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SEE PAGE 78

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O XX N 48 : THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

12. HELLO BULLETIN 52. SHAPESHIFTERS 64. HEAD OVER HEELS 74. GIVE AND GO 92. SAVING GRACE 14. MASTHEAD 28. INTEL French-Italian rug brand Tokyo-based designer Noritaka A Boston-based art collective How art liberated Jean-Michel 16. CONTRIBUTORS Hank Willis Thomas in Portland, CC-Tapis debuts Doodles, Tatehana incorporates ancient uses art and design to promote Othoniel, over and over again. 100. CHECKING IN David Adjaye’s Ruby City British designer Faye Toogood’s Japanese craft techniques into inclusivity on the basketball court. 106. AGENDA museum opens in Texas, Dora playfully collaged collection of everything from giant hairpins Maar at Tate Modern, and other art for the floor. to heelless platform shoes. APPENDIX goings-on in the world of design. THIS CHANGES 114. A JUICY STORY 18. COLOR BLOCKER 56. RING OF LIARS 68. MORAL FIBER EVERYTHING On a trip to Ohio, interior Leta Sobierajski and her Why you shouldn’t buy knock-off The John Michael Kohler Arts 38. TRICK OR TREAT? 78. THE PLACE MAKER designer Elisabeth Sandler started husband, Wade Jeffree, bring How the French outfit Messgewand furniture. Center explores the life and work As president and CEO of collecting vintage juicers—and supersaturated artistic oddities hacks the design process. of pioneering fiber artist Lenore commercial real estate investment she’s never stopped. contentsinto the mainstream. 58. FLOOR TO CEILING Tawney through a comprehensive firm EQ Office, Lisa Picard finds Unexpected materials, including four-part exhibition. profitability in bringing people FIELDWORK recycled glass, sailcloth, and together. molten aluminum, feature in our 44. ALL IN 70. MODERN MIDCENTURY favorite lighting, surfaces, and In deference to architect Anatol The design practice Civilization 86. BREAKING BARRIERS fosters connections and finishes of the moment. Kagan’s original plan for their Seattle’s Burke Museum is spear- community in Seattle. home, a family in Melbourne heading a shift in the way natural makes the most of their mid- history museums are designed. century house’s modest footprint. The result: expanded access for all.

10 GRAY GRAY 11 HELLO roomandboard.com

Barbara Kasten, CONSTRUCTS 1981–1982 (2019).

ONE RECENT SUNDAY MORNING, I Photographs showed me in an emerald Such moments are the theme of this WAS VISITING MY PARENTS, WHO cap and gown with a marigold tassel issue: ideas, projects, and decisions that STILL LIVE IN MY CHILDHOOD HOME. walking across a football field amid a sea are pushing both people and the design I was standing at the marble kitchen of classmates. There I was accepting industry forward. Here you’ll find a island, preparing to drink a cup of coffee. a diploma, being handed a yellow tenacious fiber artist, a human-focused My mom handed me an 8x10 clear plastic carnation and baby’s breath wrapped design studio, and a critically acclaimed sleeve filled with papers. “We’re clearing in cellophane, throwing my hat in the Japanese craftsman who’s little known out the attic. Here’s everything from your air somewhere in the mass of graduates stateside. Our senior editor, Rachel high school graduation,” she said and shown in a long-distance shot. Suddenly Gallaher, takes a deep dive into the world walked away. I had never seen any pictures the setting switched to the street outside of Julie K. Stein, the driving force behind or documents from that day—the event is the stadium. There I was with my parents, the Burke natural history museum in a numb, blissful blur in my memory. I sat with my boyfriend, with friends I haven’t Washington State, which will reopen there staring at the packet for a few min- seen for more than a decade. Most of the following a period of intense renovation. utes, grappling with two thoughts: first, people in those pictures don’t exist any- And Portland-based architecture critic that I am apparently at an age when my more, including myself. We all grew up. Brian Libby unpacks the vision of Lisa parents’ attic can no longer act as a storage Confronted with my 18-year-old Picard, the CEO and president of EQ unit for my past (artifact-filled boxes from self, I couldn’t help thinking about the Office, who’s disrupting the way we my adolescence, college, and life in each formative decisions I’ve made since work. Each profile is one of dedication state and country where I’ve lived crowd then. I do that whenever I feel lost—as and zeal. Dive in. the space above their two-car garage); if reliving the times I’ve made big second, they are purging these things, and choices will embolden me to make new it is up to me to take or toss them. That’s ones in the future. Taken together, a terrifying thought because it means I’ll those decisions are both a sizzle reel of rely on memory alone to conjure the ex- my life and a conglomeration of every perience represented by anything I throw eureka moment I’ve ever had. It’s so out. I had a time capsule in front of me. I satisfying to really know something to took a breath and dumped its contents onto the point where I can actually act on it. TIFFANY JOW the counter. It changes everything. Editorial Director PHOTO BY KRISTIAN LAUDRUP, INSTALLATION VIEW, BORTOLAMI, NEW YORK

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BRIAN LIBBY (“The Place Maker,” page 78) is a Portland– based writer and the editor of the blog Portland Architecture. He has contributed TODAY to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Dwell, and Architectural Digest, among other publications. His third book, Collaboration for a Cure: The Knight Cancer Research Building and the Culture of Innovation, was published this year.

AMANDA RINGSTAD (“All In,” page 44) is a Seattle–based photographer. Her work has appeared in GQ, Refinery29, theWall Street Journal, Wired, and Vogue Australia, BEHIND THE LENS among other publications. LEVI MANDEL is a Seattle–born, New York–based photographer whose work has been featured in Bon Appétit, Monocle, Vogue, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, and W, among other publications. He JESSE TREECE captured Lisa Picard, president and CEO of EQ Office, at the Exchange (“Ring of Liars,” page 56) is a self-taught Building—which houses one of the real estate investment firm’s Seattle collage artist who reconstructs illustrations workspaces—for our cover story, “The Place Maker,” on page 78. Below, from vintage magazines and books. He Mandel recounts his experience shooting Picard. lives in the greater Seattle area.

“THE ENERGY [OF THE SHOOT] WAS POSITIVE AND CALM, THOUGH WITH THE USUAL EXCITEMENT THAT COMES WITH A COVER STORY. My first impression of Lisa was that she was surprisingly accessible for such an ERIC TRINE influential, successful person. She is kind and down to earth, which are traits (“Ring of Liars,” page 56) is the ORDER AT I [have] as well, so we immediately had a connection—something crucial to founder of Amigo Modern, a Long Beach, achieve in a portrait shoot. I wanted to capture her stature as a CEO juxtaposed California–based design firm specializing with her relatability. I hoped to somehow incorporate her athleticism as well, in furniture and home accessories. GRAYMAG.COM which we, fortunately, were able to achieve. "During preparation for the shoot, there was talk that Lisa might not be 1 YEAR (6 ISSUES) willing to do anything too weird or unconventional, so I was tickled when she $ was perfectly happy to climb up the back of a six-foot-tall oversized armchair or NATE WATTERS NORTH AMERICA: 60 hold yoga poses on the street outside the Exchange, a building that sits on what (“Breaking Barriers,” page 86) is a INTERCONTINENTAL: $144 happens to be one of Seattle’s steepest hills. photographer who has shot for Microsoft, "Shooting spaces is always challenging, as the lighting and layout are Mojo Magazine, Seattle’s Museum of Pop often out of your control, especially when you’re working with a brand-new Culture, City Arts Magazine, and Olson space. Fortunately, the Exchange Building is beautifully designed. We didn’t Kundig Architects, among other clients. have any issues making it work.” He lives in Seattle.

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STILL-LIFE

Color Blocker Our showrooms stimulate all five senses. Leta Sobierajski and her husband, Wade Jeffree, bring Six, if you include your sense of accomplishment. supersaturated artistic oddities into the mainstream. By CLAIRE BUTWINICK Photograph by LETA SOBIERAJSKI @LETASOBIERAJSKI

LETA SOBIERAJSKI’S COLOR-BOMBED CREATIONS an Australian designer, on OKCupid (they married in ARE HARD TO MISS. Whether it’s an interactive adult- 2016). Her initial paintings and photographs of oddly sized jungle gym for Brooklyn design incubator A/D/O or shaped items from the 99-cent store have evolved into the 30-year-old modeling a pair of pink Crocs under a min- projects that push her creativity to the extreme (such as iature staircase, her eccentric creations, often made with Complements, a portrait series in which the couple poses Hear sizzling steak. Taste chef-made bites. See exceptional appliances. From cooking her husband, Wade Jeffree, walk the line between art and against vibrant backdrops with peculiar props like tinfoil advertisement. They’re certainly influencers—for the past masks or mouthsful of toilet paper). When Sobierajski demos to product classes, you’re invited to discover the potential for your kitchen. four years, the two have designed a series of cartoonish and Jeffree join forces, their technicolor imaginations photos and wavy Memphis-inspired wood interventions fuse into luminous reality. They typically begin a project for the likes of Gucci and Google—but their work takes on by working separately. Her occasional misinterpretation serious aesthetic experiments, too, ingeniously exploring of Jeffree’s sketches, she says, tends to spur better ideas. the endless possibilities of saturated hues. “I have no bias In August, Sobierajski announced the launch of her against black and white,” says Sobierajski. “But there’s an and Jeffree’s eponymous joined creative studio, Wade and infinite amount of colors in the spectrum, so why not take Leta. Sobierajski is keeping their upcoming collaborative advantage of them?” projects under wraps, so one can’t predict how their While Sobierajski’s love of color predates her design irreverent style will materialize next. “I try to be comedic career, the New York native started cultivating her about it,” Sobierajski says of their work. “We try to style in 2013, when she went freelance and met Jeffree, invoke a bit of humor and encourage human activity.” h

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Untitled-1 2 9/16/19 4:38 PM BULLETIN Goings-on in the world of design.

MODERN PRINCIPLES. MARVIN INNOVATION.

Introducing Modern.

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Discover it at marvin.com/modern. PHOTO BY KRISTIAN LAUDRUP, INSTALLATION VIEW, BORTOLAMI, NEW YORK

FIND YOUR INSPIRATION AT YOUR LOCAL, INDEPENDENT MARVIN DEALER TODAY. It all started with photograms: photographic images made by placing objects onto light-sensitive material and exposing them to illumination. Photograms by Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, a pioneer of the medium, caught the eye of American artist Barbara Kasten while she was still in art school, and she has since experimented with photograms, cyanotypes, diazotypes, and Cherry Creek Windows & Doors other photographic techniques for decades. Now an octogenarian, Kasten has mastered her signature visual language, creating Seattle 206.547.4162 large-scale sets using glass, mirrors, Plexiglas, and window screens, lighting them from above to create kaleidoscopic interplays of CherryCreekWindows.com light, shadows, and reflection and photographing them at close range. The results, shown on the opening page of each section in Call Us For An Appointment to Visit Our New Showroom this issue, twist scale and reality. Photographs Kasten made during her summer residency at Illinois Institute of Technology’s S. R. Crown Hall will be on view at the Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey in October.

©2019 Marvin Lumber and Cedar Co., LLC. All rights reserved. ®Registered trademark of Marvin Lumber and Cedar Co., LLC. GRAY 27 BULLETIN

Alex Selma and Clara del Portillo Designers of new Valencia Seating INTEL

ART videos,and mixed-media installations undertones in contemporary advertising that unmask superficial notions of and US culture’s commodification of Afri- Statement Piece equality in pop culture and disrupt can Americans. In one photo, The Cotton stereotypes of African Americans. This Bowl (2011), he depicts two black men October, Oregon’s Portland Art Museum crouched down facing each other, one in unveils Thomas’s first comprehensive a football uniform, the other in overalls exhibition, All Things Being Equal . . . picking cotton, drawing parallels between (named after an artwork included in the capitalism in sports and the trans-Atlantic show), highlighting91 works that encom- slave trade, both systems that have treated pass his complex reinterpretations of black bodies as possessions. mainstream culture. According to Dolan, the Portland Art “What I feel in much of Thomas’s Museum doesn’t just want All Things art is a moment to pause,” says Sara Being Equal . . . to be thought-provoking; Krajewski, the museum’s curator of it wants the show to inspire action. modern and contemporary art, who Alongside the exhibition, the museum co-curated the exhibition with the has established a partners-in-residence museum’s curator of photography, Julia program for community leaders whose Dolan. “[I] check myself and make sure organizations address gun violence, I see the individual and resist ‘other- equality, and criminal justice. Partners ing’—grouping people by stereotypes or such as Don’t Shoot PDX, King School by statistics.” Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Audiences enter All Things Being Oregon Justice Resource Center have Hank Willis Thomas never formally learned Equal . . . through the museum’s interior been given a 250-square-foot space within how to draw or paint. Yet he’s made a sculpture court, where Thomas’s flag- the exhibition galleries to meet, make quilt constructed from decommissioned based piece, 14,719 (2019), stretches art, and host events. prison uniforms inscribed with the 30 feet from floor to ceiling. In a riff on “We want the exhibition to add more Preamble to the US Constitution, took a the stars and stripes of the American voices to conversations [about race and photo of a black man’s head branded with flag, its 14,719 stars represent each inequality],” says Krajewski. “Continuing a Nike swoosh, and sculpted an iridescent person killed by gun violence in the to bring these conversations to the surface bronze hand spinning a basketball on United States in 2018. Throughout the is part of this pivotal moment, but we its middle finger. For nearly 20 years, exhibition’s following eight thematic must also act on them to work toward the Brooklyn-based artist has confronted sections, including “PitchBlackness/ greater social justice.” » Inc. Reach, © 2019 Design Within social and political injustice through OffWhiteness,” “Remember Me,” and —Claire Butwinick HANK WILLIS THOMAS, THE COTTON BOWL (2011), BRANDED HEAD (2013) captivating sculptures, photographs, “Branded,” Thomas unearths racist Experience the best in modern design at our stores. Stop by today, or book a complimentary design session in advance at dwr.com/studios.

