02.08.25

Saturday Selects

Week of February 3, 2025

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: highlights from Mexico Art Week, an unsung Dadaist ceramicist on view at Volume Gallery, and a side table stitched with freshwater pearls that we're seriously coveting.

01.16.25

Sighted

The Debut Collection From Studio Hanrahan Melds Ancient Forms and Contemporary Aesthetics

One of the best things about Sight Unseen turning 15 this year is having an archive at our fingertips by which to chart the growth of certain artists who have captured our interest over the years. Take Ryan Hanrahan, an Australian designer whose work we first published more than a decade ago. Hanrahan has been involved in several different ventures since then, including Addition Studios, a ritual-focused wellness brand he sold at the tail end of COVID. But looking at each one — particularly in the context of Text the Sun, the first collection he's releasing under his new studio name, Studio Hanrahan — you see the obvious through lines: the geometric shapes, the love for elemental materials such as marble and metal, the melding of ancient forms and contemporary aesthetics, an abiding interest in waterjet–cut perforations. Hanrahan calls Text the Sun "a playful recalibration" of those interests, and the results are lovely.

12.05.24

Interiors

We Did a Full Styling Makeover of Jill’s House — Courtesy of Lightology and an Epic Vintage Haul

If you're a longtime reader of Sight Unseen, it's possible you've seen some version of my house in East Hampton, from the just-moved-in IKEA-starter-kit vibe of 2014 to the post-renovation feature last year, where I revealed our baby blue kitchen and double-drenched yellow guest bath. Last month, though, Monica and I decided to give my home a new life — a styling makeover we're calling "the Sight Unseen edit," executed as part of our continued collaboration with Lightology, for which we've previously shot two other homes we outfitted with the online retailer's incredibly diverse lighting and furniture offerings. For our third in the series, we paired vintage accessories and art with beautiful, sleek pieces from Lightology's catalog to create a more sophisticated mood for my space, one befitting the vision I've always had of it as a repository for all the design work and knowledge I've collected over my 20-plus-year career.

12.03.24

Excerpt: Book

A Full Repudiation of Beige-on-Beige, an Ode to Citrus, an Appreciation of an Undersung Finnish Designer: What We’re Reading, Fall 2024 Edition

Gift-giving season is in full swing, and while a big, beautiful coffee table is a uniformly welcome present, we wanted to deep dive into a few particularly inspiring ones we've been living with lately. In the second edition of our new column, What We're Reading, we're looking at two excellent new interiors books, an archival look at the life and work of a beloved Finnish designer, and an ode to the humble lemon.

11.21.24

Gift Guides

Lace Pants and Stone-Encrusted Pillboxes: Jill’s 2024 Sight Unseen Gift Guide

Part II of our annual gift guide! A reminder: whether you’d actually buy these things is, to a certain extent, beside the point; it’s how enjoyable it can be to dig into a well-curated list and imagine a future when your home might be full of incredible things, and the world might just be a better place. Today’s gift guide comes from Jill, who tends to make personalized hats on Etsy for her loved ones but here is coveting a hefty glass catchall by an up-and-coming studio, the mixed-metal ring JB Blunk made for his wife, a semi-precious stone-adorned pillbox, a menorah that reminds us of a lazy Susan, and more. See — and shop — her full list below!

11.01.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

After 100 Years in Business, You Might Think You Know the Iconic Swedish Design Store Svenskt Tenn. You’d Be Wrong.

Something funny happens when you're a company that's been around for a full century. People start to assume that they already know everything there is to know about you — that they've somehow osmotically absorbed your brand tenets or your ethos by virtue of you simply sticking around. For me, the storied Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, was one of those companies. But then I went to Stockholm in September on the occasion of Svenskt Tenn's centenary retrospective opening at Liljevalchs Kunsthalle, running through January 12. Called Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home, it spans thirteen thematic rooms, curated by Jane Withers together with Svenskt Tenn's head curator Karin Södergren. It was there I realized that what I knew about this company hardly scratched the surface.

