10.25.22

Current Obsession

Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part II: The 1930s Ceramics of Mazzotti and Nikolay Diulgheroff

Like many of the best art movements of the early 1900s, the radical Italian Futurist movement was most-known for two-dimensional works, but encompassed the applied arts as well. One of its more interesting — yet largely forgotten — practitioners was the late designer and artist Nikolay Diulgheroff, for whom ceramics became a medium of dynamic expression for his and the Futurists’ ideas.

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10.24.22

Current Obsession

Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part I: Tour Four of Italy’s Most Avant-Garde Interiors

In the 1909 manifesto for one of the most controversial avant-garde art movements of the 20th century — Italian Futurism — founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti confessed his admiration for the modern age and its inventions, for speed, the roar of engines, and the rage of war weapons. The group’s paintings and sculptures attempted to depict the speed and dynamism of the industrial age, but Futurism’s reach also extended to a practice in architecture and interior design, and in the past few years I toured Italy to uncover few of its best spaces.

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10.23.22

Saturday Selects

Week of October 17, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an afternoon tea tray cast using blocks found on Mexico City streets, conveyor-belt chairs, "moldy marble," and a heavenly collaboration between Lalique and James Turrell.

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10.20.22

Sighted

In His First Work of Architecture — A Country HQ for Kvadrat — Thomas Demand Takes Inspiration From the Page

Known for his highly nuanced, opaque, anything-but-straightforward photographs of cinematically lit, full-scale sets made of paper, artist Thomas Demand’s latest project is an incredibly literal work of architecture that appears like a paper construction. The pavilion — done in partnership with Caruso St John Architects as part of the textile manufacturer Kvadrat’s headquarters in coastal Ebeltoft, Denmark — follows, as the artist says “the logic of paper."

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10.19.22

Sighted

Studio Paolo Ferrari Changes Perspective for Latest ‘Editions’ Furniture Series

In 2016, the Toronto-based interior designer Paolo Ferrari released his studio's first edition of collectible furniture, intending to evolve and expand upon its forms over time. Last week, at his New York gallery Colony, he unveiled the collection's latest iteration — Editions 04 — which was meant to debut in 2019 but was postponed due to the pandemic. This extra time proved beneficial for Ferrari, who was able to pause, contemplate, and develop his designs even further than previously anticipated. It also provided another fortuitous opportunity: to photograph them against the dramatic industrial backdrop of Skylight Steelworks, a former factory and 1960s office space on 750 acres outside of Toronto in the one-time steel town of Hamilton, which has recently become home to a new generation of creatives and artists.

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10.15.22

Saturday Selects

Week of October 10, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new chair collection from a beloved interior designer, a light-filled restaurant atop Ace Hotel Sydney, and a longtime Danish exhibition whose conceptual works continue to push the boundary between form and function – and make a few statements about the climate crisis and sustainability along the way.

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10.13.22

Sighted

Menu’s New Icons Collection is Betting Big on Reissues

This week, a meme circulated online, contending that home goods had officially supplanted sneakers as "the new flex." Like all memes, there was a certain amount of tongue-in-cheekness about it mixed with a healthy dollop of truth: Over the past few years, we've watched as lamp after lamp, mirror after mirror became the hot new "it" accessory. But, like sneakers, home goods tend to inspire the most fervor when they're a bit more rare and harder to come by. Drop a new (old) design into the marketplace, the thinking seems to go, however, and watch the feeding frenzy begin. I would venture to guess this is a large part of why brands have suddenly decided to reissue their old designs en masse, including MENU, which has relaunched a half-dozen mid-century designs in a collection they're calling Icons.

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10.12.22

Sighted

Jacqueline Sullivan’s Tribeca Gallery Breathes New Life Into the NYC Design Scene

Gertrude Stein’s experimental text Tender Buttons is more than a hundred years old and yet it still surprises. In the book’s three sections — Objects, Food, and Rooms — Stein evokes an eclectic domestic scene that it is at once cozy and weird, making ordinary things, and language itself, strange, beguiling, and new. It’s what New York gallerist Jacqueline Sullivan is also after in her inaugural exhibition: working to reframe and refresh objects and the ways we live with them.

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10.08.22

Saturday Selects

Week of October 3, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a store interior inspired by Mono-Ha, furniture inspired by hand-shaped surfboards (above), and a fashion collection — from Jonathan Anderson at Loewe — inspired in part by anthuriums, and how they resemble an "object of design."

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10.07.22

Q+A

Fred Rigby Draws Upon the English Landscape for His New Furniture and Homewares

In Fred Rigby’s mind, clouds can be sofas, raindrops in a puddle become a collection of coffee and side tables, and pylon conductors translate into stackable bowls. Growing up in the English countryside, with not much to do but play in the fields and make things in the garage, the London-based designer now draws inspiration from the natural world, and the industrial objects set within it, to create furniture and homeware that’s honest, tactile, and intended to have conversations with its users.

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10.06.22

Sighted

Bower’s New Mirrors Are Based on the Elements of a Home — But They’re Really a Portal to Someplace Else

Mirrors have always conjured thoughts, both lofty and literal, about reflection and perception, consciousness and subjectivity, surface and depth. Any mirror, when you look long enough, will provoke this. But the latest ones from Bower do even more: They’re transformative objects that turn space into something else. Over the last couple of months, the Brooklyn-based design studio, led by Danny Giannella, Tammer Hijazi, and Jeffrey Renz, has launched six individual mirrors that all nod to familiar architectural elements you think you know well — doorways, bookshelves, windows, arches — but become unexpected, making you do a double take.

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10.03.22

Shopping

Add Color to Your Space With Our New Collection of Gallery-Level — Yet Accessible — Art

In our forthcoming book, we talk a lot about how easy and rewarding it is to build a collection of great objects that add texture and personality to your interior. What's always been so much harder is building a collection of great art. That's why we were so excited to discover the David Zwirner–backed online art marketplace Platform last November, which lets anyone purchase high-end works by respected artists for relatively accessible prices, and with just the click of a button. A year later, we've partnered with the site to create our own collection of Sight Unseen–approved artworks that will instantly make your space more colorful and more visually interesting — most of which are under $5k.

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