05.20.25

Excerpt: Exhibition

Galerie Néotu Was Legendary In Its Heyday. A New Show in NYC Invites You to Experience the Radical Furniture That Put it On the Map.

In 1984, Gérard Dalmon and Pierre Staudenmeyer co-founded Néotù in Paris — a now-legendary project existing somewhere between a gallery and a furniture producer, a home for designers who considered furniture to be a fine art medium, and a mode of emotional expression. Néotù wasn’t beholden to any particular aesthetic, though you could loosely and retrospectively apply the Postmodern descriptor. Rather, they sought to put divergent styles in conversation with one another and provide a singular home for a multiplicity of voices. They also wanted to challenge the then-dominant production and distribution models. The name itself is a phonetic wordplay on “néo-tout” or neo-everything. A new show, Néotù: The Visionary Years, now gives the gallery its due.

01.30.25

At Home With

Inside the Home and Showroom of Oculus’s Alfie di Trolio, London’s Coolest New Vintage Design Dealer

“If you asked a child to sketch what their fantasy chair or bed looked like, they might draw something that looks like an Oculus product,” says Alfie di Trolio, who deals vintage furniture and objects under the name Oculus and works as a set designer in London. It’s a pretty perfect description of the pieces he seeks out for selling — handmade, imperfect, a little wonky and weird. “They’re functional pieces but there’s something super decorative and super silly; often the scale is a bit more exaggerated than it needs to be,” he adds. Guided mostly by intuition, di Trolio gravitates toward metal work, specifically wrought iron, which allows for “these overblown, extravagant forms.” Weighty wooden pieces are hardly out of the question, though, like “chunky old cabinets where you feel like someone’s chopped down a tree and carved inside.” So, what makes for an Oculus object? There’s a feeling of excitement di Trolio gets, a tumbling curiosity around how the object came to be. “It’s like, I can’t imagine who made you! What were they doing? Were they in therapy?"

12.16.24

Sighted

Bower’s Moody, Mystical Showroom — And Their New Moongate Mirrors — Channel Someplace Far From Brooklyn

When you’re in a mystical frame of mind — cue the winter solstice — mirrors really do start to feel like portals. And the Moongate series, the latest from Bower Studios, seems to offer entry into another realm. Inspired by outdoor passageways originally found in traditional Chinese gardens, these large wall mirrors would add a sense of mystery and quiet adventure to any interior. And they do just that in Bower’s newly redone showroom, complementing and contrasting with the studio’s classic collections and transporting you somewhere far from Brooklyn.

10.04.24

Interiors

For Design Lovers, Spencer’s is the New York Spa We’ve Been Waiting For

I've been to spas all over the world, and it's not that I'm unable to relax, per se. It's that — to be perfectly frank about my occupational hang-ups — my mind has often remained restless in waiting rooms as I silently judge a spa's design decisions, wondering why it's so hard for someone to come along and design something truly cool. From the garish, Daily Candy–era palette of Bliss spas to the grotto-esque cosplay of Great Jones, there's never been something that felt completely like a true design person's vibe — until now. The new Spencer's spa in Soho was designed by founder Ryan McCarthy in partnership with Charlotte Taylor and EBBA Architects. Enter the space, and you're greeted by a soothing, impeccably furnished lounge that's akin to stumbling into your favorite Hackney vintage shop. The whole thing makes you want to throw away your furniture and start all over with a palette of swirly Ron Arad chairs, Regency-era benches, Paul Evans–esque coffee tables, primitive abstract sculptures, and a bookcase full of vintage gems about design, art, women, wellness, tarot, and the occult.

09.19.23

What They Bought

This Chicago Showroom is an Under-the-Radar Gem for Sourcing High-End Vintage Furniture Finds

The collection of furniture, objects, and art at Beth Berke’s Chicago vintage furniture emporium South Loop Loft is both wonderfully eclectic and satisfyingly cohesive. While Berke is often drawn to iconic classics by recognizable names, she’s developed a keen eye for the unusual, too, which in a way reflects her curious path to the design world. Berke began as an aid worker in Afghanistan and then a social worker in Chicago, helping women and children in crisis; $30,000 sofas were not exactly top of mind. But a stint in San Francisco “on a social worker's budget,” she says, led her to estate sales and Craigslist, as well as a burgeoning passion for vintage furniture.

