At the New Permanent Eames Archive in California, You Can Deep-Dive Into the Design Process of Charles and Ray Through 40,000 Artifacts

From the moment that Charles Eames, formerly an architect and teacher, and Ray Eames, formerly a fine artist, began a shared design practice in 1941, they cultivated an unusually meticulous creative process: in lieu of drawings and schematics, they worked out ideas and solved problems in real-time by creating endless physical models and prototypes. It's no wonder, then, that until the Eames Office closed after Ray's death in 1988, they were able to rack up more than 40,000 artifacts of their design process — and also no wonder that it took the family nearly 25 years to catalog them and finally make them available for public viewing all in one place, at the newly opened Eames Archive in Richmond, California.
More

This Campaign for a Sailboat-Inspired Sofa Transports You to a 100-Year-Old Sailing School in Venice

The Vela, designed for Saba Italia by Zanellato/Bortotto, is an interesting take on the puffy sofa: It's soft and cushy yet somehow still crisp, with arms that taper to a subtle point and striking diagonal tufting seams that gently reign in its voluminousness. That contrast is intentional, reflecting the inspiration for the sofa, which also lent it its name ("sail" in English): "We both love the sea and have always been fascinated by the unfurled sails blown by the wind near the Venice lagoon," says Daniele Bortotto. For its new campaign, Saba sent photographer Mattia Balsamini to photograph it at the Compagnia della Vela, a nautical school founded in 1911 on the island of San Giorgio.
More

16 Incredible Vintage Objects You Should Know From Our Book

When it comes to a visual wow factor, vintage objects reign supreme — they're often the most expressive, unusual, and unexpected, not to mention the most accessible, if you get lucky at a flea market or have time to kill on eBay. As such, a copious amount of real estate in our new book, How to Live With Objects, is devoted to the discussion of how to shop for vintage and what makes a vintage object worth buying, which means that we had plenty of pages to illustrate with images of absolutely incredible bygone designs, from a circa-1900 Swedish candelabra to some epic Postmodern gems. In today's book excerpt, we're spotlighting 16 of the vintage objects we included that, if you didn't already know them, we're sure you'll be pleased to get to know them now.
More

From Ceramic Hair to Luncheon Meats to Sleek, Simple Porcelain, Tissue Box Covers Are Having a Renaissance

In a world where nearly every product has been upgraded and rendered hip through new, Gen-Z-approved packaging — from toilet paper to tampons to breakfast cereal — you'd think there would no further need for a throwback like the tissue box cover, which is meant to cloak your drugstore eyesores in a mantle better suited to your decor. And yet at the moment, in part because tissue boxes haven't really been redesigned and in part because they're usually kept out very much in public view, the tissue box cover seems to be having a tiny renaissance.
More

This Italian Furniture Brand Made a Clever Trompe L’Oeil Table, Then Shot It in a Carlo Mollino Masterpiece

January saw the introduction of an interesting new expression of trompe l'oeil, in the form of Saba Italia’s Teatro Magico table by 967 Arch, a dining table whose sinuous polyurethane base echoes the form of theater curtains and can part like them, too. The brand coincided the launch with the reopening, after a two-year renovation, of Turin’s Teatro Regio, whose Carlo Mollino–designed interior contains its own multitude of visual illusions.
More

Foot Vases and Artichoke Plates: The 2021 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part I

We always look forward to putting together our annual gift guides, where we get to turn our brains off, scour our favorite stores for wishlist-worthy objects, and focus on sheer indulgence for a minute. What's our favorite candle this year, our favorite wine glass? Which books are we dying to have on our coffee table now, and in the case of Monica (whose guide is featured today), which foot-shaped vase? We hope you can get some inspiration from these lists — particularly when it comes to supporting small businesses and talented independent makers.
More

50 Products We Loved at The 2021 Salone del Mobile

Last week we attended the 2021 Salone del Mobile fair — postponed to September this year because of the pandemic — and we're documenting our favorite finds in two stories, today and tomorrow. Today it's new releases by brands and studios, from a Muller Van Severen carpet to a Teklan kitchen.
More

With Prints Inspired By Art-Store Pen-Test Doodles, These Curtains Are ‘Free and Wild’

Sarah Illenberger has a talent for recontextualizing everyday items in ways that are deceptively simple, yet at the same time so clever that there's an irresistible kind of magic in it. The same is true for her new collaboration with Danish textile purveyor Kvadrat, a series of three vibrant curtain panels created by scanning the little pads of paper people test pens on in stationery stores — the unremarkable made remarkable, through little more than a flash of creative inspiration and a change in scale.
More
Melbourne Design Week 2021

Our Top Picks from Melbourne Design Week 2021 — An Actual Design Fair Happening Right Now, IRL ?

In Melbourne, there's an honest-to-god IRL design fair going on right now, and we can barely wrap our heads around it. In case you're as excited as we are to live vicariously through the Aussies, we've put together a tour for you of our 7 favorite Melbourne Design Week exhibitions that are currently on view so you, too, can experience it mask-free, from the comfort of your home.
More

Meet the New Wave of Ultra-Affordable PR Services Making It Easier Than Ever to Get Published

In almost every sense imaginable 2020 has been an epic fail of a year, and yet thanks to eight months of collective introspection and recalibration, silver linings have already begun to appear. Today we're taking a closer look at one of them, which could yield huge benefits for early- and mid-career creatives: Some of the best PR people we know have recently launched affordable programs geared towards smaller clients, offering a la carte courses and consultations without the sky-high monthly retainers.
More

Lauren Coleman Experiments with Gravity and Melting Metal in a New Skincare Campaign

Brooklyn photographer Lauren Coleman's love of science-lab equipment made her an obvious choice for an important collaboration we're debuting today: an artistic depiction of the properties of a new product by the Swiss beauty brand La Prairie, which since 1954 has been known for its scientific approach. La Prairie invited Sight Unseen to commission a series of animated cinemagrams to mark the launch, and we invited Coleman to conceptualize them.
More