02.19.16

Shopping

These Mirrors Will Make You Question the Meaning of Humanity

Chen Chen and Kai Williams's new Mirror Masks for Areaware are clearly just flat slabs of industrially produced glass printed with a few simple shapes. And yet somehow they ooze emotion — that's how strongly our brains are wired to read the feelings that lie behind facial expressions. To underscore that dichotomy, Areaware's art director Elsa Brown hired the up-and-coming Brooklyn artist Carson Fisk-Vittori to take the mirrors to Mexico City, then shoot evocative photographs of them in various settings around town.

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02.10.16

Studio Visit

Playing Around With the Cool Kids of American Design

Inside the experimental playground that is Ladies & Gentlemen's new Brooklyn studio: “All of our work is an evolution of itself,” says Dylan Davis, one-half of the up-and-coming design couple. Shapes on a piece of jewelry might lead to a geometric take on lighting; that, in turn, might inspire the assorted forms suspended on a mobile. However distinct, each piece is unmistakably linked to the next, joined by an understated elegance and what the two refer to as "playful austerity." “We try to embrace that feeling you had as a kid when you got to really explore,” Davis says. “Our goal is to take that spirit of play and figure out how to use it professionally.”

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01.29.16

Sighted

Be the First to Snag New Jewelry by Moving Mountains

Today is a happy day for anyone obsessed with the furniture of Moving Mountains's Syrette Lew — she's just debuted a new jewelry line that's infinitely more accessible, and we made sure we were the very first ones to carry it, in the Sight Unseen Shop. Not only is almost everything in the collection under $250, it shares the same inspirations as her ultra-popular Palmyra lamp.

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01.27.16

Studio Visit

Chiyome’s Japanese-Inspired, Minimalist Handbags

It’s easy to look at the work of designer Anna Moss and draw associations with a familiar sort of functional Japanese minimalism: her line of handbags, CHIYOME, is named for her Japanese great-grandmother. Yet for Moss, the starting point is plainly straightforward: “I strive for simplicity and that can take many forms,” she explains. What interests her is not minimalism for the sake of it, but rather a focus on the bag as vessel; it’s a study less in stripping back and more in adding intentionality.

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01.22.16

At Home With

The Brooklyn Brownstone of Sit + Read’s Kyle Garner and Sharktooth’s Kellen Tucker

Kyle Garner and Kellen Tucker may do magazine-level work for clients, but when it comes to their own two-floor brownstone in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, it’s barely about looks at all. “The driving force is comfort,” says Tucker, who deals antique textiles through her shop Sharktooth. “If you close your eyes and walk into this house, does it feel good?” Garner, the furniture dealer and designer behind Sit + Read, agrees: “We prioritize the feeling over the aesthetic,” he says.

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01.07.16

Studio Visit

Tureens, Totems, & Tables: What’s Next for Workaday Handmade

When we think of ceramicists at work, we often conjure romantic visions of noble artisans wearing clay-streaked aprons and strenuously channeling their artistic magic behind a potter’s wheel. Which is mostly true, to a point, and yet — what happens once that noble artisan also has to figure out how to run a thriving, growing business? To find out, we visited the Brooklyn studio of the hugely successful Forrest Lewinger (aka Workaday Handmade) with photographer Paul Barbera.

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12.22.15

Sighted

Bryan Metzdorf’s Sunday Morning Sketches

If you're a creative who's ever had a day job, you will no doubt understand the plight of Bryan Metzdorf, the full-time Urban Outfitters set-builder who, despite also doing freelance projects on the side for brands like Areaware and The Greats, still can't help but spend his Sundays at home working — on the weekly collage series he posts on Instagram with the hashtag "#sundaymorningsketches."

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12.16.15

Up and Coming

Brooklyn’s Cofield Is Scaling Up

Though Sara Ebert and Jason Pfaeffle studied in the same industrial design program at Pratt, it wasn’t until they started working together on a post-grad project for West Elm that a partnership developed. As they started spending more time together, they would often ask each other’s opinion on personal projects. They soon realized they shared a creative point of view; love blossomed and their design studio Cofield was formed.

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12.15.15

Sighted

Junpei Inoue’s Technicolor Wall Hangings

Being multi-taskers ourselves, we have nothing but admiration for people like Junpei Inoue — not only does he split his time between Brooklyn and Tokyo, he spends his days toggling between running and designing an art magazine, designing websites and logos for other people, and creating illustrations for textiles and fashion. Not such a stretch —until you consider his art practice as well, in which he creates intricate yarn-based wall hangings that are dyed using careful applications of acrylic paint.

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12.10.15

Studio Visit

The Brooklyn Ceramicist Behind the Insanely Popular “Boob Pots”

Even with its door wide open, Isaac Nichols’s Greenpoint studio is easy to miss. Walk past, look around, turn back, and there it is, tucked inside a cavernous, garage-like space that’s served as a creative home base for Nichols (who works under the name Group Partner) and a wide circle of artist friends for the past two years. The studio, unassuming from the outside, hums within: music plays; the stretch and tear of packing tape is constant. All around, laid out on makeshift surfaces and shelves, are Nichols’s signature pieces in varying stages of completion: ceramic pots molded to mimic breasts, each adorned in a hand-painted outfit, and his famous face pots, each with one of three appointed names: Adam, Rory, or Pat.

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11.18.15

Invitation

Ladies & Gentlemen and Robin Stein Team Up on a Still Life Inspired by Moholy-Nagy, Not Memphis

You know all those contemporary still-life clichés, like pastel backgrounds, cactuses, and Sottsass-approved geometric shapes? When New York photographer Robin Stein recently teamed up with Brooklyn design studio Ladies & Gentlemen for a studio visit (coming soon) and impromptu creative photo shoot (pictured after the jump), the longtime friends decided to toss all those ubiquitous tropes out the window and do something different.

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11.16.15

Studio Visit

Designer, Artist, and Animator Todd St. John

Todd St. John launched a stand-out furniture line this spring, but “I do a lot of animation, illustration, and narrative work,” says the designer, whose background is in graphic design, and whose clients have included The New York Times, Prius, Nickelodeon, Pilgrim Surf Supply, and MTV. “So I’m often experimenting with and developing new characters. There are tests around here everywhere.”

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