05.05.23

Sighted

This Australian Designer Scoured Paris’s Flea Markets for Her New Vintage Capsule Collection

With their newly launched CLO Capsule, Australian interior design atelier and boutique CLO Studios makes a strong case for visiting Parisian flea markets. It helps if you have a shipping container to fill, which they did, collecting secondhand, vintage, and antique European design treasures over the course of a year to bring back to Australia. Founder and creative director Chloe Tozer has always traveled to find inspiration and on her journeys has struck up friendships with suppliers from Morocco to Beijing. But Paris was always a destination for the company to attend design fairs and exhibitions until a visit in 2022, when Tozer was intrigued by the local flea markets and what she might find among the stalls. She went with no intention to buy…at first. “Once I arrived, I thought, “How can I not?!”

04.11.23

Current Obsession

Meet the 1980s-Era Designer Whose Chair Went Semi-Viral During the Pandemic

The impulse to reassess design from the late '70s and '80s — and to place it in a current context — has clearly been in the air, most notably at last year’s Return to Downtown group show from Superhouse and Magen H Gallery and at the more recent Blurring the Timeline show, also at Superhouse. Standout pieces from both exhibitions included chairs by a designer whose name you might not be familiar with: Howard Meister, part of the core group of designer-artists at Art et Industrie, a now-legendary New York gallery that opened in 1977 and closed in the late '90s. Here, we caught up with Meister from his home in Western Massachusetts. In a roving, entertaining interview, he shared with us how he got his largely accidental start and went from being “a dope in a suit” to an artist, his belief in the importance of craft and his desire not to be “survived by crap."

02.01.23

How to Live With Objects

How These Vintage Dealers Restyle Their Jersey City Home on the Regular

When we first encountered Joey Meyers and Mark Baehser, it was online, via their vintage shop Ball & Claw — since renamed Unnecessary Projects — which had taken a place in the sprawling North Brooklyn vintage empire Dobbin St. Co-op. We assumed the two were old-hat dealers. But, as we discovered when we approached them about shooting their Jersey City Victorian home for our book, How to Live With Objects, it turns out they only entered the game a few years ago, out of love but also out of necessity: Meyers had taken to constantly cycling furniture in and out of their home, and they needed an outlet to offload the amazing finds that didn't quite work with their own space.

London interior designer vintage objects

08.03.22

Sighted

In a New Gallery Space, Hollie Bowden Shows Off Her Talent for Sourcing Minimal Maximalist Vintage Objects

London-based interior designer Hollie Bowden is a self-described “minimal maximalist.” Think bare walls and airy, earth-toned environments accented and brought together with a touch of dramatic surrealism. She has a way of adding the surprising elements that wind up feeling completely necessary to any given project. After working as a stylist, florist, and set designer, Bowden launched her own studio in 2013 and has spent the past decade conceiving of dreamy domestic and retail spaces. As an extension and natural progression of her studio work, earlier this summer she opened The Gallery, an appointment-only shop located next to her Shoreditch headquarters.

11.23.21

Sighted

This 20th-Century Vintage Design Store in London is Giving Peak Postmodern Maximalism

Vintage dealer M.Kardana opened a store on Hackney Road in London earlier this year, a physical space that allows owner Mario Kardana to take joy in the arranging of things. “What I love is curating all of these various pieces that could be 70 years apart and making them work together and complement each other,” he says. “I always make sure to mix styles and eras as this is what I find the most fun and interesting.” Downstairs, on the original wonky wooden floorboards, it’s maximalist and colorful whereas the newer upstairs room is more suited to Postmodern and clean-cut pieces.

09.01.21

What They Bought

The Vintage Furniture Dealer Whose Aesthetic Runs From Bauhaus to Beetlejuice

Gennaro Leone, who runs the vintage furniture shop Spazio Leone in London, is clearly devoted to the cult of '70s and '80s Italian design. But he’s also drawn to pieces that seem to exist in a dream-zone where Art Deco–meets-Postmodernism and Surrealist motifs, along with a hint of Delia Deetz (that's Catherine O’Hara’s sculptor stepmom in Beetlejuice, for anyone who needs a refresher). In the short time that Leone's been up and running, the dealer has developed an aesthetic that could even be described — as he himself puts it — as “WTF is this? I’m trying to find a balance between crazy shapes and comfortable things.

03.10.21

Interiors

The Parisian Design Duo Channelling 1970s French Glamour

The 1970s were, arguably, one of the best eras in French design. It’s a decade that saw then-president George Pompidou commission Pierre Paulin to reimagine the Élysée Palace’s interiors in his unorthodox space-age designs, and the stiff conventions of mid-century modernism finally loosened into an ironically cosmopolitan glamour. So when we came across French design duo Hauvette & Madani’s sumptuous interiors that so perfectly channel that decade’s vibe, we were instant fans.