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09.02.20

Up and Coming

Guess This Is The Point Where We Crown Paper Pulp the “It” Material of 2020

Brazilian designer Humberto da Mata was born and raised in Brasília — which, with its swooping, Oscar Niemeyer–designed reinforced concrete buildings, could be considered the international seat of organic architecture. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that da Mata creates freeform work from easily moldable materials like hand-stitched upholstery, ceramics, and, most recently, papier-mâché (which, in case you missed it, appears to be *the* it material of 2020).
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09.01.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

Murals Reign At This Exhibition in the South of France, Celebrating Centuries-Old Craft Techniques

Antique-Rustique is an immersive experience and the furniture and decorative sculptures are best viewed in situ among the murals painted directly onto the walls at a mano studio, a gallery in Biarritz, France. For the layout, designers Bella Hunt & DDC imagined a walk amongst ancient ruins lost in a forest. “Our work is a tribute to the history of art and the fluidity of time,” they write.
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08.22.20

Saturday Selects

Week of August 17, 2020

This week: The $195 acrylic table of our dreams, new lamps by the likes of Toad Gallery and Bijoy Jain, and a drop-dead gorgeous pink stucco house in Mallorca that's one with its surroundings (above).
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08.14.20

Up and Coming

Meet Kelsie Rudolph, Our Newest Ceramic Furniture Crush

Ceramic artist Kelsie Rudolph glazes her adventurous creations in color combinations that just about make her skin crawl. She does this to better grasp color’s effect on us. On vessels, sculptures and, more recently, larger furniture pieces like benches and chairs, the striking pairings jig across her work in stripes, zig-zags and checkerboard. “I’m really intrigued by the way color and pattern are able to make each other move," she says.
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07.30.20

Eye Candy

Harvey Bouterse’s New Ceramic Lamp is a Study in Contrasting Textures

It's basically our job here at Sight Unseen to follow the career trajectory of up-and-coming designers, and in our professional capacity, we've come to realize that most ceramicists follow a certain path: First come the smalls, like cups and mugs and plates and vases. The next step is usually lamps — think of Natalie Weinberger's pleated clay shades, Workaday Handmade's listing table lamps, and BZIPPY's pyramid-shaped bases. Today, we're featuring one of the first lamps by Belgium-based Harvey Bouterse.
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Nicolette Johnson Assemblage vases
06.29.20

Eye Candy

These Surrealist-Inspired Vases Are the Breakthrough That Resulted From a Creative Block

At the beginning of the pandemic, some designers may have viewed the ensuing solitude as an opportunity to "bloom where you grow." But not everyone found it easy to stay inspired. "After lockdown started in the early months of 2020, I felt completely unmotivated to make work," confesses the Brisbane ceramicist Nicolette Johnson. After a while, however, Johnson gave herself permission to make literally anything, and began sculpting shapes out of soft clay — inspired by Surrealist and Constructivist motifs — and attaching them to small wheel-thrown vases.
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BZIPPY Offsite Online
05.19.20

Offsite Online

BZIPPY’s Outsized Ceramic Works Are the Statement in the Room — Not the Accent

If you’re lucky enough to ever see one of LA-based artist and sculptor Bari Ziperstein’s outsized ceramic works in person, the combination of scale, texture, and hue might stop you in your tracks. Her design studio, BZIPPY, creates striking, often Brutalist-inspired ceramic vases, lamps, and furniture, while within her complementary fine art practice, Ziperstein has been known to explore meticulously manicured fingers, dimensionality, or the aesthetics of Soviet propaganda. With her robust dual practice, Ziperstein welcomes decorative ceramics into the fine art conversation, and vice versa.
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Cape Town ceramicist Ceri Muller
04.27.20

Up and Coming

The Cape Town Ceramicist Making Crinkled Vases and Clay Faces

Here’s a tip for anyone suffering from the fear of starting something creative: Make the ugliest thing you can think of. That’s the genius bit of advice that ceramics artist Ceri Muller’s partner gave her when she felt blocked, faced with her first lump of clay. “I did that and carried on doing it and those ugly little things morphed into these heads that I grew to really love,” she says.
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04.11.20

Saturday Selects

Week of April 6, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a reissued Nanna Ditzel chair, a stylish oasis in the desert, and the only pocket knife we'd pay $375 to probably never use.
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04.09.20

Current Obsession

Think Face Pottery Is a Millennial Thing? Meet the Artist Who’s Been Doing It Since the ’70s

When Jill and I posted pictures of our favorite books on Instagram last week, mine featured one of my favorite objects in my living room, shown above: A pot, used by me as a planter, that features two hand-painted, color-blocked pastel faces. I bought it on eBay for $10 a year and a half ago. I don't remember how I found it. I had no idea, at the time, who the maker was, only that her name was Victoria Crowell and I assumed she was an obscure local artisan who made the pot in the '80s. I was mostly correct.
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03.07.20

Saturday Selects

Week of March 2, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a scathing takedown of the millennial aesthetic, the first-ever museum exhibition on ASMR, and oh, a bunch of new design objects, too.
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