A New Show Highlights the Appealingly Messy Side of Contemporary Ceramics

Closing in Barcelona this week is an exhibition that celebrates some of the bigger trends in contemporary ceramics these days — namely bright, drippy glazes; lumpy, organic forms; and raw, tactile, fissured surfaces. Presented by Side Gallery, “Exposed Material” is an overview of work by four artists who span several generations and hail from places ranging from America to Auckland, New Zealand.
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This Housewares Brand Thinks the Future of Design Lies in Uniting 3D Printing With Contemporary Talents — and Traditional Artisans

In recent years, 3D printing technology has finally started to come into its own, making the dream of an on-demand manufacturing industry — one that yields products people might actually want — feel closer at hand than ever. That's the realization that inspired cousins Ismail and Adnane Tazi, who founded the Parisian housewares brand Trame in early 2020, to rethink their entire approach to production just two years later, culminating in the launch of their new Alhambra.gcode collection.
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Olivia Cognet’s Very Provence–Meets–Palm Springs Ceramic Murals

With a color palette drawn largely from nature, Olivia Cognet’s aesthetic of geometric lines and sculptural excrescences is heightened by elegant crackle glazes and tactile textures. Exploring a dialogue between Brutalist influences and feminine discourse, architecture and art, Cognet's often large-scale works — from lamps to monumental bas-reliefs — embrace the irregular, inspired by her design idols, Roger Capron and Jean Derval.
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Week of February 14, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: never-produced 1970s furniture by Gabriella Crespi reissued by Gubi, a sprawling solo show of works by Simone Bodmer-Turner, and a new wallpaper series (pictured) whose bold geometries have a painterly feel.
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Shane Gabier ceramics

A New York Fashion Designer Reinvents Himself With Clay

You may know Shane Gabier as the designer behind the fashion label Creatures of the Wind, where, since 2008, he has been churning out sharply tailored avant-garde collections for New York Fashion Week and earning accolades like an LVMH prize shortlist. But if you’ve kept up with his work more recently, you would know that fashion isn’t Gabier's only talent — he’s also a budding ceramicist.
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With Its Whimsical Ceramics and Mirrored Lounges, Project 213A is Bringing a Bit of Joy to 2022

If you needed more proof that we're living in something of a golden age of small-batch production, look no further than the new design brand and housewares shop Project 213A, which was founded in 2020 by four friends and is based between London, Paris, and Portugal. In the last two years they've built up an enviable portfolio of that mixes the kind of ceramic silhouettes that are popular right now with wild cards that keep you guessing like a fully mirrored low lounge, a multicolored tiled bench, and a chestnut wood milking stool, with one lone leg carved in the shape of a foot.
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Sight Unseen gift guide 2021

Gloopy Cake Plates and Striped Dog Beds: The 2021 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part II

We always look forward to putting together our annual gift guides, where we get to turn our brains off, scour our favorite stores for wishlist-worthy objects, and focus on sheer indulgence for a minute. What's our favorite candle this year, our favorite wine glass? Which books are we dying to have on our coffee table now, and in the case of Jill (whose guide is featured today), which which four-figure Gio Ponti vase? (Yep, that's how we're rolling this year.) We hope you can get some inspiration from these lists — particularly when it comes to supporting small businesses and talented independent makers.
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Hallelujah — Our Favorite Scandinavian Art Objects Retailer is Finally Shipping to the States

This week, the Swedish design object retailer The Ode To launches shipping to the United States — and just in time. We can't think of a better place to shop for gifts for people who are notoriously hard to shop for. Where else can you find a vase shaped like a white go-go boot, a sculpture meant to look like a watermelon, or a deflated mirror decorated with a truly unhinged smiley face?
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Sean Gerstley is Playing With Scale at New York’s Tiniest New Design Gallery

When we first started writing about ceramic furniture back in 2014 — first with Chris Wolston's terracotta chairs, then on through to Eny Lee Parker, Kelsie Rudolph, Floris Wubben, Virginia Sin, BZIPPY, and more — we had no idea we would end up here: in Superhouse's new, 100 sq.ft. vitrine/gallery on the second floor of a Chinatown mall, filled to bursting with more than a dozen such works by the young designer Sean Gerstley, whose process and aesthetic we can only describe as simply thrilling.
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Sean Gerstley ceramics

Sean Gerstley’s Clay Objects Live In A World Of Their Own

Following the trajectory of Delaware-born artist and designer Sean Gerstley’s practice, it feels a bit like he’s always, intentionally, scaling down. “I went to Rhode Island School of Design for architecture before finding ceramics,” he says of his creative coming-of-age. “As a kid I was, and still am, super interested in interior spaces. My ceramic practice started as sculptural work that was kind of about interiors and domestic space in abstract-installation form.”
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