04.18.16

Fair Report

The Best of the 2016 Milan Furniture Fair, Part II

The 2016 Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone — aka the Milan furniture fair — closes today, and we were there on the ground, running around like crazy people trying to absorb a year's worth of new furniture in less than a week's time. According to our iPhones, we walked about 7.5 miles a day in our quest to scout great design. Here's the second of three posts chronicling what we found.
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04.16.16

Fair Report

The Best of the 2016 Milan Furniture Fair, Part I

The 2016 Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone — aka the Milan furniture fair — closes today, and we were there on the ground, running around like crazy people trying to absorb a year's worth of new furniture in less than a week's time. According to our iPhones, we walked about 7.5 miles a day in our quest to scout great design. Here's the first of three posts chronicling what we found.
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04.16.16

Sighted

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today: Day 5

The Eindhoven-based Studio Mieke Meijer has been on our radar since way back in 2010, when the very first Dutch Invertuals exhibit in Milan showed the studio's amazing Bernd and Hilla Becher–inspired Gravel Plant, an architectural unit for storage and display. But this year's Space Frames installation in Ventura Lambrate was the most show-stopping the studio has ever put on, and in fact seems like a spiritual heir to that original project.
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04.15.16

Sighted

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today: Day 4

Visiting the pavilions at the Milan furniture fair is basically the exact opposite of going to the beach — there's tons of artificial lighting, way too much exertion, and not a piña colada in sight. Which is why we were tickled to get these images of Italian designer Cristina Celestino's Opalina collection for the glass furniture manufacturer Tonelli — the sheer dissonance made us laugh out loud. But the collection is pretty great on its own, photography (or excellent Photoshopping) notwithstanding. It includes a dressing table, a writing desk, a mirror, a coat stand, and a stool, all made from thick slabs of etched or painted opaline glass that give off a translucent and silky appearance.
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Wallpaper Handmade by POOL
04.14.16

Fair Report

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today: Day 3

Wallpaper Handmade is always one of our favorite spots on the Milan circuit, and this year was no exception: The London-based magazine again paired up international designers with manufacturers, this time asking each team to reflect on ideas about hotels and travel. At their San Gregorio arcade spot, we swooned over Vera & Kyte's colorful ironing station, Karl Zahn's brass animal keys, Pelle's shapely soaps, and Pettersen Hein's clothing rack. But perhaps our favorite entry was by Léa Padovani and Sébastien Kieffer of the Paris-based studio POOL, who created two sculptural sofas in collaboration with Living Divani.
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05.20.14

SU Services

Sight Unseen OFFSITE, 2014

In 2014, Sight Unseen launched the first annual Sight Unseen OFFSITE, a curated design exhibition coinciding with New York Design Week that provides a platform for the most directional, cutting-edge ideas in contemporary furniture design.
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04.13.16

Sight Unseen Presents

Visit Us at Collective Design This May!

From May 4 – 8 at Skylight Clarkson Sq, we are thrilled to be showing at Collective again, spotlighting ambitious new work by independent American design studios on the rise. For our 2016 showcase, Bower x Studio Proba, Chris Wolston, Fort Makers, and Only Love Is Real will debut a collection of furniture and lighting set against a backdrop of custom wallpaper developed with our amazing sponsor Designtex especially for the show.
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Thévoz Choquet's Cast Brass accessories
04.13.16

Fair Report

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today: Day 2

Virgile Thévoz and Josephine Choquet are no strangers to Sight Unseen, but their latest collection, which is debuting at Rossana Orlandi as part of the "i Dream of Luxury" exhibition in Milan this week, might be our favorite yet. The two London-based designers know from high-end products, having studied in the Design for Luxury and Craftsmanship program at ÉCAL, and their new Cast Brass collection explores the effect of time on the value of an object. The polished brass accessories are half-cast in transparent resin blocs, allowing the exposed metal to oxidize over time and cast half to remain pristine and shiny forever.
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Swedish designer Erik Olovsson
04.12.16

Up and Coming

This Former Acne Art Director Makes Furniture With a Graphic Eye

When we first encountered Swedish designer Erik Olovsson two years ago in the basement of Rossana Orlandi, he had but two products to his name — a wavy-lined metal and marble clothes rack and a modular, geometric shelving unit, both created in collaboration with his fellow graduate and graphic designer Kyuhyung Cho. Since then, Olovsson has been developing and tinkering with the beautiful projects he's unveiling in Milan this week.
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04.12.16

Sighted

Afternoon Sculptures by Erik Olovsson

Today on the site, we're featuring Swedish designer Erik Olovsson, who's debuting in Milan this week a collection of stools made from slatted pine and treated with various hues and patterns of screen-print dye. Olovsson's been documenting his experiments in color-treated on Instagram with the hashtag #afternoonsculptures, and we're excerpting a few of our favorites here today.
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04.12.16

Fair Report

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 1

Sight Unseen is on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair this week and we’ll be bringing you loads and loads of coverage later this week! But until our rounds there are done, we’ll be featuring quick hits from some of our favorite things that caught our eye. First up: Ferrosecco, a collection of powder-coated steel vases and cups by Italian designer Federica Elmo, which we spotted at Ladies & Gentlemen, a show in the 5Vie area of Milan curated by Secondome and PS and featuring tons of SU faves like Studiopepe and Giorgia Zanellato. Love these pics, which are like mash-up of Meta Flora and Barbara Kasten.
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04.11.16

Sighted

A Design Legend in the Making Breaks Out On His Own

When we first heard rumblings that RO/LU — the epically talented, intellectually formidable Minneapolis-based studio that we've been covering and collaborating with since its move into furniture design five years ago — was ending, we were sad but also a little excited. After all, what would its multi-disciplinary founders get up to next? This week, we got our first glimpse into RO/LU co-founder and creative director Matt Olson's new studio, called OOIEE.
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04.09.16

Saturday Selects

Week of April 4, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week we tried to restrain ourselves from posting all the Milan Furniture Fair goodness we've been gathering by sharing our top picks from Miart (above), plus recent examples of three trends we expect to see plenty of at the Salone next week: colored mirror, brushstrokes, and terrazzo.
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