SARKOS' hand-painted wallpaper

SARKOS, a Brooklyn Wallpaper Company

One of the primary objectives of Sight Unseen OFFSITE has always been to feature up-and-coming designers who are experimenting with materials and processes in interesting, and often very personal, ways. So we were delighted earlier this year to welcome Stephanie Dedes Reimers’s just-launched wallpaper company SARKOS to our line-up. SARKOS — whose name translates from an Ancient Greek word for the tactile sense of our earthly spirit — mixes deeply personal inspiration with fine art, hand-painting techniques, creating a line of papers that are muted and highly individual.
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At the 2015 London Design Festival

In terms of sheer distance traversed, if not content, LDF now stands nearly on par with the Milan fair. But these days it’s also becoming equally vital as a destination for open design debate, with a strong manufacturing voice represented and a buffet of ambitious installations on offer. Guide in hand, we hit the mean – but thankfully sunny – streets of London to choose our favorites from this year’s show.
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Laura Houseley on Ready Made Go at the London Design Festival

Last week's London Design Festival included plenty of beautiful objects thoughtfully displayed on pedestals or on gallery walls. But possibly even more compelling was the setup at the Ace Hotel's Ready Made Go exhibition, curated by Laura Houseley of Modern Design Review magazine, where visitors could experience a handful of new designs by local up-and-comers actually put to work in their intended habitat.
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Week of September 20, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Photographs that make us scratch our heads (like the one above by photographer/architect Erin O'Keefe), a colorful Baggu x New Friends collab, and a bunch of fall art exhibitions.
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Top 5: Mobiles

A periodic nod to object typologies both obscure and ubiquitous, featuring five of our favorite recent examples. Today, we're turning our attention to a perennial favorite subject: mobiles! (And for those in small spaces, don't worry — these beauties will look as good hanging against a wall as they do in mid-air.)
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Archivo Diario by Melinda Santillan and Marco Rountree Cruz

If you're the kind of person who pays attention to Pinterest, you may have spotted the playful image above making the rounds there as of late. But we can pretty much guarantee you don't know the story of the two Mexican artists who created it — and the blog it's pulled from, Archivo Diario — which turns out to be one of the more amusing tales we've heard in awhile. We were lucky enough to meet Marco Rountree Cruz and Melinda Santillan at a party thrown this fall by Jennilee Marigomen of 01 Magazine, and we decided to keep in touch with the Mexico City–based couple, who launched Archivo Diario three months ago both as a way to force themselves to create something new every day and to try their hand at working together (Cruz being a successful installation artist and Santillan more of an art director). But when we dug a little deeper, we found out that the endeavor was technically their second collaboration, and was in many ways a direct reaction to the failure of first: an elaborate script for a stylized telenovela that they dreamed of actually producing, but that has since languished in their desk drawer. We were so impressed by the couple's boundless creative ambitions — just wait until you hear about the crazy project Cruz is working on now — that we begged them to tell us everything
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David Haskell on His Psychotic Plants Show at Coming Soon

New York-based editor and Kings County Distillery co-founder David Haskell has been collecting cacti and other succulents in his spare time for the past decade, and he’s also spent his Tuesday nights over the last two years cultivating his skills as a budding ceramicist. In search of the perfect pots for his handpicked plants, Haskell linked his two passions, the results of which are on view at “Psychotic Plants,” opening tonight at Coming Soon.
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Norwegian Product Designers Gunzler Polmar

Gunzler Polmar, led by ceramicist Victoria Gunzler and furniture designer Sara Wright Polmar, haven't churned out a ton of work just yet, but the projects they have designed — including their new textile series launched this week at 100% Norway in London — display an eye for form, proportion, and material that certainly merits further attention.
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Norwegian Product Designers Stokke Austad

It's a bit strange to call Stokke Austad Up and Coming, especially since their current project list includes the interior design for a major new wing of Oslo's airport. But this week we're spotlighting three of our favorite studios presenting new work at this year's edition of 100% Norway at the London Design Festival, and we'd be remiss if we didn't include them in that list.
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Tetra, A Designer Smoking Accessories Shop

Launched yesterday, Tetra is the first shop devoted entirely to beautiful smoking accessories like lighters, ashtrays, and incense burners — objects that have either have never before been aggregated in one place, or, more often, have been neglected by design entirely. Marianne Brandt, Enzo Mari, and Dieter Rams created incredibly sleek smoking accoutrements for the home in the '50s and '60s, and Tetra's intent is to revive that tradition in a contemporary way.
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Norwegian Furniture Designer Silje Nesdal

This week we're showcasing three Norwegian studios showing new work as part of this year's 100% Norway at the London Design Festival. First up is Silje Nesdal, who began her career with a short stint in fashion and textiles, then incorporated those skills into a furniture practice, creating objects that are functional and honest in their construction.
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Week of September 14, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A series of things we never dreamed we'd be able to buy (a huggable Greek column, an original Sottsass pen), a special guest report from Maison et Objet, and the most beautiful sculpture we've seen in ages, pictured above, spotted at Art Berlin Contemporary.
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Jim Walrod on His “Difficult” Exhibition at R & Company

It’s not news that certain works by designers such as Ray and Charles Eames, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, or Ettore Sottsass deserve a place on a podium. That their initial reception was shock, outrage, and even utter disgust, then, may come as a surprise — that’s the premise explored in “Difficult,” a new exhibition at New York gallery R & Company curated by interior designer Jim Walrod.
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