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DESIGN / BUILD REMODELING HANDYMAN SERVICES CUSTOM HOMES INTEL

ARCHITECTURE Crown Jewel

A little more than a decade ago, Linda evokes a faceted jewel, and its precast entry plaza area. “The ambulatory loop Pace—heiress to the San Antonio Pace concrete exterior skin, fabricated in is about the idea of the promenades and salsa fortune and longtime patron of Mexico City, has a distinctive orange-red colonnades in monasteries,” Adjaye says. the arts—had a vivid dream in which hue. A polished lower story holds lobby “There is an obsession in this project to a structure in various shades of shim- and office spaces; above it, the surface make this circuit that ends back where mering red appeared. Upon waking, she transforms into a rough façade embedded you started. You could almost do the sketched the vision in colored pencil, with multiple hues of red glass chips that building continuously in an endless loop.” convinced that she had dreamed about capture every ray of the South Texas sun. The motif continues outside, where a the building that would one day hold “The exterior color was conceived sculpture garden, holding work by Nancy her art collection. Before Pace passed from the ambition of having a form that Rubins and Marina Abramović, among away in 2007, she gave her drawing would rise from the earth and possess others, invites viewers to stroll its oval to the then-emerging architect David an ethereal magic,” Adjaye explains. pathway. “Ruby City is a deep dive into Adjaye and asked him to interpret the “It’s a meditation on the pre-Columbian the motifs of the context,” Adjaye says. image in architecture. concept of earthbound architecture. We “It references the mundane ordinary “Linda had a clear vision for her developed a concrete skin that would architecture of the city and the historic Powder Room. Boom! institution and how it would resonate catch light and sparkle as the sun pans architecture, as well as the ruins of the within the context of San Antonio,” [across] the sky and as one walks around region—which are very much deeply The smallest room in the house has the potential to make a big impression on your Adjaye says of the two-story contempo- the building.” embedded in my psyche.” » guests. “The powder room is like a little jewel in the home, where you can have fun rary arts center, which will house more Inside, 10,000 square feet of exhibition —Rachel Gallaher and be bold with colors and patterns,” says Neil Kelly Design Director, Barbara Miller. than 900 works that are part of the Linda space will showcase sculpture, photog- “And with wallpaper coming back in style, you can make a big statement that’s relatively Pace Foundation collection. “The design raphy, painting, and video from artists sets out to capture the essence of Linda’s including Diana Thater, Ross Bleckner, easy to update.” Ready to have some fun? Let’s talk about how to make your powder vision, creating a templelike space for Isaac Julien, and Pace herself. Adjaye room pop! art that will inspire artists and the larger designed the interiors as an easily community.” navigable circuit: from the ground Slated to open October 13, the arts level, visitors travel up a set of stairs (or NEIL KELLY PARTNER: Visit Our Design Centers: center, called Ruby City, lives up to its an elevator) and through the galleries, 866.6. Portland  Seattle name: its sharply angled geometric form and then back down to the lobby and © DROR BALDINGER. COURTESY OF RUBY CITY AND ADJAYE ASSOCIATES www.neilkelly.com Eugene  Bend

OR CCB# | WA L&I #NEILKCI O 30 GRAY BULLETIN Photo courtesy of GD Nielsen Homes I INTEL

TECH Opening Ceremony © 2019 Kolbe© 2019 & Kolbe Millwork Co., Inc. When the design team at Danish and aluminum speaker panels, which mounted on a steel stand, fusing cutting- electronics manufacturer Bang & Olufsen open and close at the touch of a button. edge technology and classic Danish design. was sourcing inspiration for what Debuted at Milan Design Week in April, “The combination of wood and aluminum would become its Beovision Harmony the futuristic home accessory officially creates a new and exciting [aesthetic],” television, they found it in an unlikely launches in October. Like a midcentury says Bang & Olufsen’s creative director, place: Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens. The entertainment cabinet, the Beovision Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre. “The ultimate venerable amusement park’s pantomime Harmony’s wood blinds allow it to inte- goal was to create a television for people theater has mechanical curtains that grate effortlessly into a space without who believe aesthetics are just as import- fan open like a peacock tail, and the sacrificing a room’s aesthetics. Come ant as experience.” designers mimicked the effect in their showtime, the panels artfully unfold to —Annette Maxon television’s screen-concealing oak reveal a 77-inch 4K OLED screen from LG with Claire Butwinick

ARCHITECTURE Curve Appeal

Amid the architectural penchant for sharp angles and geometric lines, Le Monde’s new Paris headquarters feels refreshingly ahead of the curve. With its elegantly contoured shape, gradient-tinted windows, and concave bridge, the eight-floor, 246,850-square-foot building is captivating, but its design serves a purpose beyond aesthetics. Designed by Oslo-based architecture firm Snøhetta in partnership with Paris’s SRA Architects, the headquarters’ shape was chosen in Kolbe Windows & Doors leads the industry with innovative products that response to a national tragedy. push the boundaries and defy the limits of function, performance and In 2015, just days before architect Kjetil Trædal Thorsen—a founding partner style. With unlimited options and custom solutions, the possibilities for at Snøhetta—pitched the firm’s design one-of-a-kind window and door confi gurations are endless. to Pierre Bergé (the French industrialist Gare d’Austerlitz railway in the 13th the site, allowing foot traffic to pass has a significant stake inLe Monde and arrondissement. The site was originally underneath it through Le Monde’s plaza, cofounded Yves Saint Laurent in 1961), divided into two plots that the firm opted which is equipped with a café, visitors’ the staff at French satirical weeklyCharlie to link via an approximately 262-foot- center, outdoor seating, and green areas. Hebdo were attacked by two gunmen who long bridge. Constructed from 4,200 “Paris is a dynamic city that constantly Contact the experts at your nearest Kolbe Gallery to schedule a personal design consultation today. left 11 people injured and 12 dead. Thors- tons of steel, walled-in glass panels, and searches for new sites to develop,” says en’s final design focused on uniting the finished with concrete made in situ, the Thorsen. “Locations such as this are community and added an outdoor plaza archway is heavier than the Eiffel Tower. ecological in the long term, and utilizing and a cross-cutting archway. Beyond its pragmatic function— such sites can be seen as repairing the Slated to open in November, the connecting the publication’s departments— urban fabric.” »

building sits on a concrete slab over the the bridge cuts diagonally through —CB COURTESY BANG & OLUFSEN. LUXIGON AND SN Ø HETTA 101-185 Forester St. | North Vancouver, BC 3931-B First Ave. South | Seattle, WA kolbegallerybc.ca | 604.988.8683 kolbegalleryseattle.com | 206.456.5113 32 GRAY

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WORKSPACE been given a dreamy, light-filled interior with its frosted globe light fixtures, executed by LA- and Toronto-based firm walnut barstools, and curvilinear Second Life DesignAgency. upholstered furniture. While the design “The Bradbury Building is an embod- responds to the past, the amenities are In a synthesis of retrofuturism and iment of our promise to our members: influenced by the creatives who will modernism, NeueHouse’s recently it’s bold, grand, provocative, and full of work here: the space will host a gallery, opened downtown LA location echoes the important visual cues that almost force a private offices, a lobby café, conference history of its space: the 1893 Bradbury reaction,” says Josh Wyatt, CEO of Neue- rooms, and, because this is 2019, a Building, the city’s oldest landmarked House, which was founded in New York meditation/nap room. In a city over- structure. Opening in November in the in 2011. The Bradbury location will be whelmed by four million people and architectural treasure (best known as an the company’s third, fusing hospitality, never-ending traffic, NeueHouse offers eerie Blade Runner setting, it also served a social club, and an office into one an urban escape. as the grand backdrop for movies such collaborative space. —Teaghan Skulzski as (500) Days of Summer and The Artist), The structure’s Art Nouveau architec- with Claire Butwinick the coworking space’s new outpost has ture is balanced by the interior design, LIBERTY (1936), COLLECTION THEROND, © ADAGP, PARIS, AND DACS, LONDON 2019

ART opening at Tate Modern on November “There is so much more to Maar than 20. Featuring more than 200 works from her relatively short relationship [with More Than a Muse a career spanning over six decades, the Picasso],” says Emma Lewis, assistant exhibition will include photographs (both curator at Tate Modern. “By the time she Dora Maar, immortalized in Pablo Picasso’s commercial commissions and person- met Picasso, Maar had established herself vibrant Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), al work), paintings, and collages that as one of the most innovative commercial is probably best known as the Spanish demonstrate Maar’s innovative approach photographers of her time; her photo- artist’s lover and muse. Thus the Pari- to constructing images. Dramatically lit, graphs, photocollages, and photomontages sian photographer’s own artistic oeuvre her photographs often feature surreal were beginning to occupy a unique place was, for many decades, in the shadow combinations of objects—a mannequin within the Surrealist movement. Later of her eight-year relationship with hand emerging from of a spiraled shell, a she was prolific as a painter, and many Picasso. Now, 22 years after her death, woman in an evening gown whose head of her canvases were exhibited to critical Maar is receiving the wider acclaim she appears to be a giant, glittery star—that acclaim.” Here’s to her work’s much- deserves with the largest retrospective are just odd enough to provoke both deserved moment in the spotlight. »

of her work ever mounted in the UK, curiosity and revulsion. —RG DESIGNAGENCY. DORA MAAR, UNTITLED (1935), © CENTRE POMPIDOU, MNAM-CCI / P. MIGEAT DIST. RMN-GP, ADAGP, PARIS, AND DACS, LONDON, 2019. MODEL IN SWIMSUIT (1936), THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES, © ADAGP, PARIS, AND DACS, LONDON, 2019. DORA MAAR,

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place in postwar art, architecture, and design and showcasing a selection of more than 100 works by 45 P&D prac- titioners active from 1972 to 1985, the book will be released on November 26. One of its central figures is multimedia feminist artist Miriam Schapiro, whose 1985 piece Heartland, a heart-shaped fabric and acrylic canvas featuring a

INTEL geometric pattern overlaid by intricately embroidered flowers, brings the traditional craft of embroidery into the context of modern art. “These were artists who tru- ly believed in art’s aesthetic pleasures,” says Katz. “They took sincere pleasure in color, sequins, glitter, feathers, arabesque, and quilts. They genuinely approached these objects with love BOOK to reconsider ideas of what constitutes and celebrated their sources and their Pattern Recognition “women’s work.” aesthetics.” Anna Katz, curator at the Museum The book accompanies the exhibition of of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the same name opening at MOCA on Octo- In the late 1970s in America, amid the first became intrigued by the movement ber 27. Here, viewers can see Heartland in fervor of the feminist and Black Power while writing a wall label describing a person, as well as works by Joyce Kozloff movements, the vibrant Pattern and work by P&D artist Kim MacConnel, who and Al Loving. The importance of With Decoration artistic movement took root. often painted brilliantly hued patterns Pleasure is clear, says Katz; both the book Focused on elevating the aesthetic value onto bedsheets. That inspired Katz to and the exhibition recognize “artists who of craft and decorative media such as spend three years researching the move- set themselves the task of rethinking the needlepoint, quilting, and tapestry, ment, culminating in the publication of hierarchies in which they had been indoc- P&D artists—whose ranks included both With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in trinated and who wanted to make an art women and men—challenged traditional American Art (Yale University Press). In- based on inclusion, where more is more.” notions of fine art and asked viewers cluding essays detailing the movement’s —AM/CB

DESIGN Meeting Point

“To innovate and evolve” is not just the guiding mantra of American furniture company Herman Miller—it’s an ingrained practice. Since 1905, the Michigan-based entity has expanded the possibilities of seating with pieces such as the reclining Eames lounge chair and ottoman, Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick’s Aeron chair, and George Nelson’s dot-filled Marshmallow sofa. In October, the brand continues to push the boundaries of design with a pop-up shop that features a selection of pieces from Italian furniture manufacturer Magis, lamps in their own workspaces. British Kelsch. “The relationship between the which Herman Miller has distributed designer Jasper Morrison’s minimalist two powerhouses is epitomized by their exclusively in North America for the past neoclassical-inspired Plato chair, which shared devotion to innovation and crafts- eight years. Taking over the second floor launched at Salone del Mobile this past manship.” Magis’s CEO, Alberto Perazza, of Herman Miller’s New York flagship April, along with French designer Inga agrees: “Among the values [we share] is store through the end of 2019, the Magis Sempé’s tufted Volentieri rugs, will be on a commitment to creating responsible Pop-In includes a series of interactive display alongside other objects. design and a strong belief in design vignettes designed by Swedish firm “Magis and Herman Miller want to authorship.” Seeing both in Note Design Note Design Studio that give custom- express the breadth of Magis’s portfolio Studio’s environment will be a surefire ers a sense of how they can combine in a meaningful way,” says Herman treat. h the company’s tables, chairs, and floor Miller’s marketing director, Jenelle —AM/CB (1977), PHOTO BY EEVA-INKERI, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND DC MOORE GALLERY, NEW YORK. COURTESY MAGIS JOYCE KOZLOFF, STRIPED CATHEDRAL (1977), PHOTO BY EEVA-INKERI, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND DC MOORE GALLERY,

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THIS PAGE: One of the first objects Messgewand ever made. OPPOSITE: A work built by Messgewand for artist Mamali Shafahi, installed at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo in the exhibition City Prince/ sses in June. FIRST LOOK

DON’T LET THE TERM TRASH of a failed vision of society. In proposing— Messgewand’s maximalist artwork, AESTHETICS INTIMIDATE YOU. It through design—their own paradigm which takes the form of sculpture, refers to a new wave of design that’s at within the present neoliberal crisis, the illustration, and other objects, collages once conceptual and cool, deploying a practitioners of trash aesthetics are the together found materials and enhances mash-up of found, fake, and natural ma- contemporary avant-garde.” them with crackpot embellishments and terials, all marinated in pop culture and A relative newcomer to the party is eye-popping color. Usually the process presented in intentionally imperfect forms Messgewand, a collaborative design project results in ludicrous, Frankenstein’s- that mock (or ignore) once-celebrated by French 28-year-olds Romain Coppin monster sort of furniture: consider Dig- industrial processes and their values. (based in Paris) and Alexis Bondoux ital Furniture 13, part of Messgewand’s Favoring an improvisational approach (based in Amsterdam). They met nine Digital Furniture series (2016–18), in over physical appearance, work in trash years ago as students at the École which a barber chair–esque seat in- aesthetics is experimental, aiming to Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués in Burgundy corporates a tie-dyed office chair base, establish new typologies and ways of and went on to earn master’s degrees from a mop-covered headrest, and a silver thinking about design. the Object Design department at Reims’s sink, covered in a flame motif, at its Its best-known perpetrators—Anton École Supérieure d’Art et de Design. “We center. A few months ago, design critic Alvarez, Thomas Barger, Misha Kahn, considered our studies too conventional Glenn Adamson posted a 3D rendering Max McInnis, Katie Stout, and Chris from the beginning,” they tell me in of it to his Instagram with a caption Schanck among them—are mostly email correspondence. Their teachers reading, “Yet another final frontier for millennials who struck out on their own would present design as an industrial trash aesthetics. If they can ever pull Trick or Treat? to create one-off handmade pieces that tool or a defined mental process meant to this off in three dimensions, look out.” respond to a postindustrial world. Trash produce a functional object, they say, and In fact, they have realized such How the French outfit Messgewand hacks the design process. aesthetics practitioners, wrote curator their desire to respond to this message— projects, including a blue mirror-tile-

COURTESY MESSGEWAND and critic Tiffany Lambert in the spring/ and to upend it—brought them together. covered wall lamp (Spectrum, 2018) By TIFFANY JOW summer issue of PIN-UP magazine, “are Coppin and Bondoux founded Mess- shaped like a reusable shopping bag, with now rummaging through the remnants gewand in 2017 and never looked back. a slit at its center for the bulb and an »

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Extremely Handmade by Tufenkian.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Digital Furniture 13 from the Digital Furniture series (2016–18), Spectrum (2018), Myth (2018). FIRST LOOK

anthropomorphic papier-mâché shelf own work critiques both representation (Serial Lover, 2018). Messgewand also and standard systems of production. fabricated furniture designed by artist As their output suggests, Coppin and Mamali Shafahi for City Prince/sses, a Bondoux have long been fascinated with group show at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, ambiguity. Growing up, Coppin fabricated in June. They’ll spend this October at objects from furniture his parents had Alpha. Brussels in Belgium, a residency thrown in the bin, and Bondoux chose program organized by design dealer to study design in college because it Boris Devis. was “midway between art and industry.” But the vagueness around the (Messgewand, in German, means a physicality of their work is intentional: priest’s chasuble; in French, it refers to Messgewand dodges questions about the garish synthetic tank tops worn by whether pieces in the Digital Furniture athletes when training.) They maintain series are merely renderings or were individual design practices, but, as close eventually built. “There is no [further] friends, find it more fun and fulfilling Trying to figure out who did what, explanation—we just need to create every to work together. “[Messgewand] has what a given object is for, or if it’s real or imagined is part of Messgewand’s allure. day, and [if we have] no space to create, we become like a two-headed monster that CLASSIC HERIZ | RUST NAVY build [3D] collage,” they write to me. feeds on our respective aesthetic desires,” Eventually, though, I stopped caring—and “We also use Instagram to blur boundaries: Coppin and Bondoux write. Both take indulged in the fun of simply looking. “We chose questioning the rules [of furniture most people will never see our objects, part in all aspects of a given project from Every rug we sell makes a difference. so we sometimes take advantage of that, conception to production, meet regularly design] as a tool of research to define our mixing real and digital [designs]. But now in France or the Netherlands, and talk own experimental language,” Coppin and EXPLORE THE PROJECTS TUFENKIAN FUNDS AT we want to make, above all, real objects constantly, regularly taking time away Bondoux write. “It’s important to work on Tufenkian Portland Showroom Tufenkian.com/foundation and furniture.” As in everything else it from their own work for periods of self-initiated projects in order to create 515 NW 10th Avenue

does, Messgewand’s dialogue about its intense Messgewand planning. our own radical world.” h COURTESY MESSGEWAND Portland, Oregon 97209 503.212.4569 Tufenkian.com 8 8 8 . 9 0 8 . 3 7 7 3 h e l lo @ Tufenkian.com 40 GRAY

TUFENKIAN_PORTLAND_GRAY.indd 1 8/21/19 4:03 PM FIELDWORK The people, places, and objects in our orbit.

