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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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London interior designer vintage objects
08.03.22

Sighted

In a New Gallery Space, Hollie Bowden Shows Off Her Talent for Sourcing Minimal Maximalist Vintage Objects

London-based interior designer Hollie Bowden is a self-described “minimal maximalist.” Think bare walls and airy, earth-toned environments accented and brought together with a touch of dramatic surrealism. She has a way of adding the surprising elements that wind up feeling completely necessary to any given project. After working as a stylist, florist, and set designer, Bowden launched her own studio in 2013 and has spent the past decade conceiving of dreamy domestic and retail spaces. As an extension and natural progression of her studio work, earlier this summer she opened The Gallery, an appointment-only shop located next to her Shoreditch headquarters.
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11.23.21

Sighted

This 20th-Century Vintage Design Store in London is Giving Peak Postmodern Maximalism

Vintage dealer M.Kardana opened a store on Hackney Road in London earlier this year, a physical space that allows owner Mario Kardana to take joy in the arranging of things. “What I love is curating all of these various pieces that could be 70 years apart and making them work together and complement each other,” he says. “I always make sure to mix styles and eras as this is what I find the most fun and interesting.” Downstairs, on the original wonky wooden floorboards, it’s maximalist and colorful whereas the newer upstairs room is more suited to Postmodern and clean-cut pieces.
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09.10.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

For a Show in the Former Home of a Sculptor, Designers Respond to His Works and Collection

When the British flamenco dancer and sculptor Ron Hitchins died, he left behind a small pink Victorian house in Hackney, London. For their first exhibition, Atelier LK — a newly formed interior design studio helmed by Lisa Jones and Ruby Kean — has taken over the home, leaving intact a curated selection of the artist's work and asking 36 contemporary artists and designers to respond to it.
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09.01.21

What They Bought

The Vintage Furniture Dealer Whose Aesthetic Runs From Bauhaus to Beetlejuice

Gennaro Leone, who runs the vintage furniture shop Spazio Leone in London, is clearly devoted to the cult of '70s and '80s Italian design. But he’s also drawn to pieces that seem to exist in a dream-zone where Art Deco–meets-Postmodernism and Surrealist motifs, along with a hint of Delia Deetz (that's Catherine O’Hara’s sculptor stepmom in Beetlejuice, for anyone who needs a refresher). In the short time that Leone's been up and running, the dealer has developed an aesthetic that could even be described — as he himself puts it — as “WTF is this? I’m trying to find a balance between crazy shapes and comfortable things.
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07.28.21

Up and Coming

Lewis Kemmenoe’s Debut Collection Features One Very Of-the-Moment Material

“For as long as I remember I loved just making things,” says London-based designer Lewis Kemmenoe. “My parents told me that when I was eight, I begged them to let me go to art school, right there and then.” He may not have matriculated quite as early as he had hoped, but Kemmenoe eventually enrolled in Central Saint Martins to study Fine Art. Eighteen months ago, he began working on his first collection of furniture, a series of chairs, tables, shelving, and lighting in burl veneer, plywood, and timber — either left in its natural state or stained with linseed to highlight the grain.
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05.04.21

Sighted

Molecular Biologist By Day, Ceramicist By Night: How Science Informs Abid Javed’s Art

The Hong Kong–born, London-based artist Abid Javed became a ceramicist almost by accident: While studying for his PhD in biochemistry, Javed began searching for a medium he could dabble in to fulfill a desire to make 3D forms inspired by molecules. "I considered glass initially, but it seemed too technical to pursue as a hobby," Javed recalls. "Ceramics felt and became more intuitive." A hobby soon became a full-blown art practice; the resulting series is called Pleomorphs.
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04.28.21

Q+A

Marco Campardo and the Marta Gallery Founders On Obsessive YouTubing, Failed Projects, and the Importance of Craftsmanship in Design

Considering the Italian designer Marco Campardo’s long friendship with Marta Gallery founders Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong — as well as the trio’s shared interest in a multidisciplinary approach — we decided to go Interview Magazine–style with this Q&A and allow the three room to riff on ideas about collaboration, identity, and digital representation in design.
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03.18.21

Interiors

Peek Inside a Barbican Apartment Full of Period-Appropriate Furniture

If you're one of those people — ourselves included — who have fantasized about living in one of the 2,000 apartments that make up the Barbican housing estate in London, where Brutalism meets Roman ruins meets exquisite landscape design, we have a treat for you: a look inside the home of interior architect Oskar Kohnen, located inside the estate's 1973 Defoe House.
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03.11.21

Sighted

Xanthe Somers Wants Us to Question Everything About Our Relationship With Domestic Objects

As a self-taught ceramicist, not knowing the "right" way to do things has led Somers down some experimental paths. Clay has become a medium for her to interrogate concepts beneath its fragile surface. As a contemporary ceramic sculptor, she describes her pieces as a satirical and questioning take on domestic objects. “We cannot treat domestic objects as inert beings; they have place and purpose and motivation,” she says. “Clay has a long history of being used for functional, domestic objects that are laden with political and social constructs."
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03.01.21

Q+A

James Shaw On Why He Hopes His Design Practice Will One Day Eat Itself

“Daffodils are great,” says British designer James Shaw when I point out the bright yellow bunch sitting behind him in his southeast London workshop during our Zoom call. “They always start off really unpromising as those little green buds, and then they get better and better and they last for ages.” It’s an apt metaphor for Shaw’s own work, which often begins as discarded post-consumer plastic that he turns into slightly trippy organic forms reminiscent of crude cake frosting, created with his self-built plastic extruding gun and sculpted into quotidian objects from toilet paper holders to bowls, candelabras, and chairs.
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