We love this chair by monocomplex design studio because it illustrates an essential lesson about cardboard: when sheets of it are glued together they become an incredibly strong material, a homemade laminate that can be used like wood. Here, the designer glued together 127 pieces of cardboard (recycled boxes, not pristine sheets) until he had a big roughly-arm-chair-size block. Then he sculpted it with a grinder and saw, gradually tailoring a chair to fit his body.
You can watch the process here, a 1.5 minute revelation. read more…
Over the years we’ve been given a number of beautiful oversized platters which we love to use for celebrations of all sorts. We’ve discovered they are too oddly-shaped to fit stacked on a shelf in our renovated kitchen cabinets, but would if we could find a way to stand them up. Using wire plate display stands for each platter would prove unwieldy and take up too much room. So we started to look around for another option.
We found it in the form of an inexpensive plate holder from Crate and Barrel: basically two wooden bars held in place by dowels, with dowels placed vertically at about 1″ intervals to hold plates: a tinker-toy of a plate holder.
Our platters need bigger spacing to balance upright properly so we decided to try hacking the plate holder read more…
We recently discovered Easy Home Tricks, a pinterest board from Remodeleze.com. A lot of DIY home sites involve repurposing everything to the point of absurdity, but while this board has a little of that - covers up a bathrooms window??!! - for the most part it’s extremely USEFUL. We think of it as a more modern Hints from Heloise.
So far we’ve discovered a lot of great everyday home solutions, many of them ‘green’, including read more…
Spoon straws are metal straws that have a spoon bowl attached, so you can use them to both stir and sip a cocktail, ice tea or ice cream floats and shakes. Although we’ve collected them over the years at flea markets, we had no idea that we could buy new ones that were both inexpensive and great looking: a perfect summer house or dinner party gift.
In honor of our giveaway of a signed, first-edition of Sally’s A New Way to Cook, we thought we’d publish 3 recipes for summer that are both crazy-simple (one has only 1 ingredient!) and dazzling. They make up just a fraction of the book’s chapter on fruit desserts. It includes a guide for improvising flavored syrups for making quick, memorable fruit salads, which is what’s happening in the photo above. Think Vanilla Bean; Cherry Eau-de-Vie; Rosewater; Basil and Cinnamon; Rosemary, Lavender and Honey; Whisky and White Peppercorn syrups to adorn peaches, aprictos, melons, cherries, berries, mangos…
To enter, just comment if you’d like a copy of A New Way to Cook and we will pick a winner at random on June 19th.
And now, here are Three Crazy-Simple Fresh Fruit Desserts: read more…
Among the many projects we’re working on, is creating a standing desk – or perhaps better put – a standing area for our the 13-foot desktop we’re creating, so we can sit AND stand during many ours of blogging. We’ve seen many iterations on the internet, not to mention research as to why standing while you work is beneficial. Wirecutter’s recent article rounds up much of it, and shows the lengths, and cost, the standing desk obsession can take you to.
From our recent renovation we’ve discovered that in designing anything, it’s good to keep in mind the simplest, most bare-bones iteration; read more…
(Video link here.) Artist Tom Sachs, who we’ve posted about a number of times, recently made a video about plywood. He LOVES IT, uses a lot of it in his work, and has learned a great deal about handling it, which he summed up in this charming, illuminating video. It is totally after-are-own-hearts: in our the ongoing renovation of our Laboratory, we’ve made – and are making – all sorts of things from plywood…like the floors read more…
This makeshift pull’s austere beauty comes from having been made from Gorilla Tape, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
We love the pull so much, and think it looks SO good, we might just leave it… read more…
As a tribute to the 80th anniversary of Alvar Aalto’s famous stool “60″, Artek commissioned Mike Meirè to make a fresh interpretation of that icon of Finnish design. Here, the artist painstakingly handpaints the simple elements of the stool: 3 bent-ply legs, one round seat (showing just how difficult it is to paint a straight edge). It gave us new ideas for transforming the fabulously versatile stool (which we’ve blogged about at great length), copies of which are available at Ikeas in Europe and on Amazon (prime them before painting as the wood has a sealer on it).
The video is also a curiously relaxing, mesmerizing 2+ minutes mediation on paint and process, with lovely music… read more…
(Click here to listen while you read.) We are always looking for music we can work – and write – to. So we were thrilled to learn of a free, open-source Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, from the newly-released recording by Kimiko Ishizaka, performed on a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial piano in Berlin.
The Variations are the quintessence of improvisation. A conversation with pianist Jeremy Denk on NPR describes the piece as beginning “with an initial melody, the Aria, followed by 30 short but brilliant variations built on eight notes that Bach appears to have borrowed from Handel.” Says Denk: ”One of the most beautiful thing about the Goldbergs is that Bach uses it as a canvas in which to draw this seemingly infinite world of possibility.”
Click here, to download or stream the entire work.
We love the surprising “flower arrangements” created by Sania Pell, author of Homemade Home for Children. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
(Video link here.) When we checked in on Pascal Anson’s YouTube Channel and saw a video called “The Present”, we thought we’d see Anson demonstrating a clever way of BEING present. Well, we did, sort of: Pascal Anson’s inimitable way of…giving real presents/presence.
Good lighting is essential to making any space come alive, ESPECIALLY one suffering from disorder, as ours has during our recent move of lock-stock-and-many barrels. The solution was Lunette, lighting designers David Weeks’ and Lindsey Adelman’s inexpensive clip-on lamp shade we bought and blogged about a couple of years ago, but never had occasion to use. We bought two more in advance of the move and found them a perfect INSTANT solution to bare bulbs and unresolved lighting fixtures. It’s soft form is somehow perfect with our sculptural 50′s Atomic base which has lost its original globe, as well as the inexpensive porcelain pull-chain socket ”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. read more…
In the days after our move to Harlem, friends came to help with the massive amount of unpacking, disposing of paper and boxes, and figuring out how to make the unfinished space as livable and pleasant as possible. As is typical with well-layed plans, ours did not go altogether smoothly. read more…
We are smitten with these vintage plywood children’s chairs whose very direct, modern lines and whimsical port holes make us envision an adult version. (Turned on it’s side, a chair could easily morph into a table…). There’s something Donald Judd-esque about them, softened by the curved corners. They wouldn’t be too hard to copy…They look like something we’d find in Furniture in 24 Hours…
for each platter would prove unwieldy and take up too much room. So we started to look around for another option.
@ $1.75 a piece OR 
for $6.)
and we will pick a winner at random on June 19th.
, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. 
