Asymmetry can be such a relief, “breaking” the obvious perfection of a designed space. We’ve long been a fan of mismatched chairs…but hadn’t thought of mismatched pendant lights. A simple, unexpected visual surprise. via French by Design Related posts: wabi sabi, the perfection of imperfection thanksgiving logistics: makeshift tables + chairs we’re back (breaking our…
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With the holidays fast approaching, everyone we know is starting their annual scramble to find great gifts. We’ve always felt that books make the best children’s presents. Over the years we’ve posted some of our favorites, all of which encourage creative thinking. From surprising cookbooks to clever craft projects, we highly recommend these six books…
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Our friend Jacque Burke is the Communications Director for The Dutch and Locanda Verde, lynchpins of chef Andrew Carmellini‘s growing restaurant empire. She sent us a photo of this astonishing to-do list with some thoughtful commentary, and inadvertently became a guest blogger: “I had some work waiting for me at Locanda Verde, and when I went…
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(Video link here.) The weekend is here. Time to take a road trip cross country with this little desk toy, using a toy car and Google Maps Street View. A little beauty of homemade animation by Tom Jenkins. via Open Culture Related posts: ‘the world is full of interesting things’ on the massively creative internet and…
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“A wide field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded this spectacular meteor breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 30, 2011, 8:37 p.m. EDT. Also visible is a star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the field of view — the upper stage of the Zenit booster that launched the…
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When we did our 2-minute survey, we discovered that A LOT of our readers love that there are no ads on ‘the improvised life’, that we are not trying to sell them something. Not having advertising is easier-said-than done: ads provide revenue that pays for the production costs of content. No ads = no $$.…
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We have a lot of respect for writer Michael Pollan’s writing about the food industry, and heard that his 2009 book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual presented a sane approach to eating. But we’ve been so bombarded over the years with”scientifically proven” strictures about what to cook and eat that were later proven WRONG, that our…
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The streets of Tangier in North Africa are a mix of the ancient and the contemporary but some traditions still hold fast. Outdoor cafes are populated with men who seem to sit for hours on end, drinking strong coffee or Moroccan ‘whiskey’ – gunpowder green tea with loads of fresh mint and sugar. Passing the…
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From Anthony Giglio: “Was in Atlantic City this weekend having dinner at Buddakhan. They gave us chopsticks but nowhere to rest them! Then I saw my friend had used the paper wrapper to make an improv one. Thought of you. Not earth shattering… but fun.” We have a friend who makes elaborately folded origami-like chopstick…
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For many years, I’ve enjoyed this amazingly-designed mid-century folding desk. The desk unit looks like a normal small wardrobe but when you open it, closed cabinet swings open on both sides to reveal pull-out desk. It has many any moveable shelves, a large drawer with pencil/pen holder, large slide out shelf and a even a moveable…
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On a recent Selby visit, we spotted this fabric-draped sofa in the wonderful home of Hitoshi Uchida-san – owner of J’Antiques Tokyo (check out the full story). The beauty of it is that the sofa is covered with a really big swath of fabric that can bunch and drape luxuriously. The fabric is wide enough to go from…
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(Video link here.) When Amy Schoening told us about her friend and teacher Alonso King, founder of Lines Ballet, we went right to a video she made about him. King is clearly a transformative teacher, the kind of person we’d love to have as a mentor. His teachings about dance and movement are really teachings about life…its…
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As you may have noticed, we have a thing for images of people flying and leaping, free falling and sailing through the air – to where? – with no constraints. (Because it’s what we want to do). Today we found a delicious trove on John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries column on Design Observer… Related posts: fly! (merce…
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We have a fondness for rusted and/or corroded bits of steel, aged into a patina that no artist could produce (well…maybe Richard Serra). We find them lying in the street, along railroad trestles, near construction sites. They are sculptures unto themselves that often have great uses, like this stunning vintage nail – a railroad tie perhaps…
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(Video link here; start at 4:50) We had a non-stop day, working on a big project, then racing back to write a post many hours late…wondering if we might write about lateness, or busyness or not-living-up-to-our-obligationness, which so many people we know are trying to figure out. We were poking around the files, half-written posts,…
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The northeast had a surprise snowstorm in late October which left a lot of people without power. Our good friend Pamela Hovland sent us pictures of her family’s improvised living arrangements: mattresses arranged around the fire place with an array of colorful quilts and pillows made for cozy, impressively stylish indoor camping. But best of all…
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(Video link here.) On TV last week, we caught a compelling video made by The Guardian about artist Vik Muniz’s recent work. Over three years he traveled to his native Brazil to photograph “catadores” – pickers of recyclable materials – who comb daily through Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest garbage dump, located on the outskirts of Rio…
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(Video link here.) At Apple’s recent celebration of Steve Jobs’ life, Norah Jones sang Bob Dylan’s classic Forever Young, which he wrote in the early ’70’s. Although we’ve heard the song many times over the years, we never really focused on the lyrics until we watched the video of Jones’ performance and looked them up. We…
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What the sculptor David Smith could do with with simple squares and rectangles… …. …his studio is as inspiring…
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A clear sign of our economic times, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article about the growing trend of folks who attempt home repairs before throwing out a broken appliance. The article cites notable increases in customer service calls for help with do-it-yourself home repairs, and increases in the sales of replacement parts. We…
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