04.07.22

Q+A

This Housewares Brand Thinks the Future of Design Lies in Uniting 3D Printing With Contemporary Talents — and Traditional Artisans

In recent years, 3D printing technology has finally started to come into its own, making the dream of an on-demand manufacturing industry — one that yields products people might actually want — feel closer at hand than ever. That's the realization that inspired cousins Ismail and Adnane Tazi, who founded the Parisian housewares brand Trame in early 2020, to rethink their entire approach to production just two years later, culminating in the launch of their new Alhambra.gcode collection.
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04.06.22

Up and Coming

Introducing Manon Steyaert, the French Artist Making Plastics Look Pretty

By now, you might be aware that latex is having a bit of a moment in the fashion world. But have you ever seen sheets of the stuff applied to — or, more specifically, becoming — the canvas? We hadn't, or at least we hadn't seen instances where it was not only used but was in fact the main event, which is precisely why we found the work of Paris-born, UK-based artist Manon Steyaert so interesting.
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Theoreme Editions Collection 02 Sight Unseen
04.05.22

Sighted

Theoreme Editions’ New Collection Features Mirror, Metallics, and a Hint of Mint

Named after a 1968 movie by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Paris-based brand Theoreme Editions describes its curatorial approach as embodying the same “fetish for form” and penchant for storytelling through art as Pasolini's radical film did. After presenting their debut collection of furniture, which we spotted during Milan Design Week in 2019 as well as at the 2020 Collectible Design Fair, founders David Giroire and Jérôme Bazzocchi invited 10 new French designers to collaborate with artisans across Europe. Intended as a continuity of the first, Collection 02 keeps a sculptural and poetic thread running through a range of numbered and limited editions.
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04.02.22

Saturday Selects

Week of March 28, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week, a new limited-edition program by Hem brings three of our favorite Swedish talents into the fold, a megastar mass-market designer creates marbleized housewares, and the checkerboard trend takes on an oh-so-British archetype — the toast rack. 
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04.01.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

In His First Gallery Show, Ryan Preciado Combines His Love of Wood, the 80s, and High-Gloss Finishes

L.A. designer Ryan Preciado traffics heavily in nostalgia, particularly for his own Cali upbringing: "When I was a kid, my grandpa would give me five bucks to buff and polish his cars; I bet that’s why I’m attracted to the glossy finish," he told us back in 2019. He also cited his grandmother's garden chairs, and his uncle's car-show habit, as formative design influences. All of those influences were on display in his first gallery show, A Cliff to Climb, at Canada gallery in New York earlier this month — including via a new, ultra-polished green cabinet that he created at his friend’s autobody shop. 
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03.29.21

Sighted

Sarah Ellison’s Stand Out New Collection Features the Stripe

A bold Memphis sensibility meets sunny Byron Bay ease in Australian designer Sarah Ellison’s new capsule collection “La Banda,” meaning “the stripe” in Italian. Bands of ash and walnut wood lay next to each other to create a striped pattern, and rounded and rectilinear silhouettes playfully and unexpectedly alternate. In fashion, the notion of “the stripe” has a rich and varied history — a history that Ellison, a former fashion designer and stylist, was no doubt aware of.
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03.30.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

Nathalie du Pasquier is So Much More Than the Poster Girl for Memphis Design

When a return to Memphis became the defining design trend back in 2014, a few of the movement's original members flew to the forefront of discourse once again, among them Peter Shire, Ettore Sottsass, and Nathalie du Pasquier, whose exuberant patterning became a kind of shorthand for cool around that time. (If you came home from Milan in 2014 without an NDP Wrong for Hay tote bag, were you even there?) But while Du Pasquier became pigeon-holed for that kind of blocky, frazzled look (remember when she designed for American Apparel?!), she's always been so much more than that, and the full fruits of her output as an artist are on view this month at an exhibition called "Speed Limit" at Anton Kern Gallery in New York.
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03.28.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

These Fashion Designers Made Their Name Reinventing the Uniform. Now They’ve Turned Their Eye to Furniture

One of the more poignant collections to come out of lockdown was on view earlier this month at Nilufar Depot in Milan. Called "Scarpette and Carolino," the exhibition — conceived by the Danish-Italian duo OLDER, aka Letizia Caramia and Morten Thuesen — featured two pieces of design dreamed up during a period of pandemic isolation spent at Caramia’s father’s studio in Pietrasanta, on the seaside edge of Tuscany. “As lockdown isolation is a lonely affair, our idea was to create a small series of friends to bring us company and warmth," say the founders.
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03.26.22

Saturday Selects

Week of March 21, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week, a proliferation of interesting work out of Melbourne Design Week, a new co-working space is Brussels whose furniture looks like the above, and a quirky, corky mirror.
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03.21.22

Excerpt: Book

“Why Design Matters” is Only the Tip of the Iceberg in This Expansive Book of Interviews by Debbie Millman

If you've ever thought about starting a podcast — a design podcast, sure, but really one on any topic at all — you probably have Debbie Millman to thank for that. Millman, who started the phenomenally popular Design Matters way back in 2005, was one of the first people working in the medium — and, as I was reminded when flipping through her new book Why Design Matters, which brings together more than 50 conversations from the show's past, remains one of the best. We're excerpting one of our favorite interviews from the book, with the filmmaker, graphic designer and artist Mike Mills, here today. 
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03.19.22

Saturday Selects

Week of March 14, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Gossamer x Studio Proba make psychedelic rugs to sink into, Irish favorites Orior scale down with their limited-edition line of small homewares, and a Flamin’ Hot Cheetos–inspired furniture collection, made from waste polystyrene, is on show in Australia.  
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03.17.22

Giveaway

Win a $2,000 Huggy Chair from Sarah Ellison, Whose Furniture Is Now Available in the US

When the Australian designer Sarah Ellison released her Huggy chair two years ago, it blew up. There was only one problem: If you weren't a big-name designer with a bottomless budget, it just wasn't that easy to get one. But that all changed this winter, when Ellison partnered with Design Within Reach to make her work readily available in the US; together, they're offering one lucky Sight Unseen reader the chance to win a $2,295 Huggy chair in a choice of upholsteries. Click through to enter!
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SU Shop

Dome Bookends
Kokomo Pitcher and Cups
Forma 2 Bowl
Amigos Blanket
Wave Barrette
Handle Vase

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