This article is part of our Design special section about creating space with the look and feel for one person.
Taking It Straight to the People
Our product is deserving of more airtime,” said Oona Bannon, the managing director at Pinch, a British furnishings company known (though perhaps not enough) for its classic forms and meticulous craftsmanship. That is why she and the designer Russell Pinch, her husband and business partner, are planning a pop-up display in New York City to mark the company’s 20th anniversary.
“It gives us an opportunity to do something we haven’t done before and takes us in a slightly new direction,” Mr. Pinch added. For the showcase, which opens on Sept. 18, he is coating the glass used in a coffee table and cabinet in silver, dressing a sideboard in a textile made of fiber from the abaca plant (a relative of banana) and using Jesmonite, a gypsum and acrylic resin composite, for a romantic effect in his lighting.
The company will also display some pieces that have been in the collection from the beginning, like the Avery armchair, a Shaker-slim assemblage of wood spindles, posts and rails.
Pinch, which the couple started in 2004, has been distributed for many years in the United States by The Future Perfect, a design shop with branches in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco. “They definitely gave us a platform,” Ms. Bannon said of the shop. “We’re grateful and still are, but we want the opportunity to sell more directly.”
The pop-up will be at the Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery in TriBeCa. With its large, arched windows and embossed tin ceiling, “it’s a happy home for our furniture,” Mr. Pinch said. Through Oct. 8 at 52 Walker Street, New York City; pinchdesign.com. — ARLENE HIRST
From the High Atlas Range to Copenhagen
Frama, a lifestyle brand and retailer in Copenhagen, has developed an enthusiastic following over its 12 years in business. What began as a source for minimalist furniture and lighting has expanded to include many other categories. But the company recently discovered that the number one category searched on its site that did not turn up any results was something it did not sell: rugs.
Earlier this year, several members of Frama’s design team traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco, to explore the possibilities of creating a collection with Beni, a six-year-old brand of rugs hand made in Morocco.
While there is no dearth of rug producers in Morocco, Beni is considered unusual in that its design, weaving and sales happen under one roof. Beni is also a certified Step Fair Trade Partner (Label Step, the body that gave it that certification, is a nonprofit that, according to its website, is “committed to fair trade and the well-being of workers in the handmade carpet and textile industries”). This was in line with Frama’s focus on natural materials and craftsmanship.
“They were really adamant that no dyes or anything not completely natural would be used,” Robert Wright, a co-founder of Beni, recalled, of the staff at Frama. “And very exacting about the shades of color.” Beni’s vertical setup — in which all stages of production take place under one roof — allowed for quick prototyping and editing of woven samples. (It also resulted in higher wages for the weavers.)
The collection, called Terrain, features flat-woven rugs in three colors: Soil, Salt and Sand. All were created with undyed light, medium and dark wools from mountain sheep from the High Atlas range. The collection will debut Thursday to Sept. 7 (during Paris Design Week) at Maison Rocher, a gallery in the Marais district. The rugs will be available on Sunday from Frama and Beni Rugs. — RIMA SUQI
Sometimes, the Pen Is Mightier
For a contrarian subset of architects and designers, the pen and paintbrush are still mightier than any software. “The Persistence of Hand Drawing: Interior Rendering Today,” an exhibition opening Sept. 19 at the New York School of Interior Design, will showcase about 140 works by practitioners, past and present, who have wooed clients with physical sketches.
“There’s a secret society of us out there,” putting ideas on paper, said Leyden Lewis, a New York designer. His sketches lent to NYSID include a proposal for a Brooklyn apartment, with crimson slashes representing ripple-fold drapery between the kitchen and dining area. Elizabeth Graziolo, who heads Yellow House Architects in Manhattan and is displaying sketches of a ziggurat-topped condo tower at the show, described drawing as “part of my daily life.”
Thomas Mellins and Donald Albrecht, the curators, said they were inspired to gather the material after a young NYSID student gazed astonishedly at vintage renderings from the school’s archive and asked, “Somebody drew these?” Hand-drawn proposals can be so seductive, Mr. Albrecht said, “The clients imagine themselves in it.” The show traces the field’s changing fashions, dating back to tidy neo-Classical sketches from the early 1900s, and reunites drawings for contemporary furnishings with the actual pieces, such as the architect William T. Georgis’s armchair shaped like a cactus.
Mita Corsini Bland, a watercolorist whose paintings of a Cipriani outpost in Lower Manhattan will hang at NYSID, said she was looking forward to commiserating and rejoicing with the show’s kindred spirits. “I always am curious,” she said, “to see who else is mad enough to do this.” Through April 3, 2025, at 170 East 70th Street; nysid.edu. — EVE M. KAHN
Creating the ‘Black Living Room’ Across Time
For a decade, the antiques dealers Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart have specialized in material related to the African American experience. In a forthcoming book celebrating their tenth anniversary, “BLK MKT Vintage: Reclaiming Objects and Curiosities That Tell Black Stories,” they reflect on how their Brooklyn shop (which closed in late June and is now virtual) has evolved amid surging public interest in the field.
The women, who are a married couple, seek “pieces that awaken our cultural memory,” Ms. Stewart writes in the book: from Zora Neale Hurston’s novels to Pullman porter uniforms, Juneteenth T-shirts, Afro combs, James Baldwin recordings, Shirley Chisholm memorabilia and Madam C. J. Walker’s pomade tins.
They interviewed other enthusiasts for the book, including Steven D. Booth, an archivist working on the Johnson Publishing Company Archive at the Getty Research Institute, and Matthew Jones, whose family ran the music-focused Soul Publications. Carla Williams, a writer, editor, archivist and photographer in New Orleans, described her particularly specialized collecting realms: “vintage pinups of Black women, vintage images of Black burlesque dancers, and images and ephemera of Black circus and sideshow performers.”
This fall, Ms. Stewart and Ms. Handy will display pieces at the Brooklyn Museum, furnishing a welcome lobby for the newly reinstalled American Art galleries, which open on Oct. 4. The room décor will be inspired by the work of the Harlem-based designer Sheila Bridges, Ms. Stewart said, and represent aspects of “the Black living room across the time continuum.” hachettebookgroup.com — EVE M. KAHN
Read More: A Panorama of Design