Hasta La Ideas

(Photos, from left to right: UnBeige, Rich Brilliant Willing)

Another week, another highlight from our recent trip to the New York International Gift Fair, the sprawling twice-yearly trade show that demonstrates the impressive elasticity of the term “gift.” Today we bring you the second of our two “Best in Show” picks from the Accent on Design division (the first, you’ll recall, was Areaware’s Bucky Fuller-inspired Geo Birdhouse, designed by Kelly Lamb). At the rough-hewn American Design Club booth, we were drawn in by these elegant, glass-topped Russian Nesting Doll Tables, designed by New York-based firm Rich Brilliant Willing. The wood side table, with its ring of milk-painted wooden slats, appears to defy gravity, while the larger aluminum coffee table, in a sharp peacock blue, looks like something salvaged from a chic Milanese circus. And notice those tempting orange orbs atop the wooden one? “People kept trying to steal the tangerines,” Alex Williams (the “Will” in Rich, Brilliant, Willing) told us at the fair. “One woman just walked away with one, and we had to chase after her to get it back.”

Previously on UnBeige: