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09.22.15

Sighted

Tetra, A Designer Smoking Accessories Shop

Launched yesterday, Tetra is the first shop devoted entirely to beautiful smoking accessories like lighters, ashtrays, and incense burners — objects that have either have never before been aggregated in one place, or, more often, have been neglected by design entirely. Marianne Brandt, Enzo Mari, and Dieter Rams created incredibly sleek smoking accoutrements for the home in the '50s and '60s, and Tetra's intent is to revive that tradition in a contemporary way.
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07.31.15

Up and Coming

L.A. Jewelry Designer Kathleen Whitaker

For the past few years, Kathleen Whitaker's name has been practically synonymous with the ubiquitous gold dot and line earrings that are a staple in boutiques everywhere. But her work has been evolving recently, making it the perfect time to check in and see what's motivating her now.
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designer dominos
07.24.15

Shopping

Top 5: Designer Dominos

A periodic nod to object typologies both obscure and ubiquitous, featuring five of our favorite recent examples. Today the subject is dominoes, which no longer resemble those black and white, polka-dotted celluloid tiles of yore.
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07.22.15

Sighted

Node Lights by Amsterdam’s Odd Matter

The young Amsterdam-based duo Odd Matter, who we mentioned today in a separate post dedicated to their new work at Aram Gallery, have been busy bees lately. In addition to that project, the Dutch and Bulgarian designers recently launched a series called Node, which includes four highly expressive, sculptural lamps in copper and Jesmonite with forms designed to underscore their functions.
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07.18.15

Saturday Selects

Week of July 13, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: very on-trend iridescent flatware and terrazzo coasters, gorgeous oil-slick vases from a recent RISD grad, and the debut of the booksleeve (pictured above), an innovation we never realized we needed until now.
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06.30.15

Invitation

Q+Q’s 2015 Collection, Shot by Amanda Ringstad

When we first invited one of our favorite prop stylists, Seattle's Amanda Ringstad, to create a shoot around Q+Q's line of waterproof, solar-powered watches last year, she attempted to abstract the simple, color-blocked designs into ambiguous shapes and arrangements. For its 2015 collection, however, the Japanese brand — who partnered with us for a second time at this year's Sight Unseen OFFSITE — went wild with pattern, so we thought it would be especially compelling to return to Ringstad once again and see how that might change her aesthetic approach. The result is a series of playful, summery images shot inside a big bucket of water that imagine the watches as eye-catchingly outfitted, anthropomorphized bathers.
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06.26.15

Sighted

L.A.’s Newest Design Brand, TOOOLS

Back in 2012, we wrote about the launch of a gallery called Beginnings in Brooklyn, which, a year later, met an untimely and unfortunate end. But two of the gallery's founders have since gone on to forge a new (ahem) beginning, this time giving it a far less superstitious name: TOOOLS, a Los Angeles–based object-design company recently started by artist Caroline Hwang and designer Joel Speaskmaker that aims to be "a new company with an old ethos: form & function." See what the duo have to say about the project, and see tons of images, after the jump.
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06.12.15

Excerpt: Exhibition

ECAL Takes Over Apartment 50 in Le Corbusier’s Radiant City

Since it was renovated in the early 2000s and restored to its original 1952 condition, Apartment 50 in Le Corbusier's famous Cité Radieuse housing complex in Marseilles, France, has played host to a rotating cast of designers — Jasper Morrison in 2008 followed by the Bouroullecs, Konstantin Grcic, and, perhaps most successfully, Pierre Charpin. But a group of Swiss design students may have just completed our favorite intervention yet.
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05.30.15

Saturday Selects

Week of May 25, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a hip summer pop-up shop in Sagaponack, two ceramicists branching out into wallpaper and shelf brackets, and more work you might have missed during ICFF, like the Earnest Studio trivets above.
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05.29.15

Excerpt: Exhibition

Curse The Darkness by The American Design Club With Roll & Hill

When the American Design Club first started back in 2008, the idea was to find new ways to gain exposure for emerging talents in the U.S. scene, a goal pursued primarily via juried exhibitions — and a goal that happened to dovetail perfectly with Sight Unseen's vision for a New York design week event that would put the spotlight on exactly the kind of emerging voices the AmDC comprised. In 2011, the second year of our Noho Design District show (the precursor to Sight Unseen OFFSITE), we hosted the club's fifth exhibition, and last month we were thrilled to host its 12th. Called "Curse the Darkness" and presented in partnership with the lighting brand Roll & Hill, the show invited designers to submit "objects that can hold a candle and light up a room."
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05.15.15

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

The Making of the Principals’ Dynamic Sanctuary for Ford

Sight Unseen OFFSITE opens today, and front and center at this year's show is an undulating structure that, from a distance, looks incredibly mysterious — its walls are made from an unusual material, and they periodically emit a strange, pulsing blue glow. As you approach the structure, you first pass through a very narrow entryway that obscures your view of what's inside, but once you arrive there — well, that's the magic of the Dynamic Sanctuary, an installation by the Brooklyn design studio The Principals that's a kind of poetic metaphor for the design ideas behind Ford's 2015 Edge vehicle.
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