CAMERICH by ALCHEMY ALCHEMY COLLECTIONS 2029 2ND AVE. SEATTLE, WA 98121 2111 1ST AVE. SEATTLE, WA 98121 T. 206.448.3309 T. 206.441.2350 WWW.CAMERICHSEATTLE.COM WWW.ALCHEMYCOLLECTIONS.COM Barbara Kasten, CONSTRUCTS 1981–1982 (2019). PHOTO BY KRISTIAN LAUDRUP, INSTALLATION VIEW, BORTOLAMI, NEW YORK

Gray Full Page Template New.indd 1 8/27/2019 3:58:40 PM GRAY 43 FIELDWORK STUDIO VISIT

ALL IN The design practice Civilization fosters connections and community in Seattle.

Interview by TIFFANY JOW Photographs by AMANDA RINGSTAD

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PREVIOUS PAGE: From left: Gabriel Stromberg, Michael Ellsworth, and Corey Gutch. THIS PAGE: Account manager Raya Leary sits at a desk on the upper level of the studio. OPPOSITE: An installation view of On Display: A Sampling of Graphic Works from the Herman Miller Archives was mounted in the in-studio exhibition gallery Non-Breaking Space. STUDIO VISIT

Michael Ellsworth, Corey Gutch, and Gabriel Stromberg founded Civilization in 2012. The Seattle-based firm’s work—which includes printed materials, environmental graphics, brand identities, digital experiences, and exhibitions—is marked by empathy and the creation of meaningful, memorable connections. Civilization’s Design Lecture Series, Non-Breaking Space gallery, and Beyond This Point podcast underscore its commitment to forging new relationships and inspiring conversation within the creative community. You three have known one another for day of freedom. But then you guys pulled a long time. Tell me how Civilization over, and Michael stuck his head out the came about. window and said, “Are you looking for Michael Ellsworth: Corey and I had a a job?” [design] studio before Civilization, and Gabriel was working as the creative director Just like that, Civilization was born. at [Seattle clothing retailer] Totokaelo. Why did you decide to call it that? Even before that, we all knew one another GS: I remember a specific conversation and lived within a three-block radius where a bunch of us were seated in a of each other. One day, a friend told us circle. We had a sense that this [new studio Gabriel wasn’t working at Totokaelo any- and new name] could be the start of a more, and [then as we were] driving home new phase. We asked everyone what they from work, my wife and I saw Gabriel and were interested in doing. They could have his husband walking down the street. said anything, but everyone was talking about design in the context of social Gabriel Stromberg: It was the first time change. It came up really organically, and in my adult life I’d not had a job, my first that informed the direction we took. »

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GS: When you have people who are personally connected to what they do, intention and accountability come out of that.

I think there are a lot of benefits to having a few people, instead of a single person, at the helm of a studio. STUDIO VISIT How do your individual strengths contribute to making Civilization work? GS: If this was a band, I’d be Christine McVie.

ME: It’s a little Three Musketeers.

GS: I am very aware that we are all What was the name of the studio that end-of-life issues] was about bringing [necessarily] need big budgets and or a different. I think that’s great. At the you and Corey previously ran? people together around a table. We [certain type of] client. same time, we have things we connect ME: Dumb Eyes. Like demise. And now didn’t facilitate that, but we gave people with, and we have very similar visual it’s Civilization. [Laughs] “The demise of the tools to create it themselves. Or our CG: Specifically in the Seattle area, vocabularies and tastes. civilization.” [2017 website and brand identity for the we’ve seen a very real draw to work at multicity showcase of makers] Renegade Amazon right out of school. I know Is one person more practical than the I wonder how you carved out a niche for Craft: that’s empowering small makers all people who’ve taken those jobs, and others, or more of a natural leader? yourselves as the “social change” firm. around the world to create community. they end up working on one thing, like ME: Gabriel is such a strong designer Did you only do projects with clients an interface design, for two years. And because he always thinks about how who fit that bill in the beginning? Did You’re doing work for clients you that’s all they have to show in their things are going to go wrong. Not in a you do pro bono work, or do we just not genuinely believe in. What if I’m a portfolios, so that’s what they get stuck bad way, but like, “How can we prevent know about some of Civilization’s early design company that doesn’t have the doing [in future jobs]. this?” And I’m an eternal optimist. projects? luxury of choosing my own work? Is ME: There was a [definite] shift when there a way for designers to find value ME: It’s such a spectrum, though. GS: There are so many times when I we transitioned our studio into its in any project, even if isn’t necessarily What if you are crippled by student debt, totally lean on your optimism! I think, current state. From the beginning, we for a client that excites them personally? haven’t had the opportunity to go to “Well, Michael seems to think this will set a deliberate course toward the type GS: I think this is a really interesting school, or are thinking about how you’ll work out, so . . .” I might be the eternal of projects we wanted to work on. There question. I feel there are two ways of help someone else? You have to put on pessimist. was also a shift in [our] way of thinking: looking at your profession: there are your own mask first. more focused and supportive of our daily people who see it as a way of paying the CG: And I see harmony! practice, and celebratory of the history bills, and there’s the idea that the work CG: There’s also knowing that the work of graphic design, which is deeply you do is part of the greater vision of you’re doing is part of a larger history. A perfect match. I’m curious if that important to us. how you see the world. You use the word People who aren’t necessarily doing the seamlessness comes through in your luxury, and yes, I feel lucky to do [what work they want [can still] understand process. How do you approach a new Corey Gutch: We [always] evaluate we do], but it took a lot of risk and sacri- that what they’re doing is part of a larger project? whether we believe in what the client fice to position us in a certain place. conversation. Visual communication is ME: This is something we don’t talk is doing, if it is good for the world in an important and valuable practice. about publicly, ever. But our process is some way. We really look at the social ME: We are in a very privileged position really, really refined. change thing as like, Is this client doing in our careers to be able to choose the Does your staff share that level of something that’s destroying the environ- projects we take on. We try our best to investment in their work? GS: We all read books constantly on ment? Is the client doing something leverage this privilege to create work ME: We’re lucky to have such a great [how to best work with clients]. that’s hurting people in some way? Are that can help champion voices that team. They’re doing this because they they creating equity? might not be in the same position. I can’t not do it. I was throwing parties Is your process the same regardless don’t like the words pro bono, but us and making band posters when I was of the client or project? ME: A thread that goes through our doing self-initiated things [is what] got 14; I wasn’t getting paid, I wasn’t think- ME: Yeah. It’s not formulaic, but it THIS PAGE: Views and objects in the work is bringing people together around us to where we are. There was a lot of ing about being a graphic designer. I produces the results we [want]. A lot of studio. OPPOSITE: Staffers at work on topics or bringing them to a physical sweat equity. There was a lot of “Hey, just wanted to throw a party and make it is about consensus-building, because a the studio’s ground floor. place. Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About we believe in this thing, and we’re going a poster. And a lot of [our staff] is that lot of design is a series of decisions. Death [a 2013 project in which they to do it and make it happen.” Everybody way. It’s a very different approach to set up a website to encourage people to who’s in the creative field has the abil- work. There is no work-life balance. CG: Right. [Our clients usually] are going host meals where guests could discuss ity to do similar things, and they don’t through a very sensitive period »

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A collection of Eames furniture on display at Civilization’s in-studio exhibition gallery, Non-Breaking Space.

NY Presented by STUDIO VISIT Oct 16-20 Opening night film: The New Bauhaus World Premiere

Vancouver

Presented by

[of change], and that can be difficult. But CG: If there’s a thread [in our work] [Turns to Ellsworth and Gutch.] Do you Nov 7-10 the design process can be transformative aesthetically, it’s that it’s thoughtful. also feel that a big intention behind so for them. much [of our] community programming is Opening night film: City Dreamers Civilization is one of the few design creating the kind of city we want to see? GS: I remember early on thinking, firms based in the tech-focused city “Wait a minute, imagine how hard this of Seattle. What are some challenges CG: Totally. It’s also about connecting is for them!” That [thought] changed you’ve encountered working in a place people. Think about the Amazon Fresh everything. So we set up a process to that maybe doesn’t fully appreciate store: they’ve [created] this way that be there for the [client] and make sure what you do? you can walk into a grocery store and they always feel supported. Whether ME: I have one, but I don’t know if I not interact with anyone. That’s valued the end product is a website, a logo, or a want to say it. [Pauses.] I think a pro innovation? Is that really the future that print piece, what we provide is the whole and a con of Seattle is that it is fueled we want? Toronto experience of getting there. We’ve heard by innovation. Seattle is such an inno- Presented by from people that working with us is like vative city, from aerospace to coffee to GS: Right. What is the lens of success? therapy—that’s always the best. retail. It’s so infused with technology, adfilmfest.com and sometimes that overshadows ME: What about [the fact] that you can How do you toe the line between other forms of creativity. [The designer get any restaurant food delivered to your ensuring the client is happy and Charles] Eames always said to “innovate house— Nov 14-17 maintaining your authenticity? as a last resort.” Innovation doesn’t GS: That goes back to process. The thing necessarily create human connections. CG: —so you don’t have to leave your Opening night film: City Dreamers we get most excited about is collaboration. Sometimes innovation is [done] for its house! You don’t have to actually live in The hallmark of any project is listening, own sake. And I don’t think we view our the city you’re in. so the measure of our success is “Did we work that way. [We aren’t looking] to do tell the story or connect with the mission something new. ME: We’re pushing against that. We or the audience?” Anything like visual didn’t open a gallery because we wanted aesthetics or doing something that’s GS: Historically, design has been a force to open a gallery. It’s just an extension of beautiful or cool—that’s not even part of the that’s recalibrated the impact of inno- a way we’d like to connect more. h conversation. All of that just happens in- vations. It’s been the thing that’s taken nately. Everything is focused on the client. innovation and made it more human.

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Handmade painted artworks by British designer Faye Toogood that informed CC-Tapis’s Doodles collection. SEAL OF APPROVAL

Shapeshifters French-Italian rug brand CC-Tapis debuts Doodles, British designer Faye Toogood’s playfully collaged collection of art for the floor.

By TIFFANY JOW

CC-TAPIS HAS MASTERED THE business in Strasbourg, encouraged the IRREGULAR SHAPE. Its signature newlyweds to try their hand at his line collections’ audaciously graphic, often of work. “We learned what a rug really is remarkable floor coverings—made by and developed a deep admiration for the design-world royals ranging from Patricia craft,” Cantoni says of the experience. Urquiola, Martino Gamper, and Steven Hooked on rugs, the couple began trav- Holl to up-and-comers Germans Ermičs eling to India, China, and Nepal to better and Mae Engelgeer—feature forms understand how the industry works. (rounded, amoeboid, prismatic) more In 2001, they opened two brick-and- typically seen in abstract art or geometric mortar stores in France: a design concept diagrams than in rugs. But a few months shop that sold furniture, books, and ago it teased a new collection, launching objects, and a rug store that offered floor October 7, with a surprisingly straight- coverings designed and manufactured by forward shape: a rectangle. It’s part the couple themselves. They relocated to of the forthcoming Doodles collection, Milan in 2009 so Cantoni could pursue designed by London-based Faye Toogood. a master’s degree in interior design. But let’s back up: What is CC-Tapis? Post-graduation, the couple chose to Its roots reach back to 1992, when shift their focus from a rug shop to a Fabrizio Cantoni (who is English-Italian) rug brand, and they founded CC-Tapis and his future wife, Nelcya Chamszadeh in 2011 with Daniele Lora, a classmate (who is French), met in Lausanne at of Cantoni’s, aiming to collaborate hotel business school. Once married, with international talent while offering they decided to forego the hotelier route architects and interior designers the and reinvent themselves by opening opportunity to create original rugs for a French-Italian delicatessen in New their projects. York. Before they could depart, though, One of the first things CC-Tapis did Chamszadeh’s father, who had a rug was create a facility to produce its own » COURTESY CC-TAPIS

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Interior With Table, one of six rugs from the Doodles collection.

rugs, establishing an way we work across atelier in Kathmandu different disciplines

SEAL OF APPROVAL where everything is in the studio. We cut done in-house, from our shapes on paper, yarn buying to fin- fabric, and cards— ishing to shaping. some painted, some (CC-Tapis also raw—and created new produces, sometimes assemblies, painting anonymously, floor over the shapes coverings for other again and applying brands.) “We innovate stitches.” in the design—but for The amoeba-esque the craft, we want to paintings, rendered [keep it] extremely in pink, seafoam, and traditional,” Cantoni beige and accented says. “Rugmaking is with lines of burgundy an ancient tradition and black, are decep- that’s been around for centuries, and school graduation. Recently, the initiative tively playful. “While they appear to be we respect that. We don’t work with has expanded to include children from a casual drawing, every detail actually machines. Everything is done by hand.” families outside the atelier, too. has been calculated, from the color to The brand also doesn’t want to change Cantoni met Toogood during the the balance to the use of each individual the rugmaking traditions of its expert 2016 London Design Festival. He re- fiber, all designed to achieve the desired artisans, who belong to a very large members going to her Shoreditch studio effect,” says Lora. After Toogood had community of expatriate Tibetans living and seeing everyone “dressed in white, completed the prototypes, he took them to in Nepal: while CC-Tapis has looms in speaking very slowly, and being very Nepal so he would have color references its facility, most weavers work on looms kind.” “Fabrizio understood immediately as the Himalayan wool used to make in their homes in the style of their how we work with materials and colors each rug was dyed; the selected yarns home country (according to Cantoni, it’s and how our amalgamation of interior, and finishes were approved by Toogood standard for a Tibetan house to have a object, and fashion work,” says Toogood. to ensure authentic recreations of the single large room that serves as living They ended up collaborating on a series original source artworks and to achieve room, kitchen, and lounge, generally of topographic rugs—one of Toogood’s a 3D effect. Each carpet incorporates with a loom in one corner). Production first forays into the medium—that incor- more than 70 colors and six different of a CC-Tapis rug begins in the atelier, porated a variety of quilting, appliqué, yarn thicknesses and pile heights, where the materials—raw Himalayan and stitching techniques. They debuted ranging from smooth to shaggy. wool, silk, and linen—are prepared and the Inventory collection, as they named While the Doodles are independently dyed before they are taken, along with it, in a slam-dunk installation at Milan idiosyncratic, they connect to one a map of the design, to the weavers’ Design Week 2017, placing the rugs on another through their fusion of collage homes to be knotted. The woven rugs the floors and walls among Toogood’s and materiality, and all but one are rect- return to the atelier to be finished, a Roly Poly and Spade chairs at the inau- angular. As if to underscore their origins multiweek process that includes pile guration of CC-Tapis’s new showroom in as artworks, each rug’s name could be COMMERCIAL | RESIDENTIAL | HOSPITALITY cutting, washing, stretching, and drying. Piazza Santo Stefano. mistaken for a painting’s: Interior with CC-Tapis prohibits the use of chemicals October’s Doodles series is far more Table, Reclining Figure, Seated Nude, Wood flooring is more than just a business for us. It’s in our veins. At the core, we or acids, and washes each finished intimate. The six designs began as Winter Still Life. Toogood says she’ll be are a family with 90 years of experience in the wood flooring industry and we piece with recycled rainwater. In 2015, physical artworks composed of layered at CC-Tapis’s Milan showroom for the promise to take that expertise to assist you in the unique “color journey” on which CC-Tapis founded CC-For Education, and collaged painted fabric that collection’s launch. “CC-Tapis has a huge you are about to embark. Our custom planks are a “blank canvas” that can be used to create any floor model you desire, and our design consultants are there to help a nonprofit that provides its weavers’ “played with shapes, colors, and literal respect for a designer’s vision,” she you every step of the way. We strive to be a sustainable and eco-conscious children with education in private doodles,” Toogood says. “It was about says, “translating mini-artworks into company, at the same time always offering unparalleled quality.

schools from kindergarten through high doodling with materials, reflecting the beautiful rugs.” h COURTESY CC-TAPIS

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OPINION Ring of Liars Why you shouldn’t buy knock-off furniture.

