07.11.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

These Ceramics in a Former French Salon Are the Exact Amount of ’80s Nostalgia We Need Right Now

When Italian designer Valentina Cameranesi and curator Matylda Krzykowski first saw the former hairdresser's shop in Toulon, France — where the interior design portion of the annual Design Parade festival is held this year — its windows were plastered with the word "Féminin." Perhaps it was fate, because the word is an apt reference to Cameranesi’s work, which is on view in the former salon in her first solo exhibition until September 24.
More
07.08.17

Saturday Selects

Week of July 3, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: velvet-clad walls at the Vienna Secession, 3-D artworks having a moment, and, for good measure, Scandinavian paper porn.
More
07.06.17

Sighted

See Sabine Marcelis’s Real-Life Version of Mondrian’s Most Famous Painting

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the launch of Theo Van Doesburg's seminal magazine, De Stijl, in 1917, and Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis recently helped carve out a space at the Cannes Film Festival to honor the art and design movement that adopted its name. For the festival's Dutch Pavilion, Marcelis brought to life Mondrian's famed 1935 painting "Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow" by building a 3-D framework of black lines inset with gradient glass panels, then punctuating it with primary colored versions of her signature Voie Lights and Candy Cubes.
More
07.05.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Nine New Mirrors We Love, On View at a Swiss Gallery

For the Lausanne gallery MOBILAB — which also does triple duty as part laboratory, part shop —the latest theme of works is “Face / Surface,” which entails a wild exploration of mirrors by nine designers, craftsmen, and artists. The varying concepts of reflection range from hanging balloon-like chandeliers by glassmaker and artist Matteo Gonet to quasi-circular, blue-hued shapes inspired by lunar cycles from Swiss designer Adrien Rovero.
More
10.15.14

Excerpt: Exhibition

Lawrence Laske at Wright: Design Studio & Collected Works

Before we began Sight Unseen five years ago, Monica and I worked for the beautiful but now-defunct design magazine I.D. And though we were helping to run one of the most venerable design publications in the country, in hindsight, we were mere babies in terms of our design education. Which is perhaps why, when we received an entry to our annual competition for a molded plastic beach chair by a designer named Larry Laske back in 2008, the name failed to ring a bell. But maybe it wasn’t purely our ignorance. After all, Laske is the classic case of a behind-the-scenes designer who ought to be much more famous than he is. The creative mind behind two classic pieces for Knoll in his own right (the ‘90s-era Toothpick and Saguaro tables) Laske also worked for years alongside Ettore Sottsass, and designed incredible prototypes with some of the world’s most famous designers: Ingo Maurer, Philippe Starck, and Matteo Thun, among them. Next week at Wright, an online-only auction will be held to benefit Laske’s foundation, A Brain Tumor and A Dream.
More
07.02.17

Saturday Selects

Week of June 26, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: furniture inspired by Judd and Noguchi, a peek into Portland's seriously impressive retail scene, and a new collaboration between a Dutch textile designer and a happy housewares store, above.
More
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.
More
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.
More
Ana Kras Natalie Weinberger
06.27.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Ana Kras and Natalie Weinberger’s Powerhouse Collab at Picture Room

On view through August 20th at Brooklyn’s Picture Room, Family pairs pencil drawings by artist and designer Ana Kraš with stacked stoneware sculptures — each comprised of a set of functional vessels wheel-thrown by Brooklyn ceramicist Natalie Weinberger — in an exploration of emotional interplay between inanimate objects. “We started calling each set a family,” Weinberger says, “because we’re working with separate figures that share an emotional attachment.”
More
06.26.17

Sighted

Buy These Curated Arrangements from Daniela Jacobs, Queen of the Still Life

Daniela Jacobs sees the world through the lens of the still life — something that's instantly obvious with a scroll through her Instagram page, where her beautifully shaped and textured ceramics are placed in and among the best props and treasures. So when her latest collection of shoppable still lifes, called ARC Accents, came about, it had evolved over years of accumulation and a love for secondhand items. “I didn't want to start a secondhand shop, but rather a curated collection of pieces, both found and of my own design.”
More
06.24.17

Saturday Selects

Week of June 19, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the best of Design Miami/Basel, the debut production run of German Ermics's much-coveted ombre mirrors, and the first Milan flagship for Acne, complete with pink ceiling and interior arches — so on trend.
More