Studies of Furniture Designed By Women, On View at Rachel Comey

If there's one person we'd trust to curate literally everything in our lives, it would probably be Rachel Comey. The fashion designer's New York and LA stores are among our favorite interiors; her pottery pop-up two winters ago was filled with ceramics favorites like Jennie Jieun Lee and Jessica Hans; and if we buy one more pair of her chunky-heeled shoes, we're going to need more closet space. So while it's unsurprising that Comey masterminded the concept behind her latest in-store exhibition, opening tonight in New York, it's still a complete and total delight: Together with her friend, illustrator Leanne Shapton, the two conceived "Seats — Studies of Furniture Designed by Women."
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A Landscape of Architectural Ceramics at Patrick Parrish Gallery

Since we first spoke to him four years ago, ceramicist Ian McDonald's pieces have gotten more architectural, more functional, and more singular — his first solo show at Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York opened yesterday, and it's full of ceramic vessels made in parts and arranged within the parameters of powder-coated trays. We spoke with him about refining the old, experimenting with the new, and the satisfaction he’s found in exploring a form that resonates.
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Ceramic Experiments by a Swiss Designer, On View in the South of France

First on our list of talents to scout at this year's Design Parade at Villa Noailles: Swiss designer Dimitri Bähler, who we featured earlier this year for the beautiful limestone bench he showed with Nov Gallery in Milan. Bähler showed at Noailles a few years ago when his current project was in its infancy: Now called Volumes, Patterns, Textures & Colors, the collection, on view in the gymnasium at Villa Noailles, features a series of ceramic volumes that have been imprinted with various three-dimensional patterns by way of a textured latex foil.
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New Perspective-Bending Works By Eindhoven Duo OS ∆ OOS

Oskar Peet and Sophie Mensen of OS & OOS consider themselves designers, not artists, but their latest body of work — on view now in a solo exhibition at Zurich's Roehrs & Boetsch gallery — includes not only cast-concrete updates on their neon-tube Primary Fluorescents lights, but also two large sculptural works whose only purpose is to delight and tease the eye.
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We Didn’t Think Kilims Could Get Any Cooler… Until Now

Iranian artist Taher Asad Bakhtiari may be a Raf Simons–wearing, Swiss-educated jetsetter, but growing up, he was inundated with local tradition. Now he helps support and modernize the ancient crafts that were among his most formative influences by working with semi-nomadic Iranian weavers to create contemporary, geometric updates on traditional kilim and gabbeh rugs. His latest series, pictured here, is on view in The Pond House, a solo show of his textiles that just opened at Carwan Gallery in Beirut.
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4 Art and Design Shows You Should See This Weekend

Some of us are currently having the busiest week of our year, juggling two major shows at once. But for all our readers whose schedules are slightly more forgiving at the moment, we envy you, because there's some excellent art and design to be seen out there this weekend, and not just at Frieze or Collective Design. Here's a quick roundup.
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Jesse Moretti at Patrick Parrish

A New Series of Pastel Paintings, Inspired by Floridian Hues

In her colorful, line-driven work, Brooklyn artist Jesse Moretti has always explored the space between flatness and dimensionality, and the visual tricks one might use to create a bridge between the two. Her newest body of work, called FOAME — on view through Sunday at Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York — does so quite literally: In many of her paintings, Moretti employs a shadowy line that creates the illusion of a canyon carved into the wood — or, perhaps, like an X-acto knife cut into foam.
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Wright Design auction

Get Ready to Lust After These Wright Design Auction Finds

This month, we've been exploring the upcoming Wright Design Auction, taking place March 24, which includes some amazing lots, like a set of 1930s geometric glass candlesticks that look shockingly contemporary, and a bronze sculpture we never realized was in Mangiarotti's repertoire. Need a rabbit hole to fall down this weekend? Look no further.
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Ben Branagan's sculptural vases

Sculptural Vases With Scholarly Origins

Among our 30-something friends, collaging is suddenly all the rage. (Maybe it's the new adult coloring book?) But to our minds, there's another use for old books and papers that consistently produces a far more beautiful result: paper pulp, the key ingredient in CHIAOZZA's charming Lump Nubbins, Silo Studio's PPPPP bowls, and now Ben Branagan's Monuments series, which debuted last night in a window installation at London's Darkroom concept shop. For the exhibition, Branagan, a designer and professor in visual communications, transformed the pulped remains deaccessioned library books into a series of totemic, distinctly non-functional pots and vases.
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Stools inspired by modernist sculptors

Stools That Channel Our Favorite Modernist Sculptors

Isamu Noguchi, Hanna Eshel, Barbara Hepworth — these are the masters of marble who came to mind when we first saw French designer Guillaume Delvigne's beautiful new stool series for Tools Galerie in Paris. The young designer — who often does work for companies like Hermes or La Chance — just closed an exhibition there, the inaugural presentation at a brand-new Left Bank space for the gallery. The sculptural, totemic stools — which were inspired by mooring posts — are actually made from several different materials, including bronze, wood, and leather. But stone is the star here, in creamy white Carrera, flecked travertine, and a rich green called Vert Donay.
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Europe's New Generation of Design Stars

Experimental Objects from a New Generation of Design Stars

Considering this is our fifth year covering the Ornsbergsauktionen, a design auction produced annually by some of our favorite Swedish talents in conjunction with Stockholm Design Week, we began to wonder what it is about this particular event that we love so much. For us, it basically hits all the sweet spots — it focuses on the small-scale production of experimental objects, it commissions work only from contemporary designers with unusual or inventive practices, and it photographs really, really well.
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