Over the years, lighting designer par excellence Lindsey Adelman has posted free diy lighting instructions on her website, where she also sells her beautiful, pricey creations. A generous act indeed; Linssey reveals the tools and techniques to many of her designs. Her simple, liberating words: Make your own light. Experimenting with off-the-shelf parts is how Lindsey…
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(Video link here.) Our friend David Saltman is, among other things, a magician. Over the years, we’ve learned from him that magic requires PRACTICE. When you see a great illusion, it is the result of hundredes of hours of practice, thought, innovation. This lovely illusion, found at his blog The Houdini File is an example of practice…
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I’ve always struggled with Mother’s Day. Too pink, too saccharine, too much forced happiness when the reality so often cloaks a good deal of ambivalence, sadness, and hidden anger. That all changed when I opened our Little Free Library on the front fence yesterday and discovered Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi’s extraordinary graphic memoir of…
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Jim Dillon of The Thousand Dollar Shop recently sent us this image of a unique play on ramps — wild leeks — that he tasted at Sobban, a local Korean-Southern fusion restaurant in Georgia which is his neck of the woods: Shrimp and Ramp Yakidori and Kimchi Rice Sushi Rolls wrapped with ramps instead of sheets…
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Browsing through my image files, I came across photos I’d collected of matte black door hardware, which I contemplated using in the Laboratory. The first time I saw it used was in a friend’s just-renovated Brooklyn brownstone: black hinges add a surprising graphic element, as does the rosette of the crystal doorknob. Beautiful. Although I only used black hardware in one detail of the Laboratory, I learned its biggest lesson and caveat.
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Over the last three years, an anonymous artist has wandered around the streets of New York City finding random pieces of urban infrastructure, from trash to fire hydrants to street lights and parking signs, and turning them into something useful. The 23 “interventions” are inspiring because they are great examples of innovative thinking about everyday…
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In our ongoing theme “The Annals of Bad Design” we’ve critiqued ultra-wide bigger-than-the-mattress beds that look cool — and allow for an instant spot for your drifting-off-to-sleep-reading—but make for scraped and banged calves when getting in and out of bed. New York based designers Cristoff : Finio devised a clever solution to this dilemma in their design for…
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(Watch video HERE.) While compiling our post about Men Wearing Skirts, we stumbled on a picture of athlete Noah Galloway, missing both an arm and part of his leg, embarking on a grueling physical competition while wearing a skirt. Who is this guy, we wondered? So we went to his website to find out. On December…
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Our friend Chris Eldredge alerted us to a fashion trend he’s noticed: Men Wearing Skirts. He said that he’s seen a number of stylishly dressed men wearing skirts lately —definitely NOT in drag. Interesting. A search took us to The Facebook page of Women Wear Pants. Let Men Wear Skirts, which features a lot of…
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Another simple, surprising re-envisioning of an ordinary object by interior designer Andrée Putman: vintage garden chairs used forthrightly as dining chairs — indoors. They are comfortable and bouncy and have a similar, strangley modern feel as her modernized clawfoot tub. The white chairs in the image are classic Retro, easily found at yard sales and on Ebay. We’ve…
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We keep stumbling on brilliantina interior designer Andrée Putman‘s clever, simple, visionary plays on ordinary objects. Here she hacked a clawfoot tub way-before-her-time, by replacing the claw feet with giant balls to give the tub a completely “other” modern look. It retains the comforing depth, length and back-slope of the classic clawfoot. Putman used this…
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One of our favorite books as kids remains A Hole Is to Dig, A Dictionary of First Definitions, a brilliant wise collaboration by the great Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak. We only recently discovered Open House for Butterflies originally published in 1960. It is indeed a treasure full of charmingly philosophical, zen-ish, in-the-moment wisdom, perfect for kids…
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Frequent contributor Susan Dworski passed on this photo and commentary from her brother, who lives on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala: West side neighbor’s guardian’s solution to lack of long enough wood piece for a hand rail along the camino publico…….. While not entirely w/out a certain rustic charm……. Flip side of well orchestrated indigenous handicraft……… Cockamamie for…
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(Watch video HERE.) Watch this video with the sound off and you’d swear it was special effects made by Dreamworks or Hollywood. In fact, it was filmed in Norway, Finland and Sweden during autumn, winter and spring, the three seasons those countries have darkness. The “silent storms” referred to are the geomagnetic storms which takes place…
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All the elements of a classic, unrenovated loft are here: tin ceiling, pipes and sprinklers snaking across the ceiling and down a wall, big old iron radiators, electrical boxes showing, a door that had been painted a million times… Fashion Designer Betsy Johnson totally transformed it by painting walls and ceiling a daring LOUD pink.…
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Although acrylic can initally be pretty cool looking, we’ve never been crazy about it given it’s tendency to scratch and yellow with age. But recently, Design Milk’s Interview with Aaron R. Thomas, “Master of All Things Acrylic” shifted our view a bit. When we saw the acrylic furniture Thomas had painted, a light bulb went off.…
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Stunned by sight of a scarlet phaleonopsis, I actually BOUGHT this PLASTIC orchid for $5.99 at TJ Max when I was shopping one day. Sure, it’s flat-out fake, but it radiates unfailing good cheer every day, winter or summer, day or night. And it serves as an essential reminder.
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On the heels of our post about found Art and Inspiration, we stumbled on this at Aqqindes: artist Carl Andre’s found steel sculptures, circa 1960! Beautiful!
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David Saltman over at Houdini File sent us these beautiful 3D optical illusions created in sand, which allow for many possibilities for real and imaginary play, art, sports, fun….
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This simple, stylish hanging shelf is made of only 3 elements: a (painted) board, suede or leather lacing, wall hooks. It reminded us of other cool iterations —some more complex, some simpler — of the hanging shelf.
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