06.02.25

Fair Report

The Material-Rich Hundō Was One of Most Assured Furniture Debuts of the Season

One of our favorites launches at NYCxDesign was Hundō by Emily Thurman, an interior and product designer based in Salt Lake City. Thurman’s debut collection of furniture, lighting, and sculptural objects takes its name from the proto-Italic word for “pour out” — fitting as it gestures towards the fluidity that characterizes these pieces as well as the way in which some of them were made using the art of lost wax casting. The idea and process of “pouring out” also evokes the communal, collaborative effort behind this collection: Thurman turned to both local and far-flung designers and artisans to realize this transformative series.

05.28.25

Sight Unseen Presents

For New York Design Week, We Surrounded Ourselves With Friends for a Sight Unseen Collection x Petra Exhibition

When the founders of the hospitality design firm AvroKo, who have been friends of ours for more than a decade, invited us to take over their Soho showroom and events space, Host on Howard, we in turn invited a group of our favorite designers to exhibit their work with us, not to mention co-host a few really fun parties along the way. Four studios trotted out their latest contributions to our Sight Unseen Collection — the furniture and lighting we represent direct to the trade — including Sunfish, Sam Klemick, Cultivation Objects, and Known Work, while Monica showcased nearly 20 new pieces from her hardware showroom Petra by friends like Sally Breer, Elyse Graham, Alexis & Ginger, and more.

03.04.25

Fair Report

A Wonderfully Cohesive Debut From Tobias Berg, Sight Unseen’s Best in Show Winner at Greenhouse, the Stockholm Showcase for Emerging Design

At the Stockholm Furniture Fair earlier this winter, we found the thing we're always searching for at these things: a designer whose work is so sophisticated and ready for the market that they're bound to be in the conversation for years to come. (A booth full of bangers, if you will.) And so our Best in Show at Greenhouse award this year went to Tobias Berg, a Norwegian designer with one of the most assured debuts we've seen in years.

02.21.25

Fair Report

25 Up-and-Coming Talents We Scouted at Greenhouse, Stockholm’s Showcase for Emerging Design

In my general round-up of the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week, I noted how ably Scandinavians seem to grapple with the realities of our culture of waste. Nowhere at the fair is this more evident than at Greenhouse, the emerging design section that mixes independent designer showcases with group installations by design schools and curated projects.

02.19.25

Up and Coming

This Parisian Designer’s Furniture Looks Like it Was Left Out in the Rain

Following a storm, there’s a moment when surfaces are left covered with beautiful, randomly dispersed droplets that glisten until they evaporate. In his new series — appropriately titled After the Rain —Parisian designer Quentin Vuong has been able to recreate this effect with startling accuracy across a series of blackened oak furniture pieces, upon which he painstakingly hand-applies black epoxy resin. Currently on show at Galerie Gastou, the series is the latest example of Vuong’s delicate approach to imbuing his works with intriguing details that require significant time and focus to achieve.

01.22.25

Up and Coming

This Self-Taught Designer’s Dark Wood Furniture is Imbued with Spirituality

It wasn’t until the pandemic that South American designer Rafael Triboli found his calling. Triboli grew up in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, and studied communications at a university there. He later moved to São Paulo and worked as an art director and scenography designer. But during lockdown, which forced him back home for a period, he looked inward and delved into his own artistic practice: signing up for free courses; discovering influences in artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, and Eileen Gray; and, eventually, experimenting in a friend’s wood shop. With the time and opportunity to research, learn, and experiment in the world of art and design, the Brazilian creative quickly learned that his favorite woods to work with are the darker, harder varieties — such as mahogany, imbuia, and ipe — that are native to Brazil. He uses these to produce simple seats, benches, daybeds, dressers, trunks and tables that wouldn’t look out of place in a friary – albeit a very stylish one.

01.08.25

American Design Hot List

The 2024 American Design Hot List, Part III

This week we announced our 12th 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 (including recent RISD grad Michelle Jiaxin Huang, whose futuristic works in steel are pictured above).

