09.04.24

Sighted

Audo, Our Go-To for Cozy Danish Furniture, Just Dropped a Whole Slate of Products Perfect for Small-Space Living

By now, we’ve established that Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design is a staple on the annual design-fair circuit, particularly as many Danish brands forgo Milan in favor of their own city, where their work can be exhibited both in context and in a more sustainable fashion. For Audo Copenhagen, this summer's 3 Days offered the opportunity to celebrate the brand's Nordic roots — and newly released products — at the revitalized Audo House in the Nordhavn district. Launched in 2019 as a combination monobrand store, restaurant, and residence, Audo House got a glow-up this year in collaboration with Stockholm’s Note Design Studio to showcase updated favorites. But perhaps it's ironic that Audo's refreshed collection launched in summer, as so many of Audo's products are designed for maximum indoor coziness. As such, many of the products this season arrive in new, more petite sizes.

08.15.24

Sighted

With Its Designer Collective, CB2 is Bringing a Global Design Perspective to the Masses

Big-box furniture stores doing high-profile collabs has long been one of the surest bets for those who yearn for a collection of beautiful things by internationally renowned designers — but who can't necessarily afford the luxury price tags that typically accompany such items. CB2 has long been at the top of our list when it comes to products with a point of view, hand-picking many designers we know and love — from Kara Mann to Luam Melake to Studio Anansi and Farrah Sit — to offer collections at accessible price points, bringing the designers' varied global design perspectives within reach of a much broader audience. Now, CB2 has introduced its 2024 Designer Collective, a showcase of nearly two dozen designers and independent studios, through whom the brand is able to introduce multiple design styles from around the world— giving design fans more options to find pieces that align with their aesthetic and creating a variety in perspectives that enables the range as a whole to feel fresh and current. We spoke to three members of the Designer Collective — interior designer Kara Mann, lighting designer Farrah Sit, and the Barcelona-based Mermelada Estudio — about what this collaboration means to their practice, and how their individual approaches to design each bring something unique to the brand.

07.25.24

Sighted

This Parisian Studio’s New Collection Turns Grandmotherly Flourishes, Like Tassels and Cords, Into Something Decidedly Modern

Imagine a place in the Mediterranean — where North Africa meets Europe meets the Middle East — and a time that can’t quite be determined, and you’ll get a feel for the latest collection from the Parisian architecture and design studio Ebur. Racha Guttierez and Dahila Hojeij Deleuze, who founded Ebur in 2020, conjure their respective cultures and histories in their designs: The two of them grew up in Côte D’Ivoire — Ebur means ivory in Latin — and the childhood friends spent their summers in Lebanon before going on to study architecture in Paris. Ebur’s first release of furnishings, last year, drew inspiration from their early memories of the seaside. This second act builds on that and continues an elegant exploration of form and material.

06.12.24

Sighted

Danny Kaplan’s Earthy Ceramics Meet Lesser Miracle’s Warm Woods in a Pitch-Perfect New Collab

What began as a one-off turned not only into a furniture collection but also a friendship when New Yorkers Danny Kaplan of Danny Kaplan Studio and Vince Patti of Lesser Miracle started collaborating last year. In early 2023, Kaplan, known for his ceramics-forward furniture and lighting, asked artist and designer Patti to help construct a bed for his own home. What resulted is the Paravent, both massive and graceful, featuring a brass-hinged floating oak headboard and base, accented with geometric, jewel-like tile detailing. As the two worked on the piece, says Kaplan, “it became clear that our combined vision and skills could produce something more substantial, merging my ceramics practice with Vince’s woodworking expertise.” And so, the Delf collection was born.

06.11.24

Sighted

Saba Journeyed to Sardinia to Weave, and Photograph, Its New Cime Carpet Collection

Steeped in history and tradition, Sardinia is known — among many things — for its sheep farming and wool production, and a weaving method that’s distinct to the Mediterranean island. Handed down by generations of women, this ancient technique, called Pibiones (which means ‘cluster of grapes’ in the local dialect), creates small bumps of thread that are knotted around vertical bars. This highly textural effect has been employed for Italian design brand Saba’s latest collection of carpets named Cime, designed by Treviso-based duo Zanellato/Bortotto.

06.04.24

Sighted

Is Design In an Age of Maximalism, Or Minimalism? The Answer Is Both — and Pelle’s New Collection Offers Proof

Are we currently in an age of maximalism, with wood paneling, hand-painted ceilings, ruffled fabrics, and decorative pillows constituting the reigning aesthetic in design? Or an age of minimalism, when sleek chrome and the High-Tech vibe have never been more popular? The answer, really, is both — the two styles have often happily coexisted in the past, and we've been happily embracing both for awhile now. That might be why the latest collection from the Brooklyn studio Pelle, released a few weeks ago during New York design month, appeals to us: It unabashedly embraces both extremes.