By ERIC TRINE Artwork by JESSE TREECE

IN 1990, THE GERMAN R&B GROUP crime, as Interpol defines it, is the knowingly deals in knock-off chairs, MILLI VANILLI WON THE GRAMMY global distribution of counterfeit goods, it’s because those chairs have high AWARD FOR BEST NEW ARTIST. which raises the obvious question: Are signaling value, just as a designer The only problem was, the duo didn’t knock-off furniture companies openly handbag does. And from that point, actually sing its own songs—members and directly operating as crime rings? it’s a race to the bottom: whoever can Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus lip-synced When I clicked on a few targeted provide the signaling value for the all the lyrics. When the deception ads and followed links to various lowest cost wins. surfaced, the group was asked to return direct-to-consumer furniture compa- It’s easy to see how counterfeit goods its Grammy, which it willingly did. It nies, I discovered clean branding and affect the bottom line of the bigger was the right thing to do. The industry convincing copy promising “faithful companies whose goods they knock off— set the standards, and society backed reproductions” of midcentury classics. especially when they appear before the it up. The industry says, “If you play by The problem is, no matter how good real thing in a Google search. However, our rules, the sky is the limit.” That’s these products look, they are knock-offs, it’s more difficult to perceive how smaller, why everyone loves the Olympic Games. and these companies don’t have legal independent companies are impacted by They are bound by global agreements permission to sell them. At least Milli bad actors. Let’s return to the Olympic that combine institutional game rules Vanilli owned the music they didn’t Games metaphor: imagine the smallest (such as court boundaries and permitted sing. I researched one such company, countries in the world come to compete, gear) and social game rules (including Industry West, and found an interview but they are edged off the field by teams sportsmanship). When someone breaks with its founders on the Business of that openly pay off the referees. If legal these rules, it betrays the entire system, Home podcast. The company’s origin policies don’t encourage companies to from the players and referees all the way story in a nutshell: “We couldn’t afford do the right thing, then it is incumbent down to the spectators. No one wants to to buy the chairs we liked, so we went upon us, the design industry, to generate root for the cheaters. on Alibaba.com and found someone who social policy—and encourage healthy, Yet in the world of furniture design, it would make them more cheaply.” Not a robust, and fair competition among seems the same rules don’t apply. Let’s very inspiring tale, but an increasingly all the players. To the design industry say you go to a dinner party at a friend’s common one. How did we get here? and design media, you can start by house and fall in love with their dining In his 2002 book Design and Crime not buying knock-offs or featuring any chairs. You ask for the name so that you (And Other Diatribes), Hal Foster talks companies that deal in knock-offs. Take can go home and shop for them online. about the inflation of design as an outcome the pledge to support authentic design, When you type “Eames shell chair” into of several factors, one being the “general and become a member of the trade group the search bar, the shopping tab turns mediation of the economy.” According Be Original; for the past seven years, the up three knock-offs, one Herman Miller to French sociologist, philosopher, and nonprofit organization has advocated original, and one fake Wegner chair. cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, Foster for authenticity in design and sought Try “Tolix chair”: four knock-offs. Or says, “the Bauhaus signaled a qualitative to educate makers, consumers, and the “Wishbone chair”: all five results are leap from a political economy of the industry at large about the dangers knock-offs! I don’t expect the everyday product, to a ‘political economy of the and ethical pitfalls of dealing in stolen consumer to be able to spot a knock-off sign,’ in which the structures of the intellectual property. To consumers, just by looking at its image or price. commodity and the sign refashioned one allow your self-care values to extend to What I find absolutely outrageous is another, so that the two could circulate your home, and support the companies that businesses are allowed to openly as one, as image-products.” Essentially, that align with your principles. engage in the production and distribu- the object, in this case a chair, is no Fellow industry members, it’s time tion of counterfeit goods, and to target longer an object but a sign. A signal. to up your game. And to the businesses advertising for their fakes (companies We are no longer trading in objects; openly dealing in knock-offs, I say: turn pay to appear first in results for relevant we are trading in signals, for others in your Grammys, and come back when keywords). One facet of organized and ourselves. So when a business you’re ready to sing your own songs. h

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Designed by former research scientist Steve CEILING Holzgraefe, founder and principal of Minnesota- based lighting manufacturer Mnima, the FLOOR TO aluminum Kenal wall sconce lends a muted » elegance to any environment. The space between each module can be customized for a Unexpected materials, including recycled glass, sailcloth, stronger or more subtle glow. mnima.com and molten aluminum, feature in our favorite lighting, surfaces, and finishes of the moment.

By TIFFANY JOW OBJECTS OF DESIRE » Marked by gold and white veining, Cosentino’s Silestone in Et Noir owes its striking appearance to Sahara Noir marble. It features the architectural surfaces brand’s exclusive N-Boost technology, which improves the material’s color intensity, glossy finish, and easy-to-clean surface.

cosentino.com » Bocci’s 44.3 lighting fixture is a smaller version of its predecessor, the 44. Each one is formed by pouring molten aluminum into a large container filled with rocklike nodules of resin-impregnated sand, a waste product of conventional sandcasting. Low-voltage electric- ity runs through the castings, allowing a light Cambria, the American manufacturer of source to be suspended between them without natural quartz surfaces for countertops, showers, the use of cables. bocci.ca flooring, and beyond, is behind the Levven Lazy » Susan. Its swirls of black, gray, and slate are an unexpected addition to any table. Plus, the nonabsorbent material cleans up in a snap with mild soap and warm water. cambriausa.com »

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The design of Cerno’s sculptural Acuo Outdoor sconce, part of its foray into exterior lighting, is derived from a deconstructed three-sided » box. Made from powder-coated metal, the fixture appears to float just above the surface it’s mounted upon. cernogroup.com

Made of a highly resistant porcelain material, Porcelanosa’s Sochi Blanco Pulido, part of the Spanish ceramic tile manufacturer’s Highker

OBJECTS OF DESIRE collection, is a large-format tile fit for both floor and wall applications. It’s available in four variations: cement, stone, wood, and marble- inspired, shown here. porcelanosa-usa.com » »

The wood-inlay motif of Shield, a porcelain stoneware tile that’s part of Ceramiche Piemme’s Soul collection, demonstrates the potential of digital printing technology. Each tile’s surface includes intricate knots and veins, mimicking the characteristics of oak with remarkable attention to detail. ceramichepiemme.it »

Dylan Davis and Jean Lee of Brooklyn-based L&G Studio created the Myrna sconce using sandblasted » art glass sheets (each with a different marbling pattern) and an acid-etched glass globe. The Part of Caesarstone’s Metropolitan collection shade’s elegant curve was informed by the wide- of surface materials, Primordia 4043 quartz brimmed hats sported by 1930s actress Myrna Loy is flexible, nonporous, and scratch- and stain- and other silver-screen stars, resulting in a soft, resistant. Its versatile muted-gray complexion sinuous fixture.ladiesandgentlemenstudio.com » is akin to that of concrete, making it at once industrial and refined.caesarstoneus.com

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Alora Lighting’s Tagliato LED 4 linear suspension lamp combines a matte steel frame, flecked with gold-toned details, and a » quartet of opal glass globes. Each orb, placed

in varying positions throughout the fixture,

appears to rotate in space. aloralighting.com, lumens.com »

Everyone was talking about Trueing’s Cerine collection when it launched during NYCxDesign in May. Made of hand-formed OBJECTS OF DESIRE glass chains, marble, and brass, the fixtures are informed by the humble chains used to

suspend colonial-era chandeliers. Evolving

the chain into both a functional and an aesthetic pursuit, Cerine’s transparent links » are available in smart variations including emerald, topaz, opaque white, and pink, shown here. trueing.co h

French designer Philippe Starck created La Plus Belle for FLOS with Snow White’s Magic Mirror in mind. LEDs are integrated along the border of the oval wall mirror, projecting a soft, elegant light onto its user. usa.flos.com

The aptly named Asteroid, part of Lumicor’s Equinox collection, is formed of 98 percent recycled glass aggregate (mostly crushed bottles » and windows) and bits of reflective mirrored glass, which make each versatile panel literally sparkle. Use them to form partitions, counter- tops, feature walls, ceiling features, or all of the above. lumicor.com

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Noritaka Tatehana, Heel-less Shoes (2018).

oritaka Tatehana’s Fields (2017)—a circle of acrylic and elegance and refinement. Reimagined incredibly arched heel- bronze-red camellia blossoms, a symbol as human-sized sculptures made of less shoes cannot be of life and death in Japan—is informed urethane-coated wood, the magnified purchased in any shop. by his hometown. He studied fine art, objects lose their practical purpose and Standing up to almost 20 Japanese crafts, dyeing, and weaving are rendered purely decorative. Tatehana FASHION inches tall, encrusted at Tokyo University of the Arts, and enlists help from artists skilled in Japanese with gold studs or designed his first pair of leather heelless lacquer (considered the finest in the Swarovski crystals, or made entirely out shoes for his graduation thesis in 2010. world) to create the enormous hairpins. nof glass, the physics-defying accessories, “[At university,] I realized I should Tatehana’s Void Sculptures are a notably worn by Lady Gaga and Daphne pursue the life of a true artisan, rather contemporary take on traditional Guinness, must be custom-made in his than focusing on a career as a fine artist Japanese swords owned by the country’s Tokyo atelier. Customers—those who or designer,” Tatehana says. “It felt like 15th-century warrior class. Inspired by can endure the three-year waitlist—fly this life path would suit my nature better. Japan’s culture of signs and symbols and to Japan and spend at least one week When I create a work of art—whether it is guided by French philosopher Roland with Tatehana, who works with them to a pair of shoes, a sculpture, or a painting— Barthes’s text The Empire of Signs, the collaboratively design a one-of-a-kind I approach it in the same way: with an blades are made from the Japanese steel shoe and tours them through his city emphasis and reliance on the craft.” tamahagane and encased in acrylic. so that they can fully understand the Inspired by takageta (tall wooden Crafted by Kunihira Kawachi, the son of culture and techniques behind his work. sandals worn by oiran, or high-ranking a 14th-generation Japanese swordsmith, Yet, despite the couture nature of his courtesans, during the Edo period, each sword is equipped with a scabbard handmade creations (which are surpris- roughly 1600 to 1868), Tatehana’s heel- and hilt. “[Tatehana] connects himself to ingly wearable; Guinness often sports less shoes transform a 17th-century the lineage of a master craftsman when hers around the office), Tatehana does status symbol into revolutionary stylish he creates his designs,” says Portland not consider himself a fashion designer. stilts. Their abnormal design captivated Japanese Garden curator Laura Mueller. For nearly a decade, he has made the fashion community and became “[Because he realizes] that he doesn’t sculptures using time-honored Japanese Lady Gaga’s red-carpet staple in 2011. have a lifetime to learn the craft of craft techniques, reenvisioning their After appearances in the pop star’s swordmaking, he works with the masters traditional roots to site them firmly 2011 music video Marry the Night of that craft to maintain the excellence of within the context of contemporary art. and a handful of collaborations with the work.” Creating abstract interpretations of Commes des Garçons, Tatehana’s shoes While Tatehana collaborates with antique Japanese hairpins and the began to register as art. The Museum experts on most of his sculptures, he platform clogs worn by 17th-century of Modern Art featured them in its creates his heelless shoes by hand, Japanese courtesans (which inform the much-anticipated 2017 exhibition sometimes soliciting help from an design of his improbable shoes), Tate- Items: Is Fashion Modern?; today, the assistant. Beginning with the shoe’s hana’s meticulous work highlights the Met and the Victoria and Albert Muse- platform, Tatehana hammers nails into beauty in utilitarian objects. um both hold Tatehana’s work in their the bottom of the toe box to anchor the In October, the Portland Japanese permanent collections. only element of the shoe that meets the Garden mounts his first American solo “It’s hard to design something truly ground. Then he hand-carves the shoe exhibition, Noritaka Tatehana: Refashioning new for the fashion circuit,” says Christina along the contours of a men’s insole and Beauty, which showcases Tatehana’s Cacouris, co-curator of the Portland glues the pieces to four three-dimensional heelless footwear as well as never-before- Japanese Garden exhibition, who for- parts that form the shoe’s base. Finally, he seen additions to his Void Sculptures, merly worked as an editor at V Magazine applies the shoe’s custom outsole, pulling an ongoing series inspired by symbols and for British fashion photographer it taut in all directions, and secures it and signs found in Japanese culture, Nick Knight. “And yet, by creating a with glue and water. and his oversized kanzashi hairpin heelless shoe, Tatehana-san created a In a culture of mass-produced, easily sculpture series from 2014. Dispersed new silhouette. By eliminating the heel disposable objects, Tatehana’s elevation throughout the garden’s Tanabe Gallery yet elevating the wearer, [the shoes] of traditional craft seems all the more (located in the Kengo Kuma–designed make a person seem alien at first—like imperative. His attention to detail Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning an ungulated human.” reframes decorative items as artifacts HEAD OVER HEELS Center) and Pavilion Garden, Tatehana’s Refashioning Beauty features more and unearths traditional foundations of pieces are enhanced by their setting’s than a dozen of Tatehana’s platform Japanese culture. “He [doesn’t] want to Tokyo-based designer Noritaka Tatehana incorporates balance of modernity and tradition. heels—including a new pair of baby be a lone success,” says Cacouris. “He Born in Tokyo in 1985, Tatehana grew heelless shoes and “frozen” boots made [wants] contemporary Japanese artists ancient Japanese craft techniques into everything from up just south of the city in Kamakura, of acrylic—in addition to lesser-known and traditional Japanese design to be giant hairpins to heelless platform shoes. surrounded by old shrines, including the works of grand proportions. His kan- seen on a global scale and to reignite renowned Kōtoku-in Buddhist temple. zashi are enlarged versions of Japanese interest in it. In that sense, he’s more than By CLAIRE BUTWINICK Much of his work, including Camellia hairpins that historically symbolized an artist—he’s a cultural ambassador.” » GION; COURTESY NORITAKA TATEHANA

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FASHION

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Heel-less Shoes (2018); Noritaka Tatehana with a work from his Vanishing Point series (2018); a work from his Hairpin series (2018). h I

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Moral Fiber The John Michael Kohler Arts Center explores the life and work of pioneering fiber artist Lenore Tawney through a comprehensive four-part exhibition. By TIFFANY JOW

OPPOSITE: Lenore Tawney, photographed by Yousuf Karsh in 1959. THIS PAGE, FROM LEFT: Whose Number Is Without Beginning or End (1964), and Floating Shapes (1958).