11.14.24

Up and Coming

The Green Goblin, Norwegian Black Metal, SpongeBob: Up-and-Coming Designer Clay Brown’s References Run the Gamut

Clay Brown’s work is shot through with an imaginative sense of play that is, quite simply, fun — but that’s not all it is. Somehow his pieces come off as minimal and spare yet highly referential and evocative, like his resin Island lamps, which call to mind cake domes; the Formica and birch I’m Ready cabinet, which could be a “mini-bar or maybe a wardrobe for a toddler;” and the jagged yet precise aluminum 1234567 bookcase, which is sharp but not at all forbidding. His Stave cabinet, part of the Sight Unseen collection, rises to a steep peak in darkly moody colors but it’s also… friendly. With its oxblood Thumbprint pull by Sam Stewart — with whom Brown has worked on several projects — it’s like a classic wooden toy scaled up to human proportions.

09.11.24

Up and Coming

Carsten in der Elst Lets the Materials Lead Him Where He Wants to Go

Raw is the adjective that first comes to mind when looking at the work of German designer Carsten in der Elst. There's his Graywacke Offcut Series, for which in der Elst exclusively uses the jagged "crust" that's discarded when turning sandstone slabs into German sidewalks; his Accession chair, whose seat is formed from a sawn carpet of latex tubes resembling pasta noodles; and his ongoing Aluskin seating series, whose shells are crafted from the cast-off skins salvaged from high-precision aluminum production and whose cushions are foam remnants that puff up, lumpily, like loaves of sandwich bread. His designs feel contemporary and fresh but continue the red thread of predecessors like JB Blunk, Max Lamb, and Kwangho Lee (the former two in der Elst cites as inspiration). Like in der Elst, all of these designers seem to tease form from a material, allowing its inherent properties to lead to the final shape.

07.18.24

Up and Coming

Designers in America Lack the Infrastructure to Help Build Their Businesses. A New Residency From Colony is Here to Help.

Putting creative work out into the world can be incredibly daunting. There’s not only the pressure to conceive of a strong artistic vision but also the challenge of balancing logistical production details — not to mention the cost, particularly here in the United States, where we lack structural and financial support from the government. The Designer’s Residency Program from Colony, a gallery and design strategy firm in Manhattan, helps guide up-and-comers through all of this. For their 8-month intensive incubator, Colony’s founder Jean Lin and creative director Madeleine Parsons draw on their experience as professors at Parsons and RISD to help emerging, independent designers navigate the stages of launching a studio and breaking into the industry.

03.29.24

Fair Report

10 Projects We Loved at the 2024 Collectible Fair in Brussels

The biggest news to come out of this month's Collectible fair, now in its seventh year, wasn't about a ground-breaking gallery or a new designer at all but rather the fact that the Brussels-based fair — much beloved in the design community for its rigorous curation and its commitment to highlighting emerging designers in the collectible field — will be debuting a show in New York this fall. From September 4-10, the inaugural US edition will take place inside the enigmatic WSA building in New York's financial district; it follows this year's successful westward expansion of Alcova into Miami. What can we say, we Americans love to shop! If you're the collecting kind, consider our round-up of the most interesting projects to come out of this year's Collectible fair in Brussels a preview of what's to come.

03.04.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

At Zona Maco, Agnes’s First Solo Exhibition is Bestrewn With Symbols of Luck

When the Guatemala City-based duo Agnes first burst onto the scene in 2017, they did so in a decidedly iconic fashion: Their debut collection was immediately embraced by the international design community, with splashy press clips, interesting placements, and influential commissions (AGO Projects founders Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg asked the two to create a rug for their own CDMX home, which was later featured in our book, How to Live With Objects). Now AGO is spotlighting Agnes’s sophomore collection at their Mexico City–based gallery as part of the designers’ first solo exhibition, which opened during last month’s Zona Maco festivities.