Our Top 10 Finds From Maison & Objet

In the spring edition of the fair, we found refreshing colorways (so long neon and pastels!) and sophisticated sensibilities. If you didn’t get chance to visit the French capital, never fear: Behold our guide to the best furniture finds and more from the week.
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Norwegian Designer Kim Thome

Kim Thomé, A Norwegian Designer By Way of London

Think of the London-based, Norwegian designer Kim Thomé’s playful approach to design as a Venn diagram of sorts: On the one side is a fondness for color and geometric pattern play, and on the other is an affinity for reflection and creating optical scenarios that can change at the viewer’s discretion. Where the two overlap is a creative region in which the designer thrives.
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At the 2015 London Design Festival

In terms of sheer distance traversed, if not content, LDF now stands nearly on par with the Milan fair. But these days it’s also becoming equally vital as a destination for open design debate, with a strong manufacturing voice represented and a buffet of ambitious installations on offer. Guide in hand, we hit the mean – but thankfully sunny – streets of London to choose our favorites from this year’s show.
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The Top 5 Designers at RCA’s 2015 Graduate Show

It’s graduate show season in London, and though we’ll be featuring students from all over town in the coming weeks, we’ve found over the years that no show is quite as spectacular — or up our alley — as the Royal College of Art’s. With its esteemed alumni including the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Thomas Heatherwick, Tracey Emin, and David Hockney — not to mention some of our favorite contemporary designers, such as Max Lamb, Hunting & Narud, Soft Baroque, Fredrik Paulsen, and Hilda Hellström — Show RCA always boasts an impressive arsenal of postgraduate talent across a variety of disciplines.
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Toronto’s MSDS Studio

MSDS — the small, Toronto-based studio of Jonathan Sabine and Jessica Nakanishi, who have been working together since 2011 — is a perfect blend of its founders Scandinavian and Japanese sensibilities: aesthetics outlined by minimal, well-considered forms and explorations into tactile, human materials. The duo have been on our radar since spotting (and still very much coveting!) their Pleated Series of terracotta planters and vases, which they designed for the launch of Umbra Shift at ICFF last May. So nothing could’ve tamed our delight when we came across the duo’s solo stand in and amongst the Nordic brands at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last month.
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Nous Vous, Graphic Artists

“It’s about making language visual,” respond the three members of Nous Vous when I ask them about their distinctly French name, which translates to We, You. “Well, it rolls off the tongue nicely, too,” laughs Jay Cover, who founded the London-based trio with William Edmonds and Nicolas Burrows back in 2007. “But aside from that, our external influences tend to be design manifestos where the process is conscious of the audience and collaboration.” We, You — there is a certain anonymity to their practice, reflected also in their European website domain (nousvous.eu), placing the group nowhere specific, perhaps in an effort to avoid defining their collective body of work.
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Our Top Picks From the Stockholm Furniture Fair

February: a month synonymous with diminishing New Year’s resolutions, potential polar vortices, and the world’s largest meet-up of Scandinavian furniture and lighting designs. Expectations for this year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair were higher than ever with positive winds sweeping through the industry (and Scandinavia in general, according to this week's New Yorker). Although the Nordic vernacular for high-quality craftsmanship still prevailed, this year welcomed debate around experimental methods and their significance for contemporary design. From across both the larger halls and the Greenhouse display for independent designers, we're highlighting some of our favorite products from the week here.
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IMM Cologne 2015

Our Favorites From IMM Cologne 2015

While the furniture market seems to be enjoying a slower pace of late – with many brands safely coasting on a design language of minimal lines and adaptable colorways geared towards the notion of versatility in our homes – the international interiors show IMM Cologne brought a smattering of unexpected and pleasing discoveries. From bold, new homegrown brands and a hall designated entirely to up-and-coming designers, to the surprising use of color across the bigger, international halls ('70s-style honey beige, maroon, and green anyone?) we bring you our favorite launches from this, the first furniture trade show of the year.
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sarah kissell's palm springs wedding

This is What Happens When Art Directors Get Married

It can be easy to become immune to the Postmodern references and patterns currently littering the digital ether, but there’s something different about Sarah Kissell, the Los Angeles–based designer behind the graphically-fitting guise Pure Magenta. As she describes it, it’s the simultaneous practice of excess and restraint — especially while exploring questionable taste — that Kissell values the most. “Riding the line between the two is when things become interesting to me,” she says. “It also widens the opportunity to succeed or fail, which is a healthy place to be a young designer.” And healthy is exactly where the designer is right now, dividing her time as senior art director for the terminally trendy fashion retailer Nasty Gal, as well as developing Pure Magenta’s graphic identity and soon-to-launch jewelry line.
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London Design Festival 2014

As summer turns to fall, so we turn the design diary to September and one of our favorite events: London's annual Design Festival. Now in its 12th year, LDF has evolved to include not only the city’s flourishing design community, but a national and increasingly international mix, competing against the behemoth that is Milan’s Salone del Mobile in April. But in addition to furniture debuts and high-profile launches, LDF also acts as an occasion for those lesser design-mad folks to enjoy events and workshops around the city, as well as the oh-so-tempting retail destinations offering the latest coordinating stationery necessities (yes, HAY, we’re looking at you). With the launch of our pop-up keeping us New York–bound, we sent our London correspondent Rae Blunstone out onto the circuit, LDF guide in hand and sturdy sneakers at the ready, to pick up her favorites from the week's events.
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12 Dozen Egg Cups

Here at Sight Unseen, we have a pretty strict bias against kitsch. But every so often we stumble upon a project that, while somewhat gimmicky, injects so much fun into the daily routine and has such roots in formal and material investigation, that it’s impossible to deny its utter lovability. We discovered such a project from the Leicester, England–based creative duo 12 Dozen Egg Cups, whose initial outing to a pottery class at a local community center developed into a challenge to repurpose the ubiquitous egg cup 144 different ways in the space of 12 months.
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