BACKGROUND CHECK present them in Patterson’s re-creation of it. (JMKAC holds the world’s largest collection of artist-built environments and has long promoted their study and preservation; next summer, it will open the Art Preserve, a facility dedicated to such environments, and Tawney’s studio will become a part of it.) According to Patterson, Tawney knew what she wanted. She was particular, intentional, and unapologetic. She loved words, especially poetry and mystical writings; in her journals, she quoted THERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN Tawney—beloved by the craft where a re-creation of the artist’s studio are left unwoven)—to forge monumental Born in 1907, Tawney moved to Chicago Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke and IN 1959 BY ARMENIAN-CANADIAN community, nearly invisible to everyone will be presented alongside objects once abstract, amorphous tapestries that in her 20s to work as a proofreader for Bauhaus artist Paul Klee. A voracious PHOTOGRAPHER YOUSUF KARSH else—is a ripe subject for any museum kept there. Scholar Glenn Adamson hang or float in space, redefining the a court publisher. In 1941, she married student of philosophy, she became OF THE LATE LENORE TAWNEY to explore. In October, Wisconsin’s John chronicles Tawney’s biography in the possibilities of sculpture and textiles. George Tawney, who passed away less acquainted with many religious beliefs (1907–2007). The Ohio-born artist’s Michael Kohler Arts Center will open exhibition’s catalog, and the Lenore G. Often embellished with feathers, beads, than two years later. Newly widowed, from East and West, making repeated sepia hair, pulled into a sensible bun, the last of its four-part exhibition series Tawney Foundation’s executive director, shells, and fringe, Tawney’s weavings she enrolled in art classes at the city’s trips to India to study meditation. accentuates her elegant features—high Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, Kathleen Nugent Mangan, provided exude otherworldliness. “Creation is a Institute of Design and studied under Indeed, she regarded her repetitive, cheekbones, thick brows, wide-set which unpacks the artist’s entire body of overarching guidance. defiance of ordinary verbal communi- its founder, Hungarian Bauhaus artist labor-intensive work as a kind of prayer, eyes—and she rests her chin on her work (the first part opened in August). Despite the project’s all-star cast of cation,” she once said. Take Bound László Moholy-Nagy, and Ukrainian a stand-in for spirituality. “I’m not just folded hands, set atop a wooden rack Patterson, who served as JMKAC’s senior curators, Patterson thinks viewers Man (1957), with its manifest tension be- avant-garde artist Alexander Archipenko. patiently doing it,” Tawney said of the holding spools of thread, seemingly lost curator until June, oversaw the project will still see Tawney as an enigma. tween the downward pull of an abstracted In 1954, she studied weaving under Cloud series. “It’s done with devotion.” FLOATING SHAPES (1958), COLLECTION OF THE LENORE in thought. Before her hangs her work and secured experts from outside the “She was very mysterious in that she figure and a sheer, flimsy backdrop, or Finnish textile artist Martta Taipale at By the 1960s, Tawney had expanded Shadow River (1957), a gauzy tapestry museum to create the most comprehensive didn’t describe what she was doing,” Waters Above the Firmament (1976), the the Penland School of Craft in North her oeuvre to include collage, sculptural whose intricately woven areas contrast survey possible. Mary Savig, curator Patterson says. “She wasn’t not proud last thing she made on the loom, which Carolina. Three years later, she moved to assemblage, and drawing; in the 1970s, with large swaths of loose, nonfunctional of manuscripts at the Smithsonian’s of [her work], but she never explained measures 12 by 12 feet. New York, joining a community of artists she abandoned weaving altogether to weaving that resemble the lines of a Archives of American Art, organized why she did it. She’s only continued People didn’t know what to do with including Robert Indiana, Ellsworth focus on these nontextile media. “I see drawing suspended in space. It’s a Ephemeral and Eternal: The Archive of to be unplaceable.” In the 1950s and Tawney’s work. The art world didn’t Kelly, Peter Voulkos, and Agnes Martin, it as a great distilling,” Patterson says. strange image, juxtaposing traditional Lenore Tawney (on view through March 1960s, when Tawney was creating her get it; the craft world felt it was too who became a close friend. “She went from elaborate, figurative weaving materials with a nontraditional 1, 2020); Shannon R. Stratton, JMKAC’s best-known woven works, art and craft avant-garde. But she kept going, and her She filled her Manhattan loft, a former work to the line. The more in tune she woven work, but its serene subject interim senior curator, traces Tawney’s in America were viewed as mutually ex- persistence proved essential for the fiber sailmaker’s workshop, with furniture was with her practice, the less elaborate doesn’t seem to consider the situation impact on eight contemporary artists clusive—and to many, including Patterson, arts movement, which was undergoing and ceramics by Toshiko Takaezu, along her work needed to be.” unusual. Somehow, it all makes sense. in Even thread [has] a speech (on view that distinction still seems prevalent. Yet in an international revolution in the 1960s with eggshells, animal bones, feathers, The JMKAC exhibitions give equal “Lenore was so beautiful and stunning, through February 2, 2020); JMKAC’s Tawney’s work, the two realms are united. and 1970s. Tawney was someone fiber gold-leaf buttons, and other materials space to all the media in which Tawney and her work was so beautiful and associate curator Laura Bickford exam- Did she think about the difference between artists could believe in. She under- ready to be incorporated into a work. worked and highlight the way that she stunning—there’s nothing to mess with ines Tawney’s Cloud series—suspended them? “Absolutely not,” Patterson says. scored the significance of every thread. “Lenore’s built environment embodied made her creations: by piecing and there. You just leave it be,” says Karen environments made from thousands of “That’s why it was so powerful: she made Everything she did was intentional, even and expressed her lived experiences and weaving visual cues into a larger visual Patterson, a curator at Philadelphia’s hand-knotted threads—in Cloud Labyrinth the work she wanted to make.” as her practice seemed to be guided by the time, place, and culture that influ- narrative. “In a way, the show was easy Fabric Workshop and Museum. “You (on view through January 19, 2020); and Trained as a sculptor and weaver, intuition and instinct. She embodied the enced her work,” says JMKAC’s associate to put together,” Patterson says. “You rarely question what she was doing. Patterson connects Tawney’s work to her Tawney used several techniques—including possibilities inherent in undoing some- director, Amy Horst, noting that the could combine her line drawings with Instead, you end up questioning your workspace through In Poetry and Silence plain weave, gauze weave, slit tapestry, thing extremely structured—fabric woven institution recently acquired hundreds her collage and weavings, and it’d work.

own interpretation of art-making.” (on view October 6 to March 7, 2020), and open-warp weaving (in which threads YOUSUF KARSH, UNTITLED (PORTRAIT OF LENORE TAWNEY WITH SHADOW RIVER ) (1959), COURTESY THE ESTATE KARSH. TAWNEY, WHOSE NUMBER IS WITHOUT BEGINNING OR END (1964), COURTESY OF THE LENORE G. TAWNEY FOUNDATION, NEW YORK, PHOTO: RICH MACIEJEWSKI, 2018, COURTESY OF JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER. LENORE TAWNEY, G. TAWNEY FOUNDATION, NEW YORK, PHOTO: RICH MACIEJEWSKI, COURTESY OF JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER on a loom—and made it personal. of objects from Tawney’s studio and will It’s all the same spiritual practice.” h

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OPPOSITE: The owners of this Anatol Kagan–designed house in Melbourne, Australia, requested that the living room be kept intact during their home’s renovation by local firm Kennedy Nolan. Vertical western hemlock slats reference the home’s midcentury roots. THIS PAGE, FROM LEFT: The dining chairs, chosen by the homeowners, are a 1960 design by Australian furniture designer Grant Featherston. Kennedy Nolan embraced a triangle motif throughout the house.

WHEN ANATOL KAGAN MOVED TO that would cement his name in the squares sitting on a sloping triangular MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, IN 1939, architectural canon. block. We wanted to retain the angles MODERN ARCHITECTURE HAD NOT One such project, built in 1951 near of the home, as well as the footprint, to YET GAINED POPULARITY ON THAT Melbourne’s Studley Park, has served preserve Kagan’s carefully considered CONTINENT. An émigré architect as home base for David and Janine since proportions.” The couple also wanted to originally from Russia, Kagan arrived via 2007. Clocking in at just over 2,000 redesign the kitchen to better accom- Berlin and London and worked at several square feet, the two-bedroom house felt modate appliances, improve flow to established firms before he partnered a little cramped by 2018: over the years, adjacent rooms, and bring in natural with friend and fellow Russian émigré David’s mother, three children, and two light. Outside, they hoped to add a patio Yuri Blumin to form the firm Blumin & Siberian cats had been added to the and a pool to better unite the yard with Kagan. Their collaboration was short- household. The couple loved the history the structure it surrounds. lived, as wartime restrictions soon halted and heritage of their home and had no After consulting with Janine’s brother new construction across the country, but desire to move or demolish and rebuild, and sister-in-law, both architects in the firm’s most lauded building—a brick but it was clear that additional space was Melbourne, the homeowners hired local Modern Midcentury box factory in the Brunswick suburb of a pressing necessity. architecture firm Kennedy Nolan to In deference to architect Anatol Kagan’s original plan for Melbourne—prefigured the local boom “The challenge became how to lead the remodel. “We weren’t seeking in modern architecture, in which Kagan transform the 1950s space into one that to create a 1950s museum but rather their home, a family in Melbourne makes the most of their became a pivotal figure. In 1949, he would meet the needs of our family,” something respectful of the home’s 1950s midcentury house’s modest footprint. launched his own firm, Anatol Kagan & David wrote to GRAY in an email. “The origin,” Janine wrote. Kennedy Nolan had

DEREK SWALWELL Associates, and started to design the central conceit of Kagan’s design is that experience working with heritage houses, By RACHEL GALLAHER flat-roofed, geometrically stacked homes of a flat home consisting of different-sized and founding director Rachel Nolan »

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The homeowners drew inspiration for their kitchen from the full-scale model of Julia Childs’s kitchen at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Kennedy Nolan used a sage-and-white checkerboard tile pattern to honor the era of the house’s construction.

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understood the importance of retaining a favorite perch for humans and felines steel cutout in the streetside house the spirit of Kagan’s original design. alike. It also received a boost of aesthetic number sign, appears around the house “When they were built, these houses inspiration from the full-scale replica of in various forms (a cutting board, a side were incredibly modern for the time,” Julia Childs’s kitchen at the Smithsonian table, a stair railing). Furniture, chosen she says. “We tend to forget that in Washington, DC, which the family, who mostly by Kennedy Nolan’s interiors because we look at them through the previously lived in New York, visited in the team, is neutral and streamlined, with a 1994 lens of the present. They seem old and early 2000s. Its influence is seen in the set of Scape dining chairs by Australian quaint [now], but it was a really exciting pegboard storage on the southeast wall designer Grant Featherston tucked time in [history]. There was an energy and the open shelving. A George Nelson into a Carrara marble dining table by and positivity for the future back then.” Ball clock takes pride of place—it has been Antonio Citterio. Nolan notes that the It was also a time when people on display in every house the couple has bold graphics and wooden details cap- generally lived in smaller houses. To give lived in since they were married in 2005. ture the midcentury DNA of the house, the homeowners the space they needed, Taking a cue from the property’s while the contemporary furniture helps Nolan expanded one end of the house native plants and the homeowners’ the overall look remain fresh rather to add a third bedroom and a powder penchant for sagey greens, Nolan used than antiquated. room. The kitchen and dining area were corresponding hues as accents in paint “A lot of people aspire to more, more, better connected by the removal of a and tile throughout the house and more,” says Nolan. “But this family door and the expansion of the opening complemented them with warm-hued recognizes that what they have is very between the two rooms. The kitchen vertical wooden slats in the hallways, special. They feel like custodians of the 2019 A FIVE GENERATION FAMILY LEGACY. gained square footage as well as a new living room, and kitchen. A recurring architecture, so we helped them make

banquette that, according to Janine, is triangular motif, most prominent in a this house the best version of itself.” h DEREK SWALWELL

72 GRAY FIELDWORK

Give and Go A Boston-based art collective uses art and design to FROM LEFT: New Craft Artists in Action, an international artists’ collective, promote inclusivity on the basketball court. painted this basketball court in Boston’s Harambee Park to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the invention of basketball. The court’s mural, Courting By RACHEL GALLAHER the Sky, pays homage to New Bedford, Massachusetts’s history as a whaling town. A net knit by NCAA founder Maria Molteni hangs in Los Angeles. POWER

