furniture
Sometimes there’s no way around keeping a piece of furniture in your place that you’re not crazy about; you either need it (like a file cabinet or storage chest) or you can’t get rid of it just yet (you’re keeping it for the next place). Here’s an example of using a great fabric to hide a piece of furniture, from the fabulous house designed by the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan that we blogged last week. Laying fabric upon wonderful fabric on the table and folding the corners in neatly makes it look interesting and intentional, rather than like a disguise (though we don’t imagine Barrigan is disguising anything in that house.)
We think, the example from Lonny Magazine, below, works pretty well, though it transmits subtle inklings of “disguise”. We think it would have been much more complete with another piece of fabric, or a runner (even placed front to back) draped over it, a la Barrigan.
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05.31.10 |
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in cool spaces, copy this!, elements, furniture, inside, materials, reimagine, resources, soft, solutions |
Since we first set out on our mission to find good looking clips to make shelving out of boxes, we came across Indie Furniture‘s site. (That’s what happens when you hold an idea in your mind: answers and iterations start to appear). The folks at Indie devised a clamp/joint that can fit different sizes of wood, with instructions for using them. They are so passionate about creating a do-it-yourself shelving system that would allow people to configure their own unique shelving, that they even published a manifesto: read more…
05.17.10 |
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in furniture, hard, inside, materials, plans, resources, solutions, storage, stores |
A few years ago, I clipped this image from Reference Library, the always-surprising visual blog that rarely gives explanations. It said simply:
“Michelangelo Pistoletto Struttura per parlare in piedi (Oggetti in meno) 1965-66
This is just about my most favorite thing.”
In English, Pistoletto‘s artwork is called “Structure for Talking Standing Up”, part of a series he did called Minus Objects. In one photo, a man is standing by the structure, leaning on it lightly with one foot on rung, as though he were talking to someone over a fence.
I love it as an object, and its amazing concept. I also can’t help but imagine it as a table base, in a slightly shorter scale, say 30 inches high. If I could work wood or iron, I’d copy it and lay a flat slab of something beautiful on top – wood, stone or rusting steel – to make a gorgeous table. I might even hinge the corner so the base could fold. I think “I am a barbarian for envisioning Pistoletto’s work of art as a table base” and then think, “No…
… this is an example of how art can inspire the most mundane of things.”
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s website is full of amazing ideas.
via Reference Library
05.04.10 |
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in art, furniture, inside, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, why not? |
When we need a table in a hurry for a project or a bigger-than-expected-crowd-for-dinner, we pull out a pair of folding aluminum saw horses we keep the closet. We lay on a top made out of a hollow-core door or a slab of plywood cut to whatever size we like (we’ve got a small version and a larger one…) to make an instant trestle table. If you don’t have room to store the top(s) under or behind the sofa, in the closet or in the basement, take a cue from Spanish Designer Tomas Alonso’s 5 Degree Table, and store the top propped against a wall in plain sight, like a sculpture. Alonso laminated the top of his table a bold green. You could laminate or paint yours any color you like. (We’re thinking blackboard paint …so we can create brilliant transient artworks, or our dinner guests could have fun marking up the table…).
And there are all sorts of cheap, cool looking options for folding saw horses. We LOVE these red powder-coated ones
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05.03.10 |
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in cheap + great, furniture, materials, projects + play, resources, tools |
Our recent call for accessible clip/clamp ideas for securing stacked boxes (wood, cardboard, plastic) to make d-i-y clipped-together shelving got a big response, all offering the same solution: large binder clips. These cheap, ubiquitous clips seem to be the go-to solution for many niggling problems. Wine writer Anthony Giglio wrote:
“I have improvised with these binder clips for years. Currently they clamp open a window that won’t stay up, and clamp those brackets flaps on the window air conditioner in place. For those shelves you would but the extra large, clamp them on and them squeeze/remove the wing handles for aesthetics. Voilà!”
…San Francisco Architect Kim Sykes elaborated on removing the handles:
“I agree that the binder clip is a magical tool. The metal wire looking handles not only fold forward as Joan mentioned but can actually be taken off once you position them in the desired place by squeezing the handles and taking them off their hinges. I think this would create a better look from the side at the vertical connections of these shelves.”
Two inches seem to be about the right size; their one-inch opening would sandwich two half-inch (or thinner) boards. Now we’re hunting for two-inch binder clips in white or colors, rather than the usual black clip
. read more…
05.02.10 |
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in cheap + great, furniture, inside, materials, resources, storage, stores, tools |
Yikes! have we had a glitch sending ‘the improv life’ via Twitter. So this is a test to see if we’ve finally got it figured out…
…we’re sending along a teeny post: a very simple cool way to disguise a sofa with panels of fabric, to take the focus off the original homely cover without denying it’s existence (which never works).
testing…testing…1….2…..3….
02.10.10 |
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in elements, furniture, inside, solutions |
Hunter Gatherer is a blog that is appears to be about STUFF: enticing pictures of cool things for sale (no words) that it is not selling (it just points to the place that is): like the simple desk for sale at Iko Iko with a lovely curved base that looks like you could make it yourself out of really good plywood. This curiously curated selection is almost always rich with interesting, if inadvertent, ideas, like Iko Iko’s concrete block shelving (totally unlike college dorm ones)… read more…
01.11.10 |
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in art, cheap + great, copy this!, furniture, gifts, inspiration blogs + sites, stores |
Recently, 2 or 3 Things I Know posted a picture of this table by the artist Donald Judd; it is miraculous in its simplicity and harmony. I put my face close to the screen to contemplate the structure. It looked to me to be made of big sheets of plywood with an ash or birch veneer: a surface on a base.
Could it be that the base is made of notched sheets of plywood similar to those House of Cards games I remember from my childhood? read more…
11.02.09 |
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in elements, furniture, how-to, inside, materials |
Westerby Gard is an inn and restaurant on a beautiful centuries-old estate near Inkoo, 45 minutes southwest from Helsinki. Its traditional, rustic style reflects the Swedish influence on Finland. I was taken with their glossy painted tables, cleverly configured to make a huge dining table, or rectangular tables of any length – no tablecloth necessary. It’s an expensive-looking way to transform cheap wooden tables and chairs like these (from Ikea, Crate and Barrel, or an unpainted furniture store… ) read more…
08.30.09 |
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in copy this!, eating, furniture, solutions |
I’ve come across a number of posts about furniture made of pallets, those flat rectangles of rough hammered-together wood platforms commonly used to move bundled goods around by a fork lift. This lounge chair by Studiomama is a particularly good one; it has clean lines and looks like it would be comfortable – perfect at a beach house or on a patio. It is made out of two pallets and 50 screws, from an inexpensive, down-loadable plan. It would be great painted, or naturally weathered.
The ever-innovative Studiomama has other well-designed examples of pallet furniture read more…
07.29.09 |
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in furniture, garden, hard, how-to, materials, plans, repurpose |
Kei Okano
You’ve invited a crowd for dinner and you don’t have enough chairs…So, you take some long planks you happened to have hanging around for a construction project, or bought for just such emergencies, and expand a row of spaced chairs into double the seating with a bench. No matter how chic they become, a bench is an old-fashioned no-frills seating method that gives the sitters a feeling of connection, and allows for pushing the numbers at table by “squashing together.” read more…
07.08.09 |
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in copy this!, elements, family + friends, furniture, solutions |
Ellen Silverman
Although I am not a designer, I decided to try designing a table base myself. Using a ruler and pencil, I made a drawing with the totally cockeyed perspective of an outsider artist (since I don’t really know how to draw) with the exact dimensions. Then I faxed it to a guy I’d heard about at Tringali Ironworks in Boonton, New Jersey. He said he could make my base.
The reason I designed my own table is that I couldn’t find a base I liked or could afford to support a beautiful slab of slate I’d inherited. So I figured: “Maybe I can design one; what have I got to lose?” read more…
07.07.09 |
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in elements, furniture, hard, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, plans, solutions, why not? |
For years, I made short-shrift of concrete block, associating it with the clunky cinderblock-and-pine shelves beloved by frugal college students, or bleak, prison-like garages and homemade tool sheds. I’d pass cheap, strong concrete blocks at construction sites and lumber yards, and wonder what I could do with them. Although I’m crazy about concrete, I seemed to have no imagination for concrete block.
Lately, new visions of concrete block have come my way, and opened my eyes to possibilities. read more…
05.20.09 |
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in elements, furniture, hard, inside, inspiration books + zines, materials, reimagine |
Phil Mansfield for The New York Times
A while back, the N.Y. Times reported on a stylish mom whose muslin-covered John Derian sofa became a canvas for her daughter and her seventh grade class to decorate with markers. The article didn’t say whether she’d intended the white muslin sofa to be painted on or whether the blank canvas she’d meant only to be chic and minimal inspired a fit of improvisation. No matter, I suppose. It IS a great idea, and was taken a step further by her son, who embellished two muslin-covered arm chairs with Fabric Paint
clearly an incredibly fun thing for a kid to do.
read more…
04.02.09 |
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in before + after, elements, furniture, kids, reimagine, soft |
