11.14.24

Up and Coming

The Green Goblin, Norwegian Black Metal, SpongeBob: Up-and-Coming Designer Clay Brown’s References Run the Gamut

Clay Brown’s work is shot through with an imaginative sense of play that is, quite simply, fun — but that’s not all it is. Somehow his pieces come off as minimal and spare yet highly referential and evocative, like his resin Island lamps, which call to mind cake domes; the Formica and birch I’m Ready cabinet, which could be a “mini-bar or maybe a wardrobe for a toddler;” and the jagged yet precise aluminum 1234567 bookcase, which is sharp but not at all forbidding. His Stave cabinet, part of the Sight Unseen collection, rises to a steep peak in darkly moody colors but it’s also… friendly. With its oxblood Thumbprint pull by Sam Stewart — with whom Brown has worked on several projects — it’s like a classic wooden toy scaled up to human proportions.

10.16.24

Sight Unseen Collection

This California Designer’s Steely Minimalism Was Inspired by Japanese Architecture and the Light & Space Movement

It's a common conundrum for creatives: knowing exactly what you want for your own space, but, more often than not, finding it does not exist. California-based designer Orlando Pippig began producing furniture for this very reason, without any formal training, to create a home filled with pieces he actually loved. Eight years later, something of an accidental furniture designer, he’s amassed a collection of striking minimalist designs — several of which we sell through our own Sight Unseen Collection — and he continues to expand his range of “usable sculptures” through experiments with materials, scale, and proportion.

03.28.24

Q+A

Architectural and Archetypal, Kalon Pieces Are Defined By Their Thoughtful Details

Since 2007, Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen have been producing work that is as poetic as it is practical through their Los Angeles studio, Kalon. The studio borrows its name from an Ancient Greek concept of ideal beauty that comprises both physical and moral aspects. It’s a high bar to set. In their practice, Simmering and Pauwen take a principled approach that seriously considers the environmental and social impact of what they do; “sustainability” has become an overused word, but for Kalon, it’s a true ethos, guiding not only their production process — in terms of the materials and labor involved — but also how their designs exist in the world. To celebrate Kalon joining the Sight Unseen Collection, we checked in to get a sense of what’s changed — and what hasn’t — since we last touched base.

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."

09.14.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Farrah Sit’s Work — Including Her Best-Selling Serpentine Sconce — Feels Both Effortlessly Current and Like a Prehistoric Artifact

Equilibrium and harmony: They’re difficult to achieve in life and maybe only slightly easier in design. But the search for balance, especially a desire for balance with nature, has lately been driving New York designer Farrah Sit — in a stylistic sense, but also in the way she produces the lighting and furniture for her eponymous line. Sit makes pieces that embody substantial and even existential concerns but wear their heaviness lightly; they’d look really great in your living room but they’re also meant to do more than that. “Part of what we’re trying to do as designers,” she says, “is create awareness between you and your environment.” Her aesthetic has largely hewn to neutral colors and natural materials and a dedication to elegant, mysterious forms — like Sit's best-selling Serpentine sconce, which debuted as part of Sight Unseen Offsite in 2020 and is now part of the Sight Unseen Collection. A ceramic wall sconce, Serpentine seems both effortlessly current and like an unearthed artifact — a relatively simple form that wordlessly conveys a whole world of feeling.

09.06.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Objects & Ideas Are Making Sculptural, Relational Objects in the Canadian Wilderness

Since we last checked in with Di Tao and Bob Dodd of Toronto’s Objects & Ideas, their furniture designs have moved increasingly towards functional sculpture. “We’ve always thought that every piece we make needs to have a strong character and a strong expression — that has never changed. But the way we express our ideas has evolved,” says Tao. The latest pieces are visually alluring objects that have a use, of course: The enveloping Beaver Tail chair offers a seat, the curving Ascend floor lamp provides illumination. But these works also — and just as importantly — are relational, changing the space that they, and you, occupy.

08.16.23

Sight Unseen Collection

These Three Studios are Redefining Cool Outdoor Furniture for a New Generation

Until the middle of last century, most outdoor furniture was serving Period Piece, “with stamped-out metal, bunches of flowers and leaves,” as the late designer Richard Schultz wrote in an essay reprinted in his 2019 book, Form Follows Technique: A Design Manifesto. But lately, we’ve been clocking a growing number of contemporary designers taking up the torch of inventive outdoor furniture design. It tracks alongside the growing collective awareness that nature is precious and that cultivating our feelings of belonging within nature is more important than ever. We caught up with three exciting talents on the scene.

07.13.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Only a Year Out From Graduating RISD, Alexis & Ginger Already Have Two Collections Under Their Belt

Was it fate that brought Alexis Tingey and Ginger Gordon together? The designers’ studio benches happened to be positioned next to each other during their furniture design Master's program at RISD, and after two years of sharing ideas and inspirations, the pair decided to officially join forces and set up a business together after graduating in 2022. A year later, Alexis & Ginger have moved to Brooklyn, launched two collections — one as part of our Sight Unseen Collection — and already have plans for so much more.

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.

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.

05.18.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Danny Kaplan Wants His New Furniture Collection, Made From Clay and Oak, to Appear Built By Nature

Danny Kaplan is a ceramicist, but he’s also a bit of a wizard, conjuring pieces that somehow manage to feel earthy and ancient — as if they’ve always existed — yet also exceedingly current and fresh. “A lot of my forms were born from looking at Etruscan ceramics and thinking about midcentury ones as well,” says the New York–based designer. “I love the idea of blending these things in an organic way where it feels like my pieces are almost built by nature,” their geometry and angles always slightly relaxed or imperfect. This especially applies to his latest collection, Brick, which is launching as part of our Sight Unseen Collection today, both online and in NYC through May 25 at Voltz Clarke Gallery on the Lower East Side.

05.15.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Each Item in This Stained Glass Lighting Collection is Like a Piece of Jewelry for Your Home

Carina Webb’s parents built the house she grew up in close to the sea in a small suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. Her dad, an engineer, believed that every home should have a small workshop in which to make things, so naturally the house was filled with handmade objects alongside those collected or inherited over the years. “From a young age I was taught the value of handmade, quality craftsmanship, and the sentimentality of objects,” she says. These are the values on which she bases her Auckland design studio Frangere, whose debut Fun Guy collection we fell in love with earlier this year — and which we'll be launching a piece of at our Sight Unseen Collection show this Thursday in New York.