06.11.24

Sighted

Saba Journeyed to Sardinia to Weave, and Photograph, Its New Cime Carpet Collection

Steeped in history and tradition, Sardinia is known — among many things — for its sheep farming and wool production, and a weaving method that’s distinct to the Mediterranean island. Handed down by generations of women, this ancient technique, called Pibiones (which means ‘cluster of grapes’ in the local dialect), creates small bumps of thread that are knotted around vertical bars. This highly textural effect has been employed for Italian design brand Saba’s latest collection of carpets named Cime, designed by Treviso-based duo Zanellato/Bortotto.

05.06.24

Up and Coming

This New Rug Company Wants You to View Its Products as Works of Art

A serendipitous meeting in the mountains of Nepal birthed a new rug company called Maison Rhizomes, which employs the country’s expert artisans to create its colorful abstract designs based on the work of Belgian-French artist Charlotte Culot. Culot happened upon Berlin-based Hannah Vagedes up in the Himalayas in 2019, and the pair decided to join forces. By 2022 they had launched their first collection of 22 boldly patterned floor coverings, each modeled after a painting from Culot’s oeuvre, and which the duo hopes will be treated like artworks in their own right and passed down through generations.

05.02.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Entryway at the Kips Bay Show House Takes Wall-to-Wall Carpeting to New Heights

As a participant in this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, New York–based designer Bennett Leifer wanted to do something that would push design boundaries, he says: “not necessarily in a way that would be loud or provocative but that would be intellectually exciting.” Soon after learning he’d be part of this year’s iteration, Leifer happened to have dinner with the team from Edward Fields Carpet Maker (who you'll remember we worked with on our Norway x New York exhibition!). He’s worked closely with the custom luxury rug brand for years and has long admired “their heritage and their vision” – the company’s storied work has been featured in many iconic settings, including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs and the famous sunken living room of the Miller House by architect Eero Saarinen and interior designer Alexander Girard. That conversation provided the creative spark for Reframed Foyer, Leifer’s contribution to the Show House.

03.12.24

Sighted

Sunnei and cc-tapis Just Dropped the Ultimate Fashion x Design Collab, Where Carpets Become Clothing and Vice Versa

In addition to their playfully chic sartorial offerings, Sunnei has been on our radar for years thanks to their periodic overlaps with the design world, from a thoughtful ongoing object collection to the collaboration they presented during Salone in 2022 with our friends at Bloc Studios. And yet I was still surprised and delighted when, after I emailed the brand's PR team asking for a press kit for the brand's FW24 fashion show, it turned out the striking striped knitwear pieces that I'd immediately been drawn to were actually a collaboration with one of our other favorite Milanese brands, rug-maker cc-tapis.

11.27.23

Sighted

Sweden’s Oldest Rug Brand Finally Lands in Soho

Scandinavian design brands have been a favorite of American consumers since the mid-20th century — and of Sight Unseen since we could barely recognize something as "design." This month, one of our favorite of those brands — the Swedish rug company Kasthall, with whom we partnered for Sight Unseen Offsite in 2017 and created a capsule collection of rugs pre-pandemic — opened up a new permanent showroom in Soho, leaving behind the trade-friendly but consumer no-mans-land that is the D&D Building for the cobblestone streets and extensive foot traffic of downtown NYC. The company has created beautiful woven and hand-tufted rugs at its factory in Kinna, Sweden, since 1889, and its spacious new flagship on Howard Street will allow customers to touch and see the quality of those carpets IRL.

10.23.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

A New Exhibition of Black Designers Explores the Role Aesthetics Play in Social, Economic, and Racial Justice Efforts

In 2017, Little Wing Lee of Brooklyn’s Studio & Projects founded Black Folks in Design, an international network for Black design across disciplines: interiors, architecture, fashion, graphic design, and more. BFiD was ostensibly founded in order to foster community but Lee's aims also go way beyond that, based on the idea that design and aesthetics aren’t simply a luxury but part of everyday life — that our environments shape us — and therefore play a role in social, economic, and racial justice efforts. Last year, Lee curated Spotlight I, an inaugural showcase of Black designers at the Ace Hotel in Brooklyn. Now the collective’s Spotlight II is up at the Verso gallery in Tribeca, with pieces that reflect and incorporate traditions – cultural, familial, stylistic – while also looking forward.

