10.22.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

In a New Archival Exhibition, Maria Pergay — the Original Multi-Hyphenate — Takes Her Place Among Giants

When considering Maria Pergay, it is necessary to invoke the hyphen. But even a descriptor like designer-artist-decorator doesn’t begin to contain the whole of the late designer's experience or her legacy. Opening this week at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery, the exhibition Precious Strength: Maria Pergay Across the Decades aims to secure Pergay’s place as a design pioneer, alongside fellow female powerhouses like Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray.
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10.16.24

Sight Unseen Collection

This California Designer’s Steely Minimalism Was Inspired by Japanese Architecture and the Light & Space Movement

It's a common conundrum for creatives: knowing exactly what you want for your own space, but, more often than not, finding it does not exist. California-based designer Orlando Pippig began producing furniture for this very reason, without any formal training, to create a home filled with pieces he actually loved. Eight years later, something of an accidental furniture designer, he’s amassed a collection of striking minimalist designs — several of which we sell through our own Sight Unseen Collection — and he continues to expand his range of “usable sculptures” through experiments with materials, scale, and proportion.
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10.15.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

Lukas Cober’s Crinkled-Resin Collection Was Inspired By A Beloved Children’s Book

Confession: I have never read Where the Wild Things Are. But after learning that the children’s book left such a lasting impression on Maastricht designer Lukas Cober — and influenced his most recent collection of resin-fiberglass works — I've added it to the top of my library list. Cober was so enchanted by American author and illustrator Maurice Sendak’s 1963 picture book, which follows a boy’s journey to a jungle inhabited by mischievous monsters, he decided to reconnect with his inner child and tap into a state of curiosity, naïveté, and sheer joy while crafting the body of work that’s currently on view at the Objects With Narratives gallery in Brussels.
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10.14.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

A New Exhibition at PAD London Celebrates Marks of Imperfection and Impermanence

Marks of Existence, a new collection of collectible furniture launched this weekend at PAD London from Movimento Gallery (of London and Milan), refers to Buddhism’s three marks that characterize existence: imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. For the show, eight of the gallery’s designers conceived of pieces using the same material — Travertino Ascolano — to celebrate asymmetry, irregularity, and the patterns, cycles, and forces of nature that can never fully be replicated or mimicked by machines or technique.
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10.12.24

Saturday Selects

Week of October 7, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a rug collection inspired by a giant of modern art, a spare and minimal Athenian shoe shop (above), and the IRL exhibition of Mindcraft, a nearly 20-year-old franchise celebrating experimental Danish design and craft.
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cristina celestino interior
02.16.22

Interiors

In a Renovated Apartment in Udine, Cristina Celestino Shows the Softer Side of Brutalism

What's the first thing you notice when you scroll through images of this renovated 1970s-era apartment in Udine, Italy? Is it the pink-on-pink walls, a kind of blush and bashful situation? Is it the delicate, fan-shaped Afra and Tobia Scarpa floor lamp (which, we're predicting, is about to blow up in a big way)? Is it the conversation-pit–like living room, covered in wall-to-wall travertine tiles? The genius of Milan-based designer Cristina Celestino is that her interiors give you the space to notice each of these things, but no one element knocks the others out of balance.
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10.09.24

Sighted

At the New Brooklyn Museum Café, 10 Stools by 10 Designers, Reminding Us of the Borough They Call Home

For as long as I toil in the trenches of design, I'll never tire of the design brief that goes: "Everyone please take this same basic thing and mold it in your image." The results of such an assignment are nearly always uniformly delightful, so I was happy to see the debut of this latest project, commissioned by the bicoastal studio Office of Tangible Space, run by Michael Yarinsky and Kelley Perumbuti. As part of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, Office of Tangible Space was asked to redesign the museum's cafe, and they called upon their Brooklyn design friends to each take a basic wooden stool, and from it, create a one-of-a-kind work of art with which to decorate the space.
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10.05.24

Saturday Selects

Week of September 30, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Sophie Lou Jacobsen scales up her glass work, Pinch celebrates its 20th anniversary with an American pop-up, and we put a spotlight on two North Carolina fundraisers to benefit the decimated creative community in Asheville.
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10.04.24

Interiors

For Design Lovers, Spencer’s is the New York Spa We’ve Been Waiting For

I've been to spas all over the world, and it's not that I'm unable to relax, per se. It's that — to be perfectly frank about my occupational hang-ups — my mind has often remained restless in waiting rooms as I silently judge a spa's design decisions, wondering why it's so hard for someone to come along and design something truly cool. From the garish, Daily Candy–era palette of Bliss spas to the grotto-esque cosplay of Great Jones, there's never been something that felt completely like a true design person's vibe — until now. The new Spencer's spa in Soho was designed by founder Ryan McCarthy in partnership with Charlotte Taylor and EBBA Architects. Enter the space, and you're greeted by a soothing, impeccably furnished lounge that's akin to stumbling into your favorite Hackney vintage shop. The whole thing makes you want to throw away your furniture and start all over with a palette of swirly Ron Arad chairs, Regency-era benches, Paul Evans–esque coffee tables, primitive abstract sculptures, and a bookcase full of vintage gems about design, art, women, wellness, tarot, and the occult.
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10.02.24

Fair Report

11 Things We Loved at September’s Paris Design Shows

Earlier this month, at Paris Design Week and its concurrent shows, we were especially drawn toward work that explores material richness and depth — the use of upholstery to add dimensionality, tactility, and coziness, as well as furniture that highlights the grain and various textures of wood. Attention to detail is seasonless but there’s something about the change in the air, the way autumnal light shifts your perspective and what it attunes you to. Below, 11 of our favorite designers, launches, collars, and more from the week.
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10.01.24

Sighted

Hauvette & Madani’s Second Furniture Collection Channels 1930s Art Deco and the Strict Geometries of a Visionary Architect

When the French design duo Hauvette & Madani released their debut furniture collection in 2021, they called it Amuse-Bouche, after the small canapés served prior to a meal. Their newest collection, which launched during Paris's design week last month, has a slightly more esoteric name — following with the dining theme, they called it Entremets, dubbed for the decorative after-dinner or between-course treats popular in French cuisine — but it's a clear and logical evolution from their previous releases. Here, oak, lacquer, and Art Deco accents are the primary ingredients, resulting in a mélange of pieces with a distinctly 1930s feel. This means hard lines, essential geometries, and lots of layered materials, which have been cropping up a lot in new collections recently. Deco is seemingly the design era du jour.
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09.28.24

Saturday Selects

Week of September 23, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Clare Vivier's first furniture and lighting collection, the (momentary) return of Zouzou rugs, and influential Italian/Swiss designer and architect Eleonore Peduzzi Riva finally gets her due.
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09.25.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Norwegian Studio Devised Its Own Machinery to Make These Joyful, Rainbow-Colored Stools

We learned something new today, so perhaps you will, too: The acronym for the colors of the rainbow in Norwegian is ROGGBIF, which Oslo-based Studio Sløyd has used to title its new collection of stools, as multi-colored and joyful as you’d expect from such a moniker. Comprising 24 different playful shapes, each is designed to explore applications of a newly created dyed wood technique, which founders Herman Ødegaard, Mikkel Jøraandstad, and Tim Knutsen — who decided to work together as students during a late-night karaoke session (extremely relatable) — have been developing over the past couple of years. “Rather than starting with a shape or form, we turned our usual process on its head for this project, experimenting our way to a new material,” says the trio. 
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