What’s Happening: The second coming of Ti Chang’s vibrator necklace is riding a new wave of pleasure jewelry.

The Download: Fashion has always been about sex. From codpieces to push-up bras, high heels to hanky codes, what you wear often telegraphs what you want to do when it all comes off. These days, it can even get you off. Jewelry and accessory makers are hard at work blurring the lines between fashion, fetish object, and functioning sex toys—and options are flooding the market.

In large part, this is thanks to Ti Chang. Classically trained and educated in industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ti successfully brought to market the world’s first crowdfunded sex toy. 2014’s Vesper wasn’t just a vibrator, though it certainly did that job; with its coy chain and delicate sheath of silver or rose gold, it was a necklace chic enough to wear almost anywhere.

A promiscuous market erupted. Luxury lingerie doyenne Fleur du Mal led by example with a pearl harness whose material winks at the old necklace euphemism. A subtle but sexy pair of Metal Chain handcuffs from vibrator experts Le Wand are the perfect gift for cuffing season. Bijoux Indiscrets, an “erotic company” devoted to “sexual wellbeing” tailored a tassel choker into a kicky accessory that’s somewhere between a bolo tie, bullwhip, and leash.

The writer and queer Instagram sensation Leo Herrera released a line of necklaces boasting silver sterling heads of puppies and pigs that serve as popper bottle tops—with a quick screw, owners have easy, and easily noticed, access. Pop stars are also getting into the game. Frank Ocean’s Homer jewelry brand whipped out the XXXL H-Bone ring, an 18 karat gold cock ring encrusted with diamonds. And in one of his final shows at Gucci, Alessandro Michele went whole hog, bedecking the models with jewelry resembling—embodying, perhaps—silver butt plugs and vaginal beads, and undone bracelets of anal beads.

This fall, Ti returned to reassert her dominance over the field. “I was inspired by the experience of adornments and how it makes the wearer feel,” she tells Surface. Her company Crave has just introduced the low-slung Vesper 2, made of high polish 316 stainless silver, finished in silver, rose gold, or 24 karat gold. A button turns it on, while a hidden USB charging port can plug in. Fans are turned on. Goop snapped it up. Madonna posed with a custom black number and told the world that if she “could only wear one thing for the rest of her life,” it would be the 24 karat gold option. Meanwhile, Ti says this could just be design foreplay. What comes next? “I’m just getting started,” she says.

In Their Own Words: “Jewelry can enable the wearer to feel beautiful, respected, and honored, a feeling that is rarely experienced in pleasure products,” says Ti Chang. “The functionality of a vibrator had to be balanced with the wearability of a necklace pendant. I didn’t want to compromise.”

Surface Says: Everyone has the right to pursue their own sexual pleasure. If it feels good, wear it.

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

Next year, tile savant Alison Rose will finally launch her own eponymous collections. But first, there’s some unfinished business with longtime partner Artistic Tile. Euclid, their initial collaboration, invented an alphabet of waterjet set units with Bauhaus-inspired patterns which could be assembled any way you choose. Next came geometric-minded Zephyr, a dimensional tile boasting concave marble slopes. With this fall’s Sfera, Rose comes full circle. It’s her most ambitious collection yet.

A kind of infinite mosaic, Sfera layers spheres atop and around each other—think of cells dividing, solar systems in motion, champagne fizzing in a flute, or even a chic take on a ball pit. Rose devised three colorways: Verde, which mixes green polished quartzite with polished and honed Nero Marble; Lilac, a quartet of the titular marble along with polished Statuary and honed Calacatta Bluette and Bianco Carrara; and moody Grafite, a foursome of that stone with polished and honed Nero and honed Vanilla Onyx. But each colorway places each color randomly, ensuring a unique installation every time. That installation may take particular care, as sheets are irregular and interlock in combination to create the seamless pattern. But, as always with Rose, the results are definitely worth the effort.

Exactly one year ago, the art world suffered a monumental loss when Lawrence Weiner passed away. Nearly a year before, the pioneering Conceptual artist had begun working with art marketplace Avant Arte on what would become one of his final projects: a sculpture in the form of a jacquard blanket—the artist’s first and only—titled “HERE AND NOW.”

The words first appeared in Weiner’s body of work, where linguistics and philosophy played a pivotal role, in 1996, at his solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Gallery 360. His work on view there “TOUCHED BY WATER NOW & THEN SLOWED DOWN FAST HERE & NOW,” was accompanied by a poster, “HERE & NOW NOW & THEN.”

