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For summer, Athens-Based Gallery Antiqua is selling White Walls for a Deep Blue Sea.
The 20th-century Athens furniture gallery Antiqua is on display on the Greek island of Antiparos this summer in an exhibition called “By the Sea.” Photos: Giorgos Sfakianakis
One sad limitation of having a permanent gallery space is that, no matter how much exhibition design you can put out, or how many strange interventions take place, each exhibition still retains the DNA of its enclosure. The Alex Da Corte show at Karma Gallery – even with the red carpet, pink walls, and upside-down cat breathing – still feels like a typical Karma gallery show; heavy curtains or a Do Ho Suh–esque house can’t fool you into thinking you’re not at Jacqueline Sullivan’s. (Perhaps the most successful transformation of a well-known space that I have ever seen was Felix Burrichter’s exhibition by Charlap Hyman & Herrero–designed BLOW-UP by Friedman Benda, but that’s another story for another day about how 2019 was my favorite year in design.) That’s why it’s so exciting when a store or gallery decides to release an entire space, for a few months or a new gallery. There is a pleasant contrast that comes from seeing the same pieces in a new envelope.
The 20th century furniture gallery in Athens Antiqua makes the most of that conflict this summer as it appears on the island of Antiparos, in a place called Maison Bardot, a cultural center not far from the sea. The beauty of Maison Bardot is so typically Cycladic – lime and clay tops, colored terracotta floors, diffused light – that it racked my brain for a moment to see pieces like this Sottsass bookcase with blue legs or the Mendini wooden chair inside it. I wondered if it was the new folly of modern design. Once your eye is fixed, you may, like I did, start to wonder how these pieces can be transformed if they are placed in another interior: your living room.
The American Midcentury Workshop Is Alive and Well at This Bar in Turin, Italy
Fabio Fantolino’s design for the new Lève Office Bar in Turin is a reference to 1960s office culture with its flattering ceiling, chrome-framed chairs, wooden panels, and more. Photos: Luca Argenton
In Turin, a watering hole has opened that goes by the name Lève Office Bar, designed by Fabio Fantolino, and the fun is in seeing how far they can take workplace references without descending into full-on pastiche. There are nods to the American open-plan office, including bouclé-covered partitions designed to resemble cubicles and a ceiling here made of translucent smoke-colored glass, perfect for a disco. There are also wooden panels, what appears to be a linoleum floor in chartreuse green, glass blocks, and cantilevered Thonet chairs that recall another Turin interior we once covered Fantolino. But the high materials and the color palette keep this bar firmly in the lobby – red lacquer, chrome, leather, and resin among them – as do the choices of FF&E, such as creative paints or a series of aluminum sconces and suspended lamps by Lambert & Fils. In this way, its references to Mad Men-era office culture are able to go beyond mere quotations, as the designer says, to become an integral part of the design.
A Brief History of the Salt and Pepper Shaker, Courtesy of Yowie
Silver-plated salt and pepper shakers by Philadelphia-based artist Carl Durkow (left); ceramic shakers by Sean Gerstley (right). Photos: Bre Furlong
The third annual Yowie Salt & Pepper Shaker Show was just a few days in Philadelphia last month, but if you’ve been reading this book for any amount of time, you know we can’t resist the chance to write about the one-off show. Among the things we’ve put together – ashtrays, paperweights, night lights – salt and pepper shakers might be our favorite because of the chance to create a slightly different pair. At the Yowie show, jeweler Allison Grabenhorst created two beautiful silver shakers set with different sets of gemstones; Elissa Defranceschi sculpted two small horses, one in porcelain and one in black clay; Sean Gerstley used his mosaic-tile technique in clay; and Carl Durkow made the most Jill Singer-coded silver swan shakers ever. What I loved most about the show was that Yowie’s Shannon Maldonado gave a brief history of shakers in an Instagram chock full of fun facts: “Before the shaker, salt was pure theater,” she writes. “In the courts of Renaissance Italy, the trinciante – a professional meat carver – would cut meat in mid-air, let each piece fall neatly onto the dinner plate, then dip his knife in salt and scrape directly onto the plate.” What’s in Salt Bae? He also mentioned that there is a salt and pepper museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with over 20,000 specimens – Unseen field trip anyone?
In Chicago, the New Canyon Coffee Pop-Up Feels In Conversation with the City’s Design Heritage
Canyon Coffee’s new pop-up inside Design Within Reach’s Fulton Market flagship in Chicago offers different vignettes in which to enjoy your morning cup, including an office, a lounge, and a private island.
