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12.04.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

In His Latest Solo Exhibition, Magnus Pettersen’s Glass Orbs Evoke a Sense of Metaphysical Disturbance

In Norwegian designer Magnus Pettersen’s latest solo exhibition, which was on view at QB Gallery in Oslo last month, a new series of sculptures was presented, which purport, per the press materials, to transgress the boundary between artworks and functional objects. But that isn't remotely the most interesting thing about the pieces; pretty much everything published on this site at this point achieves that with equal aplomb. For us, the most interesting thing is the addition of wood, yes, especially in brilliantly tinted hues like emergency orange. But more important is the inclusion of tiny glass orbs, perched on the arms or backs or smack dab in the middle of several of the seats, which sometimes prevent the pieces from being functional objects at all. Why are they there? What is their meaning? Has Pettersen recently discovered astrology?
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11.09.23

Shopping

This Thanksgiving, Look Cute While Making a Statement in One of These Sight Unseen–Approved Aprons

Well, what do you know? Turns out all I needed to have fun on the internet again was to go shopping for aprons. What a strange pocket of online shopping — and historical discourse — aprons inhabit! They're somehow everywhere you'd least expect them to be and not at all in the places you'd think to look. I came away from this exercise understanding that the apron-buying public is vastly underserved; so much beige linen, not enough fun! Why isn't every cool restaurant across America selling aprons as merch? Regardless, the 37 aprons below are extremely solid, fashionable, sometimes surreal choices for when you're basting a turkey, glass of wine in hand, two weeks from today.
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11.04.23

Saturday Selects

Week of October 30, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a showstopping tiled fireplace in the middle of Oslo, a new destination for gift-buying in Dimes Square, and, finally, a solution for the dreaded overhead "boob light" in your urban rental.
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10.19.23

Interiors

The Latest Interior We’re Coveting is… a Film Production Office?

We've been thinking a lot lately about the flattening of visual culture and what gets lost when everything looks the same. In design, this is most prevalent in furniture and small goods like ceramics, but we have begun to notice a crushing sameness in interiors as well, with each new office or co-working space aspiring to look like the ground floor of a Brooklyn brownstone or a Parisian flat. Which is why we thought it might be useful to analyze the latest project by New York–based studio Civilian, which, despite featuring many pieces that I'd like to have in my own home, somehow avoids these pitfalls and still firmly reads "office." The space is a multifunctional home base for a documentary production company called Sandbox Films, and what we actually love about this project is how it walks right up to the line between public and private space without crossing it. Let's go over the building blocks.
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10.12.23

Shopping

Where Are All the Cool, Designer-Made Beds? Here Are 48 Options to Kickstart Your Search

It's easy to understand why beds aren't a typology that's attempted by most designers; there are pain points at nearly every step in the process. Beds are hard to ship, they're hard to store, and they're limited in their form. Plus, beds are expensive, big-ticket items that only get purchased once in a blue moon. Luckily, we're sensing a shift in the cosmos. Earlier this year, we were introduced to the Copenhagen-based brand ReFramed, whose colorful, easy-to-ship frame is made from 82% post-consumer recycled aluminum and comes with the option to purchase matching headboards and bedside tables; they'll start shipping to the US later this year. And one of our favorite emerging designers, Ben Willett, says he has at least four bed designs in the works. Until then, whether you're spec'ing for a project or buying for your own home, here are 52 options to kickstart your search.
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09.09.23

Saturday Selects

Week of September 4, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A sexy dentist's office in France, a swoony neon interior in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a reconsideration of the piano as a vehicle for design.
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09.08.23

Interiors

This Australian Renovation is Giving Off Major “Historical House Museum Outside of Milan” Vibes

If I were moving to Australia and I wanted my house to look like an Italian villa, I would probably hire YSG Studio on the basis of these images of their three-story renovation in Sydney that the studio has nicknamed Black Diamond. YSG's Sydney-based client wanted their new home to evoke a boutique hotel, but to our mind, there's more "historical house museum outside Milan" here, what with the glass bricks, port windows, ceiling plaster, travertine, banana bark, zellige tiles, raffia, smoked bronze glass, and limestone.
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07.20.23

Sighted

Designed in Australia and Woven in Argentina, These Rugs Reinvigorate Three Classic Patterns

The Australian textiles and homeware brand Pampa was founded in 2013 and quickly became a favorite of interior designers around the world. So it makes sense that for their first collaboration, Pampa teamed up with one of Australia's most beloved interior design studios: We Are Triibe, the Byron Bay firm founded by Christina Symes and Jessica D’Abadie. The two studios began toying with the idea of a collaborative rug collection at the beginning of 2020, born from a mutual desire to use textiles to introduce more warmth, depth, and texture into the home. The result of their collaboration, FORMA — newly available in olive and camel — takes three classic geometric patterns, a checkerboard, an offset stripe, and stripes of varying widths, and reimagined them with soft edges, imperfect squares, and an earthy color palette that's achieved using natural pigments.
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07.07.23

Graphic Design

Meet Ami Ami, the Boxed Wine Whose Packaging Channels 1920s Italian Futurism

If you came of age, like I did, in the '80s or '90s, boxed wine probably means one thing — and one thing only — to you. But while in the past few years there's been something of an arms race to see who can make the best boxed wine — and turn that ubiquitous Franzia into nothing but a memory — there's only one new contender that tastes delicious and also has the kind of loose, contemporary, slightly kooky vibe that we'd actually want to display on our counters or in the fridge when guests come over: Ami Ami, a new, DTC, minimal-intervention boxed wine whose playful packaging and super-memorable logotype (the dots in the I's and the negative space in the A's are meant to resemble wine glasses) were both designed by the LA- and Montreal-based studio Wedge.
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07.01.23

Saturday Selects

Week of June 26, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Reconsidering the color purple, delving into reincarnation (we promise it's design-related), and wondering about the economics of small-scale independent design brands in the face of Amazon-esque retailers. 
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06.22.23

Sight Unseen Presents

Sight Unseen is Launching a Best in Show Award at Greenhouse, Stockholm’s Emerging Design Showcase: Apply Today!

If you're a longtime reader of Sight Unseen, you probably have some idea about our hierarchy of design fairs — and, as such, you may know that the Stockholm Furniture Fair ranks, year after year, at the very top of our list. We've been attending Stockholm off and on since 2008, and we've long been fans of the fair's emerging design showcase, called Greenhouse, which launched in 2003 and functions like a more curated version of Milan's Salone Satellite, open as it is to designers around the world. We've scouted major talents there in the past, it's certainly the place to be if you're at all interested in catching the eye of tastemakers, journalists, and — not least of all — potential manufacturers for your products and interior designers who might like to spec your work. That's why we are thrilled to announce that in 2024, we will be launching a partnership with the Stockholm Furniture Fair, running February 6-10: A Sight Unseen x Greenhouse Best in Show award, judged by yours truly, that will offer even more visibility and a greater platform for your practice.
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