A quick glance of these paired photos on Emma’s blog made us unconsciously splice the two ideas together: ‘salvaged wood bedside or sofa side table’, we thought…fine idea. There is so much great salvaged wood around these days, that can be easily cut and stacked askew to great effect…
Related posts: Blog Find: Daniel Hales ‘Serendipity Rising’
A picture of a chair made out of orange-and-white-striped wooden safety barriers that we saw on The Selby led us to discovering Tom Sachs. He’s an artist who makes elaborate recreations of modern icons: masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another, from Knoll office furniture to Prada to NASA (like this hilarious video). The all-seams-showing recreations are made out of ordinary stuff like phone books and Foamcoare welded together with duct tape or a glue gun. As it is clear from The Selby’s pictures of Sach’s living/studio space, the work of this imaginative inventor/artist holds ideas for our own more modest creations…
Although we don’t know what it says, we’re crazy about Sach’s bedspread, and the idea of writing on our own…
….not to mention the wonderful chair… read more…
We are so happy to have discovered Serendipity Rising, architect Daniel Hale’s blog that is mostly about the evolution of his home in Napa Valley, which seems to be a sort of laboratory for his ideas. The guy loves soft metals like zinc and lead which he cuts and hammers in unusual ways; he transforms salvaged woods and ‘finds’ by applying modern lines and layers of techniques into an eclectic take, like this incredible flight of stairs: “I layered black over brown and ran a strip of lead sheeting up the middle”. What he does to his own house is freer than the “client” work we’ve seen, as he follows his ideas for his own pleasure. “Tickle” is a recent post – a sort of poem-story (edited here) – about his violent and fearless transformation of an old piano, which had been left in the winery he turned into his studio: read more…
Lately, we’ve been seeing planks and bits of salvaged wood being used in bold geometric patterns to enclose bathtubs, and kitchen islands, make headboards and floors… Pieced together like a puzzle, with a good eye, “rustic” changes curiously to modern. read more…
A couple of years ago (when ‘the improvised life’ was just an idea), we stumbled on this picture of Tobias Wong‘s file cabinet bed in Reference Library, and bookmarked it, thinking we’d write a post about it someday. It is such a great, direct idea, with many possibilities for implementing in different ways. But we didn’t think then to follow the little link below the photo, to Wong’s website, brokenoff.com where we would have seen just what a gifted designer and conceptual artist he was. We discovered this in the saddest way possible: reading in the New York Times of Wong’s recent death at thirty-five.
Wong’s work was very much about mocking the pretensions of “great design” in thoughtful, clever, often angry ways. He famously hacked – and mocked – the work of other designers – to their outrage – for his creations. He coined the word “paraconceptual” to describe his work. “When I do pull a prank, it’s my means of sending out a conceptual idea. It’s not just laughing at them.” Although he didn’t like being called a designer, all of his work had the grace and harmony of good design, while pushing you to think or experience things in a new way, like his Stoop Installation: read more…
Maria Robledo sent this photo from her iPhone with a short, expressive email: “Holton served these cheeries w the empty glass for the pits . Liked the improvised moment”
We like the improvised moment, too and the fun, useful little solutions that mysteriously come…
We’ve noticed that once we started thinking about the idea of improvising, we began to see it happening all around us; we began to DO it ourselves a lot more. Just a slight shift in view, really, turns it into a practice…
We discovered that improvising is really about following ideas as they connect one to another, even with the most ordinary things…like a blog post pointing in many directions – to a recipe for warm fresh cherries, or where to buy the glass, or Holton’s or Maria’s artwork, OR maybe your own brilliant, unexpected idea…
(BTW, you can click here to find out where to buy the swell, thin $3 glass that Holton used for cherry pits; it is useful for many things…we often use it as a vase for a small bunch of flowers, and for individual rice puddings…and Amontillado milkshakes…)
Related posts: The Perfect Glass: Thin, Cheap, Well-Designed
Warm Fresh Cherries with Leaves
Thanks Maria and Holton!
We find ourselves inadvertently collecting images of fabulous dresses made out of unlikely materials, like this beauty made by Cristina Liedtke from discarded peanut M&M wrappers. It’s on display at TerraCycle’s Green Up Shop, a pop-up shop set up in empty retail space in Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.
“To create the gown, more than 1,800 flowers were individually cut and sewn from 600 Peanut M&M wrappers, a time-consuming process that took over 100 hours of labor. (Five yards of silk charmeuse and silk shantung were used for the lining.)
Liedtke’s wearable artwork depicts flowers in bloom: The top of the dress displays the initial budding, while the middle portrays a ‘landscape of blooming vibrant poppies,’ according to the designer. ‘Finally, the bottom of the dress expresses a collage of fully bloomed mature flowers,’ she adds.
Terracycle is a company who makes useful products out of garbage, like an Oreo Wrapper Kite and planters made out of crushed computers and fax machines. They package the products in “garbage” as well: used/recycled bottles, boxes etc. Terracycle seems to have figured out ways of recycling that have stymied city governments.
