With New Lights and a Serene New Showroom in Downtown Manhattan, Danny Kaplan is Cementing His Studio as a Major Creative Force

Danny Kaplan's Facet series is made of slab-built forms in first-time materials for the studio: perforated brass with a patina finish, stainless steel, or white painted steel (though the studio has stayed true to its ceramic roots, hand-sculpting clay models at the start of the production process). Hard, defined edges and angles paradoxically create a mellow mood, an atmosphere that’s serene and soothing. You could say the same thing about the studio’s new 4,000 square foot showroom, located in a pre-war cast iron warehouse building in NoHo; it's a meditative, calming exhalation that both resets and reinvigorates you.
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Week of November 11, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week was heavy on excellent exhibitions: Two art-furniture greats, friends since the '80s, join forces in a collaborative exhibition at Superhouse; a historical and contemporary showcase meditating on shadows opens at Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery; and the Swedish Grace movement gets a spotlight at Galerie56, among others. 
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The Green Goblin, Norwegian Black Metal, SpongeBob: Up-and-Coming Designer Clay Brown’s References Run the Gamut

Clay Brown’s work is shot through with an imaginative sense of play that is, quite simply, fun — but that’s not all it is. Somehow his pieces come off as minimal and spare yet highly referential and evocative, like his resin Island lamps, which call to mind cake domes; the Formica and birch I’m Ready cabinet, which could be a “mini-bar or maybe a wardrobe for a toddler;” and the jagged yet precise aluminum 1234567 bookcase, which is sharp but not at all forbidding. His Stave cabinet, part of the Sight Unseen collection, rises to a steep peak in darkly moody colors but it’s also… friendly. With its oxblood Thumbprint pull by Sam Stewart — with whom Brown has worked on several projects — it’s like a classic wooden toy scaled up to human proportions.
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This Parisian Interior Deploys Moiré Walls and Animal-Print Rugs and Still Manages to Convey Understated Glamour

If an interior clings to any one time period or design movement, it can seem a bit like a theatrical set — not entirely real, not livable. But mix eras and a space can risk coming off as scattershot or lacking in a strong point of view. It’s a fine line to walk, but Stéphanie Lizée and Raphaël Hugot, of the Paris-based interiors studio Lizée-Hugot, do it gracefully, recently infusing a Parisian residence with an atmosphere that feels refreshed, yet grounded and enduring.
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At This Wood-Clad Seaside Retreat, Iconic Scandinavian Lights Pair Perfectly With California Modernism

The Danish company Louis Poulsen is home to some of the world's most instantly recognizable lighting, designed by the greats. While all distinctively Scandinavian — there’s a certain precision and integrity combined with a playful inventiveness that’s somehow simultaneously cool and warm — these lights also work particularly well in the context of a West Coast golden-hour glow, the interplay of sun and soft shadows. Louis Poulsen's sculptural yet clean aesthetic naturally dovetails with the indoor-outdoor architecture of California modernism — both of which have been captured in a new interiors shoot styled and photographed by Lumens.
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In a New Archival Exhibition, Maria Pergay — the Original Multi-Hyphenate — Takes Her Place Among Giants

When considering Maria Pergay, it is necessary to invoke the hyphen. But even a descriptor like designer-artist-decorator doesn’t begin to contain the whole of the late designer's experience or her legacy. Opening this week at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery, the exhibition Precious Strength: Maria Pergay Across the Decades aims to secure Pergay’s place as a design pioneer, alongside fellow female powerhouses like Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray.
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A New Exhibition at PAD London Celebrates Marks of Imperfection and Impermanence

Marks of Existence, a new collection of collectible furniture launched this weekend at PAD London from Movimento Gallery (of London and Milan), refers to Buddhism’s three marks that characterize existence: imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. For the show, eight of the gallery’s designers conceived of pieces using the same material — Travertino Ascolano — to celebrate asymmetry, irregularity, and the patterns, cycles, and forces of nature that can never fully be replicated or mimicked by machines or technique.
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Week of October 7, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a rug collection inspired by a giant of modern art, a spare and minimal Athenian shoe shop (above), and the IRL exhibition of Mindcraft, a nearly 20-year-old franchise celebrating experimental Danish design and craft.
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11 Things We Loved at September’s Paris Design Shows

Earlier this month, at Paris Design Week and its concurrent shows, we were especially drawn toward work that explores material richness and depth — the use of upholstery to add dimensionality, tactility, and coziness, as well as furniture that highlights the grain and various textures of wood. Attention to detail is seasonless but there’s something about the change in the air, the way autumnal light shifts your perspective and what it attunes you to. Below, 11 of our favorite designers, launches, collars, and more from the week.
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Week of September 16, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an Ibiza boutique that mimics the sea, a Belgian artist's house-museum covered in velvet, and a two-person sculpture show nestled in the mossy landscape of Manitoba, Russel Wright's home an hour north of NYC.
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Step Into the World of a Beloved Australian Furniture Brand at Its New Space in Sydney

There’s no denying that Instagram has been a source of inspiration and connection — especially in the design world — but it’s also impossible to escape the flattening quality of the social media scroll. Australia’s Ellison Studios, whose furniture takes the best of the '70s and makes it refreshingly modern, had long been envisioning a move, or an extension, from the digital realm to a physical one, but a traditional showroom didn’t feel quite right. So when an apartment in an iconic Sydney landmark became available, an idea took shape: The Rental. For the next six months, the studio is bringing their atmospheric point of view and the imaginative world-building of a mood board to life, creating a tangible, tactile space you can step into and even inhabit for a time.
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This Swedish Designer Uses a Centuries-Old Technique to Create Mural-Like Landscapes and Domestic Scenes in Wood

In the hands of Swedish designer Carl Martinson, the centuries-old inlay technique of wood intarsia is made modern with compositions that are representational — quiet domestic scenes or landscapes — abstract, or somewhere in between. What runs throughout Martinson’s kitchen cupboards, cabinets, tables, wall works, and sculptural pieces is the soothing palette of wood tones and a material richness and warmth.
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