SLY DESIGN
I declined to attend ICFF this week, picturing endless stalls of hyper-crafted wood furniture, twisted LED light sculptures, and hand-blocked wallpaper. A last-minute invitation drew me instead to Sight Unseen Offsite (SUO), a small market curated by the design website. It was the perfect antidote to the theatricality, commercialism, and insistent luxury of ICFF. The sun-drenched 15th floor of the Grace Building, where SUO unfolded, was stripped to a bare concrete slab and white walls, and filled with young designers – makers of things – showing their wares on plywood tables.
Despite the number of Pratt graduates and Brooklyn-based industries, the sensiblity was less Outer-Borough Artisanal than Understated Postmodern. The designs (furniture, tableware, linens, carpets) shared a stripped-down 80′s formalism that tempered Memphis eccentricity with
Real Simple minimalism. The entire spectacle was sweetly ahistorical, because the designers are too young to have any memory of that era. Products were crafted with basic geometries (thrown pillows shaped like pyramids, pipes shaped like cones, chairs shaped like cubes), bold graphics (checkerboard rugs, quilts with fields of squiggles), chalky pastels (hand-thrown dinnerware, shift dresses) and crayon-bright primaries (throw cushions, childrens toys). There was a smartness to the products. On the surface they seemed natural, simply put together. But achieving this kind of grace actually requires a great deal of sophistication.
Photo courtesy of Crosby Studios.