Hallelujah — Our Favorite Scandinavian Art Objects Retailer is Finally Shipping to the States

This week, the Swedish design object retailer The Ode To launches shipping to the United States — and just in time. We can't think of a better place to shop for gifts for people who are notoriously hard to shop for. Where else can you find a vase shaped like a white go-go boot, a sculpture meant to look like a watermelon, or a deflated mirror decorated with a truly unhinged smiley face?
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13 of Our Favorite New Design Studios From Edit Napoli

Late last month, Edit Napoli, the independent fair that brings together designers, artisans and small-scale producers, returned to the center of Naples for the third year. More than 80 exhibitors were in attendance, at both the main fair house in the 13th-century cloister Complesso San Domenico Maggiore, as well as scattered across the city; we were lucky enough to travel down to Naples for the event, so here, in no particular order, are our 13 favorite projects from the fair.
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Week of November 8, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two blockbuster exhibitions in Athens by Philippe Malouin and Sigve Knutson, the first Boy Smells store in LA, and the shelving unit of our dreams (above) by Barbora Žilinskaité.
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Yes, Watches and Clocks Are Still a Thing — Here Are 50 of Our Favorite Designs, Sourced on eBay

By all reasonable logic, watches and clocks should have gone the way of the fax machine, or the VCR. Yet luxury watch sales are at an all-time high, and designers continue to release new wall and table clocks as if the past 20 years never happened. We love coming across amazing watches and clocks when we're shopping, especially for vintage, so we decided to devote a post to cataloguing our favorite examples, sourced from one of our favorite shopping platforms, eBay — which happens to be ground zero for watch lovers.
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This Belgian Designer’s Color-Blocked Kitchens Channel the De Stijl Movement

“My first study was the preservation of paintings,” Dries Otten tells us over the phone from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “But I decided it was too boring — your job is only appreciated when it's invisible!” Since hanging up his white gloves, though, Otten’s work has been impossible to ignore — bright, color-blocked interiors and furniture that set him apart from the neutral-obsessed minimalists that dominate contemporary Belgian design.
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At a Pop-Up Featuring Three In-Demand Interior Designers, Almost Everything — Vintage or New — Is For Sale

A Viso pop-up in Tribeca features a trio of set designs by interiors gurus Andre Mellone, Giancarlo Valle, and Michael Bargo, highlightiung exclusive designs, vintage finds, and personal items that provide context to each designer's favorite Viso items. We visited the space last week and can confirm it's one of the coolest things we've seen during New York Design Week Month this year.
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Meet the Swedish Brand Championing “Bold Minimalism” With Rugs That Are Stylish, but Subtle

When Liza Laserow-Berglund, her husband Fabian Berglund, and his brother Felix Berglund decided to start a business together, the biggest thing they had in common was Sweden, and their desire to share some part of their native country’s vibe with the rest of the world. When they realized that rugs played a huge part in every Swede’s life, they founded Nordic Knots, a rug brand aimed at spreading the Scandinavian design gospel. Their goal? A highly curated brand offering mid-range rugs with a distinct point of view — but not one loud enough to overwhelm a room.
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Week of November 1, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new online ceramics marketplace, a Texas-based studio working in wood, and a Barcelona apartment with a seriously enviable copper-and-green bathroom situation.
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How Two Sisters Turned Their Childhood Home in Mallorca Into an Artist’s Residency and Coveted Airbnb

Claudia del Olmo and her older sister Isabella got to grow up in a richly decorated villa in Mallorca, playing in the garden and watching their mother host countless parties and dinners. "It was always really magical," she says. So much so that as adults, the sisters wanted to recreate that magic, first channeling their own gift for hosting into a dinner series in London, and ultimately reclaiming their childhood home for themselves, transforming it into an events space, artist's residency, and Airbnb property called Casa Balandra.
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Jonathan Muecke’s New Works Are a Familiar Enigma

Jonathan Muecke doesn't seem particularly interested in siting his work on the spectrum between design, art, and architecture, so we won't do it for him either. But the interesting thing about his new works for Volume Gallery is that they're described in the exhibition materials as "unknowable" but also "open to ongoing interpretation" — which, in some paradoxical way, makes them more knowable?
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A Tacchini Reissue Proves Tobia Scarpa’s Very First Chair Is Still One of His Best

As a designer, you may have been taught to always explore beyond your initial hunch — that, not unlike the "bad pancake" theory of dating, your first idea will never be your best. And yet history offers a wealth of exceptions to that rule, including Tobia Scarpa's iconic 1959 Pigreco chair, the first furniture piece he ever designed that, having recently been reissued by Tacchini, endures to this day.
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Week of October 25, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a vacation home in Greece made from repurposed Styrofoam, a furniture series in colorful onyx, and the prettiest hand-blown borosilicate bong.
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