09.22.15

Sighted

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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09.21.15

Up and Coming

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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09.19.15

Saturday Selects

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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09.18.15

Q+A

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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09.17.15

Excerpt: Exhibition

James Hyde’s Varieties of Useful Experience at Volume Gallery

He just opened a sprawling solo show at the Chicago design gallery Volume, but if you're not familiar with the work of James Hyde — or at least not to the degree of other Volume alums like Jonathan Nesci, Tanya Aguiñiga, or Stephen Burks — you're not alone. And in fact, that's kind of the point: Hyde, who began his career in New York in the '70s, is a painter, and even when his works take the form of sofas or lamps, they remain squarely in the realm of art.
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05.30.14

Sighted

Ian Stell Shot By Rob Howard

With a debut solo show at Matter in April and a major presentation last week at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, up-and-coming furniture designer Ian Stell has had the opportunity to introduce his kinetic, transformable furniture to quite a few people this spring. Yet most of them, apparently, have read it completely wrong. "I've gotten comments recently from people who ... assumed I have an engineering background or was trained as an architect, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth," he recently told photographer Rob Howard, on whose portfolio site we recently discovered dozens of shots of Stell at home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and at his nearby studio.
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Antiquing in Hudson
09.16.15

An Afternoon With

Patrick Parrish and Alex Gilbert, Antiquing in Hudson

On a recent blazing-hot Saturday afternoon, we joined Artsy's Alex Gilbert and gallerist Patrick Parrish on an antiquing trip along Warren Street in Hudson, New York, documenting all the objects and furnishings that managed to stop the couple in their tracks, which — considering their level of expertise — is no easy feat. See their favorite finds after the jump.
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09.15.15

Graphic Design

Peter Judson’s April Showers

If illustration doesn't work out for Peter Judson, perhaps he might consider interior design as an alternate career? In the story we published on the London designer today, he revealed that for every day in April of this year, he imagined and drew a different shower stall, complete with tile schemes, hinges, Bacterio-style laminates, and geometric faucets.
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09.14.15

8 Things

From Ode To Things

Ode to Things stocks a tightly edited selection of water glasses, trivets, utility hooks, and notepads that share a common, stripped-down design language and are, above all, eminently useful. We picked our eight favorites.
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09.12.15

Saturday Selects

Week of September 7, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: From the geometric works of Frank Stella to the bulbous ceramics of Ron Nagle (pictured above), this week was filled to the brim with amazing exhibitions — fall show season is definitely here!
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09.11.15

Excerpt: Exhibition

Thaddeus Wolfe at R & Company

Thaddeus Wolfe's latest experiments are on view now at a solo show at R & Company in Tribeca, and we're including some of our favorite pieces here today. Inspired by everything from the deterioration of urban surfaces in his Brooklyn neighborhood to the vicissitudes of mushroom foraging, each piece goes so far beyond any preconceived notions of glasswork that it becomes something else entirely.
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09.10.15

Up and Coming

Chicago Artist Trek Matthews

If you’re a dedicated Sight Unseen reader, the name Trek Matthews may ring a bell since we featured his work just a few months ago — paintings of pastel-colored shapes, intersecting and receding into the distance, that were inspired by transit stations and the directional signage of Asia. This time we’re delving a little deeper into his inspiration and process as part of our series featuring the work of four artists who were commissioned to create large-scale installations at Dolby’s new headquarters in San Francisco.
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