06.23.16

Studio Visit

When Is a Hairy Mirror Not Just a Hairy Mirror? Talking Materiality and Minimalism with Ben & Aja Blanc

Wood, bronze, marble, and minerals are some of the raw, elemental materials Providence-based design duo Ben and Aja Blanc use to craft their minimal objects for the home. The couple, who graduated from RISD and were the unexpected darlings of last year's Sight Unseen OFFSITE, have only been collaborating for a little more than a year and a half. But their fledgling partnership has already yielded more than a few instant classics.

04.06.24

Saturday Selects

Week of April 1, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new exhibition space in Buenos Aires, a soft/hard collision in the USM x Comme Si pop-up, and the chicest utility knife we've ever seen.

03.28.24

Q+A

Architectural and Archetypal, Kalon Pieces Are Defined By Their Thoughtful Details

Since 2007, Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen have been producing work that is as poetic as it is practical through their Los Angeles studio, Kalon. The studio borrows its name from an Ancient Greek concept of ideal beauty that comprises both physical and moral aspects. It’s a high bar to set. In their practice, Simmering and Pauwen take a principled approach that seriously considers the environmental and social impact of what they do; “sustainability” has become an overused word, but for Kalon, it’s a true ethos, guiding not only their production process — in terms of the materials and labor involved — but also how their designs exist in the world. To celebrate Kalon joining the Sight Unseen Collection, we checked in to get a sense of what’s changed — and what hasn’t — since we last touched base.

02.29.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Melbourne Exhibition Signals a Return to Romanticism in Design

We've been dancing around naming it for a while — or we've been calling it other, less expansive, more niche things — but it's official: Romanticism is creeping back into design. Following a similar moment in fashion — which saw things like Alessandro Michele’s peacock-y looks for Gucci or, really, anything from Harris Reed’s eponymous line — we’ve slowly clocked the appearance of flowing skirts around simple stools and lamps, intricately patterned floral wallpapers, deep oxblood-colored furniture pieces, and dramatic gestures like tapestries hung on apartment walls — all hinting at design’s turn to embrace its romantic side. A counter to the simplified geometries and washed-out hues of the Millennial aesthetic? A reflection of society’s current highly emotive state? Whatever the reason for this shift, the recent work of trans-Pacific duo BMDO marks a significant step in that direction, and their self-professed “playful, dark, social, and emotional” work is currently on view through this weekend at Oigall Projects gallery in Melbourne.

02.27.24

Sight Unseen Collection

Punk and Playfulness Co-Exist in Nice Condo’s Monumental Furniture

Combining influences from Brutalism and Memphis with traditional wood craft, Nice Condo’s Chris Held and Sara Graham create monumental designs that — while often statement-making in some way, from the off-kilter color palette of a dining table to a cabinet with sawtooth hardware — are each intended to anchor a space and fit with a variety of interior styles. "Challenging the expectations of a client in formal ways quickly veers into sculpture, and I'm not interested in making sculpture," Held says. "I'm interested in making things people put in their homes and spill drinks on — live life on and around."

12.11.23

Alexis & Ginger

New York, alexis-and-ginger.com Alexis Tingey and Ginger Gordon’s studio benches happened to be positioned next to each other during their furniture design Master’s program at RISD, and after two years of sharing ideas and inspirations, the pair decided to set up a business together after graduating last year. 2023 saw the prolific pair launch not one but two impressive debut series — one of them part of The Sight Unseen Collection — whose wide-ranging materials and forms take inspiration from the designers’ extensive archive of architectural and cultural imagery. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is reflective — a collage of experiences and histories. Stories emerge from a breadth of voices, and there is nothing succinct about it. There is an unwillingness to be tethered and a yearning for a new morning. American design feels both fast and slow; it is innovative but just waking up, working hard now and hopeful for what’s ahead. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This April will mark our studio’s first full year. In 2024, we’ll launch our third collection. For this next series we’re inviting in a few new materials and processes. We’re looking towards light as a medium and working with materials of transparency, including stained glass and textiles, while continuing to bring in aspects of metalwork and carved wood. These objects are a continuation of storytelling through layered materiality and form. What inspires or informs your work in general? There’s a wall in our studio that’s in constant motion — an assemblage of inspirations like photographs, pencil sketches, tacked-up fragments of textiles, and material samples. The images we arrange and the collages we create are a visual poetry, a means of sketching and finding meeting points in our thinking. Our inspirations are often connected by a common thread of tactility and storytelling. We’re fascinated by the stories an object holds, written through its processes of making and the various hands it passes through. Handcraft traditionally associated with female makers — such as embroidery, quilting, and lacemaking — are a continuous touchstone for our work. This inspiration stems from the women in our lives and early memories of their craft. Our observations of these women creating were some of our first experiences viewing and learning how things were made, designed, and collected. These influences inspire the forms, materiality, and stories … Continue reading

