Cool Hunting

Drop Dead Rug
Inspired by old crime TV, the Drop Dead Rug prototype by British designer Alex Carpenter was such a hit at the London Design Festival in 2005 that Alex will take it into production soon. Mimicking the shape "of an unfortunate soul which may have come to pass right there on your living room floor with their silhouette remaining as evidence," the throw will be...

Erich Ginder
Erich Ginder makes functional sculpture of objects from nature. This coat rack is a cast resin tree with a Saarinen inspired base-- perfect for the Crunchy Modernist. Another one of his pieces, Ghost, is an all white coat rack of reindeer horns....

Joseph Conforti
Joseph Conforti is a master of repetition. A raku ceramicist based in New York City, he creates hypnotic wall sculptures comprised of individual panels, each of which contains hundreds of ceramic pieces. Raku, for those unversed in ceramic speak, is a traditional form of Japanese pottery dating back to the 16th Century. It involves low temperature kiln firing, followed by a combustible immersion that...

Mark Andreas: Reactive Sculpture Series
After exhibiting up and down the eastern seaboard, Brooklyn-based sculptor Mark Andreas has crossed the East River to make his Manhattan debut. Andreas' Reactive Sculpture Series includes the hulking 400-pound Seed Spreader (pictured), an intimidating machine equipped with three-foot spinning blades. It brilliantly expresses the fear associated with the industrialization of mass food production that, in the words of the artist, “conceptually speaks to...

Priests and Twins
Priests and Twins are a series of haunting figurines created by the multi-disciplinary designer Kristin Victoria Barron, principal of the design studio Kreist. While visiting The Future Perfect some weeks ago, I found a small gathering of the Priests huddled on a Jaime Hayon sofa and was compelled to learn their backstory. After seeing a Jungian analyst many years ago, Kristin started making dolls...

Barnaby Barford: Private Lives
On 11 March 2008, the irreverent ceramic artist Barnaby Barford will be exhibiting a new series of subversive objects at David Gill Galleries in London. The latest collection, "Private Lives," shows Barford treading into uncharted territory, repositioning figures from pop culture and cartoons for his witty mises-en-scènes. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in 2002, Barford has been working with found ceramics...