Douglas & Bec on Sight Unseen.

Thrilled to have been able to interview Bec Dowie of Douglas + Bec, a New Zealand-based furniture and lighting design studio, a few weeks ago for Sight Unseen. Bec, who founded the company alongside her father, Douglas, lives 45 minutes outside of Auckland in a converted barn designed to serve as both home and studio.

With bedrooms on movable pods, the space transforms in minutes flat. Not surprisingly, it's furnished almost entirely with family-made pieces—but only just as many as the trio need. During the renovation, Bec says, “We lived with very little for a long time, and [that experience] really ended up informing the design of our home. We had a lovely education that we didn’t need a lot. So when we built the house, everything was very simple. The design shows a lot of restraint.”

Find the full interview on Sight Unseen. Beautiful photos by Pippa Drummond.

More from my Sight Unseen archive: Group Partner / Todd St. John / Material Lust. Thanks so much, as always, for reading.

Material Lust on Sight Unseen.

Although I'd met Material Lust designers Christian Swafford and Lauren Larson before, it wasn't until I visited their studio on assignment for Sight Unseen that I learned the story behind their brand, which produces furniture and home goods with decidedly dark flair. It was lovely to spend a fall morning in their space—to see their latest work, pore over their beautiful (and non-digital!) inspiration boards, and learn more about what inspires their cutting-edge aesthetic.

As it turns out, that aesthetic is one that's routinely confused for demonic. Says Christian: “We posted a photo on Instagram recently of a pentagram and a few of our chairs, and someone commented, ‘Unfollow these Satanists.’ Our design was based off of DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. It was historical, but it had nothing to do with devil worship. Everyone feels the need to categorize.”

Find the full interview on Sight Unseen. Photos by Emily Johnston.

More from my Sight Unseen archive: Group Partner / Todd St. John / Ladies & Gentlmen Studio. Thanks so much for reading.

Todd St. John on Sight Unseen.

I've long been a fan of Sight Unseen's thoughtful and beautifully captured Studio Visits, so I'm thrilled to share my first contribution to the series. Todd St. John is an illustrator, graphic designer, furniture maker, and animator who works out of a spacious studio in Gowanus. (Funnily enough, we discovered we attended the same high school, albeit years apart, in Hawaii.) Todd's clients include The New York Times, The New Yorker, Nickelodeon, and MTV, and though his growing portfolio represents decades of work, he's nurtured an inquisitive spirit since childhood.

"I'm curious," he says. "I like trying to figure out how to do things myself. There's an excitement to that that never goes away."

Find the full interview at Sight Unseen. Photos by the wonderful Emily Johnston. More about Todd St. John, here.