We are honored to give a little preview of a new Where They Create story by our friend Paul Barbera. It features the London office of creative agency Wieden+Kennedy, which shows a lot of character, but also the large size of one of the leading offices worldwide. The inspiring ongoing Where They Create series documents creative working spaces from all around the world through the lens of Paul. With Where They Create, the Australian photographer found a way to turn his inherent voyeurism into a form of anthropological research. Looking for absurd and hidden elements within the seemingly normal, Paul enters the studios of international creative people: artists, art directors, architects, designers, stylists and captures all the details of their personal stories and artistic processes. His curiosity, naturalness and good eye for interiors, together with his ability to transmit emotions and warmth make his project unique and constantly inspiring. From the need many creatives have to transform their offices into intimate spaces, almost like home, keeping things close to be able to create their workspace will almost alway show a lot of personality. Others could work anywhere, travelling with the bare essentials as Paul does, but everybody, even if for a while, leaves personal traces, aspects that don’t pass unnoticed, laying there to be caught by Paul. [ Continue reading ]
Time for a new playlist! This time a special one, as we weren't the ones selecting the music, but our friend Michael A. Muller was kind enough to share his favorites for this time of the year. Michael is based in Austin, Texas and is a photographer who has worked for Kinfolk, Cereal and Freunde von Freunden, amongst others.
His list starts with Memory Loss by The Snow, the new supergroup of Dustin Payseur, Jack Tatum and Andreas Lagerström. Followed by Carnival Ghost by childhood friends John Fredericks and Andy Breihan and their band SACCO. The next song is second single by German lap-pop band The Notwist of their debut Close to the Glass. Moving from guitar pop to the more electronic sounds of Seattle-based Beat Connection and their Invisible Cities. Next is our favorite track Turn Away of the most recent Beck record Morning Phase. Back to electronics, She Just Like to Fight by Four Tet. After which the lead single of Californian Jazz duo The Mattson 2 and the experimental On Guyot of Wild Nothing's Empty Estate EP follow. The song by Small Black and featuring Frankie Rose named Real People was inspired by Colton Harris-Moore, a teenager from rural Washington who went on a crime spree. Next up is one of our favorite artists Nils Frahm and his haunting For of the album Juno. More instrumental tunes follow with Mick Turner's Here's a Way and Takeshi Nishimoto's 6/8. The final song is yet another special one: recorded in Nils Frahm's studio and recently released on the namesake 18-song album, the beautiful Pinô by Norwegian Otto A. Totland. [ Continue reading ]
On the 1st of May graphic artist Andy Rementer returned to New York City-based gallery Mondo Cane, with his third solo show of new and previously un-shown paintings and drawings. The 'Meet Me Later' series transports the spectator to seemingly familiar street corners, domestic situations and subway platforms populated by characters caught in frozen moments of furtive activity. The work has a timeless quality which seems to draw from influences as diverse as Léger, The Italian Renaissance and even the narrative economy of Raymond Carver. Ambiguous narratives connect the work, while the spirit of Rementer’s work, with his familiar high key colors in the paintings, bold decorative patterns and the familiar but odd characters which interact in unexpected and often humorous ways with the surroundings in which Rementer has placed them. [ Continue reading ]
We really appreciated the last parcel of luxury subscription service Svbscription. What was already the eighth parcel stood for timelessness, quality and a respect for function: all things that iconic pieces have in common. A parcel of classics, focussed on enhancing the style and home of each recipient. The entranceway, coffee table, bar and closet were all considered within the curation. Creating classics meant challenging the Svbscription collaborators to push their own practice in new directions. The brief was to revere the old, but create something new. This resulted in the fact that Australian industrial design duo Daniel Emma designed a set of marble coasters cut from the finest Italian and Spanish marble. Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert, the French glass artist best known for one-off large-scale sculptures, crafted individually hand blown whiskey glasses. Bespoke tailor Paul Marlow made an elegant tie, bow tie and scarf, and The Paris Review provided some dignified reading material. In our eyes a great set of modern classics was created living up to the high standard Svbscription has already set for itself. [ Continue reading ]
Recently we came across this beautiful and inspirational project by the Bergen, Norway-based Of and With Studios. They recently released a collection of leather bags crafted from the last batch of leathers ever tanned on Osterøy Island, Norway. The project started in the summer of 2010, when they met Erling Teigland, initially to find out if there were grounds for a collaboration. Erling had worked at the Borge tannery since he came out of high school in 1970. Unfortunately only months after the first meeting between Of and With and Erling, he had his last day at work, because the world-renowned tannery was forced to shut its doors. The company that had been tanning since 1889, quietly supplying the finest names in high-end goods, from Louis Vuitton and Hermès to entire African royal families was no more. This moment sparked the ambition to start a journey to honor sincere and joyful craftsmen like Erling and the fine tradition that Borge represented. A journey that continued on to eventually become the first in-house lifestyle brand by Of and With Studios named Ætt. [ Continue reading ]
Esme Winter’s work can be typified by her extraordinary talent of creating beautifully patterned products in a fantastic scala of colors. Based in London since 2008, Winter works from her studio with partner Richard Sanderson. Both designer have heritage in high esteem, which resulted in a modern British company rooted in quality production and design. Each beautifully detailed accessory is a product of careful thought and inherited taste in antiquarian books and mid-century modernism. Working with the best makers and materials from the UK, they craft items that reflect the innate value of hand-binding, weaving, and finishing. Last year they unveiled their 2013 'Paper Collection' consisting of notebooks and patterned paper. The collection is a beautiful one, simple yet refined, with most likely some of the more beautiful original patterns you'll find today. Some have called it a mixture between Japanese papers and Bauhaus textile prints; the Paper Collection offers the perfect color saturated solution for your gifts and goods. [ Continue reading ]
Ouur is the latest beautiful endeavor by Nathan Williams, brand director and editor in chief of Kinfolk Magazine, and his team. Pronounced just like the word our, the brand is centered around a visual motif of underlines. These underlines represent an effort to collect like-minded elements into a single place. This translates into collections for men and women which are clearly in line with the Kinfolk aesthetic, primarily using textiles such as linen, cotton and wool. Created with a sharp attention to detail, classic silhouettes and a neutral color palette, each item has been made with an emphasis on comfort and utility. The goal Williams has set for the line is that pieces in the collection will be interchangeable, functional and wearable in all seasons, which clearly shows in the newly released lookbook for the Autumn/Winter 2014 collection. [ Continue reading ]