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08.21.24

Top Ten

The Top 10 New-Gen Vintage Dealers in the US, According to For Scale’s David Michon

We're willing to bet that as a Sight Unseen reader, a decent percentage of your Instagram feed is devoted to vintage dealers, whether you're actually in the market or just need a daily adrenaline hit of killer finds. Post-COVID, their numbers have only multiplied, and today's guest list-maker is an expert in their ranks: David Michon, the design scribe behind For Scale, a heady Substack in which he discusses topics like "airport terminal as home décor" and the "un-curation of domestic space," and keeps an ever-evolving list of top-tier décor sources around the world.
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08.20.24

Top Ten

The 10 Things You Should Have in Your Bedroom, According to Charlap Hyman & Herrero

Most of us spend the majority of our time and money perfecting the look and feel of our living rooms, and then fail to offer the same attention to the space where we spend more than 1/4 of our lives: our bedrooms. Granted we're unconscious for many of those hours, but it's hard to overestimate the impact that good design can have on our mood and thus, ultimately, the quality of our rest. Today, Adam Charlap, co-founder of the bi-coastal architecture and interiors firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, shares the ten objects you'd find in his fantasy bedroom, from midcentury lighting to a set of faux bois sheets his grandparents slept in that are still on the market today.
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08.19.24

Top Ten

The 10 Design Books You Should Have on Your Shelf, According to Stephen Markos of Superhouse

Walk into one of the always-thought-provoking historical exhibitions at Superhouse gallery in New York — where founder Stephen Markos has built a program around showing both contemporary designs and those of the often little-known makers that preceded and influenced them — and you'll get to browse a smattering of books he's collected that reference those makers' bygone works. Here, he shares a list of 10 favorites from his personal library which also span past to present.
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07.13.24

Saturday Selects

Week of July 8, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two design projects made from discarded materials, an exhibition that's a who's-who of young Scandinavian designers, and an opulent new space for the intersection of French and American culture.
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06.27.24

Travel

Four Incredible Designer Villas You Can Rent This Summer in Europe, Or Just Admire From Afar

Every winter, when I start fantasizing about summer vacations I might go on that year, there's one form the daydreams always take: the enduring paradigm of the verdant country villa shared with family and friends, something straight out of a French or Danish film. But once you try to actually book a villa like that, the grounds may be picturesque, and the building pretty enough, but the interiors usually leave a lot to be desired. That's why we've been so happy to get to know the high-end home-sharing platform Boutique. Their offerings are geared towards design-forward properties rented by and for creatives, so your vacation can be both idyllic and aesthetic. We went hunting on Boutique's site for some of our favorite villas for rent across Europe and the UK that are lovely to look at, inside and out.
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06.13.24

Interiors

Everyone’s Favorite Affordable Scandi Rug Brand Just Opened a (Giancarlo Valle–Designed) New York Outpost

When Liza Laserow and Fabian Berglund founded Nordic Knots back in 2016, alongside Fabian's brother Felix, it was with a clear mission in mind: to channel Sweden's design aesthetic and history, from the rug colors they launched with, which were inspired by building facades in Stockholm, to the historical Swedish architecture they shot their campaigns inside. But it was also with a clear intention to market their rugs to audiences outside their native country, and in the eight intervening years, they've cultivated a presence in the US that's grown to make up 70% of their sales. Once the trio unveiled their first physical showroom in Stockholm earlier this year, it only made sense to hang a shingle amidst their biggest fan base, with a flagship in NYC that opened this week.
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06.04.24

Sighted

Is Design In an Age of Maximalism, Or Minimalism? The Answer Is Both — and Pelle’s New Collection Offers Proof

Are we currently in an age of maximalism, with wood paneling, hand-painted ceilings, ruffled fabrics, and decorative pillows constituting the reigning aesthetic in design? Or an age of minimalism, when sleek chrome and the High-Tech vibe have never been more popular? The answer, really, is both — the two styles have often happily coexisted in the past, and we've been happily embracing both for awhile now. That might be why the latest collection from the Brooklyn studio Pelle, released a few weeks ago during New York design month, appeals to us: It unabashedly embraces both extremes.
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06.01.24

Saturday Selects

Week of May 27, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: highlights from a design fair for Sweden's independent talents, Caitlin Mociun's new 90s-inspired jewelry line, Giancarlo Valle's new showroom in New York, and the latest Modernist architectural icon to open its doors to overnight guests.
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05.24.24

Sight Unseen Collection

Our New York Design Week Launch: 10 Cabinets and Consoles by 10 Designers, All for Sale Through Sight Unseen

There's nothing better than a piece of furniture that simultaneously hides your possessions and, when open, offers them a beautiful backdrop. To celebrate our love of great storage options — and to offer our clients more of them — we presented 10 new pieces from our Sight Unseen Collection during New York Design Week (ahem, Month): casegoods by 10 different designers, some of which are already available to source on our site. Exhibited in the Chinatown showroom of Peter Staples's lighting studio Blue Green Works, the cabinets, consoles, and nightstands were the perfect way to also showcase decorative knobs and pulls from Monica's new project, Petra Hardware, in a collaborative exhibition.⁠
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05.14.24

Shopping

Meet Petra: Your New One-Stop-Shop For Designer-Made Statement Hardware

If you're an interior designer whose client has non-traditional tastes. If you're a renter who's tired of looking at a tired kitchen but can't renovate. If you bought a beautiful storage cabinet years ago and want to fall back in love with it. If you own a house in Connecticut or L.A. but want its front door to look like a villa in Italy. If you just need one perfect little weirdo bauble for your nightstand. Basically if you want to make a small change, anywhere in a home, that makes a big visual impact: You're going to want to bookmark Petra. Petra is my new showroom for artistic hardware, and it launched last week with drawer pulls, cabinet knobs, door handles, furniture pulls, appliance handles, and more by 27 international designers.
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05.03.24

Travel

French Installation Artist Daniel Buren Has Transformed Six Hotels With Color and Sculpture

Three years ago, the LVMH-owned hotel group Belmond began working with Italy’s Galleria Continua on a program to bring the work of a diverse group of renowned artists into their 46 global properties. But midway in, they decided it could be more impactful to commission a single person for a series that would span multiple locations, and so the gallery called the famed French installation artist Daniel Buren with an ambitious proposal: to create six site-specific works in six hotels across Italy, South Africa, France, and Brazil. For Mitico, the final results of which were unveiled over the past two months, each of his installations was envisioned in direct response to the architecture or surrounding landscape of the hotels.
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04.18.24

Fair Report

This Milanese Brand — and Its Newest Collection, Just Launched in Milan — Brings the Maximalist Trend to Your Table

We noticed a funny little recurring motif at this week's Milan fair: At many of the gatherings we attended, we were served wine and/or water from the kind of frilly, classical goblets you might expect to find at a fancy summer garden party in Tuscany rather than in the middle of a big city known for its Modernist design. But maximalism has been on the rise in our world for awhile now, and the proof can be seen not just in our design-week drinkware but in the rise of brands like Sophie Lou Jacobsen, Gohar World, Levant, and the Milanese fashion and housewares label La DoubleJ, for whom frilly goblets are an enduring staple. La DoubleJ's founder J.J. Martin is known for her love of pattern-mixing, florals, vibrant colors, and all things old-school Italian, and the label's latest tabletop collection, Solar, embodies all those tendencies.
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