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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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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In Bower’s New Perception-Bending Collection, Mirrors and Materials Appear to Melt Uncannily

To mark the release of their largest-ever collection of furniture and mirrors — whose wood, marble, and upholstered surfaces appear to melt over their frames — the New York studio Bower collaborated with 3-D renderer Alexis Christodolou on a series of images that capture the pieces in an escapist indoor/outdoor fantasy world. We caught up with the trio about that project and more.
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With Degree Shows Cancelled, A Stockholm Museum Offers Students the Chance to Show Their Work

With the pandemic in mind, the Stockholm-based Möbeldesignmuseum — which was founded in February 2018 by collectors and design world insiders Kersti Sandin and Lars Bülow — decided to create a platform for final year students from Beckmans, HDK-Valand, Konstfack and Malmstens. Called Ex-Works, the exhibition features work by 23 designers from the four schools, and the curated works are uniformly strong.
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Week of October 19, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: furniture inspired by robots, our favorites from the 2020 Design Academy Eindhoven graduate shows, and a carpeted chair by Max Lamb that's apropos for COVID life.
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A Plywood Pioneer and Champion of Eco-Modern Design Whose Work is Ripe for Rediscovery

Even though two of Peter Danko’s chair designs are in MoMA's permanent collection, many of his works were never all that commercially successful, leading him to view himself as something of an underdog. But the first time we discovered Danko's 1980 Bodyform chair on one of our early sourcing excursions, there was no question of whether to snap it up. Both it and and many of Danko's other designs are pieces of art and sculpture, and are ripe to be rediscovered by a generation that truly values those qualities.
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Designer Mac Collins Mines His Family History To Imagine Brighter Black Futures

Mac Collins's Iklwa series debuted at London Craft Week this month, produced by legacy manufacturer Benchmark. Comprising two lounge chairs — one large and one small — and a side table, the collection is named for a style of short spear used by the Zulu, the chair featuring armrests that echo its shape. It's a compelling introduction to the 25-year-old's distinct yet disruptive approach, informed by his Jamaican heritage as well as his background in art and sculpture.
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Week of September 28, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: LRNCE makes her first lamps, a New York designer releases a Memphis-style mirror to rival the Ultrafragola, and India Mahdavi opens a project space for experimental installations like the one pictured above.
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6 Up-and-Coming Chinese Designers to Watch

A trinity of qualities anoints China as one to watch in the independent design landscape: a raft of regional, incubating talent; prodigious market demand; and design and production innovation. We recently spoke with six talents from the rising creative class to get an accurate read on a burgeoning design scene in China — which is increasingly showing itself to be not only uniquely Chinese but also distinctly of-the-moment.
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Mario Tsai Chinese design

Though He Designs for Of-the-Moment Brands, Mario Tsai Isn’t Inspired By Trends

When Hangzhou-based designer Mario Tsai was growing up, he’d take apart the electronics in the house. Luckily for him, his parents were forgiving. He’d also collect old, tossed-out electric components and scrap pieces of wood to make new things. “I made many things that adults would consider strange,” he says, but that early freedom to explore has proven foundational for his design practice. A research-centered approach is the basis of Mario Tsai Studio, founded in the summer of 2014, which produces elegant, contemporary furniture and conceptual lighting design.
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