Melbourne design store Guild of Objects

A Must-Visit Design Store in Melbourne

Guild of Objects fills an interesting gap in Melbourne — a store that isn’t quite a gallery, but is far from a gift shop. Each object — handmade by an Australian maker and often one-of-a-kind — has a story behind it. Quality materials and an emphasis on craftsmanship are central to each piece — otherwise they wouldn’t be here.
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The Faded Pastels and Geometric Glamour of Ward Roberts’s Courts Series

If you're familiar with the work of photographer Ward Roberts, chances are you found his work, like we did, on Pinterest. After all, the New York–based photographer's images were practically made for social media, featuring as they do the aesthetic memes du jour: muted, pastel colors; graphic, geometric compositions; and architectural wonders seemingly devoid of any people. In Roberts's case, the backdrop common to all of his photos are the basketball and tennis courts of Hong Kong, where the Australian-born photographer was raised from the age of three.
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10 New Takes on the Pendant Light, From a Designer Down Under

In the category of cities we're seriously dying to visit, Melbourne is right up there with Tokyo, and now we have another reason to make the trek: the recently wrapped Denfair, a design fair now in its second year, which in the past week has introduced us to whole host of new talents, including the German-born, Melbourne-based designer Volker Haug, whose new lighting collection we're featuring today. Made by hand in Haug's Brunswick East studio, the lights represent a more minimalist direction for the designer, whose previous creations were more colorful and organic.
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Inside the Rope-Painting, Basket-Making World of Gemma Patford

After attempting to learn to crochet, Patford realized it was not for her and instead turned to artists who were working with rope like Doug Johnston, who remains one of her heroes. “I muddled my way through the Internet to find a process that worked with my abilities and with what I had at home. I had a sewing machine and paint — and the baskets were born,” she says.
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Melbourne furniture designer Dale Hardiman

Dale Hardiman, The Next Big Thing From Melbourne

At the heart of Melbourne furniture designer Dale Hardiman’s work is a fascination with manufacturing processes and material lifecycles. Combine that with the new millenial designer's eye for pitch-perfect styling, and you've got a serious talent on the rise.
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Melbourne Furniture Designers Pop & Scott

Shortly after meeting one another, Poppy Lane and Scott Gibson realized they had a shared habit of dreaming up possibilities for running their own businesses. Their initial ideas for a joint venture ranged from a hip retro bike shop to a hangover café. What they finally ended up launching, however, was more of an accident: A furniture line called Pop & Scott, which grew organically from the couple’s attempts to create pieces for their own home that they wanted, but couldn’t find in stores, which it turned out other people wanted, too.
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Melbourne Artist Matthew Dettmer

Melbourne-based Matthew Dettmer's work spans painting and sculpture, but in Dettmer's hands, those practices become relatively indistinct from one another. "During art school, I was painting photos and images that I'd found. But there was no reason the outcome needed to be a painting when it could just exist as a photo. So I started making sculptures of found objects or forms that didn’t exist — ones that I wished did."
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Week of August 24, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: fall previews from NYABF and Maison et Objet, a new place to score succulents in Scandinavia, and a serious showing of Aussie design power, including a new collection from Melbourne furniture-maker Fred Ganim, above.
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Melbourne Creative Agency Wildhen Design

We've said it before — Australia often feels like a strange parallel universe to us. We know it's bursting with amazing design talent, but it all feels so far away, and it's not easy for us to assess what the new hot restaurant or hotel or creative agency may be at any given time. For those of us who pride ourselves on being up on the cultural landscape of the Western hemisphere, it's a weird feeling, but in a way, it's also a nice one: We didn't have to think too hard when the Melbourne firm Wildhen sent us their portfolio recently, we just poked through it and objectively liked what we saw, from packaging for a boutique pharmacy to still life shoots for an online nursery.
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