Quick Hits: A Zebrawood Sideboard, Pedal-Loomed Placemats, and a Limited-Run Herman Miller Poster
A brief scan of design items worth grabbing, including an aluminum cabinet inspired by junk pile scraps and an industrial outdoor sconce.
Welcome to the latest installment of Sitting Pretty: Quick Hits, a monthly roundup of covetable furniture, decor, and objets d'art from one design-obsessed writer.
Steve Frykholm Watermelon Picnic poster
When Steve Frykholm joined Herman Miller in 1970 as the furniture manufacturer’s first in-house graphic designer, his first assignment was to produce a poster for the company’s annual summer picnic. For the next two decades, he illustrated everything from dripping ice cream cones to icy lemonade glasses and fully loaded hot dogs for the canonical series, which eventually made its way into several museum collections, including MoMA. Herman Miller just brought back Frykholm’s mouthwatering watermelon print from 1971, his second in the series, in a limited run, using the original screen in Michigan.
Jack Cartwright for Founders Furniture sideboard
Before founding his eponymous company in 1963, Jack Cartwright spent nearly a decade as head designer at the midcentury company Founders Furniture. Much of his work there paired walnut with unexpected and elegant materials: cork, leather, and in the case of this wonderfully restored six-drawer sideboard—zebrawood.
Minna Ridges place mat
Hudson, New York, design shop and studio Minna partners with artisans and craftspeople in Central and South America to produce home goods as covetable as they are cherishable. These cotton-fiber place mats, handmade using pedal loom weaves in Zinacantán, a town in Mexico’s central Chiapas highlands, are reversible and inspired by the dazzling colors of birds like goldfinches and herons. (There are matching napkins, too, if you are so inclined.)
Troy RLM outdoor wall sconce
A workhouse of traditional American lighting, Troy Lighting has been around since the 1960s, and its design-driven RLM sub-label has become a go-to for interior designers and architects alike. This sleek dome sconce with a black-aluminum finish brings just the right amount of contemporary industrialism to any outdoor space.
Piet Hein Eek Philips cabinet
Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek is a recycler. He shapes his creations using found materials, making everything from glossy, scrap wood coffee tables to shiny modernist benches constructed of leftover metal. The Philips cabinet came to be in 1994 when the designer found several metal-framed doors in a junk pile that had been discarded by the Philips electronics company; his studio now produces the aluminum-and-glass design, a sleek yet off-kilter silhouette, in various sizes.
Quickest Hits…
Vintage Ekstrem lounge chair ($1,995), Helle Damkjaer candlestick holders ($79), Aurel Schmidt x Supreme silk scarf ($148), Jorg Neizert La Poubelle Géométrique print ($325), Vintage Ikea cocktail flatware ($19), Falcon enamel jug ($53), Per Lutken for Holmegaard glass vase ($65), 1970s Brutalist Pedestal Highboy armoire ($2,245)
This is my favorite newsletter. Would love more print ideas! The yassification of Matisse is everywhere.