Showroom: Coryne Lovick Makes Modern Comfortable

Coryne Lovick's Z Chair features a zig-zag profile. Photo courtesy Coryne Lovick Collection.

Some people collect stamps. Others collect teapots. Designer Coryne Lovick collects chairs. The interior designer has been acquiring them for years—scouring flea markets for intriguing seats and amassing a collection that has come to require storage. In her design work, too, chairs have played a starring role. “When I put unique chairs in my own jobs, they were almost pieces of art on their own and could set a room apart,” she explains. And therein lay a problem.

As a chair aficionado, always looking for stunning seating statements for her projects, Lovick says she “saw an increasingly growing hole in the marketplace for interesting, different and comfortable chairs.” She took matters into her own hands and recently launched her first-ever furniture collection featuring a range of chairs inspired by some of her vintage finds. The line runs the gamut from contemporary riffs on classic designs such as wing chairs and club chairs (complete with cabriole legs) to more modern looks.

The Z Chair also comes in an armless option—perfect for use as a dining chair or occasional chair. Photo courtesy Coryne Lovick Collection.

In particular, Lovick’s Z Chair has a particularly 21st-century feel. Based on a vintage design that captured her heart, “The shape of this chair is totally unique for the marketplace,” she says. “You can add buttons to make it retro or add nail heads to make it more traditional. Although I present it as a dining chair it works as a side chair in any living space. Upholster it in a multicolor hide and it becomes quite a conversation piece and really makes a statement in the room.”

If you’re LA this week for the Pacific Design Center’s Westweek, stop by the Mimi London showroom there to check out her collection. The space “is a true icon of the design industry,” Lovick notes.

Showroom: A Look at the New Elements Collection from KnollTextiles

The new Elements Collection from KnollTextiles includes three designs by creative director Dorothy Casonas. Image courtesy KnollTextiles.

For some of its newest fabrics in its 2013 Elements Collection, KnollTextiles’ Dorothy Cosonas turned to her library. "I collect lots of books and use them constantly as source material for my work as creative director for KnollTextiles,” she says. “With Ikat Square, Ikat Stripe, and Origins, I was initially inspired by patterns that I found in some Japanese textile books. I was also inspired by the traditional ‘Ikat’ concept—an intricate and labor intensive process of binding and dying sections of yarn, then weaving them together to create a fabric with multi-colored tones. The result is three patterns which speak to this old-world technique but have a truly modern twist."

The three fabrics by Cosonas, in addition to additional drapery and upholstery fabrics and wallcoverings will be beloved by architects and interior designers specifying fabrics that emphasizes color, texture and large-scale pattern.

If you happen to be in LA for the Pacific Design Center’s Westweek events, be sure to stop by the new KnollTextiles showroom opening then—just the company’s second textile-only destination. A Knoll Luxe showroom, the space is geared toward residential, hospitality and executive office designers and carries the full line of Knoll Luxe textiles, along with an assortment of other KnollTextiles (including Cosonas’s new designs) intended for residential and contract applications.

SUPERFRONT is proud to present OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS, opening July 22

OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS is about the dark side of architecture – ‘architecture’ in both the abstract political use of the term and the literal experience of normative buildings. Conceiving of this exhibition as a laboratory, Farrah Karapetian, Mitch McEwen, and architectural collective Bureau E.A.S.T will accumulate work in SUPERFRONT’s space between July 6th and August 22nd. SUPERFRONT’s space at the Pacific Design Center becomes a studio for the exploration of the parameters of photography, sculpture, mapping, and architecture.