A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a bookend that reminds us of a thicc 70s-era font, a chair series inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke, and a glass collection by LA artist Austin Fields, with sinuous curves reminiscent of the human body.

Discoveries

The Los Angeles arm of Apparatus, the design studio with a flagship in New York and an outpost in London, recently got a new look. Though “look” doesn’t quite capture the depth of this renovation, which reimagines a showroom for furniture and lighting as a narrative centered around a character who could’ve stepped out of Mad Men: A woman living in New York City during the tumultuous 1960s who finds herself embracing the West Coast a decade later. Mid-century modern geometry mixes with something more organic and Californian as you move through the space in a kind of dreamy progression, from a grotto-like entrance with rock aggregate walls, to a reflective silvery room, to a softened, earth-toned cork-lined area.

Austin Fields, a glass artist based in Los Angeles, sculpts the molten substance into sinuous forms — some more decorative, some functional — that evoke the curves of the human body. With translucent, transparent, and reflective finishes her collections like Touch, Satin, and Undulation all have a certain mystery, as does her latest series, Immersion.

We’re always on the lookout for a good bookend (so many books!) and the Buffer, which Chris Martin designed for Sweden’s Massproductions, has our full attention. It’s the latest addition to their Little Things Collection, available in red, ivory, blue-green, and yellow. It draws its name and inspiration from railway buffers and though it has an industrial feel, its vibe is also warm and even friendly. Kind of like a great 70s font, in bookend form.

The golden age of streaming TV may be over, from an industry perspective, but we might only just be entering the finest years of stylishly lounging while watching TV, if the new sofas and chairs from Madrid’s Plutarco are any indication. Made in collaboration with Spanish textile brand Rabadán, this structured yet floppy seating was specifically designed around the postures we assume when we binge our shows — lying down, reclined with your feet up, on the ground and leaning back against the base. Deep cushions let you get comfortable and various configurations encourage watching with friends.

Known for her patchwork quilts, Meg Callahan, of M. Callahan Studio, recently collaborated with Design Within Reach on a gorgeous series of rugs and bedding where geometric patterns meet a color palette of ochres, browns, sky blues, and beige-y neutrals. Intricate stitching provides texture and dimension to the Kate and Wiley quilts, throw pillows, and shams. And a classic grid pattern gets reworked and refreshed in the hand-tufted wool Casey rug, the flatwoven cotton Walker, and the Jude, which uses only one color of wool yarn but almost magically achieves different tones and color shifts through varying pile heights.

LA’s Cuff Studio has a gift for rendering simple geometric forms in chunky proportions as well as slim profiles; these are pieces meant to be layered together into a space. Pairing lush materials like shearling, mohair, velvet with woods, Cuff’s latest pieces include the gorgeous Slant sofa in raspberry – which somehow manages to be asymmetrical, balanced, sophisticated, and comfy all at once – along with the wavy Solana Chaise, C Back Upholstered Chair, furry U Bench, and the Jean Royere-inspired Ripple Bunching Stool. Some pieces are ready-to-order while others are open to the trade.

Exhibitions

In 1925, American painter Virginia Berresford began studying under French painter Amédée Ozenfant, co-founder of the Purism movement with Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who would become known as Le Corbusier). Developed in reaction to Cubism, Purism valued the formal qualities of individual objects in a composition, without extraneous detail. In contrast to many Purists, though, whose work focused on the mechanical and industrial, Berresford was drawn to the natural world. The Schoelkopf Gallery in Manhattan is currently presenting Virgina Berresford: Strangeness and Romance, featuring eight of her canvases from 1926 to 1947. Although Berresford gained recognition during her lifetime, and her paintings are held in museum collections, this is the first show in decades dedicated to her work. Up through April 5.

For what was meant to be his final project, Italian architect and designer Paolo Pallucco took the idea of a simple wooden chair, painted black, and spun it out into one hundred iterations, leading to the incredible series 100 Sedie in Una Notte. (According to Pallucco, he sketched them all in one night). Postmodern and exceedingly playful, these works are also poetic and philosophical, inspired as they are by lines from Rilke. Designs were then produced in limited editions of four and originally shown at the Mazzoli Gallery in Modena in 1990. Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva came up with the names, like Chair slid out of function all the way to the bottom for the one that calls to mind the curvature of a protractor and Chair injured by a shot from behind for the one whose arcing leg seems to have rotated out of the negative space in the chair’s back. Chair forcing the circle to reflect on the fate of life looks as if it’s bisected by a round plane while Chair mindful of the weight of life rests on legs that swoon. Paris gallery Ketabi Bourdet exhibited them this past week at the TEFAF Maastricht fair.

“Made in China”­– as Chris Shao, the founder of Objective Gallery notes, the label sounds more like an allegation than a statement, connoting disposability and cheap goods in a global economy. In taking that name for its latest exhibition, the collectible design gallery subverts this notion, instead evoking China’s deep legacy of ceramic artistry and putting a contemporary spin on it. The show features the work of three artists born or currently based in China: vessels by Matt Watterson, ceramic works inspired by the drape and folds of fabric from Hao Zhenhan, and stoneware and porcelain sculptures from Ryan Mitchell.

Interiors

Surreal and serene, Cult Gaia’s new store in Miami’s design district is like a space conjured by your subconscious. Jasmin Larian Hekmat, founder of Cult Gaia, worked with Jess and Jonathan Nahon of New York’s Sugarhouse to come up with this new home for the lifestyle brand. The store’s façade is a Tree of Life mural made of 1800 tiles by artist Michael Chandler, referencing Larian Hekmat’s Persian heritage and Henri Rousseau’s painting The Dream. Inside, a dreamscape continues, where a Banyan tree grows from a curving sofa and seemingly through the ceiling into a glass dome and you’re greeted by a soaring and elongated female figure in concrete. (The sculpture is by Larian Hekmat’s mother, Angela Larian, and the sofa is from Brandi Howe). Full of ancient and mystical references, it’s transporting.