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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."
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02.24.24

Saturday Selects

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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01.23.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

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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01.22.24

Interiors

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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01.20.24

Saturday Selects

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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01.17.24

Interiors

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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01.11.24

Interiors

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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01.09.24

Interiors

Tapestries and Textiles Give This Madrid Apartment a Modern Moorish Flavor

"Just renovated, but with no charm or personality” — judging from the time we've spent browsing Zillow, this is the precise way we'd describe so many homes that have hit the market in recent years. So it was for this 2,000-square-foot holiday apartment in Madrid, which was recently refreshed by local studio Casa Josephine for a young American-Kuwaiti businesswoman — who owns Ecru, a lifestyle brand based in Kuwait and India — and her family. Throughout the home, the designers have deftly blended a mix of influences, from Moorish to the Middle Eastern, to create a space filled with rich, contemporary textiles in colors that are unmistakably Spanish.
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12.10.23

Saturday Selects

Week of December 4, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Pierre Yovanovitch’s chic new Chelsea gallery, lamps that look like melted butter, and the work from home setup of our dreams.
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12.01.23

Sighted

These Bauhausian, Artisan-Made Rugs Embody The Spirit of Argentina

When you think of Argentina, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Steak? Soccer? For many, it’s tango —the passionate partner dance that’s fast, fiery, and frankly far too complicated for my two left feet. Since Australian textile brand Pampa works with skilled artisans in remote parts of Argentina, as well as across Latin America, the company has chosen to dedicate its latest collection of rugs to the vibrant culture of its partners. So using bright red natural dyes to color the 100% wool fibers, they created the Tango collection as an homage to the spirit of Argentina, and specifically to its national dance.
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11.29.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Eny Lee Parker’s “Pretty Secrets” Exhibition Puts the Spotlight on 7 Major New Female & Nonbinary Talents

We’ve been Eny Lee Parker stans ever since she debuted her first collection with Sight Unseen at our 2017 Offsite show, and it’s been rewarding to watch her meteoric rise from breakout star to global name. Recently, the New York–based artist and designer has been doing her own part to highlight a new generation of emerging talent, the latest by curating a showcase of works by seven female or nonbinary designers in collaboration with Spring New York.
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11.27.23

Sighted

Sweden’s Oldest Rug Brand Finally Lands in Soho

Scandinavian design brands have been a favorite of American consumers since the mid-20th century — and of Sight Unseen since we could barely recognize something as "design." This month, one of our favorite of those brands — the Swedish rug company Kasthall, with whom we partnered for Sight Unseen Offsite in 2017 and created a capsule collection of rugs pre-pandemic — opened up a new permanent showroom in Soho, leaving behind the trade-friendly but consumer no-mans-land that is the D&D Building for the cobblestone streets and extensive foot traffic of downtown NYC. The company has created beautiful woven and hand-tufted rugs at its factory in Kinna, Sweden, since 1889, and its spacious new flagship on Howard Street will allow customers to touch and see the quality of those carpets IRL.
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