DURING THE WINTER OF 1891, including athletics, crafts, public-space knitted nets for empty basketball hoops net-less hoops that brought attention to the creative agency Ill-Studio, and the slightly smaller court at Talbot Middle JAMES NAISMITH, an instructor at aesthetics, labor, recreation, and feminism. at the courts where she and her friends neglected public spaces. athletics giant. “A few others started School in Fall River, Massachusetts, on Massachusetts’s Springfield College (then The group, which has an open and con- played. Soon afterward, Molteni enlisted Molteni, who studied oil painting doing court projects, but mine was the books for October. Next year, it will known as the International YMCA Training stantly shifting membership, is now several artist friends, including Andrea in college (and taught herself other deeply rooted in the collaborative, be part of a group show, To the Hoop, School), took two old peach baskets and employing art and craft techniques— Evans, Samantha Fields, and Taylor skills, including fiberwork, to expand community-focused social practice of at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at mounted them on the balcony railings such as mural work, knitting, crochet, and McVay (“They were better at knit and her practice), had always wanted to NCAA. We design dynamic systems for the University of North Carolina at at each end of the school’s gymnasium. macramé—to shift perceptions around the crochet than I was!” she says), looking to step beyond nets. “I was dying to paint pulling in neighbors’ ideas and visions Greensboro. Opening February 1, the In an effort to keep his restless students often male-dominated, intimidating space turn the solo venture into a participatory, a whole court,” she says. At the time, that are less sterile and administrative presentation will explore the history, active during the cold, dark New England that is the basketball court. social, collaborative project. The trio she continues, it was difficult for young than town hall meetings.” style, and drama of basketball and show- winter, he invented a game that involved “Basketball was a huge part of my came up with an official name, New Craft women to break into the world of mural Since their launch, the NCAA has case work from more than 20 artists, two opposing teams, each trying to move childhood and teenage years,” says Artists in Action, as a riff on the National painting, so she turned her attention painted four courts and installed including Jeff Koons, Hank Willis a leather ball down the court and toss Molteni. “I played for 10 years growing Collegiate Athletic Association. In March to landing a yearlong artist’s residency hundreds of nets in more than 50 cities Thomas, and Lorna Simpson. it into one of the baskets. Over the 128 up in Nashville, where I was competing 2014, the group wrote, illustrated, and with the city of Boston, where in 2016 around the world (its book has encour- While the sport has come a long way years since its inception, basketball has against the daughters of men my dad self-published a knit and crochet manual, she pitched a community- aged other artists to knit nets for towns from the days of peach baskets, the become commercialized and monetized played football against in high school. It’s Net Works: Learn to Craft Handmade inspired full basketball court design. and villages). They’ve also partnered NCAA is making strides to revive the to the point where its founding ideals— a dominant culture there, especially in Nets for Empty Basketball Hoops in Your “They took a chance and gave me with organizations including Queer Sport hopeful, participatory spirit of its roots. including sportsmanship, creativity, and the parochial school system, where even Neighborhood, featuring original basket- permission to do it,” she says. “And it Split in Croatia, the Office of Culture and “We want to create small and large community—sometimes seem obscured the nuns would play pickup games after ball net patterns submitted by artists worked!” The resulting project, realized Design in the Philippines and the US, interventions that inspire players to re- amid the glitz of sneaker deals, college class, rosary beads and veils flying about! across the United States. in collaboration with kids from the and Kosmologym in Denmark and the consider the varying creative potentials athlete superstars, and multimillion- I was a tomboy who played five or six “We were definitely inspired by the Boston Centers for Youth & Families US to create art-and-craft-based inter- of the game and to welcome folks, like dollar contracts. different sports, but I was also creative feminist yarn bombing trend as a reaction community program and the peewee ventions in underutilized recreational girls and women, queer and trans people, One person who hasn’t let the old and emotional, which didn’t always jibe to the territorial, male-dominated history basketball community, transformed the spaces. The group’s most recent project, who may not have felt comfortable in tenets fade is Boston-based artist Maria with intense sports culture.” of graffiti,” Molteni says. “But we wanted city’s Harambee Park basketball courts a 10,000-square-foot basketball court in these spaces in the past,” Molteni says. Molteni, who in 2010 founded New Craft Looking to bridge the gap between to make something more conceptual with vibrant patterns and colors that the historic whaling city of New Bedford, “Public space is also a very important Artists in Action, an artists’ collective her athletic and creative sides, Molteni that went deeper into our regional encourage play and inclusivity. Massachusetts, includes classic quilting component of this. We want to empha- that uses exhibitions, workshops, launched what she thought would be history and addressed pop culture and “This was around the time that Nike motifs that Molteni has redesigned into size the freeform joys and complexities community projects, and publications to a singular project, called Molteni Net consumerism, as well as the importance did the Pigalle court,” says Molteni, her own original patterns and whale tails of playing in public spaces, versus the showcase the skills, materials, and his- Works, in 2010. She started making of utility in the history of craft.” It referencing the colorful Paris court marking the free-throw line, and it was obsession with corporate, professional

tories of many intersecting disciplines, brightly colored, intricately patterned was also a creative solution for empty, JESSE ABBRUZZESE. JOHN MACIEL. MARIA MOLTENI cocreated by French fashion brand Pigalle, finished over the summer. NCAA has a athletic spectatorship.” h

74 GRAY GRAY 75 J GEIGER S HADING THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING Lisa Picard’s quest for spatial alchemy, Julie K. Stein’s influence on Seattle’s revamped Burke Museum, and French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel on being liberated by art.

SIMPLY MODERN

Motorized shades with no visible wires or screws. Thoughtfully designed to accentuate architecture. Barbara Kasten, CONSTRUCTS 1981–1982 (2019). Expertly installed for a precision fit. PHOTO BY KRISTIAN LAUDRUP, INSTALLATION VIEW, BORTOLAMI, NEW YORK

844-543-4437 [email protected] jgeigershading.com GRAY 77 THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

THE PLACE

MAKERAs president and CEO of commercial real estate investment firm EQ Office, Lisa Picard finds profitability in bringing people together.

By BRIAN LIBBY Portraits by LEVI MANDEL

78 GRAY GRAY 79 t took Lisa Picard to turn her MIT master’s degrees in urban a mausoleum into a people planning and finance to seek public good magnet. through investment of private capital. And So it seemed, at least, on in the male-dominated, profit-obsessed a recent Monday morning commercial real estate market, she’s not at the Exchange Building, a breaking glass ceilings—Picard is figura- historic 22-story Seattle office tower tively and literally taking down walls. Ithat, for all its Art Deco style, has always “She’s grown to become an individual seemed cursed. Built for the Seattle who is fearless in taking smart risks,” Stock Exchange, it opened in 1930 just says Barbara Swift, the landscape as the Great Depression began, and the architect and urban designer who heads exchange promptly folded. Utility and Seattle’s Swift Company and has worked government agencies filled the tower with Picard on numerous projects over for many years, but despite its gilt-and- the past 12 years. “She understands that bronze lobby, the Exchange still felt like something deeper goes on when you’re the ultimate old-school office building. intentional about making places that Devoid of natural light and closed off from people connect with at a visceral level. the street, it was not a place to linger. When you do that, you fundamentally Yet after a renovation (completed in change communities and cities.” September) that was developed by the Picard is going for what she terms Picard-led real estate investment firm spatial alchemy, in which elements of EQ Office and designed by Seattle’s SkB the public and private realm merge Architects, the Exchange, at last, feels like “and something magical happens,” as a gathering place. “We wanted to create she says in an EQ Office promotional places to sit and convene,” Picard explains video. Today’s workplaces need spaces from a cozy booth in the new Bar Taglio for what she calls the Four Cs: concen- at the Exchange, which, as a key part tration, collaboration, convenience, and of her vision, looks out onto a newly community. The ground floor is the key, glass-ensconced ground-floor hallway. because it can essentially host any C. In the past, she’d noticed that hundreds “Today we don’t know buildings by the of people walked through the hall each shape of their upper towers or the names day, many coming from the nearby ferry that developers give them,” Picard says. terminal and using the passage only as “We know them by our experience on the shelter from the rain, never pausing to ground plane.” look around. Adding cafés and eateries But it still takes a special kind of with big communal tables “was a way to leader to not only see the future, but create eddies in the stream,” Picard says, also build the consensus necessary to “so people can feel a part of this building.” get there. “I’ve watched her in numerous The change was so dramatic that some meetings, and she has this well-honed entering the renovated building for the method of instilling confidence in people first time actually thought they were in and getting past the rift points,” says the wrong place. SkB Architects founding partner Kyle And that’s really the point. Gaffney. “So many [plans] are still Whether it’s breathing new life into wrapped around old development models. classics such as the Exchange and When that starts to change, there’s a Chicago’s iconic midcentury modern lot of fear. Lisa comes in and says, ‘This Willis Tower (originally the Sears Tower) is what we’ve got to do because it’s the or conceiving from-the-ground-up offices right thing. Trust me.’ She does it with such as 400 Fairview in Seattle’s bur- research and she does it with passion. geoning South Lake Union neighborhood It’s that fine balance—I marvel at how (a.k.a. Amazonia), Picard doesn’t simply she does it.” string together successful projects that Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, return on investment. Her leadership Picard grew up a curious, enthusiastic emphasizes tenant and visitor experience; tomboy who built miniature cities in she’s satisfying the kid in her who, early her backyard and met her first celebrity, on, realized that the size of sidewalks Steve Garvey, as a Dodger bat girl. She shaped how she felt. She’s drawing upon sailed through school, but just after »

80 GRAY GRAY 81 THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: An installation of 7,000 hanging disks by artist Jacob Hashimoto greets visitors to the renovated Willis Tower in Chicago, a project overseen by EQ Office. Located in Los Angeles, EQ Office’s Playa District is informed by SoCal culture and offers tastefully optimized workspaces. OPPOSITE: The EQ Office–designed 100 Summer in Boston’s Financial District is 32 stories tall and features 1.3 million square feet of office space. » COURTESY EQ OFFICE. CHRIS OZER. MING THOMPSON

82 GRAY GRAY 83 receiving her undergraduate degree at was unlike anything else in the boom- multistory retail atrium Catalog. “She Cal Poly Pomona and getting accepted ing tech-focused business district. “The definitely wanted to humanize it,” says to MIT’s graduate school, she lost both problem in South Lake Union was that Gaffney, whose firm collaborated with parents. Difficult as it was, overcoming people were bringing the suburbs into the Gensler on the project. the tragedy gave Picard what she calls city,” Picard says. “They’d think of the Picard is calmly, confidently char- a newfound sense of empowerment: she ground floor as an afterthought, a ismatic, but under that surface lies a felt she was “not beholden to anyone, so necessary evil. But they weren’t seeing delightfully nerdy enthusiasm. At work, [I could] speak [my] mind.” the concept of dynamic value, of setting she uses jargon like “actionate” and After grad school, Picard made her the identity for where people want to “optionality” while relating stories about way up the commercial real estate be. Which components of the neigh- neuroscience, and her way with sound ladder, coming to Seattle in 1998 as a borhood—of Seattle’s neighborhoods in bites makes the complex clear. “Software project manager for spec-office developer particular—can we bring into the work is the culture of the organization and Hines. After stints for venerable Seattle environment?” hardware is the real estate that runs urban office developer Harbor Properties The first thing a visitor encounters at it,” she says in one online lecture. But and Tucson-based Canyon Ranch Resorts 400 Fairview, even before reaching its she’s not all work and no play. As an (including development of the company’s entryway, is a covered outdoor seating enthusiastic cyclist who racks up scores first residential community, in Miami area with long communal farm tables of miles each ride, she might show up Beach), Picard returned to Seattle in and adjacent beer taps. Inside, a small at a café for a meeting in Spandex. Her 2006 to form her own company, Muse lobby gives way to a market hall with social media accounts reveal a foodie Development, where her four-year run a florist, juice vendor, bakery, bar, and and lover of the outdoors as much as a of small infill projects attracted the Asian grocery, collectively inspired not real estate CEO: a 100-mile bike race interest of Skanska, the development only by Pike Place Market and Seattle’s in Ketchum, Idaho; hiking in the North and construction group. She joined as Capitol Hill neighborhood, but also by Cascades; or hosting friends at her an executive vice president in 2011, Picard’s travels to market halls in Copen- second home in West Sonoma County, attracted by the chance to impact a wider hagen and New York. The market hall California—the square footage of which, array of projects. is coupled to three huge skylights and perhaps appropriately, is largely devoted Though the city is now perhaps best a multistory atrium that bathes the hall to outdoor gathering spaces. known for its architectural trophies, and the building’s podium in natural Yet it’s still clear Picard’s career is from the Space Needle to the Amazon light. The tower above narrows as it rises, more than a career. It’s a chance to make a Spheres (the latter, closed off to the so every worker is near a window. real impact by leading the transformation public except for two days a month, is The success of these projects prompted of our workplaces in a time when work perhaps the ultimate anti-Picard proj- Blackstone subsidiary EQ Office to hire and leisure hours are increasingly ect), it’s another Seattle landmark that Picard in 2016: first as its San Francisco– blurred. Today, because technology most inspires her: Pike Place Market, based COO and then, just under a year allows us to work anywhere, our offices an emporium of fresh fish and produce later, as CEO, based at her request in have to compete with the amenities vendors ringed with small eateries that Seattle. Like her Skanska move, it was a offered by our homes and neighborhoods. enjoys a continuous flow of visitors from chance to impact more projects in more That’s something Picard figured out far all walks of life. cities (EQ has offices in 11). In trans- earlier than most. In 2014, Picard led Skanska’s devel- forming tired existing office towers into “We used to build buildings as a opment of what she calls “Lisa 1.0”: the welcoming, open 21st-century spaces, statement and a monument to the LEED Platinum–certified headquarters Picard is doing work that’s inherently corporation, because the corporation had of athletic-apparel brand Brooks Sports more sustainable than new builds. In to impress upon its clientele that it had in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. Seattle, her portfolio has included not longevity, that it had strength, that it had Convincing the company to relocate only the Exchange but the US Bank Centre power,” Picard says from the Exchange from the suburbs and build next to the at 1420 5th Avenue and 999 Third. In lobby, which is now only one part of an trailhead for a popular running route, San Francisco, she’s tackled projects array of public gathering spaces down- Picard envisioned an outdoor plaza that such as One Market Plaza, whose two stairs and upstairs for carrying out any would draw in the neighborhood instead office towers are served by more than of her Four Cs. “Today it’s really about of building to the property line. Open 52,000 square feet of retail space. the generation of ideas. And to generate since 2015, the plaza has become a pop- A crown jewel in EQ Office’s portfolio ideas, you need to attract talent who ular gathering spot for runners’ groups, is Chicago’s Willis Tower, which was believe they can be a part of something.” and the building itself has attracted the world’s tallest building from 1973 It’s almost as if the Exchange’s name, top-notch talent. to 1998 and has now undergone a $500 after the building’s transformation by Later that same year came “Lisa 2.0”: million-plus renovation. An expansion Picard’s team, now refers to the historic South Lake Union’s 400 Fairview, which of its ground floor includes the adjacent structure’s future more than its past. h

84 GRAY GRAY 85 THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

The new Burke Museum building, designed by Seattle firm Olson Kundig, is clad in slats that reference the shingling seen on the traditional houses of Washington’s Native peoples.

