11.11.22

How to Live With Objects

In Celebration of Our New Book, We Asked 18 Tastemakers to Name Their Favorite Objects

In our new book, How to Live With Objects, we try not to play favorites: We selected more than 150 vintage and contemporary objects to appear in its pages, and for the most part, we couldn't believe our luck that we got to be showcasing any of them in a book, much less one that we're absolutely not going to be shy about calling the new "bible of modern home decor and style" (thank you Vanity Fair!) However, god knows we love a list — in fact, there's a whole section of the book devoted to asking people from Alison Roman to Athena Calderone to name their most cherished possessions — so to celebrate the book's launch next week, we widened the circle to include some of our favorite people in design and fashion, sounding off about their favorite objects, both vintage and contemporary.
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11.10.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

For One Night Only at Superhouse, We Paired Works and Personal Mementoes by 16 Designers

To celebrate the upcoming launch of our book, How to Live With Objects, we put on a one-night-only exhibition last week at Superhouse Gallery in Chinatown with a *very* fun concept. To showcase How to Live With Objects' new approach to interiors — simply surrounding yourself with objects you love — we invited 16 designers, eight from our book, and eight from our exhibition partner, Areaware, to display two objects each: one they had made, and one that was meaningful to them. Each pair was displayed on a Duo Object Stand, a new, two-object pedestal designed by Sight Unseen and produced by Bestcase.
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How to Live With Objects Helene Rebelo
11.08.22

At Home With

How to Live With Objects Sneak Peek! Inside a Colorful Brussels Loft That Perfectly Mixes the Vintage and the New

Often when we first tell people we're releasing our first book, they assume it's a compilation of stories from Sight Unseen's archives, or a compendium of the homes of creatives. In fact, it's more like a reference book or handbook, one that — over the span of nearly 50,000 words — advises you on how to make your house a home. That said, we would have been remiss if we spent that much time talking about how to live with objects without showing you some prime examples of people who are successfully doing just that, like Hélène Rebelo and Edouard Beauget, whose colorful Brussels loft we're excerpting today.
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11.07.22

Interiors

Cobra Studios Transforms an Art Deco Building Into the Coolest Meeting Rooms Ever

If there was ever a way to bring back in-person meetings, this would be it: Design a location for that sole purpose by combining a “dated 80’s vibe” with shiny sci-fi surfaces, and create spaces that look more like a high-end design gallery or a very bougie spaceship. This is exactly what Belgium’s Cobra Studios has achieved at the newest location for Sparks, a company that provides these types of spaces on-demand for individuals and organizations to hire as needed.
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Sight Unseen Moda Operandi
11.03.22

Shopping

Starting Today, You Can Shop Contemporary Objects From Our Book on Moda Operandi

Today we launched a Sight Unseen trunkshow on Moda Operandi that makes the work of 11 of the contemporary designers featured in our book readily available for you to fall in love with. From a $47 bookend set by Bi-Rite and a $38 Utility Objects ceramic cup, all the way up to a large $2,800 cast-bronze statement candelabra by Fort Standard, the sale — which runs now through the end of the year — is just one more way of bringing our book to life.
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11.02.22

Sight Unseen Presents

At Phillips’s New Los Angeles Outpost, Our Curated Selection of California Designers is On View — And Available for Purchase

When we first began selling furniture online via our 1stDibs storefront back in 2018, we wondered if there was much of a market for buying things, well, sight unseen, as it were. Turns out there was, but after nearly five years, we still longed for a physical space in which our clients could actually see and feel and sit on the pieces in question. So when Phillips approached us earlier this year, asking if we might be interested in curating a rotating selection of contemporary California-based designers at the auction house's newly opened Los Angeles gallery space, we couldn't say yes fast enough.
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10.31.22

Fair Report

A Paper Chaise, a Tropicana-Orange Chair: 5 Favorites From This Year’s London Design Festival

Don’t ask us how, but we suddenly find ourselves in the waning days of October, which means it was more than a month ago now that the London Design Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary. Yes, we’re late. No, we won’t blame the Queen’s death or the tumultuous upheavals at 10 Downing (and beyond) for our delay. Yes, we’re still going to share some gems that caught our attention, including a Tropicana-orange chair, a collection of furniture made from layers of paper, and an exhibition that explores the theme of moving in with a partner — and the smashing together of taste, desire, and habit that ensues.
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10.27.22

Shopping

Seven Design Tastemakers on Their Biggest eBay Scores — and Secret Expert Shopping Tips

We talk at length in our forthcoming book, How to Live With Objects, about the joys of getting lost in the online shopping process on your way to building a more personal home, and about how shopping, even if you don't buy anything, can help you learn about makers and movements as you define or refine your taste. There's really no better place to do that than eBay. Today, we asked seven tastemakers and shopping experts to share their favorite eBay finds, as well as their top shopping tips and current favorite saved searches (because as every shopping expert will tell you, you *must* have saved searches).
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10.26.22

Interiors

Conjuring the Soul of Baltimore — And John Waters — At ASH’s New Hotel Ulysses

At The Ulysses, ASH’s latest hotel, newly opened in Baltimore, maximalism is having a moment — but in a surprisingly considered way, where a wealth of patterns, textures, and influences combine and cohere in a highly cinematic, vintage style. The interior nods to Baltimore’s own John Waters and his trashy-kitsch leanings, for sure, but it's matched with the refined opulence a Visconti set from the Italian cinema classic Il Gattopardo. We spoke to ASH's Will Cooper about how ASH approaches the cities they inhabit, how to be trendy without becoming dated, and how to know when over the top is just enough.
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10.25.22

Current Obsession

Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part II: The 1930s Ceramics of Mazzotti and Nikolay Diulgheroff

Like many of the best art movements of the early 1900s, the radical Italian Futurist movement was most-known for two-dimensional works, but encompassed the applied arts as well. One of its more interesting — yet largely forgotten — practitioners was the late designer and artist Nikolay Diulgheroff, for whom ceramics became a medium of dynamic expression for his and the Futurists’ ideas.
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10.24.22

Current Obsession

Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part I: Tour Four of Italy’s Most Avant-Garde Interiors

In the 1909 manifesto for one of the most controversial avant-garde art movements of the 20th century — Italian Futurism — founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti confessed his admiration for the modern age and its inventions, for speed, the roar of engines, and the rage of war weapons. The group’s paintings and sculptures attempted to depict the speed and dynamism of the industrial age, but Futurism’s reach also extended to a practice in architecture and interior design, and in the past few years I toured Italy to uncover few of its best spaces.
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