Over the past few years Curated Spaces has emerged as one of Australia’s first and most popular vintage and secondhand furniture selling Instagram accounts. Founder Pip Newell is at the helm of this rapidly blossoming business, growing it from a one-woman show out of her living room, into team of more than 10 contributors, selling high-quality secondhand furniture wares all around Australia. Every post on Curated Spaces is eagerly awaited by a captivated audience, and most pieces are sold within seconds!
Early on, Pip started working with Sydney-based sellers James Bligh and Chelsea Wilson, and together the trio have leveraged their combined experienced and influential online platform to launch an Australian designed and made furniture venture: Future Collective.
Pip, James and Chelsea wanted to take the knowledge they had gained about consumer demand on Instagram, and remove the ‘chance’ element of finding one-off pieces. ‘Future Collective started as a conversation between the three of us about the designs we love and what we would make and explore [if given the chance],’ says Pip.
Future Collective’s first range, the ‘Carved Collection’, comprises four pieces – the Monolith Lamp, Cave Bedside Table the Trunk Side Table (in two heights) and Bedrock Display Case. ‘We knew we wanted to work with a building product called Hebel, as it offers many opportunities to be explorative in form and texture,’ Pip explains. The pieces were also designed with waste reduction front of mind, so the shapes and forms are designed to optimise the set sizes of the raw material. And certainly, each of these monumental pieces looks like it was ‘found’ within the material itself, rather than created from it! Each piece is hand forged by a sculptor in the Northern Rivers of NSW.
The Future Collective team drew inspiration from Italian architect Mario Bellini, as well as British designer Terence Conran amongst other references. With the power of these greats behind them, and a massive wealth of knowledge about their audience and the opportunities for selling design pieces online, there are sure to be bigger things to come from this fledgling brand!
Keep up with new pieces from Future Collective and Curated Spaces via their Instagrams, and shop the Carved Collection here!