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Thanks — The Management
patrick martinez
Patrick Martinez’s neon sign made us think. We believe strongly in building…
…but if you aren’t building…
are you destroying?
OR… read more…
photo: heidi swanson
Not long after we posted about kintsugi, the artful repair of damaged things, we came across these photos of a worn wide-plank Douglas Fir floor patched with tin in Mindy Marin’s renovated barn Bluewater Ranch. A perfect example of modern-day kintsugi: the undisguised tin becomes part of the design on floors whose age and wear makes them both interesting and beautiful. read more…
photo: sally schneider
After we set up our office’s wonderful 15-foot desktop, we were dismayed to see the ugly cords dangling underneath – power strip, hard drive plugs, usb hub etc. Because of where our electrical outlets are placed, and the fact that we need to be able to access the various cords, we couldn’t simply hide the cords behind the file cabinets. We cast about for a solution, first propping a white-painted plywood scrap leftover from the renovation against the wires. read more…
photo: jill krementz
Although our borrowed cabin in the country was not quite as spare as Charlotte’s Web
We were so intrigued by White’s utterly simple, focused space, that we browsed some of his essays
For some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. It is not a simple matter. I am impressed by the reluctance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world. During September I kept hoping that some morning, as if by magic, all books, pictures, records, chairs, beds, curtains, lamps, china, glass utensils, keepsakes would drain away from around my feet, like the outgoing tide, leaving me standing silent on a bare beach. But this did not happen… read more…
amber waterman/sun journal
The practice of making a retreat – taking oneself OUT of everyday life to withdraw and reflect – has been around for eons. It is part of many spiritual traditions, and to our thinking, should be a requirement for everyone (and paid for by insurance – ha) , so filled as our lives are with doing and action. It’s something that people – including us – used to do a lot more, because life is intense no matter how you slice it and there’s much to reflect on. Sometimes retreating is the only way to see, and detach.
A retreat is a bit different than a vacation, because retreats generally are about taking refuge from the world, notdoing, and about attending to the spirit. Just being. Listening. Taking stock. read more…
Our favorite column at the very cerebral blog Design Observer is John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries, compilations of photographs around a theme. This week’s post focuses on the Japanese tradition of kintsugi — the artful repairing of damaged objects, and illustrates the beauty of broken and repaired things. This 18th century carved wooden bowl being sold at David Bell antiques is being described as “Perfectly imperfect.”As is this antique Japanese textile: read more…
photo credit: collection of john and teenuh foster
We’re adding this to our collection of “leap and fly” photos that we see as so emblematic of the willingness to “take a leap”, risk, try new things. We love this one because the dancer is so game, and looks like an ordinary person doing what she loves, maybe not brilliantly, but wonderful all the same.
via Design Observer
photos courtesy collection of John and Teenuh Foster
Related posts: when going slowly is ‘taking a leap’
jump! leap! (philippe halsman)
glacier point: wonder and daring
‘jump!’ (the movie)
‘leap and the net will appear’…
photo: hellosandwich
Every since it burst on the scene, we’ve been in love with washi tape masking tape, using it for all sorts of decorative purposes, from wrapping gifts to tacking images or making signs on walls; we’ve posted about it a number of times. Then, over a year ago, we stumbled on a post about washi tape wallpaper, wide rolls of washi tape you could apply to your walls, and repositioned like masking tape, only these are really wide swaths of color. Darned if it wasn’t available, just like a lot of the great design ideas we find, so we didn’t post it.
Until today, that is. read more…
We were knocked out when we saw this picture of sculptor Giuseppe Penone‘s sapling within a tree that he says is about “the hidden life within.”
We thought of many things at once, many of them corny, but true nevertheless…of the origins and emergence of ideas, and the little kid that remains within each of us (yikes!)
We went looking for more about Penone’s work and found this astonishing image: read more…
We love checking in to Cabin Porn a site which provides “inspiration for your quiet place somewhere”, which right now, is in our heads.
Recently, we became smitten with this hut overlooking Lake Bonney in the southeast of South Australia. All we know is that “it was built over 5 years with salvaged materials”; no other details were given. So we looked close at what those salvaged materials might be: we saw corrugated aluminum, windows, concrete blocks, reclaimed timber, a door, some sort of thin modern glass, driftwood…
Inspired, inspiring. A place to think…
Related posts: house tour: laura handler’s montana log cabin
cabin porn fave of the day: garden cottage, netherlands
‘tiny homes: simple shelter’
favorite escapist blog: cabin porn
the unexpected stylishness of walls of stacked logs
When we first saw this stack of books-stripped-bare of their covers to reveal neutral color and graphic texture, we thought: what a cool material for doing all sorts of things. Stack em to make stools, displays and ad hoc tables, or supports for low shelves. Books as bricks. Then we wondered: Could we really justify dismantling books in such a way?
Well yeah, maybe. There are all sorts of books that we’d feel justified in taking the covers off: falling apart ones, water-damaged ones, cheap ones, and especially fat catalogues. We tried it with the huge Outwater Hardware catalogue and found it made a lovely “brick” (we might glue a neutral top page on to the printed one). read more…
We’ve recently discovered a new series of photographs by Amy Friend called Dare alla Luce:
Through small deliberate interventions, I altered these vintage images, allowing light to pass through them. (After all, photographs are made possible with light.) In a literal and somewhat playful manner, I aimed to give the photographs back to the light, hence the title of the series, Dare alla Luce, an Italian phrase used to describe the moment of birth.
photo: william abranowicz
In this Sunday’s NY Times T magazine, we were happy to see the cover story on John Derian’s East Village apartment photographed by our old friend Bill Abranowicz (whose beauty of a book on Greece we featured some time ago.)It starts with a photo of the naked, as-is space, rife with possibilities. We realized we were relieved we were to see an undone, unslick, unmodern, messy space, tired as we are of clinically modern interiors-porn that are everywhere. Derian had the courage and vision to leave the essentials be.
We loved imagining how we would handle the space were it ours, and then looking at the photos of what Derian did (swell befores-and-afters here), and seeing how our sensibilities differed or grooved with his (we’d nix the dark armoire between the windows blocking all that light and sense of space…but yeah, what about storage?) read more…
photo: city-furniture
Le Cabanon by Le Corbusier – Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
Being weak (but learning) in the interior color department, we’ve loved Flavorwire’s recent round-up of the Surprisingly Colorful Homes of 10 Famous Architects. Although we’ve actually been inside Le Corbusier’s Le Cabanon in the south of France, we hadn’t quite realized just how much color he’d incorporated into his largely plywood interior. The slideshow covers a lot of territory, including the fabulous use of pink Luis Barragán made at Casa Barragán in Mexico City, the wonderful seemingly impromptu way Ray Kappe placed painting right next to the bed at his house in Los Angeles, and Albert Frey’s cool use of a corrugated metal ceiling in his house inPalm Springs. We especially love Finn Juhl’s understated home in Ordrup, Denmark. read more…
