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07.08.21

Sight Unseen Presents

Our 2021 Collection Launches Today on 1stDibs — With New Work From 16 International Designers

The pandemic may have prevented us from hosting our Offsite show this year, but we didn't want to entirely abandon our role as a platform for supporting the work of independent designers — especially since they haven't let it stop them from coming up with brilliant new ideas, even without a physical fair to debut them at. So for 2021, we decided to curate a special collection of furniture and accessories by 16 contemporary designers and launch it for sale exclusively on 1stDibs, starting today.
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12.23.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Sight Unseen’s 10 Most-Read Stories of 2020

Poor, sweet, prescient us. Remember back in early February when we said, "Hey isn't it weird how everything suddenly looks like a cave you'd like to escape into and shut out the world?" Little did we know that we'd all be spending the rest of the year in the equivalent of an isolation tank. So yeah — no surprise that our most-read story of 2020 was the equivalent of us shutting the bunker doors and saying "See you next year!"
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12.22.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Sight Unseen’s 10 Most Popular Instagrams of 2020

We’ll be offline from Christmas to New Year's, but before we leave, we wanted to honor our annual tradition of looking back at the year that was. 2020, of course, was an unequivocal tragedy, and our list of top 10 Instagrams began with two fitting images: a giant tongue stuck out at the world, and a soft, comforting hole to crawl into.
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10.12.20

Sight Unseen Presents

From Their Artfully Curated Brooklyn Design Shop, Guest Editors Lichen NYC Are Helping to Democratize Design

By definition, “lichen” is a moss composed of two or sometimes many organisms operating in a symbiotic relationship with one another. In 2017, we opened the doors to Lichen NYC, our take on accessible furniture — both vintage and contemporary — settled harmoniously into a single space, with an aim to represent that spirit of symbiosis and inclusion in the design community. Our goal, in first one store, and now another, is to push design forward by empowering individuals with knowledge of past designs and helping them make sense of how to incorporate those pieces into current living scenarios
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10.05.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Guest Editor Fiorella Valdesolo on Mushrooms and the Interconnectedness of All Things

Today, meet Fiorella Valdesolo, a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, and consultant who is probably best known for her role as co-founder and editor-in-chief of the food magazine Gather Journal (whose erstwhile print issues we still hoard). All of the stories we’ll be posting between now and Friday have been either written or chosen by Fiorella; they center around the interconnectedness of all things — and, in a way, why we need each other now more than ever.
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09.28.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Guest Editor Yoko Choy Explores the Work in Progress That is Chinese Design

Chinese design is still finding its way and is too diverse to be captured in a neat single identity. So while the global community may be eager to create a brand for this emerging body of work, defining it is still a work in progress. In the 15 years I’ve been working as a design journalist, I’ve been asked constantly, “What is Chinese Design”? I, too, have been asking myself that same question. And I feel that now I’m finally seeing an answer (or answers) and am proud to share my discoveries, some of which formed the basis for my guest-editor curation this week.
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09.21.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Guest Editor Robert Sukrachand Wants Us To Embrace the World’s Diverse Design Perspectives

As part of our 2020 Guest Editors series, we've asked each editor to write a personal essay that introduces themselves and the ideas and inspirations behind their week of content on Sight Unseen. Today, meet Robert Sukrachand, a New York furniture designer and American Design Hot List alum. "I’ve aimed to stop trafficking in the binary language that separates 'craft' from 'design,' or 'primitive' from 'modern,'" he writes. "The rigidity embodied in these distinctions is a tool that reinforces colonial hierarchies."
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11.13.19

Sight Unseen Presents

We Asked 10 Designers to Make Us a Birthday Card — Here Are the Results

For our last bit of 10th anniversary content this week, we followed a tradition set forth on our first and fifth birthdays — asking a select group of designers to make us a "birthday card." This year, without any prompting by us, most of the submissions centered around something we often try to publish on the site — sneak peeks into a designer's practice in the form of as-yet-unpublished designs.
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