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12.03.15

Gift Guides

Our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide — Monica’s Picks

Welcome to Sight Unseen’s annual holiday gift guide! This week, we're sharing our best, most covetable, seriously-buy-me-now finds from around the web. We've narrowed it down to 25 items from each editor — a seriously herculean task when it's basically your job to source cool things all year round. Next up is Monica, whose wish list this year runs the gamut from hairy pillows to hiking boots.
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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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Bario Neal Men's Jewelry
11.17.15

Sighted

Bario Neal & Linder Just Broke the Rules of Men’s Jewelry

The Philadelphia-based jewelry design studio Bario Neal has long offered wedding bands for men, and particularly expressive ones, at that: Some of its rings look like carved petrified wood, some have a hammered texture, some are boldly striped. But there's one steadfast rule of men's jewelry that even Bario Neal has never dared to break — until now.
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Hammertone
11.12.15

Current Obsession

Why Designers Are Obsessed With a Metal Finish Called Hammertone

When something previously considered irreparably uncool — like Tevas, or turtlenecks — suddenly becomes a massive trend, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly why. Today, beginning with the Eric Trine pieces above, we're unpacking the rise of the bumpy industrial metal finish known as hammertone, surveying its best examples and hearing from the designers themselves why they've become such converts.
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11.10.15

Up and Coming

Swiss Product and Furniture Designer Adrien Rovero

The work of Swiss designer Adrien Rovero has a certain recognizable Western European vibe — simple, often rounded forms paired with planes of solid color and an understated element of playfulness or cleverness. There's always a small innovation, a small twist. That latter part is what Rovero particularly excels at.
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10.28.15

Sighted

Egyptian-Themed Housewares by Beech Hall

Beech Hall, a new online shop based half in Brooklyn and half in Philadelphia, has a simple yet unconventional concept: to offer a line of jewelry, housewares, and ceramics based around a single, strong theme and design language, then change that theme from season to season. First up: Egypt.
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10.22.15

Sighted

Liverpool’s Granby Workshop Creates Objects with Local Makers

On view now at the Turner Prize exhibition in Glasgow, the shortlisted art and architecture collective Assemble recently debuted the results of its new initiative the Granby Workshop, a crowdfunded product line aimed at fostering a "community-led rebuilding of a Liverpool neighborhood following years of dereliction."
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10.19.15

Invitation

The Dogs of American Design + A Shinola Pet Giveaway

To celebrate the line of dog accessories Shinola has developed with Bruce Weber, we asked nine American designers we'd spotted Instagramming their canines alongside their creations (like Ben Medansky, above) what makes their dog a hero. See their best dog photos here, then post your own response on Instagram for the chance to win a Shinola leash, collar, rope toy, and postcard set worth $227.
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10.02.15

Sighted

OTTO Objects by Roula Nassar

Nassar runs the Brooklyn studio OTTO, through which the erstwhile fashion student and ever-curious autodidact became known primarily for her art books and artisanal knitwear — the items that caught our eye back when we first featured her last February — before turning her hand to the vessels featured here, partly because of their appeal as a consummate blank canvas.
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09.24.15

Up and Coming

Norwegian Product Designers Gunzler Polmar

Gunzler Polmar, led by ceramicist Victoria Gunzler and furniture designer Sara Wright Polmar, haven't churned out a ton of work just yet, but the projects they have designed — including their new textile series launched this week at 100% Norway in London — display an eye for form, proportion, and material that certainly merits further attention.
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