Home Authors
03.11.23

Saturday Selects

Week of March 6, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a show of more than 50 lamps by up-and-coming artists and designers in Brooklyn, the "most Instagrammable" restaurant interior in Tbilisi, and a home in Australia that makes the case for green-on-green-on-green (above).
More
03.01.23

Invitation

The DALL-E Invitational: We Asked Designers to Create Rooms, Objects, and Other Weird Experiments Using Image-Generating AI

With the sudden explosion into mainstream culture of AI tools like ChatGPT and the image-generation program DALL-E, the past few months have seen lots of speculation and big talk about what AI means for the future: Will machines take over the world? Will they take over the design industry? How scared should we be? These are questions that require serious consideration, but at the same time, we could hardly be blamed for simply being curious about what these tools can do, DALL-E in particular. DALL-E allows you to generate an endless stream of fictitious images based on whatever prompt you plug in, and it's insanely addictive; a few months back I went down a rabbit hole asking it to design rooms, to mash-up the work of famous designers and artists, or to create imaginary products from scratch; it was fun, so I invited a dozen designers to join me. You can see both my creations and theirs after the jump.
More
02.22.23

Fair Report

All the Best Art — and Design — We Saw at the 2023 Frieze Week in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is certainly not the most social town — compared to New York, where design and art events happen nightly and, as a professional, you could pretty much get by never paying for a glass of wine, LA's calendar can't really compete. Which is why things feel so much more exciting when Frieze comes to town each February, and suddenly your calendar fills up and you're running into interesting people left and right, multiple times a day. For those of us who crave creative stimulation, it's a boon, the time of year when galleries, stores, and makers sync up to showcase new works and new ideas. See (almost) everything we saw after the jump.
More
01.28.23

Saturday Selects

Week of January 23, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: new tables inspired by Colombian tiles, a book devoted to bookends, and a jaw-dropping opera set designed by Pierre Yovanovitch (above).
More
12.16.22

At Home With

In Her Object-Filled Mexico City Home, Su Wu Surrounds Herself With Gifts, Mexican Crafts, and Contemporary Design

Even though Su Wu's home has since become, in our circles, one of the most well-known stops on the Mexico City circuit of cool, it felt inevitable that we should include it in our book, How to Live With Objects — both to commemorate our long professional relationship, and to acknowledge that when you're talking about the beauty and power of objects, hers is a voice that deserves to be part of the conversation. Wu is a staunch champion of the local Mexican design scene, using her home — which she shares with her husband, the artist Alma Allen, and their two children — as a place to co-curate exhibitions and showcase her ever-growing collection of gifts, Mexican crafts, and contemporary art and design.
More
12.13.22

Sighted

Ben Wolf Noam’s Mushroom Menorahs Were Inspired By the Intersection of Judaism and Psychedelia

Encapsulated in a school of thought called the Kabbalah, the Jewish belief in biblical mysticism isn't shared by everyone, but its theories can be compelling — and in the case of L.A. artist Ben Wolf Noam, inspiring, too. He recently launched a collection of one-of-a-kind ceramic mushroom menorahs with The Future Perfect that reference the intersection of Judaism and psychedelia, not to mention making for wildly colorful centerpieces for your holiday table. We recently chatted with him about the series and its origins.
More
12.09.22

Sighted

Ferm Living’s New Collection Subverts the Typical Scandinavian Simplicity With a Subtle Dose of Cool

In Ferm Living's newest collection, organic shapes meet cooler textures and materials, and the typical Scandinavian simplicity is subverted by the subtlest dose of cool, so that wine glasses become brown ceramic goblets and coat racks look like mid-century sculpture. Everything has a little bit of personality, which is what we advocate for in our new book, and what helps render something a "personal treasure" rather than a utilitarian staple.
More
12.06.22

Gift Guides

Latke Candles and LP Stands: The 2022 Gift Guide, Part I

If you asked us what our absolute top gift recommendation would be for 2022, you probably already know by now what we'd answer: our new book, How to Live With Objects. But in case you need a few other ideas, don't worry, we've also compiled 100 best-gift-of-2022 runners-up, starting with Monica's 50 picks, including a colorful under-$200 drinks cart, a rhinestone-encrusted hand sanitizer pouch, and a pair of hand-shaped wooden salad servers.
More
12.03.22

Saturday Selects

Week of November 28, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: solo shows by Ellen Pong and Eny Lee Parker, a series of chairs inspired by Surrealist avant-garde paintings, the launch of a new furniture label by Adi Goodrich, and a collection of tables and cabinets encased in a patchwork of semiprecious stone.
More
11.02.22

SU Services

Moda Operandi Trunkshow, 2022

In our second partnership with Moda Operandi, we marked the launch of our book, How to Live With Objects, with a trunkshow sale offering some of the more accessible objects featured in its pages.
More
10.27.22

Shopping

Seven Design Tastemakers on Their Biggest eBay Scores — and Secret Expert Shopping Tips

We talk at length in our forthcoming book, How to Live With Objects, about the joys of getting lost in the online shopping process on your way to building a more personal home, and about how shopping, even if you don't buy anything, can help you learn about makers and movements as you define or refine your taste. There's really no better place to do that than eBay. Today, we asked seven tastemakers and shopping experts to share their favorite eBay finds, as well as their top shopping tips and current favorite saved searches (because as every shopping expert will tell you, you *must* have saved searches).
More