This year, Etsy launched its first-ever design awards, aptly named The Etsies, which honor the best of the best makers and designers on the site. Awards were issued in five categories: Earth-Friendly, Inventive Decor, Festive Celebrations, Signature Style, and Creative Collaborations. Etsy asked the public to nominate their favorite products in each category, then a panel of experts judged the entries on the shortlist to determine the winners of each category. They also chose a special Grand Prize Winner, who took home a $15,000 prize.
We highlighted the winners so you can see for yourself how innovative, beautiful, and useful these designs are, and potentially add one (or all) to your Etsy shopping cart.
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was a prolific Swiss-French designer, architect, writer, and artist in addition to being among the pioneers of modern architecture. Born in 1887, Le Corbusier grew up with an interest in the arts, which was heavily influenced by his father, a watch craftsman, and his mother, a musician.
When he was 13, Le Corbusier attended Arts Decoratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds where he followed his father’s footsteps, studying the art of engraving and enameling watches. During his time there, Le Corbusier learned from Charles L’Eplatteneir, a Swiss painter and architect who taught him about art history, drawing, architecture, and art nouveau.
Rudolph Schindler is among the most prominent Southern California architects in history, famous for his innovative contributions to modern architecture. He was born in Austria to a father who was a wood and metal craftsman and a mother who was a dressmaker. He studied architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1911 and becoming inspired by the foremost modern architects of the early 20th century, like Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
During his time at the university, Schindler met Richard Neutra, who would become a lifelong friend and friendly design adversary. Both architects followed similar career trajectories, moving to Los Angeles and becoming among the most important architects who
Source: East Side Costa Mesa Cliff May home, represented by Todd Bousman
Cliff May is an American architect who famously pioneered the California Ranch House. May was born and raised in San Diego, where he began designing and building Monterey-style furniture. Without a formal architecture education, May began designing homes, completing his first home in 1931 at the age of 23, which was a one-story tile-roofed house with a courtyard inspired by his family's adobe ranch house.
Despite the Great Depression, May quickly sold his first design and continued to develop his groundbreaking style. May’s designs emphasized livability over facade. He sought to create homes in perfect harmony with the way that people wanted to live, maximizing the experiences
It’s not an overstatement to say that Kelly Wearstler is among the most prominent interior designers in the world. Born in Myrtle Beach, Wearstler attended college in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art before moving to New York to intern for Milton Glaser. Upon graduating, Wearstler moved to Los Angeles where she opened her own interior design firm in 1995. Uniquely, a year prior to opening her firm, Wearstler posed as September’s Playmate of the Month, which helped her pay off her student loans and open her own business.
Shortly after opening her firm, Wearstler decorated the home of real estate developer Brad Korzen, whom she later married. This project led her to design many of the residential and hotel
Born in Chicago, Brigette Romanek made her way to Los Angeles after realizing her passion for interior design. The former singer and handbag designer's first interior design project was a collaboration with her friend and cofounder of nonprofit Baby2Baby, Kelly Sawyer Patricof. She helped Patricof outfit her Malibu home and has worked as a designer ever since. She now runs a highly successful design company in L.A. - Hancock Design - with her business partner Estee Stanley.
Romanek’s inventive work has led her to become among L.A.’s most sought-after interior designers. Romanek is entirely self-taught, which may contribute to why her designs are particularly imaginative and compelling. Rather than stick to rigid design rules and
John Lautner is widely considered to be among the most important 20th-century architects in the United States. Lautner was born and raised in Marquette, Michigan, the natural surroundings of which greatly influenced his distinct architectural style. The future architect became immersed in architecture from a young age, helping his father build a chalet at just 12 years old.
Despite his early interest in architecture, Lautner earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Northern Michigan University. However, after reading the autobiography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner decided to pursue an architecture education, applying to Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin.
Joseph Eichler is a post-war real estate developer who’s most famous for building high-quality, modernist homes on a large scale. According to his son, Eichler was inspired to develop well-crafted modernist homes for the masses after living in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Seeking to make these homes more accessible to the middle class, Eichler developed over 11,000 modernist tract homes in California, which were aptly dubbed “Eichlers”.
The famously liberal Eichler was also the first large-scale tract builder to sell his homes to minorities, stepping down from the National Association of Home Builders in 1958 to protest its racially discriminative policies and practices.
Given his massively influential and prolific work, it’s pretty difficult not to know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. Among the most prominent American architects in history, Wright designed more than 1,000 structures in addition to being an interior designer, writer, and educator.
Wright attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for just two semesters before deciding to study architecture in the more practical setting of an architectural firm. After leaving school in 1887, he moved to Chicago where he worked as an architectural detailer under J.L. Silsbee, a prominent architect whose masterful sketches are thought to have influenced the sharp lines of Wright designs. From there, Wright went on to work in the architectural firm of
Walter Gropius was a German architect and one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. In addition to his progressive designs, Gropius is famous for founding the Bauhaus School in Germany, which incited an architectural movement that connected fine art with function and practicality. He served as the school's director between 1919-1928 before Nazis closed the school for its resistance to the traditional aesthetic that Nazism favored.
Gropius began studying architecture at the technical institutes in Munich and Berlin-Charlottenburg, joining Peter Behrens architecture firm shortly after graduation. Gropius has attributed his penchant for progressive architecture to his time with Behrens, specifically when he solved
