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).
More
Vit Cimbura postmodern clocks

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.
More

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).
More

Meditation, Tattoos, American Shaker and French Country All Come Together in Nicholas Hamilton Holmes’s Oxalino Collection

There’s no post-modern software used in the making of Nicholas Hamilton Holmes’s new furniture collection, OXALINO; no industrial techniques. But what is required is a steady hand, a steady heart, a steady breath — and some vinegar. Made in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, OXALINO is a collection of furniture and one-of-a-kind objects with thin stripes — hand-painted with an oxidizing solution — spiraling continuously around their solid wood forms.
More

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.
More

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.
More
Sean Gerstley ceramics

Sean Gerstley’s Clay Objects Live In A World Of Their Own

Following the trajectory of Delaware-born artist and designer Sean Gerstley’s practice, it feels a bit like he’s always, intentionally, scaling down. “I went to Rhode Island School of Design for architecture before finding ceramics,” he says of his creative coming-of-age. “As a kid I was, and still am, super interested in interior spaces. My ceramic practice started as sculptural work that was kind of about interiors and domestic space in abstract-installation form.”
More

Four New Design Hotels Across the Globe to Fuel Your Summer-Travel Fantasies

Travel took on a whole new meaning — and existential desperation — this summer, both for lockdown-weary regular people and for a travel industry that endured forced dormancy for the better part of a year. While not all of us have the privilege of much mobility over the next few months, we've put together another roundup of four recent design-hotel openings for both the doers and the dreamers among us: The Sunseeker, White Water, Maslina Resort, and Hotel Ami.
More

Once a Digital-Only Brand, Beni Rugs Opens a Showroom in New York and Marrakech

Considering this was a year in which many brands shrank their physical presence or moved their activities mostly online, it seems doubly impressive that the direct-to-consumer brand Beni Rugs opened not one but two IRL HQs this month — one a studio apartment in the West Village in New York, outfitted with the help of frequent collaborator Colin King, and the other a former awning factory turned 8,000-square-foot studio in Tameslouht, Morocco.
More