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08.16.17

Up and Coming

These Classical-Meets-Contemporary Ceramics Are a Major Discovery

It's not every day that we make a discovery on the level of Nicolette Johnson, when some random Instagram rabbit hole leads us to a trove so vast we can hardly believe no one had tipped us off to it sooner. But that's exactly what happened last month, when we stumbled onto an image of Johnson's vases and found ourselves practically hyperventilating — not just over the works themselves, but the fact that the young Brisbane-based talent only started working with ceramics at all less than two years ago.
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08.09.17

Up and Coming

8 Amazing Finds From the Parisian Design Dealers Known as Kolkhoze

This month we discovered the Parisian entity Kolkhoze, whose program we must confess we don't entirely understand — founders Thibaut Van den bergh and Thomas Erber seem to be interfacing not just between designers and clients, but between other galleries and clients, as well, offering both existing editions and custom commissions. Whatever they're doing over there, they're doing it well — we did a deep-dive into their site this week and discovered not only amazing works we'd never seen before, but designers we'd never even heard of.
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07.27.17

Up and Coming

Gradients and Bands of Gold: Jonny Niesche’s Mesmerizing New Paintings

For the Sydney-based, Australian-born artist Jonny Niesche, one of the more transformative moments of his career occurred while studying abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. During a crit, a mentor likened Niesche's work to a Tumblr, meaning that he hadn’t yet established enough parameters or guidelines for his practice — or, in other words, the things that might make his work stand out as his. “As long as you think about the principles of your work, then it can be your work no matter what material or form it comes in,” he was told.
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06.29.17

Up and Coming

Six Talents to Watch from RCA’s 2017 Graduate Show

Despite continued uncertainty about the effect Brexit might have on applications from students abroad, this year’s Royal College of Art graduate show was a celebration of global design talent, showcasing some of the best emerging talents from the EU and beyond. Here are six of our favorites.
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06.28.17

Up and Coming

This Heath Ceramics Alum Just Made the Chicest Salt Lamp We’ve Ever Seen

A little more than a decade ago, when Christina Zamora was just an art-school grad living in the Bay Area, she landed a job that would go on to inform her life and her practice in immeasurable ways: She became a designer for Heath Ceramics, the midcentury California pottery brand whose early-2000s revival coincided with Zamora's tenure there. "I was surrounded by her way of thinking and working every single day. This experience had a profound impact on how I approach design." That becomes clear from the moment you encounter the first product made by Zamora's year-old, Oakland-based studio, Brave Matter.
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06.12.17

Up and Coming

Sarah Kelk, the Melbourne Painter to Know Right Now

An unplanned break from painting in the early 2000s saw Melbourne, Australia–based artist Sarah Kelk living in Scotland, running an art gallery, and focusing on the practice of other artists. It wasn’t until she returned to Melbourne in 2011 that she once again found the energy she needed to approach her practice with a fresh perspective.
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Chicago architect Ania Jaworska
06.06.17

Up and Coming

This Chicago Architect Wants Furniture To Boss You Around

Since receiving a second degree from the storied Cranbrook Academy of Art — alumni of which include Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Florence Knoll — Ania Jaworska has been living in Chicago, working as a professor and developing a practice and a body of work that spans art, design, and architecture, more often than not finding her surest footing at the point where all three intersect.
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Emerging Dutch designers Truly Truly
04.14.17

Up and Coming

This Dutch-Based Studio Was the Best Thing We Saw at Salone Satellite

The Dutch-based studio Truly Truly finds a comfortable niche oscillating between product design and experience, creating artful and engaging moments for the viewer that fall between familiarity and curiosity. Their latest work, presented at last week’s Salone Satellite, features projects that combine technical ingenuity with new aesthetics — their morphing Touch glass lights are cast using a dynamic mold that allows for more expressive surface qualities, while the Wove chair plays on the graphic interplay of two differently colored bent-wire frames. And of course we were instantly magnetized by the Daze table – folded, aluminum volumes with subtle corner slits, which allow flashes of hazy, powder-coated color to burst through.
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04.14.17

Up and Coming

A Studio Aiming to Bring More Curves and Coziness to Finnish Design

In the U.S., we look at the rich, enduring design history of Scandinavian countries like Finland and feel nothing but blind envy. But those who have grown up amidst it often have a more nuanced view, like Anni Pitkäjärvi and Hanna-Kaarina Heikkilä of the emerging Helsinki outfit Studio Finna: "The Finnish design world is very much masculine," they say. "The key aspect is functionality. The design language is edgy and square. The colors used are black, white, and grey." They're trying to take a different tack.
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Estudio Persona
03.30.17

Up and Coming

These Uruguay-Born, Los Angeles–Based Women are Poised for Furniture Stardom

Four years ago, Emiliana Gonzalez and Jessie Young moved to Los Angeles from their hometown of Montevideo. Back in Uruguay, they'd known each other only peripherally, but as creatives in a new city, they were drawn to one another. Gonzalez had trained as an industrial designer, while Young was a conceptual artist and a new mother who didn't have the energy to navigate a new art scene. After designing a few houses together, they moved on to products — first geometric walnut planters, then furniture — and founded Estudio Persona.
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Quiet Town stylish bathroom accessories
03.15.17

Up and Coming

Meet the Couple That’s Reinventing Bathroom Style

Call it what you will — wash room, water closet, commode, loo — the bathroom is nothing if not the unsung hero of many a home and apartment. It is a place of quiet refuge for space-deprived urbanites and, if Pinterest is any indication, an actual spa if you live outside New York City. No one knows this better than Lisa and Michael Fine, the founders of Quiet Town (she, a stylist, he, a photographer). They've taken their complementary skill sets and combined them to make a covetable line of bath essentials including shower curtains, rugs, and wall hooks that pleasingly upend convention while marrying (often geometric) form to function.
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