While Weiner was often referred to as a Conceptual artist throughout his career, he viewed himself as a sculptor. It’s revelatory context for the evolution of “HERE AND NOW,” which was originally intended to be a hammer, then a hammock, before becoming the blanket it is today. According to Avant Arte, Weiner always wanted this sculpture to be a piece suitable for the home environment of collectors, unlike the room-size (or larger) works that became emblematic of his later years.

Tucked behind wooden lattice doors and retreating into graceful depths of gardens, earthen walls, and bamboo screens, the traditional machiya has long defined downtown Kyoto. Maana Kiyomizu updates the form, with help from local architects Shigenori Uoya and Takeshi Ikei, and design outpost POJ Studio. And while they were at it, they refreshed the time-honored kissaten coffeehouse into Kissa Kisshan, whose Japanese and English-style breakfasts of local produce are already a local standard.

The boutique hotel comprises three suites: two upstairs within bamboo screens or panels of Wataru Hatano’s handmade washi paper, and one below with a window wall towards Toyokuni Shrine. Furnishings mix classic wood benches with modern essentials like Karimoku Case Study chairs, ceramic pendants by Elsa Foulon, and a Menu sofa, perhaps a nod to Danish modernism’s Japanese roots. Maana properties are beloved for the bathrooms, and Kiyomizu doesn’t disappoint: Shiga artisans made the ceramic bathtub by hand, just as Gaku Nakane made the pendant above it. While soaking, guests can sip tea in cups thrown by fourth-generation clay artisans, and then pop next door to the POJ Studio shop to purchase them, or even take a class and learn to throw their own.

With intimately intertwined figures rendered in smooth brushstrokes and muted hues, the first painting the Ethiopian artist made after moving back to Addis Ababa is a clarion call for human connection during a fractured, war-torn time.

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Tesfaye Urgessa, 39, Addis Ababa.

Title of work: Singing Redemption Song (2022).

Where to see it: Saatchi Yates, Miami, until Dec. 20.

Three words to describe it: Singing, redemption, song.

What was on your mind at the time: This is the first painting I made after moving back to Ethiopia. I found a country divided by the war and I wanted to make a statement, to find something that brings people together. I was listening to Redemption Song, wishing that people could come together in peace, unite, to sing like a choir, almost as a religious experience.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

A Paris Museum Has 18,000 Skulls. It’s Reluctant to Say Whose. [New York Times]

48,500-Year-Old Zombie Virus Revived by Scientists in Russia [The Tribune]

$8 Billion Turtle-Shaped Luxury Yacht Could Become the Largest Floating Structure Ever Built [Archinect]

Miami Nightclubs Mourn Absence of High-Rolling Crypto Entrepreneurs [Financial Times]

Giant Goldfish Weighing Nearly 70 Pounds Is a Good Reminder to Not Release Your Pets [My Modern Met]

Shein’s Pop-Up Store in Brazil Caused Fistfights [Semafor]

A Woman Made Chili for Neighbors, and Outrage Ensued [Washington Post]

“I Feel Gay,” FIFA Chief Attempts to Empathize With Marginalized [Reuters]

Sheep Walk Around in a Circle for TWELVE DAYS Without Stopping on Chinese Farm [Daily Mail]

New York City Wants to Pay a ‘Rat Czar’ $170,000 to Solve Its Rodent Problem [WSJ]

For All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras offers an intimate look inside the renowned photographer’s inextricable art and activism, from chronicling the emergent AIDS crisis to her ongoing stand-ins at museums that take money from the manufacturers of OxyContin.

The award-winning interior architect Lauren Rottet launched a multi-adaptive furniture range for home, office, living room, lobby, and resort. The line incorporates Rottet’s love of architecture and detail, and reflects her passion for creating spaces and objects that impart kinetic energy, visually enlivening each environment.

Surface Says: Rottet’s designs strike the perfect balance between refinement and casual comfort. But it’s her deep knowledge of abstract art that truly sets her furniture collection apart.

Build your own gingerbread Target store, complete with Bullseye the dog.

The intergenerational realtor drama on “Buying Beverly Hills” is… hard to buy.

The world’s oldest fossilized brain reveals new theories about evolution.

New research suggests that Mars was once capable of supporting life.