12.15.20

Sighted

Tiled Furniture is Having a Moment, But These Pieces Are Unlike Anything You’ve Seen

We're certainly not the first people to tell you that tile furniture had something of a moment in 2020. But because of tile's inherent limitations, those pieces tend to have a certain sameness, even as their palettes and patterns change. That's why Tajimi Custom Tiles, a new brand based in the historic center of the Japanese tile industry, feels incredibly novel. To celebrate the launch of their custom-tailored tiles — and to showcase the brand's almost innumerable possibilities —Tajimi commissioned installations from Max Lamb and Kwangho Lee.
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12.14.20

Current Obsession

Rediscovering Pucci De Rossi, the Founding Father of Ugly Furniture

Among the army of designers from the 1980s and '90s plucked from the archive in recent years — Ettore Sottsass, Nathalie du Pasquier, and their Memphis cohort, to name a few — there are still many that remain ripe for rediscovery. Our latest find is Pucci de Rossi, the Italian-born artist and designer who intrigued and confused the Parisian design world with his Brutti Mobili (Ugly Furniture). A clear predecessor to a whole cohort of artist-designers working today — think Misha Kahn’s mixed media chimeras — Pucci de Rossi didn’t invent the concept of functional art, but his work from the 1970s to 1990s certainly laid some groundwork.
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12.12.20

Saturday Selects

Week of December 7, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week, more shoppable links than usual just in case you’re still holiday gifting, the most glorious checkered terrazzo flooring we’ve seen in a minute, and a new kaleidoscopic lighting collection that hits like an antidepressant just in the nick of time.
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12.11.20

American Design Hot List

The 2020 American Design Hot List, Part V

This week we announced our eighth annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the fifth group of Hot List designers here.
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12.10.20

American Design Hot List

The 2020 American Design Hot List, Part IV

This week we announced our eighth annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the fourth group of Hot List designers here.
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01.24.19

Current Obsession

Why is This Early 1900s Swedish Minimalist Suddenly All Over Instagram?

We’re not sure when it was that we first started noticing the late Swedish designer Axel Einar Hjorth popping up everywhere we looked. But whenever it was, you can now consider us full converts to the church of Hjorth, whose work remains disarmingly fresh 60 years after his death, mixing as it does both Art Deco and Modernist influences, and a sense of sophistication with something more primitive.
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12.09.20

American Design Hot List

The 2020 American Design Hot List, Part III

This week we announced our eighth annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the third group of Hot List designers here: Mike Ruiz-Serra, Pieces (above), and Ryan Preciado.
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12.08.20

American Design Hot List

The 2020 American Design Hot List, Part II

This week we announced our eighth annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the second group of Hot List designers here: Kalon, LikeMindedObjects, and Maryam Turkey (above).
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12.07.20

American Design Hot List

The 2020 American Design Hot List, Part I

This week we announced our eighth annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the first three Hot List designers here: Campagna, Casey Johnson Studio (above), and John Eric Byers.
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12.05.20

Saturday Selects

Week of November 30, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week was all about the epic upgrade: Eny Lee Parker reimagining an Adrian Pearsall bench, Odd Matter making recycled-plastic furniture chic, and Sean Gerstley making us forget about every other ceramic table ever on his very first crack at the genre.
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12.03.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

If You’re Tired of the Brass Trend, This is the Exhibition For You

As design editors, it is our duty to report on design trends or at least acknowledge the ones that take over a certain year. But that does not mean we necessarily like all of those trends, nor do we always agree with the pace at which they bloom, wither, and die. Studio Vedèt founder Valentina Ciuffi must have had some bone to pick with the utter ubiquity of brass over the past few years for she recently curated an exhibition for FAR at Nilufar Gallery in Milan, featuring 13 designers and studios experimenting with metals and materials other than brass.
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