A Former Kenzo Design Director Finds Creative Freedom in a Pivot to Ceramics

When you’ve spent seven years as design director for a major Parisian fashion brand — in this case, Kenzo, the luxury house founded in 1970 by Japanese designer Kenzo Takada — where do you go from there? In Ben Mazey's case, the answer was: move back to the Antipodes, set up a ceramics studio, and fall in love with the creative process all over again. The New Zealand–born Mazey was on vacation in Australia when the pandemic hit; he took the opportunity to put down roots and began exploring clay as a material with total freedom. Out of this self-directed sabbatical came a highly expressive world of colorfully glazed pieces, and a unique visual language that’s not easy to define, in the best possible way.
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This French Designer is Bringing the Collectible Design Gallery Model to India

“Everyone has their eyes on India,” says French designer Florence Louisy, who ended up in the country herself quite serendipitously but has since carved a path. As co-founder and creative director of the Mumbai gallery Aequo (Æquō) — self-described as “India’s first collectible design gallery” — Louisy encourages international designers to discover and adapt traditional craft techniques from across the country, and to collaborate with artisans to create collections of beautiful contemporary furniture. Thanks to a booming economy, the demand for the gallery’s pieces, which include many of Louisy’s own, has soared. 
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Week of March 18, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: highlights from the inaugural Matter and Shape show in Paris, two exhibitions of cheerful winter-busting paintings in New York, a colorful new look for De Sede (above), and a double-sided terrycloth shower curtain that would enliven even the dullest bathroom.
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At Zona Maco, Agnes’s First Solo Exhibition is Bestrewn With Symbols of Luck

When the Guatemala City-based duo Agnes first burst onto the scene in 2017, they did so in a decidedly iconic fashion: Their debut collection was immediately embraced by the international design community, with splashy press clips, interesting placements, and influential commissions (AGO Projects founders Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg asked the two to create a rug for their own CDMX home, which was later featured in our book, How to Live With Objects). Now AGO is spotlighting Agnes’s sophomore collection at their Mexico City–based gallery as part of the designers’ first solo exhibition, which opened during last month’s Zona Maco festivities. 
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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.
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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."
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Week of February 19, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: furniture that appears trapped in ice, a charming Parisian powder room, and an apartment that has us hankering to paint stripes on our wardrobes.
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An Exhibition of 100 Hooks Has Us Totally Rethinking Our Wall-Mounting Game

The humble coat hook might be the most simple and effective design humans ever invented. It solves the problem so well that it’s often taken for granted (as most genius inventions are) and little attention is paid to its ingenuity, because it just works. Well, humble no more — the hook is celebrated in all its weird and wonderful variations in an exhibition called 100 Hooks presented by the estate of American sculptor JB Blunk. A hundred versions — by names like Jasper Morrison and Ilse Crawford as well as young artists and designers from across the US, UK, Europe, Mexico, and Japan — are all designed, at least nominally, for hanging clothing, towels, bags, hats, art, or whatever else needs storing or displaying. 
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Steal This Tip: Rich Velvet Curtains to Give Your Interior a Boudoir-Like Vibe

When it comes to curtains, the bigger the statement, the better. (See pretty much every photo shoot Sight Unseen has ever done.) Bold and heavy textiles might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they can undeniably make a space more dramatic, cozy, and welcoming. And at Locke am Platz, a newly opened aparthotel in Zurich, they’re everywhere: ruby red drapes framing the headboards; Modernist-patterned fabric wrapping the guest-room living area walls; warm terracotta textiles encircling the lobby; and honey yellow portières dividing stations in the restaurant. The effect, created by London-based Sella Concept, is one of instant warm fuzziness in every space, encouraging guests who’ve booked two nights — or two weeks — to feel right at home.
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Week of January 15, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a Paris apartment with a stellar stainless-steel kitchen (again!), a hotel with rooms by 14 different designers, aluminum furniture cast from waste polystyrene, and a few early highlights from Maison & Objet and IMM Cologne.
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This Holiday Rental in London is a Treasure Trove of 1970s and ’80s Furniture

Have you ever found the perfect piece of furniture, only to realize that you can’t fit it into your apartment because the pass-throughs are too narrow? For Hollie Bowden, access was particularly problematic during her renovation of a one-bedroom holiday rental apartment in London, which is located on the fifth and sixth floors of a Victorian building in Covent Garden and reached via a narrow and winding staircase. Which items could she bring up safely, without having to first hack them to bits? Luckily, she found a modular leather sofa bed by De Sede, one of many vintage finds from the '70s and '80s that give the sunny yellow space a retro-futurist feel, in a vibe we're calling High-Tech Country Kitchen.
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An Important New Residential Building in Philly — With Plans for Other Locales — Focuses On Community and the Arts

If you’re an artist who’s tired of schlepping to your studio, why not move into this new Philadelphia residential building — designed by architecture firm Leong Leong — rent one of the six studios available downstairs, and shorten your commute to a mere elevator ride? Called Ray, the building is part of a new initiative by Garage magazine founder Dasha Zhukova to, as the building's founders put it, "make art and design a part of everyday life."
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