Lace Pants and Stone-Encrusted Pillboxes: Jill’s 2024 Sight Unseen Gift Guide

Part II of our annual gift guide! A reminder: whether you’d actually buy these things is, to a certain extent, beside the point; it’s how enjoyable it can be to dig into a well-curated list and imagine a future when your home might be full of incredible things, and the world might just be a better place. Today’s gift guide comes from Jill, who tends to make personalized hats on Etsy for her loved ones but here is coveting a hefty glass catchall by an up-and-coming studio, the mixed-metal ring JB Blunk made for his wife, a semi-precious stone-adorned pillbox, a menorah that reminds us of a lazy Susan, and more. See — and shop — her full list below!
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The 10 Things You Should Have in Your Bedroom, According to Charlap Hyman & Herrero

Most of us spend the majority of our time and money perfecting the look and feel of our living rooms, and then fail to offer the same attention to the space where we spend more than 1/4 of our lives: our bedrooms. Granted we're unconscious for many of those hours, but it's hard to overestimate the impact that good design can have on our mood and thus, ultimately, the quality of our rest. Today, Adam Charlap, co-founder of the bi-coastal architecture and interiors firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, shares the ten objects you'd find in his fantasy bedroom, from midcentury lighting to a set of faux bois sheets his grandparents slept in that are still on the market today.
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Introducing the Iconic Women Collection, Sight Unseen’s Collab with the Brand Dedicated to Design-y Doormats

There are a few pieces of décor that can often be forgotten in the rush to make a house a home. Hardware, certainly, is one of them; another is the humble doormat. (Raise your hand if you consider yourself a "design person" and your doormat is a natural fiber number from your local hardware store.) Whether it sits inside or outside your threshhold, a mat is often the first thing you see when you enter a space, making it your very first chance, as it were, to set the mood. So when Heymat — a Norwegian company dedicated to making the entryway an artistic *moment* with their beautiful, sustainably made mats — approached us last year about collaborating, the answer was an unequivocal yes. The result is the Iconic Women Collection, a series of indoor mats in three shapes and colorways that celebrate the pioneering spirit of some of our favorite female designers from the past.
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This Thanksgiving, Look Cute While Making a Statement in One of These Sight Unseen–Approved Aprons

Well, what do you know? Turns out all I needed to have fun on the internet again was to go shopping for aprons. What a strange pocket of online shopping — and historical discourse — aprons inhabit! They're somehow everywhere you'd least expect them to be and not at all in the places you'd think to look. I came away from this exercise understanding that the apron-buying public is vastly underserved; so much beige linen, not enough fun! Why isn't every cool restaurant across America selling aprons as merch? Regardless, the 37 aprons below are extremely solid, fashionable, sometimes surreal choices for when you're basting a turkey, glass of wine in hand, two weeks from today.
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Latke Candles and LP Stands: The 2022 Gift Guide, Part I

If you asked us what our absolute top gift recommendation would be for 2022, you probably already know by now what we'd answer: our new book, How to Live With Objects. But in case you need a few other ideas, don't worry, we've also compiled 100 best-gift-of-2022 runners-up, starting with Monica's 50 picks, including a colorful under-$200 drinks cart, a rhinestone-encrusted hand sanitizer pouch, and a pair of hand-shaped wooden salad servers.
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Sight Unseen Moda Operandi

Starting Today, You Can Shop Contemporary Objects From Our Book on Moda Operandi

Today we launched a Sight Unseen trunkshow on Moda Operandi that makes the work of 11 of the contemporary designers featured in our book readily available for you to fall in love with. From a $47 bookend set by Bi-Rite and a $38 Utility Objects ceramic cup, all the way up to a large $2,800 cast-bronze statement candelabra by Fort Standard, the sale — which runs now through the end of the year — is just one more way of bringing our book to life.
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Seven Design Tastemakers on Their Biggest eBay Scores — and Secret Expert Shopping Tips

We talk at length in our forthcoming book, How to Live With Objects, about the joys of getting lost in the online shopping process on your way to building a more personal home, and about how shopping, even if you don't buy anything, can help you learn about makers and movements as you define or refine your taste. There's really no better place to do that than eBay. Today, we asked seven tastemakers and shopping experts to share their favorite eBay finds, as well as their top shopping tips and current favorite saved searches (because as every shopping expert will tell you, you *must* have saved searches).
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Platform Sight Unseen accessible art

Add Color to Your Space With Our New Collection of Gallery-Level — Yet Accessible — Art

In our forthcoming book, we talk a lot about how easy and rewarding it is to build a collection of great objects that add texture and personality to your interior. What's always been so much harder is building a collection of great art. That's why we were so excited to discover the David Zwirner–backed online art marketplace Platform last November, which lets anyone purchase high-end works by respected artists for relatively accessible prices, and with just the click of a button. A year later, we've partnered with the site to create our own collection of Sight Unseen–approved artworks that will instantly make your space more colorful and more visually interesting — most of which are under $5k.
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39 Dinner Plates To Help You Set the Table, No Matter How Indecisive You Are

Once you start sifting through the dinner plate options available on the internet, it becomes an almost insurmountable task. Do you want ceramic or glass dinnerware? White or colored? Rustic or sophisticated? Trendy or classic? Crazily patterned or subtly textured? Is pink over? Why is a thick lip so appealing right now? What the heck goes with a burl wood dining table? Here are 39 dinnerware sets to help make your search a little easier.
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With Its Whimsical Ceramics and Mirrored Lounges, Project 213A is Bringing a Bit of Joy to 2022

If you needed more proof that we're living in something of a golden age of small-batch production, look no further than the new design brand and housewares shop Project 213A, which was founded in 2020 by four friends and is based between London, Paris, and Portugal. In the last two years they've built up an enviable portfolio of that mixes the kind of ceramic silhouettes that are popular right now with wild cards that keep you guessing like a fully mirrored low lounge, a multicolored tiled bench, and a chestnut wood milking stool, with one lone leg carved in the shape of a foot.
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Hallelujah — Our Favorite Scandinavian Art Objects Retailer is Finally Shipping to the States

This week, the Swedish design object retailer The Ode To launches shipping to the United States — and just in time. We can't think of a better place to shop for gifts for people who are notoriously hard to shop for. Where else can you find a vase shaped like a white go-go boot, a sculpture meant to look like a watermelon, or a deflated mirror decorated with a truly unhinged smiley face?
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Once a Digital-Only Brand, Beni Rugs Opens a Showroom in New York and Marrakech

Considering this was a year in which many brands shrank their physical presence or moved their activities mostly online, it seems doubly impressive that the direct-to-consumer brand Beni Rugs opened not one but two IRL HQs this month — one a studio apartment in the West Village in New York, outfitted with the help of frequent collaborator Colin King, and the other a former awning factory turned 8,000-square-foot studio in Tameslouht, Morocco.
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