06.24.14

Sighted

Patch of Sky by Fabrica

People who know me well consider me to be semi-obsessed with the weather. I check it often, and I've long had the habit — often wondering if I was the only one — of bookmarking the cities of my friends and family in my app of choice, Weather Underground, just so I could picture from time to time whether they might be out frolicking in the sunshine that day, or cowering from a nasty snowstorm. It's no wonder, then, that when an email came in this morning from the folks at the Italian design-research studio Fabrica touting their latest project Patch of Sky, a "set of three Internet connected ambient lights, enabling you to share the sky above you in real-time with loved ones, wherever they are," I dropped what I was doing and decided to post about it immediately.

06.23.14

Sighted

Los Objetos Decorativos by Rosa Rubio

Barcelona-based Rosa Rubio founded Los Objetos Decorativos with a focus on creating editions of handcrafted objects designed to forge a subconscious emotional bond with their owners. Her first collection consisted of Surrealist, unconventionally tactile brushes and mirrors outfitted with ostrich feathers and synthetic hair, while her newest series — Obj. No. 5, 6, 7, and 8 — is meant to evoke the emblems of an imaginary tribe or clan. "Their patterns provide a feeling of belonging," says Rubio, which in turn conveys a sense of "protection" and "gratification, which every culture stores through these kind of elements." The one-of-a-kind pieces are made from recycled textiles which Rubio has embellished with dried plants and small clay beads.

06.20.14

Invitation

Q+Q Watches Shot By Amanda Ringstad

When Amanda Ringstad showed a friend recently one of the images she'd styled and shot for us of a cluster of Q+Q SmileSolar watches, all linked together in a random shape, her friend's first reaction was: "That looks like a lawnmower!" Ringstad was thoroughly pleased — having been invited by us to apply her styling genius in the service of our friends at Q+Q, who partnered with us on this year's edition of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, the Seattle photographer's main objective was to present the watches in a simple, abstracted way that left plenty of room for the imagination. "Watches are a simple thing, but difficult to disassociate so that they convey something else," she explains. After initial attempts to weave them together into a kind of "textile," or arrange them on top of summery backgrounds depicting water or sand, in the end Ringstad used spare colored planes and graphic shadows to elevate her subjects above the realm of mere utilitarian objects.

06.14.14

Saturday Selects

Week of June 9, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A table inspired by nailpolish that defies gravity (above), an ode to an architect whose homes are a cross between Star Wars sets and desert caves, furniture with abstract exoskeletons, and more.

06.10.14

Up and Coming

Dessuant Bone, Multi-Disciplinary Designers

Product designer Marie Dessuant and graphic designer Philip Bone met in 2010 as fellow residents at Fabrica, the Italian design research center, but their professional paths diverged for a spell afterwards. They both moved to London, but Dessuant took a job as head of design for for the furniture brand Another Country, while Bone went on to work at Wallpaper magazine and Reiss. This spring, the pair finally decided to team up to start the studio Dessuant Bone, now based in Paris, where they tackle projects that span their chosen disciplines — art direction and set design for Reiss, product design for Another Country (by whom Dessuant is still technically employed), and experimental object and furniture design for themselves. Their first official studio project, released last month, was the Bay Collection, which includes a large leaning ceramic vase, a flat vase resembling a cymbal, and a series of colorful silkscreened mirrors inspired by beach flags. Read on to see more of the duo's work and find out what the future holds for their collaboration.

06.05.14

Q+A

20th Century Carpets at Wright

At the modern design auction house Wright, rugs have long suffered that classic rom-com affliction: Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Despite being the key focal point of most interiors and often being as artful as art itself, they've only played supporting roles in larger furniture auctions — a tendency not exclusive to Wright, either. Next week, though, the Chicago- and New York–based dealer is hosting its first sale devoted entirely to the genre: "20th Century Carpets," comprising nearly 150 lots curated by Nader Bolour of Doris Leslie Blau, beginning with a late 19th-century animal-themed Indian tapestry and ending with contemporary kilims. In the middle, there's an incidental emphasis on Swedish rugs, particularly mid-century examples made by the manufacturer Märta Måås-Fjetterström. To jazz up the sale's catalog, Wright shot the images you see here, pairing some of its most beautiful lots with furniture and art by the likes of Jonathan Muecke and Ben Jones. Read more about it after the jump, in our interview with Wright's Senior VP, Michael Jefferson.

