12.15.22

Q+A

Sarah Sherman Samuel Moved to “Furniture City” and — Lo and Behold — Self-Produced a Furniture Collection

Moving back to Michigan from Los Angeles four years ago might’ve been the best decision Sarah Sherman Samuel ever made. As well as offering her family heaps more room, the in-demand interior designer — who has shot to fame over the last few years with high-profile interiors for the likes of Mandy Moore, Vanessa Carlton, and Garance Doré — has been able to set up a new office and showroom in Grand Rapids, nicknamed Furniture City for the amount of manufacturers based there, and reconnect with her childhood nostalgia of exploring the woods and lake shore. Returning to this landscape was also the driving force behind the SSS Atelier collection, the first that her studio has both designed and produced in-house, now that she has the space and resources to do so.

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12.12.22

Fair Report

A Puzzle-Piece Bed, a Ceramic Peanut, a Mosaic Table: Everything We Loved in Miami This Year

Miami in December is a fairly easy sell for those of us in the art and design industries (despite the fact that, check notes, precisely zero of Sight Unseen's editors attended this year!) Those who weren't book launch mode descended in droves for the city's annual Art Week, as it’s become known since the number of exhibitions put on around Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami ballooned somewhat out of control. Today we're featuring a few acts from the week's anchor fairs, but between poolside cocktail parties and trips to Twist, our reliably favorite fair is of course Design Miami, which showcased an impressively diverse — and thankfully colorful — range of collectible design during its 18th edition.

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12.10.22

Saturday Selects

Week of December 5, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: “Neolithic-core” tables, gummy worm–striped salt and pepper mills, soothingly smooth-edged furniture, and an Alpine-inspired lodge in upstate New York that we want to spend all winter in.

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12.02.22

Sighted

Frederic Pellenq’s New Furniture Collection Has Touches of Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Lloyd Wright

Frédéric Pellenq is not afraid to reference. Whether it’s artist Ellsworth Kelly, whose hand-drawn geometries informed a series of chairs; architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose famed Prairie style is translated into a side table; or decorator Jacques Grange, who is paid tribute through an armchair, Pellenq has nodded to the titans of 20th-century art and design for his first solo exhibition.

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11.07.22

Interiors

Cobra Studios Transforms an Art Deco Building Into the Coolest Meeting Rooms Ever

If there was ever a way to bring back in-person meetings, this would be it: Design a location for that sole purpose by combining a “dated 80’s vibe” with shiny sci-fi surfaces, and create spaces that look more like a high-end design gallery or a very bougie spaceship. This is exactly what Belgium’s Cobra Studios has achieved at the newest location for Sparks, a company that provides these types of spaces on-demand for individuals and organizations to hire as needed.

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10.23.22

Saturday Selects

Week of October 17, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an afternoon tea tray cast using blocks found on Mexico City streets, conveyor-belt chairs, "moldy marble," and a heavenly collaboration between Lalique and James Turrell.

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10.19.22

Sighted

Studio Paolo Ferrari Changes Perspective for Latest ‘Editions’ Furniture Series

In 2016, the Toronto-based interior designer Paolo Ferrari released his studio's first edition of collectible furniture, intending to evolve and expand upon its forms over time. Last week, at his New York gallery Colony, he unveiled the collection's latest iteration — Editions 04 — which was meant to debut in 2019 but was postponed due to the pandemic. This extra time proved beneficial for Ferrari, who was able to pause, contemplate, and develop his designs even further than previously anticipated. It also provided another fortuitous opportunity: to photograph them against the dramatic industrial backdrop of Skylight Steelworks, a former factory and 1960s office space on 750 acres outside of Toronto in the one-time steel town of Hamilton, which has recently become home to a new generation of creatives and artists.

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10.07.22

Q+A

Fred Rigby Draws Upon the English Landscape for His New Furniture and Homewares

In Fred Rigby’s mind, clouds can be sofas, raindrops in a puddle become a collection of coffee and side tables, and pylon conductors translate into stackable bowls. Growing up in the English countryside, with not much to do but play in the fields and make things in the garage, the London-based designer now draws inspiration from the natural world, and the industrial objects set within it, to create furniture and homeware that’s honest, tactile, and intended to have conversations with its users.

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09.27.22

Sighted

Rodolphe Parente’s Apertura Collection Includes a Lamp With Two Adam’s Apples

When Pierre Chareau, Gio Ponti and Carlo Scarpa are listed as a designer’s heroes, chances are their own work is going to be expressively shaped, functionally intriguing, and artistically quite lovely. And, happily, that’s exactly where Paris-based Rodolphe Parente’s new collection of furniture and lighting has landed in Apertura, a range of limited editions that complement the refined residential and retail interiors for which his studio is better known.

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09.25.22

Saturday Selects

Week of September 19, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a reunion for NYC’s Design Art movement, a yellow Nordic design store in a former bunker, and some pretty funky closet handles.

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09.19.22

Travel

Three New Hotels With Dreamy Interiors to Inspire Your Fall Travel

Summer is practically over, once again. But before we resign ourselves to seasonal affective disorder and reach for the hot chocolate (or hot toddy, depending on your pref), let's remember that fall is a great time to travel. Places are quieter, lines are shorter, prices are cheaper, and the weather typically offers a balance between perfect to stroll and explore in, and gloomy enough to stay inside your hotel wearing a robe and slippers for the entire day, guilt-free. If you’re going to do the latter, it may as well be in a beautifully designed space, and our three picks of new (or newly rejuvenated) hotels for this season have us daydreaming of an autumnal escape.

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09.15.22

Sighted

Sarah Ellison’s Float Sofa — In a New Luscious, Chocolatey Brown — Forms the Perfect ’70s Conversation Pit

There’s no escaping the influence of the '70s on today’s interiors and now, at long last, we get something from that era that's long overdue for a renaissance: the return of the conversation pit. Australian designer Sarah Ellison has long been influenced by the '70s and '80s, so when it came to designing her latest sofa series, the idea for a modular piece quickly developed into a system that could be implemented as a giant sunken area for large homes or hospitality spaces.

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