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sight unseen gift guide 2020
11.18.20

Gift Guides

Slime Lamps and Head-Shaped Incense Burners: The 2020 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part II

On the one hand, to publish a gift guide in 2020 seems like an immense act of magical thinking. On the other hand, one of the small, analog joys we have found in this period of sequestering and uncertainty is the act of sending a gift by mail. In our second 2020 gift guide, this one by Monica, may we interest you in some incense burners? How about a gloppy, foamy desk lamp, or some CBD hot sauce? We're also pretty excited about Christin Ripley's marble-printed husband — who couldn't use a hug from a pillow right now? Give a gift, or two, to someone you love. It might just make you feel better.
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11.11.20

Invitation

Lauren Coleman Experiments with Gravity and Melting Metal in a New Skincare Campaign

Brooklyn photographer Lauren Coleman's love of science-lab equipment made her an obvious choice for an important collaboration we're debuting today: an artistic depiction of the properties of a new product by the Swiss beauty brand La Prairie, which since 1954 has been known for its scientific approach. La Prairie invited Sight Unseen to commission a series of animated cinemagrams to mark the launch, and we invited Coleman to conceptualize them.
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10.27.20

Interiors

This Spanish Studio Just Took the Checker Craze to the Next Level

In Masquespacio's interior for La Sastreria restaurant in Valencia, nearly every square inch of the bar area is covered in a different variation of our biggest trend prediction of the year — checkers — from your standard monochromatic Vans grid to various multicolored takes on the classic harlequin pattern. While it may seem at first like an attempt to become some kind of post-COVID Instagram Influencer pilgrimage, though, the design actually had a completely unrelated objective.
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10.24.20

Saturday Selects

Week of October 19, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: furniture inspired by robots, our favorites from the 2020 Design Academy Eindhoven graduate shows, and a carpeted chair by Max Lamb that's apropos for COVID life.
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10.03.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 28, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: LRNCE makes her first lamps, a New York designer releases a Memphis-style mirror to rival the Ultrafragola, and India Mahdavi opens a project space for experimental installations like the one pictured above.
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09.19.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 14, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: three new (ish) puffy chairs, a collection of graphic ceramic tiles by Nathalie du Pasquier, and a suite of styrofoam-and-resin floral furniture with millennial-weirdo vibes.
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09.11.20

Up and Coming

A Berlin Duo Whose Marriage of Art, Design, and Craft Is More Literal Than Most

When creatives describe their work as blurring the boundaries between design and art, it's rare that the effect is quite so literal as it is in the case of Berlin's Opt Studios — not only because it's the shared practice of a textile and product designer and her painter and sculptor husband, but also because the works themselves look like abstract artworks that just so happen to be hanging out on rugs and side tables.
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09.08.20

Travel

Three New Design Hotels That Should Put Oaxaca on Your Post-COVID Travel List

Among the myriad reasons to visit the Mexican state of Oaxaca post-COVID — the mezcal, the pottery, the cultural diversity, the surfing, the fact that its fragile economy depends largely on tourism — are three new design hotels spanning the city to the beach: Grana B&B, Escondido Oaxaca, and Monte Uzulu. See all the pics after the jump.
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