At first glance, Sean Brown’s IG feed may seem like a perfectly curated design catalogue. But it’s clear it’s more of an archive of his life as he explores the past to create for the future - in no particular order. Serving as his digital business card, he documents his process and research as an artist across his social platforms. From shooting projects on film, to capturing his self-published travelogue on his iPhone 5s, and hand-crafting rugs emulating 2000s albums, Brown is known for mastering the art of minimalism.

Citing both The Source and The Face magazines as textbooks, he often references relics of the past - "I bought maybe 50 Source mags off one guy, and he just thought they were junk, but to me, it’s like a pot of gold”. Influenced by Black culture throughout his upbringing, specifically the Hype Williams era, it inevitably became the source of his creativity. While referencing a bold and beautiful age of Blackness has a nostalgic element, for Brown, creating work infused in the past is a way to keep that period alive. When the pandemic hit, this framework of reliving a previous time through its culture became even more meaningful. The idea to create something for a lockdown home through his homeware line Curves by Sean Brown, became the goal and one of the results was the illustrious CD rugs.

Using his Toronto apartment as a canvas to create new designs, his CD collection caught his attention. 

“Yo, I wonder if we die cut the center and we just started doing CD rugs, how that would hit.” 

Realising the antiquity of a CD, he took to Twitter to see how the idea would fair. Thinking only a handful of inquiries would come in, the post went viral leaving Brown and his team to catch up with the demand. Despite CDs becoming obsolete, the ability to capture multiple moments in time with a household object gives them an enduring appeal. Almost created as a challenge for people to up their design game, it’s also a call to engage in past cultures that paved the way for where designers and consumers are today. Brown’s “disks that won’t scratch” approach technology with an artful lens, giving famed albums a new function in the everyday home.