10.29.15

Sighted

An Oiva Toikka Bird Inspired by Sight Unseen’s New York

Earlier this year, Iittala invited us to be a part of its Bird and the City series, in which we — along with four other bloggers around the world — were tasked with helping glass artist Oiva Toikka to create a bird dedicated to each of our respective hometowns: New York, Tokyo, Helsinki, Shanghai, and Paris. The blue and white swirled critter above represents not just New York, but our New York.

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10.28.15

Up and Coming

Amsterdam Designer Germans Ermics

The work that Latvian-born, Amsterdam-based designer Germans Ermics does is hardly rocket science — he simply adds gradients of color to planes of glass and mirror, then assembles them into furniture pieces or more sculptural compositions. And yet the results, when we first saw them at the Milan Furniture Fair this past April, totally floored us.

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10.28.15

Sighted

Egyptian-Themed Housewares by Beech Hall

Beech Hall, a new online shop based half in Brooklyn and half in Philadelphia, has a simple yet unconventional concept: to offer a line of jewelry, housewares, and ceramics based around a single, strong theme and design language, then change that theme from season to season. First up: Egypt.

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10.27.15

Shopping

We’ve Added 8 New (and Very Giftable) Items to the Sight Unseen Shop!

Today's Sight Unseen Shop update contains 8 new objects meant to keep your home happy, from squiggly Lump Nubbins to bowls exploding with bits of iridescence to planters holding cheerful little cactuses.

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10.26.15

Fair Report

At the 2015 Dutch Design Week

We made the rounds in Eindhoven this year in order to scout out our favorite projects from an event that consistently introduces top emerging talents into the European design scene. Here's our guide to the names and projects to know from DDW 2015.

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02.27.13

Excerpt: Book

Carl Auböck: The Workshop by Clemens Kois and Brian Janusiak

Is it possible to love something too much? What about when you're an avid collector of something that teeters on the line between fame and obscurity? For Austrian photographer Clemens Kois, a longtime devotion for the century-old Viennese design workshop Carl Auböck carried a particularly trying dilemma: He had the chance to make a book that could finally introduce the long-overlooked brand to the mainstream, vindicating his fervor and helping to build up the very collecting market he was engaged in, but that would in all likelihood make it harder for him to acquire the objects he loved so much. Luckily for the rest of us, he chose to follow his passion, joining forces with Brian Janusiak of Project No. 8 and powerHouse Books to create Carl Auböck: The Workshop, which came out this past fall.

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10.24.15

Saturday Selects

Week of October 19, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two chic interiors that feature colored steel, affordable architectural art prints, and a new online shop selling objects made by hand, like the sculptural copper lamp pictured above.

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10.23.15

Sighted

BON Ceramics, A New One-Stop Shop for Buying Pottery Online

Before the Berlin-based online shop BON Ceramics launched earlier this week, you were most likely to find pieces from your favorite ceramicists scattered amongst a dozen or two fashion boutiques. BON's approach is to consolidate all your favorite makers — Apparatu, Ian Anderson, Ian McDonald, Rimma Tchilingarian, and many more — in a single, bookmark-able place.

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10.22.15

Shopping

Melbourne Furniture Designers Pop & Scott

Shortly after meeting one another, Poppy Lane and Scott Gibson realized they had a shared habit of dreaming up possibilities for running their own businesses. Their initial ideas for a joint venture ranged from a hip retro bike shop to a hangover café. What they finally ended up launching, however, was more of an accident: A furniture line called Pop & Scott, which grew organically from the couple’s attempts to create pieces for their own home that they wanted, but couldn’t find in stores, which it turned out other people wanted, too.

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10.22.15

Sighted

Liverpool’s Granby Workshop Creates Objects with Local Makers

On view now at the Turner Prize exhibition in Glasgow, the shortlisted art and architecture collective Assemble recently debuted the results of its new initiative the Granby Workshop, a crowdfunded product line aimed at fostering a "community-led rebuilding of a Liverpool neighborhood following years of dereliction."

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10.21.15

Q+A

Painter and Accessories Designer Kindah Khalidy

Working across fine art, fashion, and design, Khalidy is the driving force behind her own label — offering a selection of wearable art, patterned accessories and hand-painted textiles — as well as one part of the duo Pamwear.

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10.21.15

Graphic Design

Japanese Printmaker Kumi Sugai

As anyone familiar with our Pinterest account (or our archive content) is well aware, we kind of have a thing for unearthing vintage gems. So we were pretty psyched when Ryland's internet searching led us to the Japanese painter and printmaker Kumi Sugai, who died in 1996 but whose work remains completely contemporary and relevant today.

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