Howl: Issue 01

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An artist who express­es him­self through quilt­ing, rev­e­la­tions about a ground­break­ing Sovi­et design school that rivaled the Bauhaus in Mod­ern cur­ric­u­la, and an opti­mistic check-in with West Coast inte­ri­or design­er Pri­mo Orpil­la… these sto­ries are among the fea­tured con­tent of our first newslet­ter, titled Howl. Curat­ed by design jour­nal­ist Paul Makovsky, Howl will be sent out to our clients on a quar­ter­ly basis and archived on our web­site. The project as a whole seeks to be a ser­vice to our com­mu­ni­ty, engag­ing with two basic ques­tions that impact both Wolf-Gordon’s cre­atives and our inte­ri­or design audi­ence: what inspires us in fields par­al­lel to inte­ri­or design and which glob­al phe­nom­e­na influ­ence our design prac­tices? We expect Howl to evolve with each issue and hope it will con­tribute to your excite­ment about the cre­ative and impact­ful indus­try we work in.

Issue 1 (Q2 2021) con­tains three features:

• “Piec­ing Togeth­er a Lega­cy”, an arti­cle by Belin­da Lanks on the con­cep­tu­al quilt­ing of Michael C. Thor­pe, a Brook­lyn-based artist who explores iden­ti­ty, race and Amer­i­can pop cul­ture through exquis­ite craft that he rais­es to high art;
• “Learn­ing from the Russ­ian Avant Garde”, an inter­view of art and design his­to­ri­an Anna Bokov on the occa­sion of the pub­lish­ing of her book on Vkhutemas, a high­ly influ­en­tial coun­ter­part to the Bauhaus that led social the­o­ry-infused, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary design edu­ca­tion in the Sovi­et Union from 1920 to 1930; and,
• “On the Radar: Pri­mo Orpil­la”, in which Paul Makovsky takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss design dur­ing and post-pan­dem­ic, the excit­ing ​“toolk­it” that O+A has devel­oped to nav­i­gate the future of office design, and life in Los Angeles.
• Howl con­tin­ues with a sec­tion called ​“Space/​Pattern/​Texture” which pro­files three design­er-artists who are doing provoca­tive work in graph­ic art, tex­tile art and painting.

A quick Col­lec­tion Spot­light puts the focus on three of our prod­ucts that feel par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant right now: an uphol­stery tex­tile that trans­lates the nat­ur­al struc­ture of wood at the cel­lu­lar lev­el; a fan­tas­tic new PVC-free type II wall­cov­er­ing inspired by tree bark; and, a dig­i­tal print design that rein­ter­prets waterlilies.

Final­ly, we want­ed to help wade through the abun­dance of exhi­bi­tions, lec­tures, pod­casts and oth­er online resources by iden­ti­fy­ing five of our favorites. From fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy to tex­tiles and the rela­tion­ship of art to tech­nol­o­gy, this issue’s favorites are list­ed with links to their sources. 

Feed­back and sug­ges­tions for future con­tent can be addressed to howl@​wolfgordon.​com.