02.12.16

Sighted

These Avant-Garde Arrangements Look So Right in Ben Medansky’s Vases

It's no secret that ceramics and plants are two of the biggest styling trends driving the interiors world right now, but our favorite thing is what happens when the two collide: The planting of jaw-dropping specimens in purpose-built pots has become something of a trend itself lately, from Adam Silverman and Kohei Oda's eccentric potted cacti to David Haskell's psychotic plants to Bari Ziperstein's recent ikebana collaboration with Junzo Mori. The latest entrant to that field is Ben Medansky, who partnered with the Los Angeles creative agency We Came In Peace on a series of limited-edition living works, on sale through Monday at Persephone's, a Valentine's-themed botanical pop-up shop in Hollywood.

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02.11.16

Sighted

Pro Tip: Designy Furniture That’s Hiding in Plain Sight

Two weeks ago, I happened to find myself on the Roche Bobois website, and I had a minor retail epiphany: Not only does the French furniture brand boast some pretty legit, on-trend offerings by designers like Cédric Ragot, Stephen Burks, and even Ettore Sottsass, it has showrooms everywhere — from Scottsdale to Dallas to Denver to Detroit, and that's just in America — meaning that cutting-edge, designy furniture may actually be closer at hand in the U.S. than we realized.

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02.10.16

Studio Visit

Playing Around With the Cool Kids of American Design

Inside the experimental playground that is Ladies & Gentlemen's new Brooklyn studio: “All of our work is an evolution of itself,” says Dylan Davis, one-half of the up-and-coming design couple. Shapes on a piece of jewelry might lead to a geometric take on lighting; that, in turn, might inspire the assorted forms suspended on a mobile. However distinct, each piece is unmistakably linked to the next, joined by an understated elegance and what the two refer to as "playful austerity." “We try to embrace that feeling you had as a kid when you got to really explore,” Davis says. “Our goal is to take that spirit of play and figure out how to use it professionally.”

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02.09.16

Interiors

A Brooklyn Home by the Duo Behind New York’s Coolest Design Shop

Coming Soon is the design shop most cities only wish they had. The downtown New York boutique, founded by former art gallerists Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet, opened in 2013 in an area that's since become a nexus of cool, thanks to neighbors like Dimes, Project no 8, Mission Chinese, and Fung Tu. The plant-filled shop hosts occasional exhibitions and carries a pitch-perfect mix of vintage finds and design's most-wanted giftables, and it does so in a space that's constantly changing but somehow always exactly what you need. What we didn't know when we first met Barquet and Faria is that the two have an ad-hoc, not-quite-professional interior design business on the side.

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02.08.16

Interiors

A Designer’s Barcelona Home, Where Color is King

In the most recent issue of Apartamento, alongside really excellent pieces including an interview with Matt Connors, a photographic essay of Donald Judd's collections, and a paper still-life series, we found this gem: Casa Horta, a 1920s single-family Barcelona house now occupied by the young designer Guillermo Santomà, who used vibrant shades of green, pink, and blue paint to delineate space as well as provide a gorgeously saturated, incredibly dramatic backdrop.

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04.04.14

Sighted

Ashley Helvey’s #IRL Exhibition

Today on the site, we're giving you a peek inside Seattle creative Ashley Helvey's home and studio, but we also wanted to show you the results of the work that was being created there during our visit. Last week, at Seattle's Love City Love art space, Helvey debuted an exhibition with possibly the best name — and best concept — we've heard to date: "#IRL (internet shorthand for 'In Real Life ') is Helvey's exploration and reflection on being an artist in the age of Tumblr, Instagram and the reblog," the show text reads. "With the vast array of technological opportunities we have to broadcast our identity and redistribute images of art and design, at what point do we create our own content? #IRL presents work created by Helvey, that references images and works from the internet, many of which have been re-posted on her blog, HunterGathererer. These works, brought together under Helvey's distinct aesthetic and material sensibility, reject the lament that there is really nothing new. Instead, this exhibition celebrates the impact of technology and social media and its wealth of imagery as direct inspiration for creating real and tangible art objects.'"

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02.06.16

Saturday Selects

Week of February 1, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week is all about shapes: geometric tables and artworks, a shelf adorned with a wooden squiggle that looks like a break in the space-time continuum, a series of angular Brutalist teapots, and the epic Vignelli-esque, Toogood-esque Moser tray pictured above.

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02.04.16

Up and Coming

Pedro Paulo Venzon Is the Hip New Face of Brazilian Design

History looms large over Brazilian design — how to compete with tropical modernism? Sergio Rodrigues? Lina Bo Bardi? Everyone's got it pegged, which is why the work of Pedro Paulo Venzon is so exciting: He's the first young up-and-coming Brazilian designer we've seen who's totally nailing the delicate balance between paying homage to the legacy of his forebears, and developing an aesthetic that's new, cool, and relevant to the international contemporary scene.

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02.03.16

Current Obsession

Lava Rock — So Hot Right Now

The Guadalajara-based studio Peca made coasters out of it. Formafantasma paired it with more refined materials like brass and glass. Aleks Pollner and Adrien Rovero are obsessed with it. Now, the latest designer to be inspired by plucking basalt from the earth and fashioning it into something, well, fashionable is Laura Bilde, a furniture and interior design student from Denmark who sent us this seriously on-trend lighting series this week.

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02.02.16

Fair Report

Our Top 10 Finds From Maison & Objet

In the spring edition of the fair, we found refreshing colorways (so long neon and pastels!) and sophisticated sensibilities. If you didn’t get chance to visit the French capital, never fear: Behold our guide to the best furniture finds and more from the week.

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02.01.16

Excerpt: Exhibition

Experimental Objects from a New Generation of Design Stars

Considering this is our fifth year covering the Ornsbergsauktionen, a design auction produced annually by some of our favorite Swedish talents in conjunction with Stockholm Design Week, we began to wonder what it is about this particular event that we love so much. For us, it basically hits all the sweet spots — it focuses on the small-scale production of experimental objects, it commissions work only from contemporary designers with unusual or inventive practices, and it photographs really, really well.

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01.30.16

Saturday Selects

Week of January 25, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Everything old is new again: midcentury-inspired lamps (like the gorgeous one by Toronto's Lightmaker Studio, above), Memphis-inspired tea trolleys, and an ancient Japanese tray garden re-imagined as a post-industrial panorama.

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01.29.16

Sighted

Be the First to Snag New Jewelry by Moving Mountains

Today is a happy day for anyone obsessed with the furniture of Moving Mountains's Syrette Lew — she's just debuted a new jewelry line that's infinitely more accessible, and we made sure we were the very first ones to carry it, in the Sight Unseen Shop. Not only is almost everything in the collection under $250, it shares the same inspirations as her ultra-popular Palmyra lamp.

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