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11.01.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

After 100 Years in Business, You Might Think You Know the Iconic Swedish Design Store Svenskt Tenn. You’d Be Wrong.

Something funny happens when you're a company that's been around for a full century. People start to assume that they already know everything there is to know about you — that they've somehow osmotically absorbed your brand tenets or your ethos by virtue of you simply sticking around. For me, the storied Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, was one of those companies. But then I went to Stockholm in September on the occasion of Svenskt Tenn's centenary retrospective opening at Liljevalchs Kunsthalle, running through January 12. Called Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home, it spans thirteen thematic rooms, curated by Jane Withers together with Svenskt Tenn's head curator Karin Södergren. It was there I realized that what I knew about this company hardly scratched the surface.
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07.25.24

Sighted

This Parisian Studio’s New Collection Turns Grandmotherly Flourishes, Like Tassels and Cords, Into Something Decidedly Modern

Imagine a place in the Mediterranean — where North Africa meets Europe meets the Middle East — and a time that can’t quite be determined, and you’ll get a feel for the latest collection from the Parisian architecture and design studio Ebur. Racha Guttierez and Dahila Hojeij Deleuze, who founded Ebur in 2020, conjure their respective cultures and histories in their designs: The two of them grew up in Côte D’Ivoire — Ebur means ivory in Latin ­— and the childhood friends spent their summers in Lebanon before going on to study architecture in Paris. Ebur’s first release of furnishings, last year, drew inspiration from their early memories of the seaside. This second act builds on that and continues an elegant exploration of form and material.
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04.23.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

An All-Female Welding Team Built Studio Kuhlmann’s Gorgeous, Stainless Steel Ode to Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreams, the new solo show from German designer and welder Hannah Kuhlmann, is an ode to unconscious depths, afternoon naps, and theta state reverie. On view at St Vincents gallery in Antwerp through mid-May, these pieces evoke an atmosphere somewhere between illusion and reality, following a kind of dream logic where the unexpected is encountered and absorbed. Lucid dreaming, after all, is when you realize you’re dreaming in your dream. “I wanted to capture the essence of those moments of heightened awareness within our subconscious,” Kuhlmann says. “The title Lucid Dreams speaks to the surreal experience of being both asleep and awake, where the mind wanders freely and perceptions shift.”
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female italian designer The Ladies Room
08.19.19

Up and Coming

These Four Women Are Leading Milan’s Design Scene — Both Together and Apart

This July, a design show in a Parisian apartment harnessed the talents of what feels like at least half of Milan’s up-and-coming design scene. Called "You Are Welcome" by The Ladies' Room collective — a collaborative project made up of Agustina Bottoni, Ilaria Bianchi, Sara Ricciardi, and Astrid Luglio — the show took the form of an intimate, female-centered salon, where objects vibrated with their own peculiar presences. All brilliant designers in their own right, the four have been working together since 2016 when they met at the Turin-based design fair Operae.
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03.15.19

Excerpt: Exhibition

Think Women Are Underrepresented in the Creative Arts? This Exhibition Does Too

The design world hasn't yet grappled with the chronic underrepresentation of women by brands — the Instagram @showmealist was a good idea that seems to have sadly fizzled out — but female designers and curators are doing just fine supporting each other, thankyouverymuch. The latest is an exhibition at Ox Poblenou in Barcelona, inaugurated on International Women's Day and curated by Sanna Völker, a Swedish furniture designer and curator living in Spain.
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12.17.18

Up and Coming

This Dutch Design Duo Ignores What’s “Right” in Their Quest to Make Something Perfect

Over the last few years, the Dutch studio RENS has been busy building a diverse portfolio of experimental yet resolved and alluring designs. Each project they undertake breathes new life into familiar processes and is approached from a purposefully uninformed standpoint. In fact, by knowing less about a production method and the way things “should be done,” they find the beauty and potential in rejects and mistakes.
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06.14.18

Shopping

All Hail Block Shop’s Affordable, Art Deco–Inspired Woodblock Prints

Did you, like us, visit Block Shop's reading room at Sight Unseen OFFSITE and wish you could walk away with just a fraction of the sisters' sunny decor (including that bonkers amazing banana flower plant?) If so, consider your wish granted: This week the L.A.–based studio released its first edition of woodblock prints on colored paper, and they're a perfect, low-risk way to incorporate some of the sisters' graphic sensibility into your own home.
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03.08.18

Up and Coming

In Artisan-Heavy Guatemala, a Young Maker Forging a New Path in Industrial Design

The last time we featured the work of Sofia Véliz — a two-piece set of folded-steel gallery furniture made for a Diego Sagastume exhibition — we wondered what else the Guatemala City designer might have up her sleeve. Over a year and a half later, we’re finding out: From extracting rubber powder from tires to seeking inspiration from Finnish film sets, to exploring the balance between utilitarian design and the urge to experiment, there’s no question that the 25-year-old designer keeps herself busy.
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01.24.18

Studio Visit

A Belgian Designer in Morocco On What It’s Like to Run a Global Brand Via Instagram

Working from the center of a medina in Marrakech might not seem like the most straightforward way to achieve international acclaim, but with an aesthetic that walks right up to an Anthro catalog, then takes a sharp left toward Picasso, Laurence Leenaert of LRNCE has done just that. We caught up with Leenaert in her showroom-cum-studio to find out what it's like to run a global brand via Instagram, how she stays inspired, and why she can’t imagine being anywhere else.
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Eny Lee Parker
01.22.18

Excerpt: Exhibition

Eny Lee Parker’s New Ceramic Chainmail Has a Secret Message Encoded in Its Links

Where do you go after you've been named this year's "breakout American design star" AND one of the best fashion brands of 2017? If you're Eny Lee Parker, you just keep churning out incredible new work, even if you're in the throes of an upcoming cross-country move. The triple-threat ceramicist/furniture designer/jewelry maker debuted a new collection this weekend, and while the new work covers some familiar ground (thick ceramic legs as table bases), Parker also dug deep into a new obsession: ceramic chainmail.
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12.12.17

Sighted

These Women Are Teaming Up for a Powerhouse Ceramics Collab

It seems inevitable that some of the women included in Egg Collective's powerhouse Designing Women exhibition last spring would end up making their working relationship long-term, but we couldn't be happier about the first pairing: From their Soho showroom, throughout the next year, Egg Collective will be commissioning and selling capsule collections of ceramic work by Natalie Herrera, whose graphic, geometry-inspired pieces feel very much of a kind with Egg Collective's aesthetic.
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