11.01.24

Shopping

Exploring Pewter — a Once Fusty, Now Weirdly Cool Material — Via 22 Vintage and New Pieces You Can Bring Into Your Home

When I was in Stockholm earlier this fall for Svenskt Tenn's 100th anniversary exhibition, I thought about pewter — which is a primary part of the Swedish design store's lore and product catalog — a lot. We talk about metal often on this site, but unlike brass, which can be a turn-off in the wrong context, there's almost no silvery toned metal that I'd ever tire of. Aluminum, stainless steel, chrome — all eternally perfect. (Okay, let us not speak of brushed nickel.) But there's something uniquely appealing about pewter, despite its somewhat fusty early connotations as part of a kind of American Revolution cosplay kit. I started to wonder whether we were on the verge of a renaissance with this ancient material.

10.09.24

Sighted

At the New Brooklyn Museum Café, 10 Stools by 10 Designers, Reminding Us of the Borough They Call Home

For as long as I toil in the trenches of design, I'll never tire of the design brief that goes: "Everyone please take this same basic thing and mold it in your image." The results of such an assignment are nearly always uniformly delightful, so I was happy to see the debut of this latest project, commissioned by the bicoastal studio Office of Tangible Space, run by Michael Yarinsky and Kelley Perumbuti. As part of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, Office of Tangible Space was asked to redesign the museum's cafe, and they called upon their Brooklyn design friends to each take a basic wooden stool, and from it, create a one-of-a-kind work of art with which to decorate the space.

10.05.24

Saturday Selects

Week of September 30, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Sophie Lou Jacobsen scales up her glass work, Pinch celebrates its 20th anniversary with an American pop-up, and we put a spotlight on two North Carolina fundraisers to benefit the decimated creative community in Asheville.

10.04.24

Interiors

For Design Lovers, Spencer’s is the New York Spa We’ve Been Waiting For

I've been to spas all over the world, and it's not that I'm unable to relax, per se. It's that — to be perfectly frank about my occupational hang-ups — my mind has often remained restless in waiting rooms as I silently judge a spa's design decisions, wondering why it's so hard for someone to come along and design something truly cool. From the garish, Daily Candy–era palette of Bliss spas to the grotto-esque cosplay of Great Jones, there's never been something that felt completely like a true design person's vibe — until now. The new Spencer's spa in Soho was designed by founder Ryan McCarthy in partnership with Charlotte Taylor and EBBA Architects. Enter the space, and you're greeted by a soothing, impeccably furnished lounge that's akin to stumbling into your favorite Hackney vintage shop. The whole thing makes you want to throw away your furniture and start all over with a palette of swirly Ron Arad chairs, Regency-era benches, Paul Evans–esque coffee tables, primitive abstract sculptures, and a bookcase full of vintage gems about design, art, women, wellness, tarot, and the occult.

08.08.24

Interiors

This New LA Music HQ Mixes Warm Woods and Cool Metals Like Nothing We’ve Seen

Normally we would say that an office doesn't have any business looking this good. But Ceremony of Roses — whose new offices were designed by Dean Levin of the LA studio 22RE in collaboration with Madeline Denley of Never Far Studios — is the merch and branding arm of Sony Music, and as such has a constant stream of global talents coming through, from Adele to Olivia Rodrigo (whose merch, we would argue, is impeccable.) The office is housed in a former 1950s factory in Culver City, and it bears several signatures we've come to associate with Levin's up-and-coming studio: a 1970s-influenced aesthetic that preferences elements like wall-to-wall carpeting in lush tones, beautifully monolithic metal expanses, and hits of coolly minimalist vintage furniture.

07.27.24

Saturday Selects

Week of July 22, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the Mexican muralist we love, the Versailles Airbnb we’re thinking of booking, and the London party space where we’d love to shimmy and shake to Chappell Roan, like all the girlies this summer.