05.26.23

Fair Report

The Best of New York Design Week 2023, Part II

Part II of our New York Design Week roundup — the second and final in our coverage, though we technically had so much content we could have easily done three — is mostly an accounting of the more straightforward side of design week, from group exhibitions — like the launch of the Mexican and Latin American design–focused retailer Omet and the latest Radiator Show, which upends the idea of comfort at home — to sophisticated new collection presentations by brands like Atelier de Troupe and Orior. Plus, a handful of interesting collabs, and a birds-eye view of ICFF.

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05.23.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Two Days Left to See Our Sight Unseen Collection Show, Featuring Work by 23 Designers, in New York City

New York Design Week is in full swing, and while we'll be featuring a round-up of all of the excellent things we've seen later this week, today we're putting a spotlight on our own collection, which is on view in New York through Wednesday. The show features 23 designers and studios from our newly launched Sight Unseen Collection, for which we chose furniture, lighting, and objects from a stable of emerging and mid-career designers from around the world — all of which can be ordered directly through Sight Unseen.

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05.19.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Ben Willett Joins the Sight Unseen Collection With Warm Wood Furniture That Channels 1970s and 80s Europe

You could say that moving into furniture design was something of a pandemic project for Ben Willett. At the start of the shutdown, he and his wife, chef and cookbook author Molly Baz, were on vacation in California and decided to stay there, eventually making a permanent move from a 700-square-foot New York City apartment to a house on the far east side of Los Angeles. With space came the need to fill it, along with a new West Coast perspective; the result is a collection still in the works but previewed in the images here, with pieces like the WS-Shorty credenza, a beauty in Douglas fir that debuted last night at our Sight Unseen Collection show in New York.

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05.25.22

Fair Report

New York Design Week, We Missed You — Here Are 25 Favorites From the Festival That Was

Well, after two years of fallow Mays due to COVID delays (and a November iteration of NYCxDesign that barely registered), New York Design Week returned with a vengeance this month. Its de facto kick-off was the incredible MASA exhibition, curated by Su Wu, which opened in a former post office in Rockefeller Center and remains a high-water mark for the month. The festivities finally ended last week with a rager of a party at Matter Projects for a dual exhibition with furniture designer Minjae Kim and his mother, the painter Myoungae Lee, which we'll cover more in-depth on the site this week. Here are our favorite projects from the past few weeks.

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05.20.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

Haos’s Steel and Plywood Collection is a Coolly Elevated Take on Minimalism

Haos's Sophie Gelinet and Cedric Gepner recently relocated from Paris to Lisbon, where they've opened a larger studio and workshop where they can make work on-site. But rather than take their practice to the furthest experimental reaches just because they can, they've instead created a pared-down, rigorous framework for their fourth collection, taking cues from traditional Japanese architecture, 20th-century Modernism, and the Dogme 95 movement, which sought to distill filmmaking to its essence by rejecting special effects and gimmicks.

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05.16.22

Sighted

In Common With and Danny Kaplan Expand Their Earthy Ceramic Lighting Range

When In Common With debuted in 2018, the Brooklyn studio made their mark (no pun intended) by pairing sleek, machined lamp bases with ceramic shades that had been obviously, laboriously made by hand — pinch marks, bumps, and all. The studio soon found ways to make the shades faster and more efficient — and expanded their offerings to include glass and metal — but in a continued collaboration with ceramicist and fellow Brooklynite, Danny Kaplan, they have been able to recapture that earlier, earthier quality.

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06.12.19

Eye Candy

This is the Coolest Furniture Coming Out of Ireland By a Mile

If you happened to step into the new Orior showroom during New York Design Week, you were rewarded with a serious feast for the senses — plush, vibrantly colored velvets, deep green marbles and glossy woods, all of it showing the mark of impeccable craftsmanship. Here was Atlanta, a sinuous cobalt-blue sofa wearing a tasseled skirt, and Nero, a glossy oak table with a Brutalist marble base. There was Mara, a walnut and marble credenza fronted by varicolored leather doors, and Futurist, a muscular couch whose tomato-red leather cushions sit atop ebony legs. This, you realized, was furniture with personality, and the coolest thing coming out of Ireland by a mile. So where exactly did it come from?

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05.23.19

Fair Report

Our Favorite Finds at New York Design Week 2019 — Part II

With our OFFSITE show taking the year off, the biggest question we got this week wasn't "What have you seen that's good?" but rather "Doesn't it feel great to do nothing?" And while the latter question was valid (and the answer an emphatic yes), the fact that our schedules were free and easy this year actually allowed us to see even more that was quite good. Today we're rounding up our favorites from the two big shows, ICFF and Wanted.

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05.22.19

Fair Report

Our Favorite Finds at New York Design Week 2019 — Part I

With our OFFSITE show taking a year off, and Collective Design retired, New York Design Week could have theoretically suffered a participatory hit — and yet that was very much not the case. Below, we've rounded up more than 75 objects and exhibitions we dutifully scouted around town, including powerhouse show Next Level, and that's only part one....

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05.21.19

Sighted

Does Eny Lee Parker Have the Best Booth at ICFF?

In the past two years, Eny Lee Parker has doubled down on ceramics as a primary material — despite having injured her back a little over a year ago while throwing a large piece on the wheel. "I’m doing my best coming up with things I can manage without throwing all the time," she explains, "so my new pieces are all about doing what you can — no need to be perfect." It's a humble way to describe what many have dubbed the best booth at ICFF this year.

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05.20.19

Sight Unseen Presents

For New York Design Week, We Curated a Collection in the Material of the Moment

From epic collections by Glas Italia to the rise of vintage Murano to the swell of young glass blowers creating their own pieces and collaborating with other designers, glass has been enjoying a major resurgence as of late, and the work being done with it continues to excite us. That’s why, when we began planning a New York design week project with the influential fashion boutique 4510/Six, creating our own glass collection was the obvious choice.

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05.15.19

Sighted

Pelle’s New York Design Week Installation Brings the Drama

For sheer bonkers drama, our New York Design Week pick today is Unnatural Habitat by Pelle, a showroom installation of new work that includes a lighting system meant to resemble both floating dust particles and a shattered mirror as well as a giant, hand-sculpted banana frond turned pendant light.

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