04.29.24

Sighted

Fritz Hansen Blends In With the Furniture — Literally — at the Catskills Retreat Piaule

These days, it’s not uncommon for a hotel group to launch its own homeware line. A homeware line that launches a hotel, however, is slightly more novel. But that’s exactly what Piaule founders Nolan McHugh and Trevor Briggs did: bought 50 acres of land in the Catskills, built a dreamy eco-friendly boutique resort designed with Garrison Architects, and opened to guests in 2021 with the primary aim to better connect them with nature. Surrounded by woodland and overlooking the mountains, this idyllic setting and its Scandi sensibility was a no-brainer for Danish furniture brand Fritz Hansen to install and showcase its first outdoor furniture collection.

04.11.24

Sighted

A Former Kenzo Design Director Finds Creative Freedom in a Pivot to Ceramics

When you’ve spent seven years as design director for a major Parisian fashion brand — in this case, Kenzo, the luxury house founded in 1970 by Japanese designer Kenzo Takada — where do you go from there? In Ben Mazey's case, the answer was: move back to the Antipodes, set up a ceramics studio, and fall in love with the creative process all over again. The New Zealand–born Mazey was on vacation in Australia when the pandemic hit; he took the opportunity to put down roots and began exploring clay as a material with total freedom. Out of this self-directed sabbatical came a highly expressive world of colorfully glazed pieces, and a unique visual language that’s not easy to define, in the best possible way.

03.26.24

Sighted

In Julie Richoz’s New Mirrors for Vitra, Color Theory and the Tiniest Details Work to Change the Way We See

When Julie Richoz, a Swiss-French designer in Paris, was envisioning her new Colour Frame Mirror for Vitra, she was drawn to elemental forms, inspired in part by wooden building blocks and toys, those staples of childhood. “I like the innocent gestures they refer to — the simple pleasure of playing with colors and shape,” she says. But even as her mirror references those basic objects, it also moves beyond them. There’s a fun lightness here, but there's also a high degree of sophistication, precision, and intent.

03.12.24

Sighted

Sunnei and cc-tapis Just Dropped the Ultimate Fashion x Design Collab, Where Carpets Become Clothing and Vice Versa

In addition to their playfully chic sartorial offerings, Sunnei has been on our radar for years thanks to their periodic overlaps with the design world, from a thoughtful ongoing object collection to the collaboration they presented during Salone in 2022 with our friends at Bloc Studios. And yet I was still surprised and delighted when, after I emailed the brand's PR team asking for a press kit for the brand's FW24 fashion show, it turned out the striking striped knitwear pieces that I'd immediately been drawn to were actually a collaboration with one of our other favorite Milanese brands, rug-maker cc-tapis.

03.07.24

Sighted

A Bronze Mirror Side Table, A Stained Mahogany Dining Table: Our Favorite Finds From CB2’s New Black in Design Collection and More

There are two things happening at CB2 right now that we find endlessly exciting. The first is their ongoing collaboration with the estates of design legends like Paul McCobb and Gianfranco Frattini; that's a McCobb task chair paired with a Frattini desk above, and can we talk about this striped outdoor sofa?! The other initiative is something that we mentioned in our Q&A with Evan Jerry of Studio Anansi last summer: the Black in Design collective, which brings together, under Jerry's curation, works by 13 Black designers. This spring welcomes Niger’s Atelier Masomi, founded by Mariam Issoufou Kamara, and Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s nmbello Studio in Lagos, Nigeria, to the fold, along with a slate of new pieces from the Collective's existing studios.

02.21.24

Sighted

Known Work — the Furniture Spinoff of Interiors Studio Parts and Labor Design — Just Launched an Immediately Iconic Debut Collection

Perhaps it was inevitable that Parts and Labor Design, a New York interiors studio noted for its atmospheric hospitality projects — including the subterranean Negroni bar Sotto, which we featured last fall — would launch a furniture design studio. After all, some of the more memorable details from their interiors have often been custom, in-house designed fixtures, which explore the tension between kinetic material and earthly texture. Called Known Work, their furniture arm debuted its first collection, Perceptions, at Zona Maco in Mexico City last month as part of Sculpted, a joint show with artist Jorge Yazpik, curated by Materia. The collection consists of nine pieces, each as alluring as you might expect.