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female italian designer The Ladies Room
08.19.19

Up and Coming

These Four Women Are Leading Milan’s Design Scene — Both Together and Apart

This July, a design show in a Parisian apartment harnessed the talents of what feels like at least half of Milan’s up-and-coming design scene. Called "You Are Welcome" by The Ladies' Room collective — a collaborative project made up of Agustina Bottoni, Ilaria Bianchi, Sara Ricciardi, and Astrid Luglio — the show took the form of an intimate, female-centered salon, where objects vibrated with their own peculiar presences. All brilliant designers in their own right, the four have been working together since 2016 when they met at the Turin-based design fair Operae.
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TEPHRA_PENDANTSCONCEMIRROROpener
08.15.19

Up and Coming

Brutalist Ceramics Inspired By the Pacific Northwest’s Most Famous Volcanic Explosion

LGS Studio, a ceramics brand founded by Thomas Renaud and Noel Hennessy, is currently based out of Los Angeles. But the company actually got its start a few years back in a garage in Portland, Oregon, where the founders were living at the time. Which is what makes their latest collection all the more personal — called Tephra, it's inspired by growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the aftermath of the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption.
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500BC_FinsLamp_2
08.02.19

Up and Coming

Meet the New Mumbai-Based Studio Making Lamps Inspired by Ancient Culture

The work of the new lighting design studio 500 B.C. comes from a fairly unexpected place, in more ways than one — not only is the firm based in Mumbai, India, but founders Anandita Shah and Shiraz Noorani both have backgrounds in disciplines other than product design. Before creating their very first lamp together a year ago, Shah ran a handbag company for 15 years, while Noorani was a civil and structural engineer. Since pivoting, they've been churning out lamp after lamp under the influence of icons like Luis Barragan, Alvar Aalto, and Ettore Sotsass.
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Ryan Belli Haas Brothers
07.23.19

Up and Coming

This Haas Brothers Protégé is the Next Big Designer Out of Los Angeles

When talking about his work to date — wooden pieces with an often rough-hewn, whittled feel, topped by lollipop-like textiles — Ryan Belli describes a reference map in his mind of things he’s seen: the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon, a bristlecone pine forest, the bubble clusters that form when you’re a kid blowing into a glass of milk with a straw. Sometimes these things come together in strange combinations to create an idea, and in recent months they have given rise to a wild collection of seating and light fixtures.
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Objects & Ideas_Aero_LivingRoom_V5_Hres copy_opener
07.11.19

Up and Coming

This Toronto Design Studio Finds Inspiration in the Canadian Wilderness

The Toronto-based design group Objects & Ideas works within a conceptual-meets-functional framework, and they talk about their work as an active excavation of the voice and soul of objects. "What we do is much closer to art than to mass production," says co-founder Bob Dodd. "Like everyone, we have to make money, and we have to make products people want to possess and cherish, but our furniture is definitely a vehicle to express our ideas and concepts. The best products have a soul and a presence."
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EJR Barnes_Moon Reflections Chair + Lamp190412_EJR35033
07.10.19

Up and Coming

A Self-Taught London Designer On How to Make Furniture That’s Poetic But Not Pretentious

EJR Barnes is interested in the ways furniture can become poetic or dreamlike when reframed with unexpected materials, forms, and juxtapositions. His creations engage a wide range of materials and techniques — birch plywood, gilded silver leaf, lacquered oak, powder-coated steel, pressed cane, cork, paper pulp slathered in wheat paste, even faux fur or scruffy suedes. Through all of this experimentation, Barnes seeks a quiet sort of subversion.
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CARGO_Art_ahramkwon_com2
06.10.19

Up and Coming

Four Emerging Artists Whose Work You Should Know Now

With the increasing blurriness of the line between design and art, it's difficult to have a comprehensive conversation about one without maintaining an awareness of the other. And so we make a constant effort to keep up with the art world, and keep an eye out for new talents that appeal to our aesthetic sensibilities. Today, we're sharing four up-and-coming international artists whom we bookmarked in the first half of 2019, and whose names you should know if you don't already — check out their work after the jump!
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OPENER_NEBNIKRO-shoot-17
06.07.19

Up and Coming

The 21-Year-Old Cape Town Ceramicist Making Art Inspired By Gay Love

Under the name Nebnikro, Cape Town-based artist Ben Orkin makes lumpy and unusual ceramic vessels inspired by gay love. “I hope through my work to express the beauty of gay love in a world which mostly sees it as unnatural, destructive, and dangerous,” he says. His organic shapes are often symmetrical to reflect the connecting of two bodies — either physically or emotionally, or both.
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