Breaking Barriers SEATTLE’S BURKE MUSEUM IS SPEARHEADING A SHIFT IN THE WAY NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS ARE DESIGNED. THE RESULT: EXPANDED ACCESS FOR ALL. By RACHEL GALLAHER Portrait by NATE WATTERS RACHEL ORMISTON; COURTESY BURKE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY & CULTURE

86 GRAY GRAY 87 Julie K. Stein, executive director of the Burke Museum, stands between rows of specimen storage in the institution’s newly constructed building. n the wall near the door of Julie K. Stein’s and uses an inside-out model to completely transform the way third-floor office in Seattle’s Burke Museum patrons experience the institution. Ultimately, after storage of Natural History and Culture hangs a and cooling-system needs were considered, the museum signed picture by nature photographer Paul decided it would be both easier and more cost-effective to opt Bannick. It shows a cluster of fuzzy gray for new construction rather than a renovation. “A natural juvenile snowy owls, two looking at the history museum is even more important today than it ever camera with sleepy yellow-green eyes, an- has been,” Stein says. “We live in an urban world, and people other two burying their heads among the fluff of their siblings, are so disconnected from their food and from the plants and and one—nestled in the middle of the bunch—completely on its animals they depend on. We have a responsibility to help side, head poking out, eyes closed in peaceful sleep. You can’t reestablish that connection.” ohelp but smile at the oddball; there’s always one member of The Burke’s roots stretch back 140 years to a group of four any family who’s just a little off. Stein points out the picture to Seattle teenagers who started collecting specimens me as I leave her office after a recent visit. (shells, rocks, plants, seeds) as their city rapidly developed “Those chicks remind me of Burke staff members, and the around them. Calling themselves the Young Naturalists’ Society, whole process of the move,” Stein says with a laugh. She’s club members sought to preserve samples of the natural served as the institution’s executive director for the past 14 world for scientific study (even though the students were not years and was its curator of archaeology before that. She’s professional scientists) and as educational tools. In 1885, the spent the afternoon showing me around the Olson Kundig– YNS raised enough money to erect a small building to house designed building that will house the 134-year-old natural history their collection on the University of Washington’s original museum, due to reopen on October 12. “I love the quirky one campus in downtown Seattle. Fourteen years and a move to going sideways—so many people occasionally go sideways.” the present-day campus later, the state legislature designated Stein, a geoarchaeologist who’s spent more than four the building as the Washington State Museum. In 1962, it was decades in academia and is best known for her research on renamed in recognition of a bequest honoring Seattle Judge shell middens (prehistoric garbage heaps that represent Thomas Burke, who, along with his wife, Caroline McGilvra thousands of years of Native communities’ histories), has Burke, was among the earliest non-Native collectors of North- an open conversational style and a warm sense of humor. She west Native art. laughs easily and explains scientific concepts and terms without The museum has always been a popular destination for both a hint of hubris or condescension. (When I make the gaffe of UW students and the community at large. I remember visiting mixing up archaeology and paleontology, Stein corrects me, but the Burke on a class field trip the year we studied Washington then smiles widely and assures me it’s a common mistake. My State history, and my mom took me there to see dinosaur Jurassic Park–loving childhood self was still ashamed.) bones on rainy days. Similarly, architect Tom Kundig, design Stein’s approachability is at the heart of the Burke Museum’s principal at Olson Kundig and on the Burke Museum project, new home, a multilevel 113,000-square-foot building erected has fond memories of spending time at its café during his on the northwest corner of the University of Washington years studying architecture at UW. So, when the University of campus just yards from its now-demolished predecessor. The Washington made an open call for design proposals, he jumped result of 10 years of planning and 40 months of construction at the chance. Chosen from more than 75 global firms, Olson (there was a 12-month pause during the move from the Kundig presented a design approach that aligned squarely with previous building), the Burke bucks the traditionally siloed Stein’s progressive vision. “This is the first UW campus building design of museums—exhibits up front, labs and offices hidden for me,” Kundig says. “The firm has a history of designing to to the sides and down below—and opens up behind-the-scenes bring the inside out and the outside in. [So, for the Burke,] we aspects to visitors by locating the labs and specimen storage created transparency, not only between the interior spaces, rooms as prominently as the exhibitions. It is expected to set but also between the interior and exterior. From most places the standard for natural history museums around the world. inside the museum, you can actually see outside—there’s a “The old museum was essentially a box in a box,” Stein constant dialogue about the Northwest.” explains. “The inner box was the exhibition area, to which For Kundig, maintaining transparency while also protecting visitors had access. The outer box and entire lower floor held artifacts—some of them tens of thousands of years old and sen- the collections not on display, the workrooms, and the offices. sitive to light, temperature, and touch—was the biggest puzzle But without fail, every time I gave a tour, people were blown of the design process. “We had to figure out how to protect this away when we got to the behind-the-scenes areas.” Eventually priceless collection while also keeping much of it on display,” Stein tired of watching the church-and-state sort of separation he says. But there were other issues to solve as well: problems that prevailed among museumgoers, scientists, and academics. at the old Burke, aside from physically disconnected spaces, “I feel it is important for people to see all of the work that goes included a lack of air conditioning, insufficient bathrooms, a into creating the displays,” Stein says, “and to make information dearth of space for the ever-growing collection, and an absence accessible to everyone, not just a small group.” of cooling backup, disastrous should the museum ever lose In 2008, when serious conversations about a possible ren- power. “Tissue samples must be kept at minus 80 degrees ovation for the Burke began, Stein saw her chance to pursue Centigrade to stop them from decomposing,” Stein says. “We a new kind of museum: one that embraces full transparency once had a short power outage that had us scrambling to buy »

88 GRAY GRAY 89 dry ice to keep samples cold. Four days jury-rigged various modes of transport, It should be noted that the new building without power and we could have lost an ferrying most items in wheeled cabinets was paid for in part through Washington entire collection.” that they pushed along a gently winding State tax dollars (about 50 percent) and Olson Kundig is no stranger to museum asphalt road between the old building private donations (about 30 percent), design: the firm’s roster includes the and the new one, but some objects, making it a largely people-funded Kindermuseum des Jüdischen Museums such as a 2,000-year-old glass perfume project—all the more reason to provide Berlin in Germany and Seattle’s Frye Art container from Cyprus, were taken over expanded access to the public. Museum and Wing Luke Museum of the by hand, with spotters to verbally guide Stein hopes the new setup will Asian Pacific American Experience. Yet each carrier. “The T. rex came flying encourage visitors to stop and ask this was the first time it had to take into over here,” Stein says with a laugh and questions, and scientists to pause and account 12 working labs and thousands a look hinting that perhaps its journey engage with the community. She has of tissue samples. “I call our approach was a little too quick. The final object seen the benefit of this approach in the [to the Burke] a Swiss cheese strategy,” moved from the old building into the past: three years ago, Pacific Islander Kundig says. “It has important openings, new one was the first and (so far) only students enrolled in UW’s Research but also protective walls where needed.” dinosaur fossil ever found in the state Family program (who take courses The resulting building, constructed by of Washington: a partial left thigh and conduct independent study at the Skanska, is a modern, easy-to-navigate bone of a theropod dinosaur, the group museum) studied with Dr. Holly Barker, rectangle in a palette of steel, concrete, of two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs who specializes in sociocultural anthro- and wood. Inspired by traditional Coast that includes Velociraptor, T. rex, and pology. One assignment asked students Salish longhouses, Kundig topped the modern birds. to pick an object in the Burke’s Oceania building with a shed roof (the structure During my visit, I experienced the Contemporary Cultural collection, snap slopes slightly, following the downward power of Stein’s inside-out museum a picture, and take it home to show trajectory of the natural topography from model, pausing to watch as a group of older family members. “We had such an its north to its south end) and clad the scientists surveyed the fast-tracked T. rex incredible response from the relatives,” exterior in Kebony slats (a sustainable skull in one of the labs. Viewing scientific Stein says. “We actually had some of product made of pine) that reference the research in action is incredibly dynamic; them come in and tell us more about the shingling seen on traditional houses of we’re so used to models and samples objects, things we didn’t know [like how Washington’s Native peoples. Inside, the and specimens that sit static under they were used or made]. Decades ago, spaces are streamlined, and visitors can glass or behind a barrier that it’s easy to only curators had permission to grant see from one end of the building to the forget the hours of research and careful access to the collection—now anyone other (and out the end windows), a vast restoration that go into preserving each who asks is given permission. This improvement on the old cramped and one. The Burke has become publicly space is open to the community, and no mostly windowless exhibition spaces. accessible in a way that seems truly new. one will be denied.” h The new building boasts a central stairwell, with steel guardrails crafted by Skanska, that allows natural light to spill down into the interiors. The shell was kept minimal (“Tom left all the ductwork and electrical showing,” Stein notes, “and it just works!”), and each of the three main levels has 20-foot ceilings and a perimeter lined with glass-walled offices, labs, and workspaces. “The collection is the reason you’re going to the museum,” Kundig says. “The architecture becomes a rational container that frames the specimens. We didn’t want to compete with them.” THIS PAGE: The Burke Museum holds more than 9,000 woven baskets; many of them can be traced Packing and moving the specimens to regional Native tribes. OPPOSITE: Thanks to was a years-long and at times harrowing the museum’s open design, visitors to the Burke project. The Burke holds more than 16 have a front-row look at of-the-moment scientific research and artifact restoration. million objects, including taxidermied animals, shells, fossils, and more than

RACHEL ORMISTON; COURTESY BURKE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY & CULTURE 9,000 woven baskets. Staff members

90 GRAY GRAY 91 THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

SAVING GRACE How art liberated Jean-Michel Othoniel, over and over again.

As told to TIFFANY JOW JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL, ALFA (2019). PERMANENT INSTALLATION IN THE LAGOON OF NATIONAL MUSEUM QATAR, DOHA. ARTWORK © OTHONIEL (PAGES 82- 83)

92 GRAY GRAY 93 As a student in the 1980s, Jean-Michel Othoniel worked as a guard at the Louvre. In May, the institution mounted Jean-Michel Othoniel: La Rose du Louvre, an exhibition of his work on view through February 2020 that marks the 30th anniversary of I. M. Pei’s addition of a grand glass pyramid to the museum’s courtyard. For the show, housed inside the Cour Puget, the French artist, 55, created skillful paintings of flowers, but he’s best known for his work in glass: enchanting, monumental chains of colored beads. Arranged into giant necklaces, they’ve been suspended in space at New York’s Perrotin gallery (which represents him), draped across the entrance of Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and strung in water-spouting coils in Le Nôtre’s gardens at Versailles. Often his work is an oxymoron: at once big and fragile, baroque and austere. On the occasion of the artist’s first English-language monograph, Jean-Michel Othoniel (Phaidon), out this fall, GRAY spoke to the artist to understand the significance of the tensions in his work, and the life experiences that have shaped his art.

come from a family that was not was, on the one hand, very positive: I art-oriented, but my mother was had a lot of very young artists [such a teacher, and at the time we as Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, lived in the coal-mining town of and Annette Messager] as my teachers, I Saint-Étienne, a communist town. [while other schools] were very classical The Saint-Étienne museum—second to and had students learning directly from only the Centre Pompidou for modern master [artists]. Our school, with the art in France—invited young people from young artist-teachers, was a prototype of state schools to visit, and Wednesdays what art school is today. were a free day for students. I remember Bad things were happening in the this vision of the museum as a place world at that time, too: AIDS was terrible, for freedom, where you could express and I lost a lot of friends. The art world yourself and enjoy a generation of young was touched by the crisis in France people full of ideas. Our town was quite because at the time we didn’t know how depressed at the time, as the mines were you could become ill. It pushed me into closing and people were losing their jobs; my [craft]: all those years in school, I it was the end of the glory years. was totally obsessed by this frightening So the museum was fantastic. It illness, and it pushed me to focus on my [forms in somewhat the same way] as brought me hope and joy. At the same artwork as a sort of spiritual experience. obsidian—so I had this idea to transform time, it was not an easy type of museum: It was like art saved me again—it first one material into another. I went to a it was focused on the [contemporary art saved me as a child from having a very research center in Marseille to ask if of the] 1970s, with artists coming from normal, simple life in a town with no they could help me do this. They agreed. all over the world to live and work there, culture, and then it saved me again from We realized three small sculptures, and and they made these amazing sculptures. not becoming ill as a young man. It’s how it was such a fantastic experience in I saw [British sculptor] Tony Cragg, and I survived. itself—I had to work with a lot of different [American artist] Robert Morris when he In my early work, I went through a people, and it was a way to get out of the did his first show—I was 10, and he was mourning period and used materials loneliness of my studio and come out [much older], so he was like a big brother that were not easy to work with. The of this period of mourning. The glass to me. This is where I was lucky: it was presence of the body was so strong in my changed my life, my way of working, and a really cutting-edge museum that was work at that time. At some point, later in the work itself. changing the rules of art, and we learned my career, I decided to give back what I I never wanted to be a glassblower, these concepts as children. [We learned] had received. I had to make [my artwork] but I wanted to work alongside those about artists who used objects found more joyful and transcendent for people; fantastic craftsmen, with their amazing on the beach, or garbage, or [materials] I had this idea of transcending suffering. capacity to express my ideas. It was coming out of a factory, as their medium. If you look at the first 10 years of my important for me to be close to them It showed us that anything is possible. It work now, you can see traces of hope—it’s [while they worked], to look at the way was like the artist could change the des- a mirror [image] of what it is today. they blew and understand the technical tiny of the object. The experience showed My first work in glass was in obsidian— part of production. Today, glass is in me a way of being different, and how to natural volcanic glass. I was going to a fashion, but at the time I was one of the make art with this idea of trying to make volcano on Stromboli to find sulfur to few artists who took the time to learn the world a better place. work with, and I discovered this other the techniques and understand what My education at France’s École material, obsidian. The people who is possible and what is not. What I love nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy lived there told me that pumice stone ARTWORK © JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL, COURTESY PHAIDON most are accidents that occur when »

Jean-Michel Othoniel, The Necklace Tree (L’arbre aux colliers) (2003). 94 GRAY GRAY 95 Jean-Michel Othoniel, The Big Wave (La grande vague) (2017). they’re doing something: what they see and I use them to communicate my ideas project, I have to travel to the location [inherently] political. That’s why I love 1990s. So when I started to do glass in the This is interesting for an artist working as a mistake is, for me, an enchantment. to my team, which helps me to translate before I start working: if I do a project in to do big [public] artworks: it’s a way to 1990s, it was like taboo to see something today: to be simultaneously in your own For example, sometimes there are scars it to a computer in three dimensions. Japan, I go to Japan, meet the people there, go into the streets and speak to people beautiful in the art world. Asia really world, with its own ideas and reference on the glass. The mistakes or failures I have developed strong relationships and take inspiration from that culture. who aren’t in museums or galleries. opened my mind to the idea that beauty points, and also to have a work out in the are very important. I want these kinds of with glassblowers around the world: I’ve Art is political. I feel that way because Those works take the risk of talking to can be a bridge to spirituality. This is world, talking to everybody. h imperfections in my work. worked with the same ones for 20 years. it is my own story. I want to tell people someone who doesn’t want to look at, or something I learned in Japan: for them, I have 14 people working with me When we start production, I go to Venice that it works: if you give contemporary be touched by, art. beauty was not a problem at all! When I now. I do paintings, drawings, or repre- or Basel or India [where the artisans are art to everybody, you [help] people see The concept of beauty was something go to America, there is another [interpre- sentations of the sculptures in my mind, based]. Any time I do a site-specific another vision of the world, and that is very difficult in Europe in the 1980s and tation] of my work: it’s [seen as] political. ARTWORK © JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL, COURTESY PHAIDON

96 GRAY GRAY 97 APPENDIX An invigorating coda.

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Barbara Kasten, CONSTRUCTS 1981–1982 (2019). PHOTO BY KRISTIAN LAUDRUP, INSTALLATION VIEW, BORTOLAMI, NEW YORK

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When asked how he’d describe the going with earthy, light tones and more To furnish the space, Pedersen went Dreaming about a home design project and not sure where to start? interiors of the forthcoming Kex Hotel of a feminine vibe.” on a buying trip to Belgium and Holland Eric Drivdahl AIA in Portland, Oregon, Icelandic designer Opening this fall in the city’s Central and sourced items from North Africa, Wondering how to make Gelotte Hommas Drivdahl Hálfdan “Dani” Pedersen demurs a bit Eastside area, Kex will provide a mix Germany, France, and England. Purchases the most of your budget? before answering. “It’s hard to put a of traditional hostel-style lodging included enviable midcentury furniture finger on it style-wise,” he says. “It’s (bunkrooms) and private rooms, which and five crates of earth-toned 1930s-era Curious about green design or how everything and nothing because we’re together can accommodate around 150 tile from Cairo. He had it all packed into to plan for your family’s changing needs? not trying to fit into any certain mold. guests. In keeping with its commitment shipping containers and brought to the Whether your project is a small remodel or new construction It’s very eclectic.” Much like its sister to foster community between travel- West Coast. There, Pedersen tapped local — or if you are just curious about the design process property, the popular Kex Hostel in ers and locals, the hotel will have a design talent including Hennebery Eddy — AIA architects can help. Reykjavík, the Portland outpost will be street-level restaurant and bar serving Architects, R&H Construction, Portland Join us for an information-packed overview of the design composed mostly of salvaged materials Nordic-inspired cuisine, as well as a Garment Factory, Lonesome Pictopia, and and construction process including budget and schedule, tips for hiring the right team, and how you and your architect and repurposed décor, with finishing rooftop deck and bar, all of them open to Bainbridge Island, Washington–based can work together to make the most of any project. touches added by local artisans. “For us, the public. Kex will also hold a lounge Blackmouth Design. “Things were made the building really dictates the look,” area, a lushly planted open-air courtyard, better in the past than they were today,” Pedersen says. “Kex in Iceland is in a and, in the basement, a gallery and event he says of his choice to furnish Kex Register today! former biscuit factory that has a heavy, space called Gym and Tonic. “We hope to mostly with vintage finds. “The wood was Jeff Babienko AIA www.aiaseattle.org/askanarchitect babienko ARCHITECTS industrial feeling. The [Portland] hotel get a whole melting pot of people coming thicker and stronger, and everything was is in a building from 1912 that is mostly in and out,” Pedersen says. “We want to made by hand, with strong attention to Announcement Provided Courtesy of: brick and timber, which gives it lighter host local bands, screen work from local detail. That’s the kind of mentality we Next Class: Location: Speakers: sensibilities. The color palette and design filmmakers, and have artists come in to want to foster.” h Sat. Nov. 16th, Center for Architecture & Design Jeff Babienko AIA, babienko ARCHITECTS 9:00am - 12:00pm 1010 Western Avenue, Seattle Eric Drivdahl AIA, Gelotte Hommas Drivdahl