Says CEO Tom Szaky: “Garbage is opportunity.”
Check out this video about Terracycle: read more…
Oven mitts are an example of a good idea with serious design flaws: shaped like a giant mitten, they are unwieldy and stiff, and don’t really allow for grasping hot things securely with one hand. But it never occurred to us to envision an alternative, other than ordinary pot holders. That is, until we got an email from Stephen Peters who wrote:
“Why do people use oven mitts when there are perfectly good inexpensive welding gloves with FOUR fingers per hand available?”
…my wife uses welding gloves I gave her, and loves them… The simple thin leather or goatskin style work fine. “
Stephen is an electrical field service technician who travels around Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Virginias and the Carolinas installing and repairing battery backup systems…and who obviously thinks outside-the-box.
We poked around welding glove possibilities. On the whole, they are way more stylish than oven mitts, and make grasping searing-hot pots and casseroles, or odd pieces like baking stones oven racks, MUCH easier. Stephen recommends read more…
Phil Scott
Page Goolrick’s dinner party goody bags garnered a lot of improvisations on the idea of “gifts for guests”, from great Comments to Lydia Wills’ innovative reversal of the traditional wedding (or any) gift.
Constance Old, who was one of the lucky few to have actually been at Page’s dinner party, turned her goody bag into art. Constance makes hooked rugs, a traditional American art form originally created out of need: to warm the floors of drafty homes with whatever was at hand. Scraps of fabric, from worn clothing or sheets, were cut into strips and, using a simple bent metal tool, “hooked” into a grid-like backing made from a strong, loosely-wovan fabric such as burlap. Gradually, a span of loops would result, to make a beautiful rug.
Rather than fabric scraps, Constance uses contemporary found materials like sales receipts, plastic bags, string, Styrofoam, thread whatever is at hand that has meaning for her. She used the packaging from the different elements in Page’s goody bag to make miniature rug-hooked “journal entries.” read more…
“Found” is a set of super light, metal-coated plastic cutlery that Spanish Designer Oscar Diaz created for an exhibition called Airmail at Goode, around the theme of lightness. He made them by “editing” plastic bottles found at the local supermarket, selecting them for their curves and shapes that would naturally allow fork, knife, or spoon to be cut from them. The photos he made of the process are like having the designer’s X-ray vision, seeing modernist cutlery in the ordinary bottles he browsed on the shelves.
On his website, he describes the process of making these beautiful pieces. In league with the photos, it allows us to get into the head of the designer for a moment, and shift our own thinking about possibilities inherent in the everyday objects around us. read more…
Every great invention, from the Murphy bed to the bicycle, started as an improvisation: an elegant solution to something someone needed or just plain wanted. But an improvisation never stops there. The improvised invention gets improvised upon, and that improvisation gets improvised upon, and so on, and so on. Viewing the everyday objects around us as improvisations makes for endless inspiration.
Take the safety pin, the ultimate emergency tool that holds up hems without thread and makes possible all manner of instant repairs. read more…
Suzanne Shaker, whose spare modernist house was posted here a while back, wanted a window shade for her bathroom that afforded some privacy, let light in and didn’t block the view completely. She found an old japanese screen with paper on the back that was ripped. She removed the paper and her husband Pete added hooks and simple chain. It’s a beautiful bit of repurposing. Here’s another picture. read more…
My friends N and O constantly inspire me with their simple, brilliant solutions to the everyday, imbued with their very unique, very personal style. Here N uses a lemon to stopper her carafe of filtered water: perfect. (It would work equally well for iced tea or lemonaid.)
When I asked if I can blog what I see in their home, they said “Okay, but please don’t say who we are; we like our privacy.” It’s a deal! The idea stays the same whether you know who thought it up of not.
More anonymous brilliance to come over the next few weeks…
I started viewing coriander seed as Instant Flavor Enhancer one day when I was testing a recipe and had a lot of cracked coriander left over. I tasted it on whatever came to mind to discover its slightly lemony-orange peel-herbal flavor and bit of crackle is wonderful on all sorts of foods, sprinkled on before serving, like pepper. It provides the perfect little alt-note on everything from smoked salmon to rice pudding to a cracker spread with crunchy peanut butter). My all-time favorite is on crushed new potatoes with crème fraiche and chives. (See the list and recipe farther down)
I was snooping around the internet hoping to find a coriander photo when I stumbled on this image and the big idea behind it: read more…
During World War II, when materials were in short supply, textile artist Anni Albers improvised charming, inventive jewelry using simple components usually found in hardware and stationary stores, and five-and-dimes. This dramatic necklace uses inexpensive window chain sold on giant wheels at hardware stores and steel bobbi pins. Seeing her necklace, suddenly these objects become BEAUTIFUL and full of unexpected possibilities; our notions of jewelry change. read more…
