Week of February 29, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A David Hockney library, a Gio Ponti flatware collection, a bracelet inspired by Mario Botta, and a brand new collection by two of the founding members of Memphis.
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Colorful geometric design objects by Schneid

Colorful, Geometric Designs by a German Studio On the Rise

Though Julia Mülling and Niklas Jessen of the German studio Schneid consider themselves makers of all things — from textiles to furniture to the amazing, stackable dishware set above — it’s lighting that fills the majority of their portfolio. Creating a lamp, they say, “feels very free, almost like making a piece of art — where you don’t have to follow the rules like when you design a chair.” So it’s no wonder that when we ask who their influences might be, they don’t first cite Ettore Sottsass or some other member of the Memphis Group who could have inspired their colorful, totemic Junit series, but rather light artists like James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson. “When you see their art, you realize how affected you can be by the use of light and color,” Mülling says. “That’s very inspirational to us.
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OMMO's colorful kitchen accessories

Colorful Kitchen Accessories by the Designer Behind Your Favorite Brand

If you've ever lusted after many of Hay's simple but colorful accessories — from the ultra-covetable Strike matches to the duotone Analog clock — you have Shane Schneck to thank for that. The Swedish-American designer, along with his wife Clara von Zweigbergk, has for years created products and headed up the art direction for the Danish brand from his studio in Stockholm. Now, Schneck is bringing his finely tuned eye to another Scandinavian-chic housewares brand: Ommo, a colorful kitchen accessories collection that's debuting in the U.S. this week.
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Ben Branagan's sculptural vases

Sculptural Vases With Scholarly Origins

Among our 30-something friends, collaging is suddenly all the rage. (Maybe it's the new adult coloring book?) But to our minds, there's another use for old books and papers that consistently produces a far more beautiful result: paper pulp, the key ingredient in CHIAOZZA's charming Lump Nubbins, Silo Studio's PPPPP bowls, and now Ben Branagan's Monuments series, which debuted last night in a window installation at London's Darkroom concept shop. For the exhibition, Branagan, a designer and professor in visual communications, transformed the pulped remains deaccessioned library books into a series of totemic, distinctly non-functional pots and vases.
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Stools inspired by modernist sculptors

Stools That Channel Our Favorite Modernist Sculptors

Isamu Noguchi, Hanna Eshel, Barbara Hepworth — these are the masters of marble who came to mind when we first saw French designer Guillaume Delvigne's beautiful new stool series for Tools Galerie in Paris. The young designer — who often does work for companies like Hermes or La Chance — just closed an exhibition there, the inaugural presentation at a brand-new Left Bank space for the gallery. The sculptural, totemic stools — which were inspired by mooring posts — are actually made from several different materials, including bronze, wood, and leather. But stone is the star here, in creamy white Carrera, flecked travertine, and a rich green called Vert Donay.
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Greenterior botanical decor

A New Book Features the Botanical Decor of Your Dreams

File this one under "why didn't we think of it first?" This fall, Magali Elali and Bart Kiggen of the Belgian online magazine Coffeeklatch — a destination for lovely interviews and photography that's been on our must-read list for years — released a book called Greenterior, which looks at the homes of designers and artists through the lens of their abundant houseplants.
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Week of February 8, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Still haven't found a Valentine's gift? How about a $7,000 trio of architectural weavings, a spiral gold ring, an avant-garde flower arrangement, or just a day date uptown to see the latest California Light & Space exhibit (above)? We've got you covered, ahead.
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Ben Medansky sculptural ceramic planters

These Avant-Garde Arrangements Look So Right in Ben Medansky’s Vases

It's no secret that ceramics and plants are two of the biggest styling trends driving the interiors world right now, but our favorite thing is what happens when the two collide: The planting of jaw-dropping specimens in purpose-built pots has become something of a trend itself lately, from Adam Silverman and Kohei Oda's eccentric potted cacti to David Haskell's psychotic plants to Bari Ziperstein's recent ikebana collaboration with Junzo Mori. The latest entrant to that field is Ben Medansky, who partnered with the Los Angeles creative agency We Came In Peace on a series of limited-edition living works, on sale through Monday at Persephone's, a Valentine's-themed botanical pop-up shop in Hollywood.
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A Brooklyn Home by the Duo Behind New York’s Coolest Design Shop

Coming Soon is the design shop most cities only wish they had. The downtown New York boutique, founded by former art gallerists Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet, opened in 2013 in an area that's since become a nexus of cool, thanks to neighbors like Dimes, Project no 8, Mission Chinese, and Fung Tu. The plant-filled shop hosts occasional exhibitions and carries a pitch-perfect mix of vintage finds and design's most-wanted giftables, and it does so in a space that's constantly changing but somehow always exactly what you need. What we didn't know when we first met Barquet and Faria is that the two have an ad-hoc, not-quite-professional interior design business on the side.
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Guillermo Santoma Barcelona home

A Designer’s Barcelona Home, Where Color is King

In the most recent issue of Apartamento, alongside really excellent pieces including an interview with Matt Connors, a photographic essay of Donald Judd's collections, and a paper still-life series, we found this gem: Casa Horta, a 1920s single-family Barcelona house now occupied by the young designer Guillermo Santomà, who used vibrant shades of green, pink, and blue paint to delineate space as well as provide a gorgeously saturated, incredibly dramatic backdrop.
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lava rock design lamps

Lava Rock — So Hot Right Now

The Guadalajara-based studio Peca made coasters out of it. Formafantasma paired it with more refined materials like brass and glass. Aleks Pollner and Adrien Rovero are obsessed with it. Now, the latest designer to be inspired by plucking basalt from the earth and fashioning it into something, well, fashionable is Laura Bilde, a furniture and interior design student from Denmark who sent us this seriously on-trend lighting series this week.
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