Bosnia and Herzegovina may not be known as a center of the design world, but there’s a dynamic company there bridging the gap between traditional craft and contemporary design. Earlier this year, we traveled to Konjic—a small village not far from Sarajevo—following an invitation from Zanat, a woodcarving company founded in 2015 by Adem and Orhan Niksic. But the family’s experience with woodcarving goes much …
Starting with an aluminum sphere (some as large as a whopping 10 feet in diameter), Yolanda Baker makes disco balls by hand, a craft she has perfected over almost 50 years. While the disco ball boom dropped off—thanks to cheaper, overseas options becoming available, Baker (known as Yo Yo) is America’s last disco queen. During the zenith of Studio 54, flares and doing The Hustle, …
While we will never be able to step into the minds or imaginations of artists, designers and artisans, we can enter their studios: little (though, sometimes not so little) windows into how they draw inspiration, execute ideas and ultimately make something unique. Throughout 2015, we ventured from Bangkok to Colorado, and much in between, to look inside the workspaces of sculptors and painters, designers and …