12.11.23

American Design Hot List

The 2023 American Design Hot List, Part I

This week we announced our 11th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the first group of Hot List designers here (including Charlap Hyman & Herrero, whose baby blue Brooklyn bedroom is pictured above).

09.21.23

Q+A

Sabine Marcelis on Her Newest Collaboration, Her Material Research, and Her Complicated Feelings About the Color Blue

Sabine Marcelis has become a design breakout star, her minimal-yet-colorful work in glass and resin having penetrated the worlds of architecture, fashion, music, and TikTok. Now she’s conquered yet another realm of wider culture — beauty — through a major collaboration with the Swiss skincare brand La Prairie, with whom she’s just launched a vanity tray that marries her signature use of resin with the brand’s signature shade of cobalt. We decided it was a good moment to catch up with Marcelis, and talk to her not only about this project, but also about what materials she’s been experimenting with lately, how she feels in the wake of all the social media hype, and why she — cobalt excluded, of course — doesn’t actually like the color blue.

09.19.23

What They Bought

This Chicago Showroom is an Under-the-Radar Gem for Sourcing High-End Vintage Furniture Finds

The collection of furniture, objects, and art at Beth Berke’s Chicago vintage furniture emporium South Loop Loft is both wonderfully eclectic and satisfyingly cohesive. While Berke is often drawn to iconic classics by recognizable names, she’s developed a keen eye for the unusual, too, which in a way reflects her curious path to the design world. Berke began as an aid worker in Afghanistan and then a social worker in Chicago, helping women and children in crisis; $30,000 sofas were not exactly top of mind. But a stint in San Francisco “on a social worker's budget,” she says, led her to estate sales and Craigslist, as well as a burgeoning passion for vintage furniture.

08.16.23

Sight Unseen Collection

These Three Studios are Redefining Cool Outdoor Furniture for a New Generation

Until the middle of last century, most outdoor furniture was serving Period Piece, “with stamped-out metal, bunches of flowers and leaves,” as the late designer Richard Schultz wrote in an essay reprinted in his 2019 book, Form Follows Technique: A Design Manifesto. But lately, we’ve been clocking a growing number of contemporary designers taking up the torch of inventive outdoor furniture design. It tracks alongside the growing collective awareness that nature is precious and that cultivating our feelings of belonging within nature is more important than ever. We caught up with three exciting talents on the scene.

08.04.23

Q+A

Studio Anansi’s Latest Collaboration with CB2 Materializes the Unlimited Possibility of Black Futures

Evan Jerry was, in his own words, on a quest to explore the relationship between contemporary design and Black culture when he founded Studio Anansi in 2018. Now five years into the artist’s practice, he has launched the Black in Design Collective, a collection of works curated in partnership with and for sale at CB2 that brings together 10 Black artists from Los Angeles to Lagos, including Jerry himself. The range of pieces respond to Studio Anansi’s initial question around the project: How do you see the future of design if Blackness was included? The result makes tangible the heterogeneity of Black culture — spanning centuries, materials, objects, and themes.

08.01.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Each Piece in Kim Mupangilai’s Debut Furniture Collection is a Meditation on Cross-Cultural Identity

Each of the pieces in Kim Mupangilaï’s debut furniture collection, on view in a solo exhibition called HUE/I/AM – HUE/AM/I through August 20 at Superhouse Vitrine, is comprised of numerous, sometimes unexpected aspects that all cohere. Without being heavy-handed, and as the name of the show implies, the collection embodies the ways we might understand and conceive of our own identities.