As coffee brands go, few seem as truly tied to the world of design as Canyon Coffee, founded in 2016 by Ally Walsh and Casey Wojtalewicz. Their first LA location, inspired by a trip to Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiu, New Mexico, featured chairs by Shin Okuda of Waka Waka and pottery cups by Peter Shire. In New York, a store opened last fall in Prospect Heights featuring furniture by Kelby Singhaus of Mambo Jambo (an American Design Hot Lister!), sconces by Thomas Yang, and spiral hooks by Clarissa Guzman of Platform Studio. There’s even a special Canyon coffee blend made in collaboration with JB Blunk Estate, whose beans come from Santa Rosa, California, near the late artist’s estate.
So it makes sense that the brand’s first pop-up in Chicago would take its bona fides seriously. The space debuted earlier this month inside Design Within Reach’s Fulton Market flagship, and extends beyond the cafe into vignettes of meditation, work, and listening to music: a full 360 experience of hospitality that feels like it’s in conversation with Chicago’s modern heritage and also shows how a designed space can enhance everyday culture. The “office” of sorts includes a rug by David Chipperfield, a collection of chairs and lamps by BassamFellows, and a Wrensilva record console; the music collection was curated for the venue by Secret Group + Numero Group and features Illinois-born and based artists from Gia Margaret to Miles Davis. As part of a new partnership, DWR will now offer Canyon Coffee in stores nationwide, which means I’ll be shopping there a lot more.
Editor’s List
CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:
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My friend likes to make fun of me for using my iPhone as a lipstick mirror; In high school, I used a Clinique makeup compact that was always shaking powder in my pocket. So yeah, maybe I’m ready to go up with the new Clasp Compact from Ready to Hang, which launched earlier this month. It is made of satin-finish zinc alloy and has a signature ball closure that collapses like an evening bag. Chic!
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Friend of SU Mackenzie Wagoner had a great piece on T List last week about how ready-made lanterns are the new paper lanterns. He followed it up with an even more in-depth take on Instagram where he teased us about this cool aluminum and blown glass lamp made by his college roommate, Claire Torok, who designs under the name Clab. One to watch!
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I published my big Copenhagen collection this week, and one thing I didn’t have a place for was the pottery based on the Belgian water tower types; designed by Bernard Dubois, produced by Bitossi for PIN-UP HOME. Long Unseen Figures You may remember that a version of these vases was first made out of wood at our Offsite design exhibition in 2016. It’s always nice to see a piece come back with a new lease on life!
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A great submission in our inboxes this week from Forge Objects, a Polish practice founded by a goldsmith and industrial designer. In their latest experiments with silver, they made a hand fan, a brooch, a mirrored box, and the stone-set perfume bottle shown here.
News
Jade Cabinet and Serpent Sconce by Jeremy Anderson, on view with Gallery Fumi at Galerie56 in New York (left); Martino Gamper’s 100 Chairs in 100 Days (right). Photos: Ethan Harrington and Filippo Pincolini
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It feels like a long time ago (late May) that I went to the opening of Jeremy Anderson’s solo show with Gallery Fumi, presented at Galerie56 as part of Fumi’s three-month residency in New York. Anderson’s pieces are incredibly complex – those bronze frames are cast in small pieces that are then joined together, and he develops ceramic glazes in-house – but perhaps the piece I loved the most was the simplest: a glazed metal sconce whose flexible, snake-like body is a descriptionpizzazz. Until July 3.
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Perhaps it’s a measure of how long you’ve been in the design world if you remember Martino Gamper’s 100 Chairs in 100 Days project happening in real time. I am one of those elders; I was two years into my design career when Gamper started collecting discarded chairs and transforming them by grafting and reassembling them. In doing so, he challenged the very idea of the author and created an outline that would be repeatednauseumby other designers. What I didn’t know about this project was that Nilufar’s Nina Yashar, in 2009, acquired a collection of 100 chairs in full to prevent it from being completely sold. Later this year, the great museum will announce its acquisition of the project but before that, on June 30, the chairs will be gathered together for the last time in Nilufar’s warehouse in Milan, where Gamper will make the last “100 chair” on the site.
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Two big launches this week for those who love patterned fabric: Dusen Dusen has launched a womenswear capsule collection that includes shift dresses and wrap skirts, for all your late 90s cosplay needs. And Block Shop launched a collaboration with Hancock Shaker Village where the sister-owned company reimagined images from the Shaker Gift Drawing Archives as hand-block prints and matching table linens. This bright pink tablecloth – based on the leaf pattern printed in 1851 – is a favorite.
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Malin — called the workplace where you’ll find me when I’m not WFB (I work while sleeping) — recently opened its seventh New York location in Brooklyn Heights, next door to the iconic Gage & Tollner. Who wants to have a work date followed by a happy hour drink at a tiki bar above a steakhouse!?