04.13.22

Sighted

Fiona Lynch’s New Furniture Collection References Everything from Rudolf Schindler to the Ace Hotel Aesthetic

Melbourne-based interior designer Fiona Lynch's first furniture collection was spun out of her own interior design for the new Ace Hotel Sydney, which opens later next month. Before coming up with her ideas for the hotel’s rooftop restaurant spaces, Lynch traveled to New York City and Los Angeles as a kind of “study tour” of American design, visiting and drawing inspiration from the Schindler house, Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock, and the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York.

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Theoreme Editions Collection 02 Sight Unseen

04.05.22

Sighted

Theoreme Editions’ New Collection Features Mirror, Metallics, and a Hint of Mint

Named after a 1968 movie by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Paris-based brand Theoreme Editions describes its curatorial approach as embodying the same “fetish for form” and penchant for storytelling through art as Pasolini's radical film did. After presenting their debut collection of furniture, which we spotted during Milan Design Week in 2019 as well as at the 2020 Collectible Design Fair, founders David Giroire and Jérôme Bazzocchi invited 10 new French designers to collaborate with artisans across Europe. Intended as a continuity of the first, Collection 02 keeps a sculptural and poetic thread running through a range of numbered and limited editions.

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03.07.22

Sighted

Daniel O’Toole’s New Gradient Works Provoke a Distortion of the Senses

"Can an image feel as though it has a sound frequency embedded in it?" That is the question animating Australian artist Daniel O'Toole's latest exhibition at Modern Times, which closed this week in Melbourne. Called Cascade Rumble, and inspired by O'Toole's own experience with synesthesia, the exhibition features works that are intended to fully engulf the viewer and to "hum a frequency of sound that resonates in the mind."

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03.03.22

Sighted

This Italian Furniture Brand Made a Clever Trompe L’Oeil Table, Then Shot It in a Carlo Mollino Masterpiece

January saw the introduction of an interesting new expression of trompe l'oeil, in the form of Saba Italia’s Teatro Magico table by 967 Arch, a dining table whose sinuous polyurethane base echoes the form of theater curtains and can part like them, too. The brand coincided the launch with the reopening, after a two-year renovation, of Turin’s Teatro Regio, whose Carlo Mollino–designed interior contains its own multitude of visual illusions.

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02.25.22

Sighted

A Whimsical Parisian Shoe Store By One of France’s Biggest Up-and-Coming Talents

Sophie Dries's design for the Michel Vivien store is relatively simple, in that it centers around a 50-foot-long undulating walnut wood wall pierced with glass and wooden floating shelves. But it is the art and objects — abstract, totem-like sculptures, stools by Pierre Chapo used as pediments for displaying shoes, plush velvet seating, and lighting by Jacques Biny and Charlotte Perriand — and the way she artfully arranges them that make the space so interesting.

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02.17.22

Sighted

The Experimental Mexico City Design Shop That’s On Our Must-Visit List

We've experienced such a shrink in the retail industry over the past two years that it honestly feels incredibly heartening to see a brick-and-mortar design store of all things opening in Mexico City this week. Called ORIGINARIO and led by Andrés Gutierrez — whose work we featured early last summer — the store is a destination where design folks can shop for furniture, objects, and art by homegrown talents, including Comité de Proyectos, CHUCH, Bestia, Raúl de la Cerda, Flama, A-G studio, and more.

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01.31.22

Sighted

The Mexican Studio Reinventing Everyday Objects

Algo Studio’s products — made from ceramics, cast concrete, resin, or terrazzo they fabricate themselves — are everyday objects that founder Diego Garza has thoughtfully reimagined with their ultimate function in mind. The results are attractive and original pieces in unusual shapes and commanding colors. “I’m trying to subvert or alter a little bit whatever is expected in an object,” he says.

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01.25.22

Sighted

A Decadent Debut Furniture Collection By One of Our Favorite French Duos

There's something we really appreciate about the first collection of furniture by French interior designers Hauvette & Madani, and that is its unabashed embrace of a decadent party atmosphere, even in the midst of a pandemic. Inspired by a kind of 1920s salon / '70s-era cocktail party vibe, the collection — called Amuse Bouche — includes furniture, lighting, and accessories made from luxe materials like alabaster, smoked bronze mirror, silk, and carved oak.

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01.19.22

Sighted

25 Chairs By 25 Designers at a New Copenhagen Café

While the mismatched-suite-of-chairs-around-a-dining-table trend has been going strong for several years now, this might be the first time we've seen it applied well in a commercial context: In Copenhagen, the prolific studio Tableau, in collaboration with Australian designer Ari Prasetya, recently completed the spatial design for a new cafeteria at the Copenhagen Contemporary museum, called Connie-Connie. For the project, Tableau asked 25 different artists, architects, and designers to create a chair or bench made from offcut wood provided by the Danish company Dinesen.

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12.14.21

Sighted

The Swedish Illustrator Inspired By Classical Figures and Scandinavian Florals

For Sweden-born, London-based illustrator and artist Petra Börner — known for her ink and watercolor images of bright, graphic florals, meandering foliage, and Grecian-inspired figures — nature is a source of both inspiration and consternation. "Living in the city, we're very cut off from nature,” she says. Perhaps this is why flora and fauna are so prominent in her paper cut-outs, paintings, collages, ceramics, and prints.

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11.23.21

Sighted

This 20th-Century Vintage Design Store in London is Giving Peak Postmodern Maximalism

Vintage dealer M.Kardana opened a store on Hackney Road in London earlier this year, a physical space that allows owner Mario Kardana to take joy in the arranging of things. “What I love is curating all of these various pieces that could be 70 years apart and making them work together and complement each other,” he says. “I always make sure to mix styles and eras as this is what I find the most fun and interesting.” Downstairs, on the original wonky wooden floorboards, it’s maximalist and colorful whereas the newer upstairs room is more suited to Postmodern and clean-cut pieces.

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11.16.21

Sighted

Hallelujah — Our Favorite Scandinavian Art Objects Retailer is Finally Shipping to the States

This week, the Swedish design object retailer The Ode To launches shipping to the United States — and just in time. We can't think of a better place to shop for gifts for people who are notoriously hard to shop for. Where else can you find a vase shaped like a white go-go boot, a sculpture meant to look like a watermelon, or a deflated mirror decorated with a truly unhinged smiley face?

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