photo: sally schneider
Walking around the Meatpacking District a while back, we spotted this weirdly beautiful door to an under-construction building: rough, completely utilitarian, cheap (actually warped) plywood painted silver -possibly using the silvery paint meant to seal metal. It’s one of those surprise transformations of an ordinary material that we find both heartening and thought-provoking (and why we love walking around New York)… read more…
photo: maria robledo
A few years ago Suzanne Shaker made the decision to change her path, from stylist par excellence to interior designer. She quickly became known for “a unique style that combines modern, traditional, and custom-designed furnishings, using natural materials and the sculptural qualities of light, personal objects and art” to make serene, minimalist spaces. Soon, she was invited to be in Remodelista’s coveted Designer Directory, where you can view some of her work.
Also check out the recent story and slideshow in the New York Times about the house she and her husband Pete Dandridge built from scratch on Shelter Island, under fierce budgetary constraints. The story of her struggle to make hard choices to stay within her budget is a compelling one. read more…
Architectural Digest, New York Interiors, 1979
When You Have Been Here Sometime recently posted some images from Architectural Digest, New York Interiors, 1979, we were struck by this one. Although lamps and pouf and carpet are all pretty dated and rigid, a great idea remains: covering a homely piece of furniture with beautiful fabric. Who knows what’s under the ochre yellow panel? It could be two horizontal file cabinets placed end to end for all we know. Layering fabrics adds substance and a mix of textures and colors. The fabric covers don’t HAVE to be hemmed: intentionally ripped linen can be beautiful… read more…
photo: wendy goodman
We worked with Jeffrey Miller many years ago when he was prop stylist and always marveled at his wonderful eye. We also marveled at the apartment he lived in, which at the time was a tiny studio with a giant window on the lower east side of Manhattan. We loved its extreme minimalism which combined function and beauty way before those ideas became popularized. He’s in new digs now, which were recently featured in New York Magazine. For a guy whose work is fabulous stuff, his home is a story of extreme restraint and quirkiness. We love his door stop made out of a found rock tied with twine, and read more…
While we were away, a reader left a Comment in response to our post about Constantino Nivola’s Tinkertoy lamps. She described a trellis she had made out of vintage Tinkertoys bought on Ebay. She devised it to display her tillandsia, which are also known as air plants because they grow without soil and can be placed just about anywhere.
We wrote back asking if she had any photos. In a follow-up Comment, she sent us these photos which knocked us out: Tinkertoy as naturally sculptural, Bauhausian trellis! She also wrote:
Obviously, I’m no master of the Tinkertoy (or the photographic, for that matter) medium. And truth be told, I pretty much lack artistic ability, in general. However, one of the great things about Tinkertoys is that, even despite a complete lack of talent, you can at least count on being able to create something with some structural integrity. And with the size and overall shape you’re looking for. So, that’s good.
We were struck by her opinion of herself has lacking artistic ability and talent. read more…
Ernst Caramelle/Mary Mary Gallery
Somewhere along the way we came across artist Ernst Caramelle‘s wonderful painted walls. They were actually installations in various art galleries: walls as artworks. We want to take them home, or the idea at least…paint some of our space in his fabulous fashion. We notice, that his color blocks can dramatically change the proportions of a room, as you’ll see from this riff of pictures we found on the Mary Mary Gallery website. read more…
Don Freeman
To our minds, paint is about the easiest way to give something a new look without spending a lot of money. We have a special fondness for painted floors, since floors are a pain-in-the-neck and expensive to replace. We stumbled on this inspiring idea while leafing through Artists’ Handmade Houses
Nivola was given the yellow tractor paint he used to coat the kitchen floor by the Mobil Oil Company, for whom he did a commission. When the sun hits this remarkable surface, the room is bathed in a honey glow. —Michael Gotkin
Tractor paint!!!!!
To win a free copy of Artists’ Handmade Houses
Lately, we’ve been finding LOTS of inspiration over at Design Milk an haute design blog that features cutting-edge products. But it’s usually not the products that call us; our eye pops right away to the background. Last week, we discovered a wonderfully geometric, d-i-y-able pegboard headboard in a feature about a lacy throw made of dye-cut felt. Yesterday we were instantly smitten by the concrete walls in a post about high-design furniture by Murmur. The walls appear to be concrete – one of our favorite materials – one color overlaying another in a sort of mottled way to make a pattern of cool, asymmetrical clouds. Or perhaps it’s concrete layered over old plaster. read more…
Don Freeman
We are thrilled to announce ‘the improvised life’ latest giveaway: Abrams’ lush coffee table book Artists’ Handmade Houses
In 1951, while on tour of the Eames office, New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg picked up a brush and painted a naked woman on an Eames fiberglass arm chair.
Steinberg, in effect, hacked the Eames chair, turning chair into art and cooling out the iconic look; he also broke a taboo against making any changes to an artists work. We LOVE breaking taboos; finding examples fortifies us to ferret out our own. Steinberg is a great inspiration. Dig this bathtub: read more…
Wary Meyers
Wary Meyers has the BEST eye for flea market finds. Dig this giant set of colorful interlocking building blocks he posted on his site. They have no known provenance. Says Wary:
They could be old, could be new.
My guess is this was an old collaboration between Josef Albers and Donald Judd.
and Bill Ding.
We can’t tell their size from the photos but imagine them – would LOVE them – to be about one foot long each, so they could interlock into chic stools, side tables, shelves and other usable structures, for kids or adults. Looking at a bird’s eye view, you can imagine read more…
Benjamin Benschneider/Pacific Northwest Magazine
A few months ago we clipped this picture of Steve Sauer sitting in the 182 square foot Seattle apartment he had renovated, creating three levels, and nooks for different uses, including two beds, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub set into the floor, closet space, a dining table and storage for two bikes. An airplane interiors engineer at Boeing, Sauer cleverly designed his space to accommodate his lifestyle EXACTLY, without a drop of wasted space, which he felt would be the problem with anything larger. Even more interesting than Sauer’s design, is the thinking behind it:
“I wanted to compress my home to squirt me back out to the community. That was one of the philosophical reasons. I want to be able to shop daily, not store a lot and eat really well.” said Seattle’s Steve Sauer.
It one of the most interesting reasons for living in a tiny space that we’d heard: to choose and create a space that would force you to live a certain way. read more…
Dominic Wilcox
We are completely smitten with Variations on Normal, Dominic Wilcox’s blog about his inventions and simple,”out there” solutions to everyday needs and wants. Wilcox is a self-described “artist, designer, inventor and ‘thinkeruper’ who works within the territory of the ‘everyday’.” That’s our favorite territory.
Each of Wilcox’s concepts and inventions is annotated. To make his room more welcoming, he carpeted it with Welcome mats. “You can even wipe your feet wherever you want. Oh and there is a patch of floor where the door mat should be.”
“ …to avoid the squeezing at wrong end arguments” he invented Two WayToothpaste, with a cap on each end.
Wilcox has gained some notoriety of late for his phallic and practical Finger-nose stylus for touchscreen technology… read more…
We always thought Kramer had a great idea there….But we’d make it with a really BIG book, like Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays, Volume 2
Ellen Silverman
Faced with the months-long renovation of their New York City coop kitchen, Josh Eisen, Ellen Silverman and their son Luca – who take eating and entertaining very seriously – devised a clever make-shift kitchen in their walled-off-from-the-construction living room. They had the workmen move in the read more…
