04.01.17

Saturday Selects

Week of March 27, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week was all about things we couldn't resist posting: a teeny tiny Milan fair sneak peek, lamps that are so bad they're good, an iridescent yoga studio, and an admittedly cliche interior full of zigzags and pink (above). Hey, we're only human.

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03.31.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Soft Baroque’s New Furniture Collection is Inspired by Photoshop

Called Hard Round, Soft Baroque's new series is about manifesting something physical from a purely digital realm — in this case, a series of sculptural furniture pieces constructed from lines derived from the Photoshop "hard round" brush tool. The "worms," as they're called, have been transformed from digital sketches into a series of charmingly lumpy wood, marble, or aluminum pieces that range from vases to shelving.

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03.30.17

Up and Coming

These Uruguay-Born, Los Angeles–Based Women are Poised for Furniture Stardom

Four years ago, Emiliana Gonzalez and Jessie Young moved to Los Angeles from their hometown of Montevideo. Back in Uruguay, they'd known each other only peripherally, but as creatives in a new city, they were drawn to one another. Gonzalez had trained as an industrial designer, while Young was a conceptual artist and a new mother who didn't have the energy to navigate a new art scene. After designing a few houses together, they moved on to products — first geometric walnut planters, then furniture — and founded Estudio Persona.

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03.28.17

Sighted

Brian Rideout Makes Art For Design Lovers

Brian Rideout's American Collection Paintings are meant to transform the interiors images he finds in old decorating books and magazines into archival records of time and place: “A contemporary reference to the Flemish collection paintings of the early 17th century, American Collection Paintings … aims to reorient these glossy commercial examples into historical documents,” he says.

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03.27.17

Excerpt: Magazine

Inside the Home and Shop of Oslo’s Most Stylish Couple

To glimpse inside the home of the owners of the best design shop in Oslo is an exercise in great envy. (After all, the couple’s instantly recognizable style is so attuned to color we now pretty much want everything to be green and pink.) Alessandro D’Orazio and Jannicke Kråkvik — interior designers, stylists, and owners of Kollekted By, the aforementioned Norwegian design mecca — spent a year thinking about the look of their newly renovated fin-de-siècle apartment in Oslo.

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06.23.14

Sighted

Los Objetos Decorativos by Rosa Rubio

Barcelona-based Rosa Rubio founded Los Objetos Decorativos with a focus on creating editions of handcrafted objects designed to forge a subconscious emotional bond with their owners. Her first collection consisted of Surrealist, unconventionally tactile brushes and mirrors outfitted with ostrich feathers and synthetic hair, while her newest series — Obj. No. 5, 6, 7, and 8 — is meant to evoke the emblems of an imaginary tribe or clan. "Their patterns provide a feeling of belonging," says Rubio, which in turn conveys a sense of "protection" and "gratification, which every culture stores through these kind of elements." The one-of-a-kind pieces are made from recycled textiles which Rubio has embellished with dried plants and small clay beads.

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03.25.17

Saturday Selects

Week of March 20, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: pool-inspired carpets, Pointillism-inspired upholstery, and perfectly patterned new rugs from an unlikely source (that's Cody Hoyt for Kinder Modern, above).

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03.24.17

Sight Unseen Presents

Bid on Works By Design’s Biggest Names in Our First Design for Progress Auction

The day after the election in November, we launched Design For Progress, a fundraising initiative meant as a call to action for the design community to rally behind progressive causes. Today we're launching the first-ever Design For Progress auction on Paddle8, featuring 40 contemporary design objects by talents like Bower and Lindsey Adelman and benefitting the ACLU, Run for Something, Sierra Club, and Campaign Legal Center. Get involved by bidding, or just by helping spread the word.

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03.23.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Portland Gallery Has Shown Only Female Artists Since the Beginning of 2017

Nationale is an art gallery in Portland, Oregon that represents eight emerging artists: four male, and four female. But since the beginning of 2017, the gallery has shown three female artists in quick succession — Amy Bernstein, a painter; Francesca Capone, a textile artist; and Emily Counts, a sculptor; whose work is everything we look for in a Sight Unseen subject — colorful, multidisciplinary, and meaningful. And while directors May Barruel and Gabi Lewton-Leopold swear that the suddenly gendered roster wasn't purposeful, it certainly feels refreshing in the current climate.

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03.21.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Design and Art Are More Connected Than Ever at New York’s Newest Gallery

Whither Johnson Trading Gallery? The New York design gallery — which in its heyday introduced an American audience to the work of contemporary designers like Max Lamb, Kwangho Lee, Katie Stout, Aranda/Lasch, and more (not to mention Rafael de Cárdenas's epic first furniture collection) — had been relatively quiet of late. Now we know why: Earlier this month, it was announced that while JTG will continue selling vintage work, the contemporary artists in their stable will be absorbed into a new program at one of our favorite art galleries, Salon 94.

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03.20.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

10 Designers and Brands to Watch at Salone del Mobile

Of course we'll always head to Salone del Mobile to see what's new with some of our favorite companies like Vitra, Moroso, e15, Glas Italia, and Flos, as well as to scout the emerging talent section, Salone Satellite. But the sheer number of independent designers who are either planning their own booths or who have major projects with big-name companies seems to have increased this year — including Raw Color for Nanimarquina, Max Lamb for Bitossi, Philippe Malouin for Resident, and Atelier de Troupe and Lambert & Fils at Euroluce. Most of the launches are still under wraps for now, but we've picked 10 of our favorite designers and brands to give you a sneak peek of what's to come starting April 4.

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03.18.17

Saturday Selects

Week of March 13, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new place to shop in Florida, French high design comes down to earth, and a look inside the ultimate Venetian design destination.

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03.17.17

Sighted

Your Search for the Perfect Coffee Table Ends Here

What is it with designers named Jonathan? Our preoccupation with the Perth, Australia–born, Los Angeles–based Jonathan Zawada in some ways reminds us of the way we feel about Jonathan Muecke — they don't release new work all that often, but when they do, we seem to want every single piece of it. In Zawada's case, that spartan output may be a professional necessity — Zawada spends much of his time creating digital art, album covers, and advertisements in his more commercial practice. But this week finally saw the official expansion of Zawada's Affordances line, which we first covered way back in 2013.

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