In Barcelona, a New Exhibition Showcasing 26 Up-and-Comers on the Collectible Design Scene

Vasto, a Barcelona gallery for emerging design, originally began as an online platform in 2020. But within a couple of years, founder Carmen Riestra had opened the physical space Casa Vasto, creating an immersive environment for up-and-coming artists and designers. Collectible Barcelona, curated by Riestra, showcases pieces from 26 international designers, putting them in dialogue with one another – a conversation that’s both pointed and wide-ranging in its exploration of materials and its conceptual underpinnings.
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After 100 Years in Business, You Might Think You Know the Iconic Swedish Design Store Svenskt Tenn. You’d Be Wrong.

Something funny happens when you're a company that's been around for a full century. People start to assume that they already know everything there is to know about you — that they've somehow osmotically absorbed your brand tenets or your ethos by virtue of you simply sticking around. For me, the storied Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, was one of those companies. But then I went to Stockholm in September on the occasion of Svenskt Tenn's centenary retrospective opening at Liljevalchs Kunsthalle, running through January 12. Called Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home, it spans thirteen thematic rooms, curated by Jane Withers together with Svenskt Tenn's head curator Karin Södergren. It was there I realized that what I knew about this company hardly scratched the surface.
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In a New Archival Exhibition, Maria Pergay — the Original Multi-Hyphenate — Takes Her Place Among Giants

When considering Maria Pergay, it is necessary to invoke the hyphen. But even a descriptor like designer-artist-decorator doesn’t begin to contain the whole of the late designer's experience or her legacy. Opening this week at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery, the exhibition Precious Strength: Maria Pergay Across the Decades aims to secure Pergay’s place as a design pioneer, alongside fellow female powerhouses like Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray.
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Lukas Cober’s Crinkled-Resin Collection Was Inspired By A Beloved Children’s Book

Confession: I have never read Where the Wild Things Are. But after learning that the children’s book left such a lasting impression on Maastricht designer Lukas Cober — and influenced his most recent collection of resin-fiberglass works — I've added it to the top of my library list. Cober was so enchanted by American author and illustrator Maurice Sendak’s 1963 picture book, which follows a boy’s journey to a jungle inhabited by mischievous monsters, he decided to reconnect with his inner child and tap into a state of curiosity, naïveté, and sheer joy while crafting the body of work that’s currently on view at the Objects With Narratives gallery in Brussels.
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A New Exhibition at PAD London Celebrates Marks of Imperfection and Impermanence

Marks of Existence, a new collection of collectible furniture launched this weekend at PAD London from Movimento Gallery (of London and Milan), refers to Buddhism’s three marks that characterize existence: imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. For the show, eight of the gallery’s designers conceived of pieces using the same material — Travertino Ascolano — to celebrate asymmetry, irregularity, and the patterns, cycles, and forces of nature that can never fully be replicated or mimicked by machines or technique.
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This Norwegian Studio Devised Its Own Machinery to Make These Joyful, Rainbow-Colored Stools

We learned something new today, so perhaps you will, too: The acronym for the colors of the rainbow in Norwegian is ROGGBIF, which Oslo-based Studio Sløyd has used to title its new collection of stools, as multi-colored and joyful as you’d expect from such a moniker. Comprising 24 different playful shapes, each is designed to explore applications of a newly created dyed wood technique, which founders Herman Ødegaard, Mikkel Jøraandstad, and Tim Knutsen — who decided to work together as students during a late-night karaoke session (extremely relatable) — have been developing over the past couple of years. “Rather than starting with a shape or form, we turned our usual process on its head for this project, experimenting our way to a new material,” says the trio. 
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How Do You Conceive Design That is “Correct” for Our Time? A New Exhibition Proposes Work by 10 Designers Answering the Call

Since opening in 2020, the Max Radford Gallery in London has consistently been showcasing some of the best contemporary and experimental collectible design from up-and-comers. With the Now 4 Then exhibition, ten of these designers are debuting new work at the recently opened 2000-square-foot gallery space from design store Aram. For this collaborative show, Radford was inspired by something Zeev Aram, the founder of Aram, once said regarding his enterprise, which is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary: "I decided that I will try my best to bring to the public designs which are contemporary and correct for the time.”
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Bronze, Silk, Pine, Cherry: A Year Without a Kiln Forced Simone Bodmer-Turner to Reconsider Her Materials Palette

What does an artist do when they don’t have access to the tools their work requires? The ceramicist Simone Bodmer-Turner — celebrated for her abstract stoneware vessels and sculptures in shades of soft white or matte black — beautifully answers that question this month at Manhattan’s Emma Scully Gallery with her show of furniture and functional objects, A Year Without a Kiln.
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A Modernist Villa Outside Milan Provided the Backdrop for This Stellar Showcase of Emerging Design

This year in Milan, Alcova's founders chose to host half of its exhibition in one of our all-time favorite buildings: Villa Borsani, the 1945 residence designed by Osvaldo Borsani, architect and co-founder of furniture brand Tecno, in Varedo, north of the city. Although much of Borsani’s incredible original furniture was tucked away for the occasion (a reason to go back and revisit), several designers presented impressive new works against the villa’s striking patterned marble floors, custom textiles, and that staircase. Here are a few of our favorite things we spotted there, which, coincidentally, also provides a tour of sorts around this iconic building.
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This Entryway at the Kips Bay Show House Takes Wall-to-Wall Carpeting to New Heights

As a participant in this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, New York–based designer Bennett Leifer wanted to do something that would push design boundaries, he says: “not necessarily in a way that would be loud or provocative but that would be intellectually exciting.” Soon after learning he’d be part of this year’s iteration, Leifer happened to have dinner with the team from Edward Fields Carpet Maker (who you'll remember we worked with on our Norway x New York exhibition!). He’s worked closely with the custom luxury rug brand for years and has long admired “their heritage and their vision” – the company’s storied work has been featured in many iconic settings, including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs and the famous sunken living room of the Miller House by architect Eero Saarinen and interior designer Alexander Girard. That conversation provided the creative spark for Reframed Foyer, Leifer’s contribution to the Show House.
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How Should We Live Now? In Milan, RISD’s Objects May Shift Exhibition Offered a Woozy Vision for Our Domestic Future

As a general rule, Milan thrives on spectacle. Some of the most memorable Salone exhibitions in recent years have relied on elaborate scenography, from Established & Sons in 2010 — when the British furniture brand filled a former Jai Alai court with walled "rooms" made from stacks of untreated tulipwood — to 2018, when Hermès constructed, over the course of three weeks inside a Milanese museum, seven towering pavilions made from thousands of jewel-toned zellige tiles. (Ask me what was inside those pavilions? Zero recollection.) So how is a student-run exhibition, from a newly founded design course exhibiting in Milan for the first time, supposed to compete? That was the conundrum facing 20 Rhode Island School of Design students, who debuted the conceptually-driven show Objects May Shift at Salone Satellite in Milan last month.
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F Taylor Colantonio’s Solo Show in Venice Makes You Feel Like You’re in an Underwater Grotto

To enter F Taylor Colantonio’s show Frutti di Mare (literally, fruit of the sea) is to be submerged in an otherworldly environment, a kind of aquatic grotto where things are fluid and surreal. Glowing forms that have a rippling effect, as if underwater; vessels that feel like remnants of an ancient civilization or like they landed here long ago from outer space. It’s Colantonio’s solo debut with the roving gallery Object & Thing, in partnership with D.H. Office.
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