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02.27.24

Sight Unseen Collection

Punk and Playfulness Co-Exist in Nice Condo’s Monumental Furniture

Combining influences from Brutalism and Memphis with traditional wood craft, Nice Condo’s Chris Held and Sara Graham create monumental designs that — while often statement-making in some way, from the off-kilter color palette of a dining table to a cabinet with sawtooth hardware — are each intended to anchor a space and fit with a variety of interior styles. "Challenging the expectations of a client in formal ways quickly veers into sculpture, and I'm not interested in making sculpture," Held says. "I'm interested in making things people put in their homes and spill drinks on — live life on and around."
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01.15.24

Up and Coming

Born in Philly and Based in London, Andrew Pierce Scott Has a Knack for Turning Discards Into Drama

Metamorphosis is at the heart of what Andrew Pierce Scott does. The London-based American designer has a talent for taking leftovers and discards and turning them into sculptural metal furniture and objects or an evocative textile still-life. In Scott’s hands, recycled sheet steel becomes a lamp with a darkened yet almost iridescent finish; fabric scraps become a plate of oysters and glasses of wine that make you immediately wish for the pleasures of good company and a good meal.
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07.25.23

Interiors

Yowie, the Best Design Boutique in Philly, Has Opened an Equally Cool Hotel

We've long been obsessed with the always-just-under-the-radar design scene in Philadelphia, but a decade ago — when we devoted a whole week of coverage to Philly — something like Yowie, the design store founded and curated by creative director Shannon Maldonado, simply didn't exist. That all changed when Yowie opened its doors in 2016, introducing a variety of Danish and American furniture brands and a refreshingly playful color palette to Philadelphia. Today, Yowie offers clothing, lighting, furniture, homeware, gifts, books (including our own!) and more, deservedly it earning the title of coolest boutique in Philly. And thanks to this success over the past seven years, Yowie is now not only expanding its retail footprint, but opening an entire hotel upstairs.
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Sean Gerstley ceramics
07.07.21

Up and Coming

Sean Gerstley’s Clay Objects Live In A World Of Their Own

Following the trajectory of Delaware-born artist and designer Sean Gerstley’s practice, it feels a bit like he’s always, intentionally, scaling down. “I went to Rhode Island School of Design for architecture before finding ceramics,” he says of his creative coming-of-age. “As a kid I was, and still am, super interested in interior spaces. My ceramic practice started as sculptural work that was kind of about interiors and domestic space in abstract-installation form.”
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05.18.21

Q+A

In Her Paintings, Becky Suss Creates Real or Imagined Interiors From Memory

Because we don't cover art as our primary discipline here at Sight Unseen, we typically discover artists a bit more slowly than we do designers, and usually by way of gallery shows, art fairs, or Instagram wormholes. But I discovered Philadelphia-born painter Becky Suss in perhaps the most Sight Unseen — or at least the most me — way possible: Her 2016 painting, August (above), adorns the cover of LA harpist Mary Lattimore's Hundreds of Days, one of the many albums that helped propel me through the emotional black hole that was 2020.
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02.24.17

Shopping

The Candy-Colored Ceramics Collection We’re Coveting

The new spring collection from Felt + Fat — the Philadelphia-based ceramics studio founded by RISD architecture grad Wynn Bauer and former Tyler School of Art glass major Nate Mell — looks like its cups, plates and bowls were colored with the powder of chalky-sweet candy hearts. Featuring matte pale pinks and swirls of sage, plus a bright and poppy blue and yellow, the tableware is as suitable for a shelf display as it is for a bustling dinner party — after all, the porcelain clay pieces can be found in restaurants all around the Philly scene.
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Bario Neal Men's Jewelry
11.17.15

Sighted

Bario Neal & Linder Just Broke the Rules of Men’s Jewelry

The Philadelphia-based jewelry design studio Bario Neal has long offered wedding bands for men, and particularly expressive ones, at that: Some of its rings look like carved petrified wood, some have a hammered texture, some are boldly striped. But there's one steadfast rule of men's jewelry that even Bario Neal has never dared to break — until now.
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10.28.15

Sighted

Egyptian-Themed Housewares by Beech Hall

Beech Hall, a new online shop based half in Brooklyn and half in Philadelphia, has a simple yet unconventional concept: to offer a line of jewelry, housewares, and ceramics based around a single, strong theme and design language, then change that theme from season to season. First up: Egypt.
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08.31.15

Sighted

Baskets and Jewelry by Philadelphia’s Karen Gayle Tinney

For us, Karen Gayle Tinney was one of those surprises that you're shocked to find lurking in your own backyard — the artist and designer lives in Philadelphia, where for the past year she's been making elaborate woven baskets, planters, and necklaces for stores like Vagabond and Brooklyn's People of 2morrow.
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03.20.15

Shopping

In a Philly Photographer’s Hands, Photos That Look Like Digital Collages

We've been familiar with Philadelphia-based photographer Roxana Azar's work for some time now (last summer, she took the snaps for our story on fellow Philadelphian Page Neal of Bario-Neal (where Azar also works). But the second she sent us the latest personal series she's been working on, we knew we had to share. Azar digitally manipulates her photos to make them almost painterly or collage-like, but in the series we're sharing today, many of the images began as photographs from gardens where Azar spent her childhood. "I am really interested in using the photograph as a starting point to layer, erase, rebuild, and obscure an image, turning the image into something ambiguous yet playful," Azar says.
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08.27.14

At Home With

Page Neal of Bario-Neal

Seven years ago, when Page Neal and Anna Bario decided to relocate from New York and San Francisco respectively to work on a sustainably-minded line of jewelry, they chose Philadelphia because it was both affordable and close to New York City. “The decision to move here was a complete whim,” Neal told me over iced tea in her kitchen when I visited her South Philly home earlier this summer. “I didn’t know anyone and neither did Anna.” But the gamble paid off: The city, it turned out, had a thriving jewelry district where casting, engraving, and stone-setting workshops have sat above storefronts for generations. “It’s an amazing place for makers because small-scale manufacturing is really accessible,” Neal says.
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08.21.14

Up and Coming

Ian Anderson, ceramicist

If you find it at all impressive that Philadelphia-based ceramicist Ian Anderson is releasing the debut collection we’re presenting here at the tender age of just 23, consider this: Anderson has been developing the collection’s asymmetrical, highly sophisticated forms in his head ever since he was a high-school student back in Mission Viejo, California. He just never had the studio set-up to realize them until now.
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