Home Authors
05.23.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

From Lava Stone to Hempcrete: The First of Our Offsite Selects Round-Ups

Ever since we began hosting our Sight Unseen Offsite fair, it has always featured both full collection launches as well as a more gallery-like section called Selects, the latter meant to highlight only a piece or two each by a large, diverse group of designers. Now that our physical show has become Offsite Online, we’ve kept the Selects concept in tact, and we’re presenting those individual works in roundups on our main feed over the next three Saturdays. View the first one here.
More
05.13.20

Sighted

Candle Wax Tables and Mattress Foam Chairs: Tour One of the Best Waste-Material Reclamations We’ve Seen

Carsten in der Elst's recent graduate project, Heavy Duty, is every design student ever's wet dream — traveling around to different regional factories, asking them to identify their primary waste materials, then collaborating with them to use their existing production processes to turn those byproducts into something new. Unlike every other design student ever, though, in der Elst's results actually transcend his original thesis, amounting to a vast collection of objects that, if a gallery like Kreo or Friedman Benda released them from a mid-career designer, we wouldn't bat an eyelash.
More
05.12.20

Sighted

A New Collection of Steel and Stone Chairs That Combine Minimalism With Personality

The work of Danish interior and product designer Lisette Rutzou is characterized by a funny sleight of hand — at first you think you're looking at something really classical and elemental, and then you realize she's snuck in a whole other aesthetic language, more vibey and directional than you initially understood. Her newest collection of chairs and benches, Ego, has that same feeling.
More
05.09.20

Saturday Selects

Week of May 4, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Schloss Hollenegg's new exhibition launches in 3-D, Lex Pott moves from candles to soap-making, and a beloved New York photographer launches in-demand jigsaw puzzles.
More
05.08.20

Fair Report

Our Favorite Finds From the First-Ever Virtual Frieze Art Fair

For those in the art world, the loss of a physical Frieze means the loss of a key moment for discovery, commerce, and networking. But for those of us with no skin in the game, the virtual viewing room offers some very real benefits — like being able to browse, and read the backstory of, pieces we might have missed in the chaos of the fair, or being able to grab the exact images we want for this roundup.
More
05.04.20

Shopping

A Lanvin Alum Who Pivoted to Design — And Just Released Our ’80s Dream Lamp

Ever since Golden Girls style became a thing two years ago, it's become something of a sport among Instagram vintage accounts to continuously drop ever-larger, ever-more-curvaceous '80s lacquered furniture sets than you dreamed could possibly exist. But leave it to a former accessories designer to recognize that sometimes a little bit of a big trend is all you need — Nadia El Abany's new collection of striped and color-blocked columnar lamps, their high-gloss ceramic bases and linen shades straight out of a Miami estate sale, let you scratch that particular itch without having to go all in.
More
04.17.20

Excerpt: Book

Three Recipes for Virtuous Comfort Food, From a Fave Restaurant of New York Creatives

Right now we're all cooking at home, and all we want is virtuous comfort food — exactly the kind of food that the New York restaurant Dimes is known for. Today we're sharing three recipes from its new book, Dimes Times, all of them warm and soothing, relatively easy to make, and freezer-friendly, too. It's no sitting-at-a-Matisse-inspired-table-sipping-wheatgrass-margaritas, but it's the perfect thing for a pandemic that has deprived us of such.
More
04.15.20

Sighted

High-End Editorial Set Design, But Make It Cuddly

For its March issue, the Italian magazine Icon Design came up with an amusing way of spotlighting one of the pandemic's unsung heroes — the pets keeping us sane during lockdown — by pairing high-end set designs by stylist Greta Cevenini with portraits of eight dogs belonging to influential Italians. It's genius, because how many of us feel like luxury design is relevant to our lives at this exact moment? But make it cuddly, and it's a whole other story.
More
04.11.20

Saturday Selects

Week of April 6, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a reissued Nanna Ditzel chair, a stylish oasis in the desert, and the only pocket knife we'd pay $375 to probably never use.
More
04.09.20

Current Obsession

Think Face Pottery Is a Millennial Thing? Meet the Artist Who’s Been Doing It Since the ’70s

When Jill and I posted pictures of our favorite books on Instagram last week, mine featured one of my favorite objects in my living room, shown above: A pot, used by me as a planter, that features two hand-painted, color-blocked pastel faces. I bought it on eBay for $10 a year and a half ago. I don't remember how I found it. I had no idea, at the time, who the maker was, only that her name was Victoria Crowell and I assumed she was an obscure local artisan who made the pot in the '80s. I was mostly correct.
More
04.03.20

Current Obsession

Get Ready to See This Classic Pattern Everywhere

We first realized a checkerboard trend was happening last fall, and have since amassed a folder full of images that grows bigger by the week, as we see the pattern flying by on the Instagram accounts of fashion brands, interior designers, and shops. Today we've prepared a roundup of our favorite examples of the trend, but prepare yourself for a lot more — despite faint echoes of bad '80s interiors and ska bands, trust us, it's coming.
More
03.31.20

Sighted

Feeling Anxious? Calm Down With an ASMR Interior Design Video. (Yes, It’s a Thing!)

We discovered recently that there's a whole genre of ASMR videos devoted to faux design consultations, from whispery kitchen renovation meetings to a guy who's just narrating himself drawing the floorplan of a house for 30 minutes. We're sharing our favorite examples of interior design ASMR here, which, trust us, are exactly what you need right now to lift your spirits, whether they chill you out or make you laugh — or both.
More