Take 5: A New Love for Color, Cool Ceramics, Sexy Seating + More
Twice a month we invite one of the Design Milk team members to share five personal favorites – an opportunity for each of us to reveal the sort of designs we love and appreciate in our own lives from a more personal perspective. Managing Editor Joseph Sgambati III returns this week for our Take 5 series.
Devin Wilde’s Exclusive Ceramic Collection for Design Within Reach (DWR)
Art and architecture consummate their union once more in the launch of Devin Wilde’s ceramic pieces created for DWR. Call it love or call it lust, this material romance is hard to quit – and I don’t plan to. His latest collection celebrates the arrival of Vessel No. IX – whose identity vacillates between bowl and platter – while reintroducing classic forms that don fresh finishes like Cobalt, Garnet, Midnight, and Metallic Satin. A formally trained architect as well, I find myself especially drawn to Wilde’s classically inspired Vessel No. IV and Art Deco-esque Vessel No. III, both in the glossy Pearl, which best showcase shadows at play.
Stools, Plinths, and Pedestals by MANIFESTE EDITION
Marble, onyx, travertine. Granite, limestone. Quartzite too. Few architectural materials are as captivating or venerable as these dimensional stones distinguished by their unique veining and rich textures, especially when polished. It was this sort of ultra-glossy brilliance that led me to stumble upon MANIFESTE EDITION, a French interior design brand, while walking this year’s Maison&Objet show in January. They have an awesome responsibility transforming soon-to-be slabs from raw elements to fully realized furnishings. Some of my favorite pieces include the PIO and JIA stools, which boast an additional sheen from velvet upholstery, as well as the IDA side table, which juxtaposes sleek, brushed stainless steel with natural stone.
Sérif Floor Lamp by Marina Declarey
Typography and visual literacy have been a part of my life from a very young age. I remember watching my mother typeset on days I went to her office after school as much as I do trying to guess typefaces featured in television and print advertisements with her. Those fond memories and subsequent affinity for type instantly drew me to Marina Declarey’s Sérif Floor Lamp. This bespoke, decorative fixture is highly stylistic in its design tempering the human, gestural qualities from which serifs are derived – those character elements that often look like feets, finials, and strokes across letterforms – with a minimalist light-element form.
Bold Colors Brought Back into the Bathroom by SIMAS
Something that I deeply love about specifying – aside from spending someone else’s money – is getting to see so many great concepts and projects realized that I wouldn’t have the nerve to execute for myself. But lately, I’ve been looking to fully commit to color. The final impetus came from my most recent trip to Boutique Design New York (BDNY) where I discovered the bold sanitaryware designs by SIMAS, an Italy-based manufacturer of fine ceramics. Each fixture on display was drenched in pigment plucked from across the spectrum and articulated through matte and high-gloss finishes. I’m ready to say ‘I do’ to hue!
Young Projects: Figure, Cast, Frame by Bryan Young with Book design by Luke Bulman
Beauty, fashion, and buildings provide representation as our first, second, and third skins – the body, apparel, and architecture, respectively. Often tasked with expressing personal, political, and cultural identity, these surfaces are the mediating layers between who we are and how we are perceived. So why not leverage such potential? Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm Young Projects has answered my call for more pioneering, explicit, and sumptuous surfaces, thus satiating my hunger for decadent spatial legibility. This captivating monograph catalogs a selection of the practice’s most relevant works – equal parts experimental and exquisite – completed between 2015 and 2020 as well as other defining moments for the studio.