10.04.23

Sighted

Each Rug in the Latest Collection from Cc-Tapis Looks Like a Portal to Somewhere Else

Made of hand-knotted Himalayan wool at the cc-tapis atelier in Nepal, the Memento collection by Yabu Pushelberg features a trio of undyed, tone-on-tone variations in off-kilter geometries. There are arches that could be doorways; squares, trapezoids, and circles that could be windows; portals to somewhere else. Or not. These designs are not so much figurative as suggestive. Like a fleeting memory that takes you out of the present but can’t exactly put you in the past.

07.20.23

Sighted

Designed in Australia and Woven in Argentina, These Rugs Reinvigorate Three Classic Patterns

The Australian textiles and homeware brand Pampa was founded in 2013 and quickly became a favorite of interior designers around the world. So it makes sense that for their first collaboration, Pampa teamed up with one of Australia's most beloved interior design studios: We Are Triibe, the Byron Bay firm founded by Christina Symes and Jessica D’Abadie. The two studios began toying with the idea of a collaborative rug collection at the beginning of 2020, born from a mutual desire to use textiles to introduce more warmth, depth, and texture into the home. The result of their collaboration, FORMA — newly available in olive and camel — takes three classic geometric patterns, a checkerboard, an offset stripe, and stripes of varying widths, and reimagined them with soft edges, imperfect squares, and an earthy color palette that's achieved using natural pigments.

02.02.23

Sighted

Studiopepe’s New Rugs for Muuto Were Inspired by 1960s-Style Land Art

Muuto is such a staple of the Scandinavian design set that it’s hard to believe the Danish company is only now releasing its first tufted rug collection. A new collaboration with Milan-based duo Studiopepe is exactly what we’d hoped for from both. Using the “tension" between Scandinavian and Italian design as a starting point, studio founders Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto combined common features of both: high-quality materials, graphic shapes, and simple yet impactful gestures, which in this instance meant filleting one of the rug’s four corners.

04.21.22

Sighted

A Cult Fashion Brand Moving Into Interiors Inspired Nordic Knots’ Latest Collaboration

Home and family, in literal and figurative ways, have guided the rug company Nordic Knots from the outset, when Liza Laserow-Berglund, her husband Fabian Berglund, and his brother Felix began their endeavor. Their aim was “to bring something from our home in Sweden to every home — and at the center of every beautiful Swedish home is a great rug.” So, it makes sense that the idea of home – leaving it, searching for it, returning to it, creating it yourself – would be the focus and inspiration for Nordic Knots’s new collaboration with their old friends Bessie Afnaim Corral and Oliver Corral of New York’s luxe yet understated lifestyle brand Arjé.

11.09.21

Q+A

Meet the Swedish Brand Championing “Bold Minimalism” With Rugs That Are Stylish, but Subtle

When Liza Laserow-Berglund, her husband Fabian Berglund, and his brother Felix Berglund decided to start a business together, the biggest thing they had in common was Sweden, and their desire to share some part of their native country’s vibe with the rest of the world. When they realized that rugs played a huge part in every Swede’s life, they founded Nordic Knots, a rug brand aimed at spreading the Scandinavian design gospel. Their goal? A highly curated brand offering mid-range rugs with a distinct point of view — but not one loud enough to overwhelm a room.

10.23.21

Saturday Selects

Week of October 18, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an affordable(ish) amorphous plaster mirror, new chairs by Moroccan Renaissance woman LRNCE, lamps that are like little paintings, and a dreamy Kips Bay room by Michael Hilal (above).