02.15.23

Fair Report

The Best of Stockholm Design Week 2023, Part I: Alvsjo Gard

After a three-year COVID hiatus, Stockholm Design Week returned in full force last week. And while we'll be covering the fair and its happenings around town tomorrow, today we're putting the spotlight on a new exhibition that also happened to be our favorite. Called Älvsjö Gärd, it was a showcase of experimental, research-driven, and collectible design, set across 13 rooms in one of the oldest manors in Stockholm — basically Sight Unseen catnip.

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02.14.23

Sighted

A Color-Blocked Exhibition By the Swedish Queen of Color

The theme of this year's FORMEX fair was "Color Vibes," and who better to expound on that than Tekla Severin, the Swedish designer who has built both her career and her wardrobe on an extraordinary sensitivity to color. In a 2,500-square-foot space at the entrance to the fair, Severin curated 200 products from 400 different exhibitors; Severin's genius lies in the fact that it doesn't read like a curation of product at all but rather like a perfect piece of set design or a real-life interior.

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02.07.23

Up and Coming

The Istanbul-Based Animate Objects Makes Statement Objects, With a Surrealist Touch

We often talk about objects that have a life of their own, that shape the space around them and affect the atmosphere and tone of a room. The limited-edition décor and collectible furniture from Animate Objects – an apt name – not only seem to live and breathe, like characters in a story, but they emote, they perform. Zeynep Satik, an Istanbul-based designer, launched Animate Objects a few months ago, with the idea of creating “theatrical environments.” Think statement pieces, with a Surrealist touch, that are as functional as they are distinctive and playfully attention-getting.

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02.06.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Alekos Fassianos’ Hellenic Designs Offer a Fanciful Take on Ancient Greece 

The simplicity of Greek classical and folk art was an eternal muse for the late artist Alekos Fassianos. Best known for his paintings, which blend ancient iconography and contemporary scenes in vibrant swashes of blue, red, and gold, his overtly Hellenic influences and signature palette also gave birth to a wide range of furniture designs. Carwan Gallery in Athens is presenting the first retrospective of these pieces, following the artist's death last year, and they’re just as transportive and delightful as his 2D works.

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02.04.23

Saturday Selects

Week of January 30, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week, Technicolor 3D-printed ceramics, a Frank Lloyd Wright reissue we’d work overtime for, and a furniture collection that defies gravity.

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03.10.20

Fair Report

The 21 Best Things We Saw at the 2020 Collectible Design Fair

Collectible has evolved to be one our favorite design fairs, what with its mix of established galleries and emerging designers, its long arm of experimentation, and its emphasis on *great* sceneography. Our favorite booth this year was obviously our own, a pink oasis framed by layered, tonal, sculptural mirrors by Ben & Aja Blanc. Called Chasing Beauty, Ben & Aja's collection explores the very nature of reflection; at the fair, mirrors on opposite walls reflecting each other added yet a another meta layer of interpretation.

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02.02.23

Sighted

Studiopepe’s New Rugs for Muuto Were Inspired by 1960s-Style Land Art

Muuto is such a staple of the Scandinavian design set that it’s hard to believe the Danish company is only now releasing its first tufted rug collection. A new collaboration with Milan-based duo Studiopepe is exactly what we’d hoped for from both. Using the “tension" between Scandinavian and Italian design as a starting point, studio founders Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto combined common features of both: high-quality materials, graphic shapes, and simple yet impactful gestures, which in this instance meant filleting one of the rug’s four corners.

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02.01.23

How to Live With Objects

How These Vintage Dealers Restyle Their Jersey City Home on the Regular

When we first encountered Joey Meyers and Mark Baehser, it was online, via their vintage shop Ball & Claw — since renamed Unnecessary Projects — which had taken a place in the sprawling North Brooklyn vintage empire Dobbin St. Co-op. We assumed the two were old-hat dealers. But, as we discovered when we approached them about shooting their Jersey City Victorian home for our book, How to Live With Objects, it turns out they only entered the game a few years ago, out of love but also out of necessity: Meyers had taken to constantly cycling furniture in and out of their home, and they needed an outlet to offload the amazing finds that didn't quite work with their own space.

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01.30.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

In a Philippe Starck Retrospective, The Designer’s Early Work Reads As Both Vintage and Prescient

Before Philippe Starck became a mega-famous household name, producing everything from countertop juicers to opulent hotel lobbies and Bond-villain yachts, the French designer conceived of Postmodern furniture that feels distinctly of its time yet continues to fascinate and compel us. Starck’s work from the late '70s and '80s is now getting its first retrospective at the Ketabi Bourdet gallery in Paris. In a way, it’s the next step in the ongoing re-evaluation of designs from that era and a continuation of the conversation the gallery opened up last year with an exhibition of the visionary Italian designer Paolo Pallucco.  

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01.28.23

Saturday Selects

Week of January 23, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: new tables inspired by Colombian tiles, a book devoted to bookends, and a jaw-dropping opera set designed by Pierre Yovanovitch (above).

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01.27.23

American Design Hot List

The 2022 American Design Hot List, Part V

This week we announced our 10th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the fifth and final group of Hot List designers here (including Tiffany Howell of Night Palm, and her Lana Del Rey–inspired Miami project, above).

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01.26.23

American Design Hot List

The 2022 American Design Hot List, Part IV

This week we announced our 10th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the fourth group of Hot List designers here (including Luam Melake, whose Listening Chair, debuting at R & Company next week, is shown above.

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01.25.23

American Design Hot List

The 2022 American Design Hot List, Part III

This week we announced our 10th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees; get to know the third group of Hot List designers here — Ginger Gordon, Gregory Beson, Ian Collings, In Common With (pictured above), and Jialun Xiong.

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