Why another Review?

It is a fair question, and one I asked myself before starting. The design world is not short of newsletters, and the average inbox is already a small graveyard of unread ones.

So the bar for adding another ought to be high. The honest answer is that I kept finding things genuinely worth telling people about, and no good place to do it properly.

That is what The Specifier is for. It is a review of design, lighting and the considered interior, written for the people who work with these things for a living: architects, interior architects, designers, and anyone who takes the specification of a project seriously. It is not a catalogue, and not a sales sheet. It is a place to write, at proper length and with some care, about the launches, the brands and the materials that deserve more than a product line and a price.

A word on where it comes from. Sirus Concepts is a strategic sales and brand representation partner working across the Nordic market, embedded alongside the trade professionals who specify high-end design and furnishings. We represent a small and deliberately curated group of brands, among them J. Adams & Co. in Birmingham, DCW éditions and 10 Heures 10 in Paris, Nordst in Copenhagen and StylEditions in Italy, and our work is to bring their craft properly into Norwegian and Nordic projects. We are not a distributor, and never have been. We work by relationships, by knowing the projects, and by caring about the detail, which is, not coincidentally, the same instinct behind this publication.

We were at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen this year where we had the good fortune of meeting new and existing clients alike.

As for me: I have spent my working life in and around this trade, representing considered brands to the people who specify them, and doing it by knowing the work rather than pushing it. I started Sirus Concepts because I was convinced there was a better, more embedded way to bring good design brands into this market. The Specifier is, in a sense, the written extension of that conviction. I will keep my own appearances here brief, and let the work do the talking.

A note on rhythm. Articles will appear here as and when something genuinely merits one, which will likely be sporadically and without padding. The newsletter, gathering the best of them, will arrive quarterly. The first issue lands this July, and if you are reading this, perhaps subscribe to the list so you get it when it lands.

That is the whole of the plan: to look closely at good things, to write about them honestly, and to be worth the few minutes it takes to read. I hope you find some pleasure in it. I intend to.