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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07.21.21

Q+A

In His Debut Exhibition, Minjae Kim Explores Identity and Getting Lost in Cultural Translation

The objects Minjae Kim has created for his debut solo exhibition at Marta in Los Angeles are a take on his own preconceptions about Western or Euro-centric culture, which — now having lived in the US for most of his adult life after growing up in Korea — he describes as akin to “being in two places at one.”

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07.19.21

Up and Coming

This Czech Glass Designer Revived a 200-Year-Old Tradition For His Latest Collection

Lukas Novák's glass works are the result of a 200-year-old process called Lithyaline the young craftsman has revived for the collection, in which he melts down rocks and minerals and incorporates them into the molten glass before blowing them into a beech wood mold.

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04.10.19

Fair Report

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 2

Sight Unseen is on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair this week and we’ll be bringing you loads of coverage next week, plus moment-by-moment round-ups on our Instagram Stories. But until our rounds here are done, we’ll be featuring quick hits from some of our favorite things that caught our eye. Our pick today? These skewed, psychedelic checkerboard rugs by Martino Gamper for cc-tapis, whose color-blocked not-quite-grids result in a collision of textures and hues.

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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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07.15.21

Current Obsession

These Playful Postmodern Clocks and Their Late Designer, Vit Cimbura, Are Finally Getting Their Due

Earlier this year, a somewhat forgotten Postmodern designer named Vít Cimbura died. A member of the iconic Postmodern group Atika, Cimbura decided at the end of the 1980s to channel his criticism of Communism through a series of experimental Postmodern creations that balanced on the edge of kitsch. The Prague-based gallery, Okolo, pays tribute to Cimbura’s work this month in an exhibition of clocks, which formed an important part of his life's work.

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07.14.21

Graphic Design

A Playful Pét-nat, and Other Graphic Design Picks for July

Each month The Brand Identity shares with our readers a selection of the most interesting studios, packaging designs, and branding and identity projects featured recently on their site. This month: Colorful packaging for a sustainable beauty line, a photographer with a font inspired by the early 1900s, and a playful identity for a Ukranian wine brand (above).

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07.12.21

Up and Coming

A Rollicking New Collection Inspired by Lollipops, Wine, and Pancakes for Dinner

Usually, says Jack Fearon of Brothers Fearon Fabrication, he comes up with designs that he would like for his own home, like their first collection: a series of thick-legged side tables and stools whose silhouettes resembled the hip crease of a human body. But the brothers' latest collection came from Jack imagining what his four-month-old daughter would think is cool.

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07.10.21

Saturday Selects

Week of July 5, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two retro-inspired French interiors, two New Zealand artists whose practices are making a U-turn, and a new brand that aims to start a discussion about leisure as a radical act for the BIPOC community.

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07.09.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

Ostrich Sculptures and Spiral Chairs: This Canadian Gallery is a Vintage Aficionado’s Dream

Earlier this summer, an exhibition called "Ils bougent la nuit" popped up in an abandoned butcher's shop in Montréal. Mixing mostly vintage and a few contemporary pieces, the show was the work of curators Isaac Larose-Farmer and Florence Provencher-Proulx, owners of a small fashion label who birthed the nomadic project Bruises Gallery during the COVID lockdown.

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07.08.21

Sight Unseen Presents

Our 2021 Collection Launches Today on 1stDibs — With New Work From 16 International Designers

The pandemic may have prevented us from hosting our Offsite show this year, but we didn't want to entirely abandon our role as a platform for supporting the work of independent designers — especially since they haven't let it stop them from coming up with brilliant new ideas, even without a physical fair to debut them at. So for 2021, we decided to curate a special collection of furniture and accessories by 16 contemporary designers and launch it for sale exclusively on 1stDibs, starting today.

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