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08.05.20

Up and Coming

Each Piece By French Designer Baptiste Lanne is an Ode to Nature, His Biggest Inspiration

After almost 10 years working for acclaimed studios like Habitat and Philippe Starck in Paris, French designer Baptiste Lanne felt a longing to get away from the screen and 3D modelling software. It was a trip to Japan to visit some woodworkers’ workshops that influenced his decision to make a living out of his personal affinities. Today he hand-carves impossibly refined design objects out of rough hunks of wood as if they’re as malleable as clay.
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08.03.20

Up and Coming

Tired of Hearing About Masks? Not Once You See this Antwerp Duo’s Incredible Creations

Clouds blowing swirls of wind, gentlemen with fin-de-siècle mustaches, finely dressed generals with elaborate headpieces — such are the lost-in-time characters depicted in "An Entrance to Mention: the Park Pardon Principles," a 52-page book about a fictional park and its inhabitants that Dutch illustrators Bloeme van Bon and Geran Knol created together in 2014. Last year Knol and van Bon began turning the characters into one-of-a-kind papier-mâché masks, and today they've launched the latest edition in the ongoing (and consistently sold-out) series.
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07.30.20

Up and Coming

Harvey Bouterse’s New Ceramic Lamp is a Study in Contrasting Textures

It's basically our job here at Sight Unseen to follow the career trajectory of up-and-coming designers, and in our professional capacity, we've come to realize that most ceramicists follow a certain path: First come the smalls, like cups and mugs and plates and vases. The next step is usually lamps — think of Natalie Weinberger's pleated clay shades, Workaday Handmade's listing table lamps, and BZIPPY's pyramid-shaped bases. Today, we're featuring one of the first lamps by Belgium-based Harvey Bouterse.
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07.28.20

Up and Coming

A Former Dancer, Virginie Hucher Uses Her Whole Body to Sketch Out Paintings in the Earth

French artist Virginie Hucher’s paintings begin in the middle of nowhere. Through a meeting of performance and land art, she uses her whole body to carve large symbols into the sand, the snow, or the clay alongside a river bed with a stick as her only tool. She then documents her process in film and photographs, so she can appropriate the gestures when she begins to recreate the forms in paint back in her studio.
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07.23.20

Up and Coming

This French Design Studio’s Process is Steeped in Tradition

The couple behind Haos – neither of whom is formally trained in design – work primarily with French artisans who often have decades of experience working with the same material. It's a process rooted in all things tangible and permanent, one whose outcome can only and inevitably be an object that's been stripped down to its most essential form.
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07.20.20

Up and Coming

Polina Miliou’s Paper Pulp Pieces Have So Much Personality She Sometimes Gets Mad At Them

Whether chairs, macaroni-shaped light fittings, or knotted, tubular standing lamps, Polina Miliou sees her pieces as creatures. “I often start from an archetypal furniture form and gradually twist it into more of a character,” she says. Once she’s sculpted their form, she dresses the pieces in a final smooth layer of papier-mâché. “It is a slow but fun process, during which I literally slap and caress the furniture,” she says. “The time I spend with each piece lets me build a personal relationship with it."
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07.16.20

Up and Coming

Meet the South Korean Designer Making Furniture From Lacquered Volcanic Stone

Seven years ago, Seoul-born Jeongseob Kim set out to find a niche that would define his identity as an independent designer. He began experimenting with using black or brightly colored cement to fill in the cracks and crevices created in the process of making cast-concrete stools, lamps, and tabletops. Calling the project Emergence, though, turned out to be prescient — rather than being his sole calling card, it ended up inspiring a body of work that draws on similar ideas but is even more layered and process-driven.
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07.01.20

Up and Coming

Gabriella Picone’s New Company — And Hand-Painted Silk Scarves — Were Inspired By Summers in Sicily

After working for four years at the New York design gallery R & Company, artist and RISD grad Gabriella Picone shifted to a full-time studio practice this year to pursue ceramics, painting, and textiles. Her first collection — the result of a company she founded called idda, which means "her" in Sicilian dialect and was inspired by Picone's childhood summers in Sicily — is a series of silk and cotton scarves printed with Picone's expressive paintings on paper.
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06.25.20

Up and Coming

These Duotone Vases Are Reversible, Depending On Your Color Scheme — Or Mood

The up-and-coming Australian designer Dean Toepfer had been primarily working on commissions and larger furniture pieces — like a bar cart made from a faux terrazzo composite and a sling chair upholstered in pink shag — since graduating from RMIT. But with the onset of the pandemic, Toepfer decided to reassess. "Vase Versa is my first object collection, and first self-produced range," Toepfer explains.
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04.28.20

Up and Coming

Designer & Rendering Artist Charlotte Taylor is Imagining The Brighter Future We Need Now

London-based designer Charlotte Taylor popped back on our radar recently with her Tiled House, a 3D rendered residence that begs the question: What if your whole house could be as hard to clean as the bathroom? All jokes aside, the eye-catching space is a bit of an engineering feat, real or imagined, as well as a kind of microcosm of the portfolio Taylor's been building over the past few years bridging those two worlds.
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Cape Town ceramicist Ceri Muller
04.27.20

Up and Coming

The Cape Town Ceramicist Making Crinkled Vases and Clay Faces

Here’s a tip for anyone suffering from the fear of starting something creative: Make the ugliest thing you can think of. That’s the genius bit of advice that ceramics artist Ceri Muller’s partner gave her when she felt blocked, faced with her first lump of clay. “I did that and carried on doing it and those ugly little things morphed into these heads that I grew to really love,” she says.
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