Home craftsmanship
04.07.22

Q+A

This Housewares Brand Thinks the Future of Design Lies in Uniting 3D Printing With Contemporary Talents — and Traditional Artisans

In recent years, 3D printing technology has finally started to come into its own, making the dream of an on-demand manufacturing industry — one that yields products people might actually want — feel closer at hand than ever. That's the realization that inspired cousins Ismail and Adnane Tazi, who founded the Parisian housewares brand Trame in early 2020, to rethink their entire approach to production just two years later, culminating in the launch of their new Alhambra.gcode collection.
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05.21.21

Up and Coming

The Dutch Designer Making Colorful, Jewel-Like Cocktail Glasses

For years, de Beijer designed purely ornamental vessels made from synthetic and non-traditional materials like resin and pigmented polyurethane cast by hand. "People have frequently asked me why I didn't make these vessels in 'real' glass,” he said. And so he did. Designing out of his father’s studio and working in close collaboration with the renowned glassblowers at Van Tetterode Glass Studio in Amsterdam, de Beijer has created his first series of glassware made exclusively for Side Gallery.
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04.28.21

Q+A

Marco Campardo and the Marta Gallery Founders On Obsessive YouTubing, Failed Projects, and the Importance of Craftsmanship in Design

Considering the Italian designer Marco Campardo’s long friendship with Marta Gallery founders Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong — as well as the trio’s shared interest in a multidisciplinary approach — we decided to go Interview Magazine–style with this Q&A and allow the three room to riff on ideas about collaboration, identity, and digital representation in design.
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01.25.21

Up and Coming

In This Mexican Ceramicist’s Pottery, Traditional Clay Gets a Refined and Contextual Upgrade

Eugenia Díaz Peon, a Mexican ceramicist who prefers to go by the nickname of Uxi, discovered her calling not very long ago. As co-founder of the Yucatán-based brand Région, she began traveling in recent years to remote locations outside of her home base in Mérida, to learn from the traditional craftspeople who typically work far outside the city. There, she was particularly drawn to a clay known as “el barro de Ticul," or the mud of Ticul. Rough, dirty, and filled with impurities, the clay is like a terracotta, but with a more luminous color and texture.
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09.24.20

Up and Coming

This New Ceramics Brand is a Collab Between Two Parisians and the Berber Craftspeople of Northern Algeria

The unconventional ceramics brand IBKKI is the brainchild of Parisians Azel Ait-Mokhtar and Youri Asantcheeff. Their collections are a physical manifestation of their travels to the Kabylie region of Algeria and their collaboration with Berber craftspeople, but the duo didn’t take their cues from European Modernists like Matisse and Picasso, who had a tendency to appropriate elements from African art and call them their own.
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09.23.20

Q+A

A Round Table on the Ethics of Working With Artisans, and How to Respectfully Bridge Cultural and Geographic Divides

Over the last year, I've been laying the foundation for a new company that aims to connect Thailand and the U.S. through the universal languages of craft and design. I found myself thinking about how designers can foster a respectful, non-exploitive engagement when they're creating products with artisan communities rather than in factories, so I organized a roundtable discussion on the topic with three participants who have experience in bridging barriers of geography or culture: Peter Mabeo of Mabeo Furniture, Casa Wabi director Carla Sodi, and Tantuvi founder Arati Rao.
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09.11.20

Up and Coming

A Berlin Duo Whose Marriage of Art, Design, and Craft Is More Literal Than Most

When creatives describe their work as blurring the boundaries between design and art, it's rare that the effect is quite so literal as it is in the case of Berlin's Opt Studios — not only because it's the shared practice of a textile and product designer and her painter and sculptor husband, but also because the works themselves look like abstract artworks that just so happen to be hanging out on rugs and side tables.
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06.23.20

Eye Candy

Lex Pott’s Pandemic Pastime: A New Series of Hand-Woven Checker Chairs

Just when we'd almost begun thinking of him as "the candle guy," his pillars and tapers seemingly having colonized every store in New York, Dutch designer Lex Pott posted a photo on his Instagram late last month of a single eye-catching chair wrapped entirely in hand-woven nylon straps. We did a mini interview with Pott to find out more about the project.
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Pampa Australia fringe rugs
08.16.19

Eye Candy

A New Australian Textiles Collection Inspired By ’70s Shag

We've never been shy about our love of shag, fringe, and all things hairy, so does it come as a surprise that we're extremely into the new Textural line of rugs and cushions by Byron Bay–based Australian brand Pampa? Featuring oversized fringes and heavy weaves, and inspired by '70s-era shag pile carpets and cozy log cabins, each piece in the collection is handmade by artisans in Argentina.
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11.21.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

Curious “Foam” Forms Made of Ceramic and Metal, Now on View at Aram Gallery

Though they may look more like sea sponges, the collaborative works of Marina Dragomirova and Iain Howlett — aka Studio Furthermore — are in fact made from cast ceramic and aluminum alloy, using a process known as "lost foam casting." On view at The Aram Gallery in London through January 20, Studio Furthermore's latest collection of mirrors, pots, lighting, and tables were inspired by Icelandic rocks and mineral ores, lava rocks, and magma debris.
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11.09.17

Eye Candy

These Chilean Stone Vessels Are Our Newest South American Design Obsession

While there's no official equivalent of Slow Food in the design world, there will always be something particularly nice about projects that take the same traditionally made, locally focused approach — especially when the results have as contemporary an aesthetic as Rodrigo Bravo's new Monolith Series, which was crafted by a Chilean artisan out of Chilean stone.
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