The Best of the 2017 Milan Furniture Fair, Part I

When you're on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair, things can seem like a total blur — you're walking miles a day, eating on the go, drinking too much wine, and seeing more new things than your brain can actually process at once. Which is why we love doing round-ups like these — organizing all of our favorite things into one (or two or three) places makes us realize just how great last week was, what trends are emerging (we're looking at you fringe, rust, lilac, and fiberglass) and what an interesting place design is at right now.
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Soft Baroque furniture inspired by Photoshop

Soft Baroque’s New Furniture Collection is Inspired by Photoshop

Called Hard Round, Soft Baroque's new series is about manifesting something physical from a purely digital realm — in this case, a series of sculptural furniture pieces constructed from lines derived from the Photoshop "hard round" brush tool. The "worms," as they're called, have been transformed from digital sketches into a series of charmingly lumpy wood, marble, or aluminum pieces that range from vases to shelving.
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Estudio Persona

These Uruguay-Born, Los Angeles–Based Women are Poised for Furniture Stardom

Four years ago, Emiliana Gonzalez and Jessie Young moved to Los Angeles from their hometown of Montevideo. Back in Uruguay, they'd known each other only peripherally, but as creatives in a new city, they were drawn to one another. Gonzalez had trained as an industrial designer, while Young was a conceptual artist and a new mother who didn't have the energy to navigate a new art scene. After designing a few houses together, they moved on to products — first geometric walnut planters, then furniture — and founded Estudio Persona.
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Week of March 20, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: pool-inspired carpets, Pointillism-inspired upholstery, and perfectly patterned new rugs from an unlikely source (that's Cody Hoyt for Kinder Modern, above).
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Nationale Portland gallery

This Portland Gallery Has Shown Only Female Artists Since the Beginning of 2017

Nationale is an art gallery in Portland, Oregon that represents eight emerging artists: four male, and four female. But since the beginning of 2017, the gallery has shown three female artists in quick succession — Amy Bernstein, a painter; Francesca Capone, a textile artist; and Emily Counts, a sculptor; whose work is everything we look for in a Sight Unseen subject — colorful, multidisciplinary, and meaningful. And while directors May Barruel and Gabi Lewton-Leopold swear that the suddenly gendered roster wasn't purposeful, it certainly feels refreshing in the current climate.
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Design and Art Are More Connected Than Ever at New York’s Newest Gallery

Whither Johnson Trading Gallery? The New York design gallery — which in its heyday introduced an American audience to the work of contemporary designers like Max Lamb, Kwangho Lee, Katie Stout, Aranda/Lasch, and more (not to mention Rafael de Cárdenas's epic first furniture collection) — had been relatively quiet of late. Now we know why: Earlier this month, it was announced that while JTG will continue selling vintage work, the contemporary artists in their stable will be absorbed into a new program at one of our favorite art galleries, Salon 94.
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Your Search for the Perfect Coffee Table Ends Here

What is it with designers named Jonathan? Our preoccupation with the Perth, Australia–born, Los Angeles–based Jonathan Zawada in some ways reminds us of the way we feel about Jonathan Muecke — they don't release new work all that often, but when they do, we seem to want every single piece of it. In Zawada's case, that spartan output may be a professional necessity — Zawada spends much of his time creating digital art, album covers, and advertisements in his more commercial practice. But this week finally saw the official expansion of Zawada's Affordances line, which we first covered way back in 2013.
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30 Artists and Galleries We Loved During New York Art Week 2017

We can't quite put our finger on what it was that made this year's Armory Arts Week feel so fresh. Was it the new venues? After all, NADA moved from Basketball City to Skylight Clarkson North, while Spring/Break moved from the old Post Office to an ex-Condé Nast office at 4 Times Square. Was it the fresh blood — the fact that NADA was even there at all, after years of coinciding with May's Frieze Fair? Or maybe it was simply the weather — we made the rounds on a gorgeously sunny Thursday that made the views at Spring Studios' Independent fair even more glorious. Whatever the case, we found much to love
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Week of February 27, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a plywood paradise in Topanga Canyon, a fashion presentation outfitted with contemporary design icons, and a series of tapestries that are way too chic to be acoustic panels.
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We Already Can’t Wait For This Exhibition of Norwegian Designers in Milan

Where has a year gone? It feels like just yesterday we were swooning over the images from this stellar exhibition in Milan of Norwegian designers (and getting excited for our own inaugural show with some of those same talents). Now it's nearly Milan time again, and with it comes news of a brand new show of young Norwegians, this time curated by our friend Katrin Greiling under the umbrella "Everything is Connected."
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Pink Travertine and Rusty Velvet in a Coolly Minimalist Cape Town Boutique

On a recent family trip to Cape Town, I determined to go to the best restaurant in the city, to revisit to my favorite beach hangout (Beta), and, thanks to a hot tip from a friend's Instagram, to pop in on a store that can only be described as #sosightunseen. The eponymous boutique of fashion designer Margot Molyneux, the shop opened at the end of last year, showcasing the brand's minimal-chic designs — in a color palette of peach, green, rust, white, and black — with a store design by Molyneux's husband to match.
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This Contemporary Design Icon Looks Even Better Shot By One of our Favorite Photogs

It might be funny to associate a photographer with a single color, but when we think of Stockholm photographer Tekla Severin, pink is the shade that immediately springs to mind. Scrolling through her Instagram, there's definitive evidence that she has shot other colors, but in our mind Severin lives in some Bofill–designed paradise of rose tones and geometric lines. So it makes perfect sense that New Tendency, the ever-chic Berlin-based design brand, would hire Severin to style and shoot its pink Meta Side Table, released earlier last year.
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