09.01.21

What They Bought

The Vintage Furniture Dealer Whose Aesthetic Runs From Bauhaus to Beetlejuice

Gennaro Leone, who runs the vintage furniture shop Spazio Leone in London, is clearly devoted to the cult of '70s and '80s Italian design. But he’s also drawn to pieces that seem to exist in a dream-zone where Art Deco–meets-Postmodernism and Surrealist motifs, along with a hint of Delia Deetz (that's Catherine O’Hara’s sculptor stepmom in Beetlejuice, for anyone who needs a refresher). In the short time that Leone's been up and running, the dealer has developed an aesthetic that could even be described — as he himself puts it — as “WTF is this? I’m trying to find a balance between crazy shapes and comfortable things.
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Borek Sipek chair
08.30.21

Current Obsession

Revisiting the Czech Postmodernist Whose Unusual Chairs Are Suddenly Everywhere

The Czech designer Bořek Šípek was one of the heavyweights of design in the late 1980s and 1990s, creating postmodern furniture and objects that enchanted the international scene. But he failed to become a household name, and his work ultimately fell into oblivion. That, however, is suddenly changing: A new generation of designers, curators, and tastemakers is rediscovering Šípek’s designs and bringing his tribal and highly eclectic aesthetic to the forefront again.
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07.31.21

Saturday Selects

Week of July 26, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week is a bit different because in addition to our usual roll call of '80s-inspired interiors and incredible craft projects, we're featuring our favorite finds from this summer's design school degree shows, including hits from RISD, Beckmans, RCA, and the Kingston School of Art.
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07.30.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

The Designers on Our Radar After This Year’s Design Parade in Hyères and Toulon

As we hurtle towards the September make-up version of Salone del Mobile — which will mark the first major in-person design fair since COVID began, advisedly or not — we first wanted to turn our attention to the return of one of our favorite smaller fairs, the annual Design Parade in Hyères and Toulon from Villa Noailles in the south of France. As always, we're smitten with the competition format for these two festivals, which seems to unearth amazingly talented designers we've never heard of.
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07.29.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Exhibition Shows How Cranbrook Helped Pioneer the Cross-Disciplinary, Craft-Based, Experimental Design and Art of Today

Most people know the highlights of the Cranbrook Academy of Art’s storied 90-year history, from its campus by Eliel Saarinen to its role as a breeding ground for the stars of mid-century modernism. But in June, the school launched the results of a four-year deep-dive into its own history — in the form of a sprawling exhibition and a 600-page book, both called With Eyes Opened — that offer a much more nuanced view of Cranbrook’s game-changing influence. We spoke with curator Andrew Blauvelt about 6 artworks and objects by varied practitioners that were part of that narrative.
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05.25.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Christopher Norman is Turning the Castoff Urban Trees of Los Angeles Into Art

Los Angeles–based architect and designer Christopher Norman’s new collection of hand-machined minimal forms resists standardization. His untitled “extrusions” in ash and cedar and pine riff on a hardware aesthetic, while maintaining the organic ethos seen in much of his other, more fluidly-shaped work. Forgoing pre-cut lumber, Norman uses wood from freshly cut trees. “If you’re working with commercial wood, you get a very normalized look and set of proportions. It’s basically highly mediated,” he explains.
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07.28.21

Up and Coming

Lewis Kemmenoe’s Debut Collection Features One Very Of-the-Moment Material

“For as long as I remember I loved just making things,” says London-based designer Lewis Kemmenoe. “My parents told me that when I was eight, I begged them to let me go to art school, right there and then.” He may not have matriculated quite as early as he had hoped, but Kemmenoe eventually enrolled in Central Saint Martins to study Fine Art. Eighteen months ago, he began working on his first collection of furniture, a series of chairs, tables, shelving, and lighting in burl veneer, plywood, and timber — either left in its natural state or stained with linseed to highlight the grain.
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07.26.21

Sighted

With Prints Inspired By Art-Store Pen-Test Doodles, These Curtains Are ‘Free and Wild’

Sarah Illenberger has a talent for recontextualizing everyday items in ways that are deceptively simple, yet at the same time so clever that there's an irresistible kind of magic in it. The same is true for her new collaboration with Danish textile purveyor Kvadrat, a series of three vibrant curtain panels created by scanning the little pads of paper people test pens on in stationery stores — the unremarkable made remarkable, through little more than a flash of creative inspiration and a change in scale.
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07.24.21

Saturday Selects

Week of July 19, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a red Formica table — two things that are experiencing a resurgence — yet another club chair on ball feet, and a collection of textiles that reference everyone's favorite design couple, Josef and Anni Albers.
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07.23.21

Interiors

This Vancouver-Based Lifestyle and Floral Shop is At Once Unruly and Refined

The floral arranging element of the new lifestyle shop Cadine presented a logistical challenge for Vancouver-based interiors studio Ste Marie, but it also provided the main source of inspiration for the space. The gentle curves found throughout are meant to evoke a frond swaying in the wind, while organic forms typically found in nature are replicated in the material choices.
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07.17.21

Saturday Selects

Week of July 12, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a rainbow-colored housewares store in Berlin, the latest extruded-plastic works by James Shaw, a group show of vases by 19 ceramicists, and a highlight from this year's Design Parade in France (above).
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