06.02.14

Sighted

Amazon Primed by Noah Kalina

Most of the images that photographer Noah Kalina posts on his popular Tumblr feed are relatively random — portraits of friends, excerpts from his commercial shoots, behind-the-scenes tidbits. But every once in awhile, any of his million-plus followers who are paying attention will notice him initiating or adding to a recurring series, like the one in which he always documents, while traveling, the view from the window of his temporary room. These mini-projects represent his most personal work, the ideas he has and then pursues in his spare time, for no other reason than to challenge himself creatively and/or keep himself busy between shoots. Amazon Primed, his latest such endeavor, showed up on his Tumblr in late February in the form of an image depicting three external hard drives and an ethernet switch.

05.31.14

Saturday Selects

Week of May 26, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: super-colorful rugs and blankets that are surprisingly affordable, an 80-pound, solid-brass bookcase that's anything but, a peek inside Totokaelo's Seattle offices, and a covetable pair of Bauhausian chairs (above).

05.30.14

Sighted

Ian Stell Shot By Rob Howard

With a debut solo show at Matter in April and a major presentation last week at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, up-and-coming furniture designer Ian Stell has had the opportunity to introduce his kinetic, transformable furniture to quite a few people this spring. Yet most of them, apparently, have read it completely wrong. "I've gotten comments recently from people who ... assumed I have an engineering background or was trained as an architect, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth," he recently told photographer Rob Howard, on whose portfolio site we recently discovered dozens of shots of Stell at home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and at his nearby studio.

05.23.14

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

A Tour of the Sight Unseen OFFSITE 2014 Show: Part I

When we founded the Noho Design District back in 2009, it was meant to provide a much-needed, well-curated platform for independent designers, whose numbers — particularly in America — had begun to surge. But it was also meant to add an extra dose of dimension and excitement to New York Design Week (or NYCxDesign, as it has since come to be known), which at the time was considered preeeeeetty lackluster, to say the least. By that measure alone, the first edition of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, our successor to the Noho Design District, was a massive success; word on the street was that this NYDW was the best anyone could remember, and we're proud to have played a significant role.

05.21.14

Fair Report

New York Design Week 2014: Interiors from Spain at ICFF

Imagine this scenario: 14 American design brands banding together to take over a large swath of the Milan Furniture Fair, all with the financial and logistical support of the US government. Sounds hilarious, right? While we can't dream of enjoying such privileges here, in one of the world's most prosperous nations, Spain has been throwing its weight behind its homegrown design industry for ages. In addition to marketing services, the Spanish trade commission — through an initiative called Interiors From Spain — has helped its local furniture manufacturers have a unified presence at ICFF for the past 10 years. This year's selection included Apavisa, Capdell, Ebir, Fama, Inalco, Isimob, Kriskadecor, Lladro, Marset, Nanimarquina, Now Carpets, RS Barcelona, Santa & Cole, and Texidors — check out our highlights from those makers after the jump, then watch our site for more coverage of the overall fair in the coming week.

05.19.14

Studio Visit

Creative Women at Work: Kyle DeWoody

If there weren't already plenty of reasons for us to love Kyle DeWoody — her friendliness, her amazing taste, the fact that she's not afraid to rock a baseball cap — she's also a poster child for blurring disciplinary boundaries, something we've long championed as well. She even named her company after the idea: She explains Grey Area, the online gallery she founded with Manish Vora in 2011, as "the undefined space between art and design, where art is made functional and the functional is made art." Even her own background has defied any categorization: Before founding Grey Area, she moved from curating to art consulting to design to film production and journalism. (In fact, DeWoody hooked up with Vora when he was running the arts website Art Log, for whom she used to write.) Her wide-ranging interests are in part what make Grey Area so great — the gallery sells everything from plush, hand-stitched Sharpies to elegant leaning brass bar carts, from plaster iPhone pillows by Snarkitecture to cat-themed beach towels by Andrew Kuo. DeWoody is constantly scouting new talent from unexpected sources, so for our Creative Women at Work series with Shinola, we got in touch to find out exactly how she does it. Here are some of her workplace essentials.