02.03.17

Sight Unseen Presents

Here Are the Immigrants Helping to Make American Design Great #Resist

When we heard the news last weekend of the immigration ban, we leapt into action. The ban affects us all on a broad scale — after all, who among American families didn't immigrate from somewhere? But when we began to think about our adopted family — which is to say the American design scene — and how much it might have been affected had this reactionary policy been in place only five, 10, or 20 years ago, we realized that we wanted to speak up.

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02.02.17

Up and Coming

Look Inside the Practice of Four Up-And-Coming Ceramicists

What we found at RCA's annual Work in Progress exhibition, in the Ceramics & Glass program, was a study in experimentation: clay that had been manipulated into terrazzo-like slabs, perforated bricks, stringy lumps, punched-in blobs, donut-like lamps, and meticulous geometrics, and almost nothing that looked like it had been turned on a traditional potter's wheel.

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01.31.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Abstract Geometric Paintings That Fold, Like Origami, Into Three Dimensions

On view at The Hole now, "Fourteen Paintings" is the first New York solo show for Louisiana-born, Los Angeles–based artist Robert Moreland, who in fact creates work that exists more in the space between painting and sculpture — three-dimensional canvases made from drop-cloths, tacks, leather hinges, and acrylic paint, that are hardly paintings at all but rather painted objects that explore how line and color can be disrupted by volume.

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01.30.17

Up and Coming

In This Dutch Designer’s Hands, Even a Door Handle Becomes a Piece of Sculpture

So pretty. So minimal. That, in a nutshell, is the work of Dutch product designer Jeroen van de Gruiter. A recent graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven, van de Gruiter’s work plays with the tension between what a thing appears to be and how we choose to let it function in the world. His objects are as much about themselves as anything else: the way they take up space, shifting and fluctuating, contrasting and offsetting — other objects as well as their surroundings. They are concept made manifest; latent potential given concrete form.

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01.28.17

Saturday Selects

Week of January 23, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: new good things like a pastel-colored jewelry store and an insanely affordable geometric rug, plus a few old good things like a marbled chair, a terrazzo table, and the glass-legged beauty pictured above.

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07.31.15

The Essentials

L.A. Jewelry Designer Kathleen Whitaker

For the past few years, Kathleen Whitaker's name has been practically synonymous with the ubiquitous gold dot and line earrings that are a staple in boutiques everywhere. But her work has been evolving recently, making it the perfect time to check in and see what's motivating her now.

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01.27.17

Fair Report

At the 2017 Maison et Objet and IMM Cologne Fairs

Neither the shadow of Milan nor the frigid, grey weather prevents us, each year, from being able to bring you all kinds of February goodness from the 2017 IMM Cologne and Maison et Objet fairs, which we’ve catalogued below. You’ll find such gems as a confetti-sprinkled carpet, a new design line out of Portugal, and no less than three distinct releases with patina-mottled surfaces that have officially triggered our trend-spotting sonar. Not a bad opening for what’s promising to be a turbulent year in all other regards.

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01.25.17

Q+A

Hayley Eichenbaum on Going Viral, Being Instagram-Famous, and How Photography Almost Saved Her

The romance of the American road has a lot to do with renewal, how to take what’s fallen into cliché and make it alive again. This is just what Hayley Eichenbaum has done in several photographic series — going on road trips to capture and create images that reframe the familiar as unearthly and surreal. Her work is guided by the geometry and clean lines of minimalist architecture and design, revealing a mysteriousness beneath flat facades and surfaces. But her pictures are also cinematic, echoing everything from Technicolor melodramas to Stanley Kubrick.

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01.24.17

Sighted

Seven Perfect Household Essentials for Your Favorite Minimalist

When we checked in with Jamie Wolfond this time last year, he had just relaunched Good Thing's website to better showcase the beauty and simplicity of the brand's accessible design objects. That momentum hasn’t waned. Continuing Good Thing's mission of creating practical tools with consideration and staying power, the latest collection is its largest yet.

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01.23.17

Eye Candy

These Colorful Vases Are the Latest Sign that Acrylic Is on the Rise

Remember when we named the California Light and Space art movement one of the top trends to watch in 2017? Well, the evidence just keeps mounting. Seoul design trio Hattern say their new series of two-tone acrylic vases were inspired by the way Impressionist painters tried to capture the effects of changing light quality on nature, but we can't help but see elements of Vasa, Helen Pashgian, and Peter Alexander's work. Is acrylic the new marble?

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01.21.17

Saturday Selects

Week of January 16, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a Japanese design pilgrimage, a new Dutch museum in nature, a sweater for your chairs (trust), and two fast-casual restaurants whose design is on par with the coolest eateries around.

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01.20.17

Up and Coming

This Moscow-Based Studio is the Only Place Not Under Russian Influence

When you think of Moscow and its corresponding decor schemes, Scandinavian minimalism isn't the first thing that comes to mind. But take a look at the interiors in this post — with their exposed-bulb lamps, gridded pillowcases, herringbone floors, moody palettes, and splashes of pink, they'd be right at home in a Stockholm flat. In fact, they're the work of Crosby Studios, the Moscow- and New York–based furniture and interiors studio that debuted its first collection with us at last year's Sight Unseen OFFSITE.

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01.18.17

Sighted

A Flawlessly Appointed Interior, On View Now at The Future Perfect Los Angeles

If you're anything like us, you've probably allowed yourself to dream about one day having a home (and a salary) where you might be able to show off your Calico wallpaper, your Michael Anastassiades lights, your terrazzo Rooms tables, your Ben & Aja Blanc mirrors, and your perfect, rust-colored, velvet De La Espada chairs. If, like us, you fear that day might never come, now at least you can visit your idealized domestic vision in the form of Casa Perfect, a new, appointment-only Los Angeles outpost of The Future Perfect, housed in a mid-century ranch in the Hollywood Hills.

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