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A global calendar of goings-on in the worlds of art, architecture, culture, and design. FREE IN HOUSE OCT 1–31 OCT 2–MARCH 15, 2020 DESIGN SUPPORT. PORTLAND TEXTILE WILD DESIGNERS CAN RESERVE A PRIVATE MONTH Textile Museum of Canada WORKROOM IN OUR DESIGN CENTER. Toronto, Ontario Portland, Oregon In a disruption of all things delicate, this exhibition features

AGENDA five emerging Canadian artists who render tranquil flora and Hosted throughout the city, Portland’s monthlong celebration fauna into untamed works of art. Organized by Toronto-based of textiles includes an exhibition on the flax industry in the curator Farah Yusuf, the exhibition showcases unusual material Willamette Valley, a workshop on how to dye clothes with natural combinations, such as a wooden log filled to the brim with pearls pigments, and a class on how to design a zero-waste dress. in Humboldt Magnussen’s print Pearl and Helmet Log (2014). For the love of cooking OCT 2–APRIL 5, 2020 An explosion of bright colours that’s full of narrative emphasis. The decoration of this kitchen draws inspiration from the traditional Italian carrettelle which is found in the most picturesque corners of Sicily. This colourful appliance collection is a one of a kind collaboration with Dolce&Gabbana’s signature decorative style. Know-how, creativity and style—for the cooking enthusiast!

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HYUNDAI COMMISSION: KARA WALKER B1467 Dolce & Gabbana 1/4 Page Ad.indd 1 2019-09-06 1:35 PM Tate Modern London, United Kingdom The Turbine Hall is a contemporary artist’s blank canvas. With 85-foot-tall ceilings and more than 35,000 square feet of floor space, the environment has hosted everything from a life-sized interactive swing set (Superflex’s One Two Three Swing!, 2017) to a sea of hand-crafted porcelain seeds (Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds, 2010). In March, Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor Company announced that New York–based artist Kara Walker—known for her black-paper silhouettes that depict the violence and suffering of slavery—would create this year’s annual Hyundai Commission in the space. Curated by Clara Kim, senior curator of international art (Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) and assistant curator of international art Priyesh Mistry, the project will be documented in a book from Tate Publishing.

OCT 5–JAN 5, 2020 OCT 9–JAN 26, 2020 GREAT FORCE LOS CARPINTEROS: Design Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia CUBA VA! Fabrication Commonwealth University DesignCollaboration Richmond, Virginia The Phillips Collection Washington, DC Fabrication This show reaches beyond museum boundaries to CollaborationGlass mosaic signage examine racial inequality in the United States. In addition Collaborating for the first time since its split in 2018, the Murals to showing work from both emerging and established artists 27-year-old Havana-based artist collective Los Carpinteros Thresholds in a traditional gallery setting, Great Force includes two (formed by Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez) is present- Glass mosaic signage interactive offsite performances. Multidisciplinary artist ing a new body of work in Cuba Va!. Borrowing its title from an Murals Alexandra Bell’s piece Counternarratives, which comprises idealistic 1970s Cuban song, the contemporary art exhibition Thresholds multiple installations on buildings throughout Richmond, uses nostalgia to unmask existing power dynamics and social tietonmosaic.com explores how racism is perpetuated through governmental unrest in postrevolutionary Cuba. Through video and sculpture law and news media. Charlotte Lagarde’s collaborative work, the show deconstructs the myth of a classless society in a citywide project Colonial White invites locals to photograph a 22-minute film focused on Cuban home interiors that gradually white paint chip next to objects, places, and situations transitions from affluent to poor, while LED sculptural portraits tietonmosaic.com

that represent whiteness to them. of ordinary Cuban citizens are reimagined as revolutionaries. KARA WALKER, SLAVERY! (1997), INSTALLATION VIEW, WALKER: MY COMPLEMENT, ENEMY, OPPRESSOR, LOVE , HAMMER MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES. PHOTO: JOSHUA WHITE. ©KARA WALKER

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OCT 17–JAN 26, 2020 FLESH AND BLOOD: ITALIAN MASTERPIECES FROM THE CAPODIMONTE MUSEUM

Seattle Art Museum Seattle, Washington OCTOBER 24-27, 2019 Drawing upon the collection of one of Italy’s largest museums, Flesh and Blood features 40 nonpareil Renaissance and Baroque works AGENDA (39 paintings and a sculpture) by renowned artists such as Titian, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Jusepe de Ribera. Centered around THE BARKER HANGAR | SANTA MONICA, CA depiction of the human body in mythological and religious works, the exhibition reveals the ways in which the body can be shown as a vessel for love, devotion, and suffering.

OCT 18–FEB 9, 2020 OCT 19–27 DUTCH DESIGN WEEK

Eindhoven, Netherlands

Experimentation, innovation, and genre blurring are center stage at Northern Europe’s largest design event, where more than 2,600 designers will present work to more than 350,000 visitors in 110 locations around town. In addition to lectures, exhibitions, and award ceremonies, don’t miss the DDW Music Festival, a live soundtrack to the festival with a lineup including Amy Root, Mk. BAKER HESSELDENZ STUDIO FANTINI DELTA LIGHT Gee, Wooze, and dozens of others.

TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ: OCT 19–FEB 2, 2020 ELEMENTAL

Pérez Art Museum Miami Miami, Florida Staged in contemporary artist Teresita Fernández’s hometown of Miami, this nature-inspired exhibition illustrates themes of identity and politics through often-vibrant installations, large- scale sculptures, and mixed-media work. Featuring work from SIGNATURE KITCHEN SUITE BROWN JORDAN the start of her career in the mid-1990s to the present day, this retrospective demonstrates the artist’s evolution, from mirrored sculptures emphasizing self-reflection to politically charged pieces that address climate change, violence, and the myth of the American Dream. SALLY MANN: A Unique Exhibitors. Engaging Programs. Non-stop Inspiration. OCT 18–27 THOUSAND CROSSINGS Your Destination for Leading Interior Design DESIGNART TOKYO High Museum of Art Atlanta, Georgia Tokyo, Japan Lexington, Virginia–born photographer Sally Mann’s new exhi- The third Designart festival hosts exhibitions and talks across bition, A Thousand Crossings, presents her gripping, and often SPONSORED IN PART BY: Tokyo that aim to revitalize the city’s creative scene and use haunting, black-and-white photography of the American South. the cityscape itself as a gallery. This year’s theme, “Emotions,” Featuring images that span her decades-long career, the exhi- investigates the ways in which art and design are used as forms bition captures the region’s complex history of racism, religion, of communication. Along with more than 100 exhibitors in identity, and family while exploring the contradictory legacy of dozens of locations, the 10-day event hosts the multiday Creative the South as both a battleground and a refuge. Conference Bridge, featuring panel discussions by designers, SALLY MANN, EASTER DRESS (1986), GELATIN SILVER PRINT. COLLECTION OF PATRICIA AND DAVID SCHULTE. © MANN curators, and editors from around the world. TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ, INK SKY 2 (2011). COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN, NEW YORK, HONG KONG, SEOUL.

108 GRAY VISIT WESTEDGEDESIGNFAIR.COM FOR TICKETS AND DETAILS APPENDIX

OCT 25–FEB 16, 2020 OCT 26–FEB 17, 2020 SOFT POWER

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, California With its title borrowed from the Reagan-era term referencing how a country’s “soft” assets (culture, political values, foreign policy) can wield more global influence than violent expres- sions of power, this exhibition explores the personal as well as the geopolitical potential of art. Expect to take in photographs,

AGENDA installations, and sculpture by Jason Moran, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Eamon Ore-Giron, and more than a dozen others.

OCT 26–MARCH 8, 2020

LINA BO BARDI GIANCARLO PALANTI: STUDIO D’ARTE PALMA 1948–1951

Design Museum Ghent Ghent, Belgium Often overlooked furniture designs by the acclaimed Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi—best known for designing 1951’s Glass House as well as the São Paulo Museum of Art in 1968—are brought center stage in Design Museum Ghent’s exhibition. 2019 Focusing on the works of Studio d’Arte Palma, which Bardi CINDY SHERMAN founded with Italian architect Giancarlo Palanti, the exhibition Vancouver Art Gallery features the largest-ever grouping of Bardi’s furniture. Vancouver, British Columbia More than 170 works feature in this retrospective of the OCT 30 photographs of shapeshifting American artist Cindy Sherman. Known for her conceptual works that explore identity (and 2019 CONTEMPORARY her trippy Instagram posts), Sherman rose to fame through her chameleonic self-portraiture. The eponymous exhibition, PAA VISION AWARD: organized by London’s National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with the VAG, features work from every major photo series Sherman has produced. PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE AWARDS NERI OXMAN REVOLUTION HALL • PORTLAND, OR San Francisco Museum of Modern Art NOV 1–24 San Francisco, California At the end of October, Neri Oxman, the MIT Media Lab PERFORMA 19 OCTOBER 25, 2019 professor, architect, and designer, accepts the Contemporary Vision Award, given annually to those who have “helped BIENNIAL 6:00 RECEPTION 7:30 SHOW MEDIA SPONSOR redefine contemporary visual culture.” The award is fitting SPECIAL MUSICAL GUEST for Oxman, whose achievements range from founding MIT’s New York, New York Mediated Matter Group (which focuses on biologically inspired The eighth iteration of this city-wide performance festival takes design fabrication tools) to winning 2018’s Cooper Hewitt on the multidisciplinary spirit of the Bauhaus, founded a century National Design Award for Interactive Design. ago this year. Look for commissions by artists including Ed Atkins, Nairy Baghramian, Tarik Kiswanson, Paul Pfeiffer, and details & tickets at aiaoregon.org Samson Young. RUY TEXTEIRA; COURTESY NILUFAR GALLERY, MILAN. THE ARTIST AND METRO PICTURES, NEW YORK

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NOV 2–APRIL 5, 2020 NOV 2–3 “CHORUS OF THE FOREST” New York Botanical Garden Bronx, New York Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón presents the world premiere of her site-specific commissioned score “Chorus of the Forest,” in which a live choral group performs amid the

AGENDA Thain Family Forest. Guests are invited to wander through the woodland while taking in Negrón’s musical soundscape—a sonic tapestry created using acoustic, electronic, robotic, electric, and found sounds.

NOV 10–OCT 25, 2020 HAEGUE YANG: IN THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY

Bass Museum of Art Miami Beach, Florida Featuring immersive installations, anthropomorphic sculp- tures, light sculptures, and graphic wallpaper, this major solo exhibition by Korean artist Haegue Yang showcases her penchant for visual abstraction and surprise. Yang’s creations typically span a variety of media and methods (including olfactory, sonic, and performative elements), resulting in an altogether exhilarating viewing experience.

NOV 9–FEB 8, 2020 SHARJAH ARCHITECTURE TRIENNIAL DO HO SUH: 348 ND Sharjah, United Arab Emirates WEST 22 STREET Los Angeles County Museum of Art Curator Adrian Lahoud, dean of the School of Architecture Los Angeles, California at London’s Royal College of Art, leads this new architecture triennial in the Middle East. The three-month-long festival’s With life-size translucent polyester-and-steel recreations of his programming lineup focuses on the theme “Rights of Future former residences, South Korean artist Do Ho Suh explores Generations.” Don’t miss the artist duo Cooking Trios (Alon personal history and memory. The artwork for which the show Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual), who, in partnership is named, which was recently gifted to LACMA, painstakingly with engineering firm AKT II, reimagine the role of desert plants replicates one of his apartments in New York and invites through prototype nonirrigated urban gardens. visitors to walk through it to take in its ethereal details.

NOV 11–16 DUBAI DESIGN WEEK

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Marking the largest creative festival in the Middle East, this six-day event features exhibitions, performances, workshops, talks, and awards that foreground Dubai as a global design capital. Check out the Global Grad Show, which spotlights game-changing projects by graduate students from schools across the world, and Urban Commissions, a series of “urban furniture products” created by a

selection of designers living in the UAE that will be installed around the city. INSTALLATION VIEW OF HAEGUE YANG: ETA 1994–2018 . WOLFGANG HAHN PRIZE , MUSEUM LUDWIG, COLOGNE, 2018. PHOTO: MUSEUM LUDWIG, SAŠA FUIS, COLOGNE. JERRY BIRCHFIELD

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A Juicy Story On a trip to Ohio, interior designer Elisabeth Sandler started collecting vintage juicers—and she’s never stopped. OBSESSION

As told to RACHEL GALLAHER IT STARTED WHEN MY HUSBAND, passed away. My husband discovered Photograph by ELISABETH SANDLER MY DAUGHTER, AND I WERE VISIT- eBay in the ’90s, and that’s how we got in- ING FAMILY IN OHIO. One day we went volved in the National Reamer Collectors to Ravenna, a little town that has a lot Association—we kept bidding against Elisabeth Sandler is a co-principal and of antique stores. We had been talking people in the club, so finally someone interior designer at Seattle’s Sandler about making lemon bars for dessert emailed us, asking who we were and Architects, a firm her husband, Norman, that night, but my mother did not have why we were bidding against them! Our founded in 1975. The duo collect vintage a juicer. I said, “Why don’t we just look reamers are mostly from the ’20s and juicers, also known as reamers, and have for one while we’re here?” So we each ’30s. There are 18 categories: everything amassed more than 1,000, which they took off and eventually [met] at the front from glass to sterling silver, from baby keep at their beach house just outside of of the store. Each one of us was holding reamers to ones shaped like clowns. We Poulsbo, Washington. Elisabeth is currently a juicer: one green, one white, and one have some from every category, but one the president of the National Reamer Col- yellowish. When the woman at the store of my favorites is the Saunders reamer, lectors Association, a connective hub for saw us, she said, “Oh, you’re reamer or the Witch’s Hat. It gets the name from those who collect, buy, and sell reamers. collectors!” We looked at one another and its shape: there is a strong point in the looked at her—we had no idea what she middle, and it comes in green or black. was talking about. They are rare because the point can From then on, our family and friends break over time. We are the only mem- started giving them to us as gifts. We bers of the club who own a “hands-free” even have a memorial shelf where we version, which has a metal cap to aid in place reamers from those who have juicing [without injury]. h

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