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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.
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03.30.20

Current Obsession

Eny Lee Parker Designed a Tiny, Perfect Room in Oven-Bake Clay During Last Week’s Quarantine

“Tedious tasks are my love language,” reads the caption in one of Eny Lee Parker’s process videos, shared with candor last week on Instagram Stories. With design weeks canceled around the world and all of us confined to our homes, the Brooklyn-based designer is making the best of things with "Clay Play," an initiative she created that challenges her followers to design their own ideal room in oven-bake clay.
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03.18.20

Current Obsession

Wright’s Upcoming Glass Auction is a Good Way to Stay Inspired From Your Couch

Among the other, more pressing, concerns this virus has wrought — Will production partners close? Will businesses go under? How the heck do you keep your kids out of the frame on a video conference call? — there is the more simple concern of how to stay inspired and engaged when there are no studio or site visits, no travel, no visiting with friends or other makers, and even a walk in nature has new rules. One of our most reliable sources of inspiration, though, has always been auction catalogs, and Wright has a doozy of one coming up in early April.
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2020 interior design trends
02.10.20

Current Obsession

2020’s Biggest Design Trends Are All About Our Desire to Escape

We know that putting out a trend forecasting story in February is a bit like still saying "happy new year" to people, but hear us out: We've been thinking a LOT about where this latest trend cycle came from. And last week, when Yellowtrace wondered aloud why everything suddenly looks like the inside of a cave, it hit us — everything we've been noticing lately, particularly in interiors, has been focused around the idea of escape
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10.22.19

Current Obsession

RIP Design Legend Ingo Maurer, Who Was More Relevant Than Ever

In a strange twist of fate, we had a story on the recent resurgence of legendary lighting designer Ingo Maurer on our calendar for today, even before we'd heard of his passing at the age of 87. We had of course followed Maurer's work over the course of our 15 years in the design world, but we had never gone in for Maurer's more purposefully kitschy designs. But to focus solely on those works is ignore Maurer's sheer breadth of output, and to dismiss a collection of his lights that has recently begun to feel more contemporary and relevant than ever.
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07.24.19

Current Obsession

No, You’re Not Imagining It — These Three Vintage Lamps Are Suddenly Everywhere

In design circles, there are a few things that might be considered "Instagram famous" — certain plants, to be sure; Luis Barragán interiors; Ricardo Bofill exteriors; the Atelier Brancusi replica at the Centre Pompidou; anthuriums. But in recent months, we've noticed three lamps popping up with such frequency that they might also be ascribed that title. Each lamp is vintage, but perhaps the more crucial thing they have in common is that each represents a trend currently winging its way through the design world.
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EJR Barnes vintage furniture finds
07.10.19

Current Obsession

EJR Barnes — Your New Favorite Instagram Follow — On His Top 10 Vintage Furniture Finds

Elsewhere on the site today, we're featuring the London designer EJR Barnes, whose work first came to our attention via his smooth, aptly named Buffalo Mozzarella chair. But we were actually first introduced to Barnes via his Instagram, where he chronicles his favorite — and often completely obscure — vintage furniture finds, from Borsani daybeds to Vignelli glassware to Kukkapuro lamps. Click through for a glimpse at Barnes's current obsessions.
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05.10.19

Current Obsession

20 Design Objects and Ceramics That Prove Chains Are Trending

When chunky chains became the jewelry trend du jour earlier this year — see Sophie Buhai, Rachel Comey, ASOS, etc— it all made sense to us, since for awhile before that we'd been tracking a similar trend in design, from the classic mid-century Carl Auböck paperweight to the dramatic porcelain chains Apparatus used to suspend their Link lights back in 2015.
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02.27.19

Current Obsession

We Asked 13 Design and Fashion Influencers to Predict Spring’s Biggest Color Trends

When a color suddenly feels like THE color, it lodges itself in your brain temporarily, influencing every eBay search, shopping trip, and Instagram like you make until the next color comes along to replace it. This month we reached out to 13 of our most trusted design and fashion authorities to find out what hue they were stuck on for spring — folks like Dusen Dusen, Tekla Severin, and Harry Nuriev — then teamed up with Behr to suggest the perfect paint color to get the look in your own home.
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