Morten Holtum
Lately, we’ve been seeing some wonderful rough plays on the idea of “faucet”. Our favorite is this sublime one made from a gracefully bent copper pipe spotted in a house tour at French by Design…though we are totally charmed by the “shovel faucet” devised by Evan and Oliver Haslegrave, two brothers whose seriously imaginitive d-i-y renovation was featured in New York Magazine last fall… read more…
We were browsing through sylist Sara Sjögren’s website, when we came across several rooms decorated with painted panels. Easy-to-d-i-y rectangles of plywood or stretched canvas painted (or sprayed) with a single vivid color bring these rooms to life (imagine them without the panels and you see what we mean)… read more…
Browsing through our archive, we found this image we’d filed several years ago of a desk designed by Gerrit Rietveld, the Dutch minimalists architect and furniture designer, known for his iconic pieces made out of ordinary crates. We were surprised all over again by the range of Rietveld’s vision for furniture made of simple pine boards. Made the early part of the 20th century, they hold their uniquely modern feel due to their thoughtful lines and colors. The 1934 desk has become a sculpture (now worth thousands of dollars).
We found it on the understated-yet-full-of-treasures blog of artist Bill Schwartz via Digital Media Tree. Here’s Schwartz’s comment:
“. . .a piece of furniture of fine wood, made wholly according to traditional methods, is shipped in a crate to prevent damage and breakage. Someone receiving such a crate at home says, at most: well packed. But it has never been established that such a crate represents a freely rendered method of carpentry aimed straight at its goal. The plain materials of which it is composed make it stronger than its precious contents. . .Therefore, there must finally be someone who chooses the crate instead of the piece of furniture.”
He includes a link to 3D rendering of the desk with which you could find your way to making one yourself. And then we stumbled on How to Construct Rietveld Furniture 
..h-m-m-m….
Sally Schneider
After we wrote about making bookshelves out of black pipe, we stumbled on these images of black pipe closet fitting. We’d taken them a couple of months ago at our friends’ newly renovated, about-to-be-moved-into, Brooklyn brownstone; there are no clothes hanging yet so you can really see the detail. We’re thinking that the resources in the bookcase post – where to buy, and the basic how-to’s – are about all you need to do this-cool-closet-treatment yourself.
The black hangers turn the whole thing stylish and artful. read more…
After a big snowfall in New York City, the natural world takes over for just a while and shows itself in surprising ways. Readers and friends often send us reports and pictures of what they’ve seen, like these icicles that appeared in a subway station (from Cara de Silva via the New York Times), or the “veil” of snow settled onto the mesh wall of a construction site (below, from Maria Robledo).
The most beautiful snow creation of all was the one we found on a late afternoon the day after the big snow. In a nearby park, we saw a little boy, no more than 6 years old, absorbed in making what looked to be an ordinary snowman: 3 balls of snow balanced on top of each other, about 3 feet high. We thought to take a picture of him working but didn’t want to disturb him. On our way home at sunset we stopped to look at what he had created. read more…
Writing ‘the improvised life’, we discover that themes come in waves: one idea (or image) seems to attract another that takes the idea a step further, or gives it a different spin (may be it’s simply that our sights are honed…). It can happen with several themes at once.
Lately, a big one has been painted floors. We keep seeing clever little tricks we never thought of , like this wonderful painted “rug” painted on concrete. It could be done freehand, or with cut out shapes to use as a stencil… read more…
Even though we’d recently imagined painting cloth-covered chairs and sofas, tablecloths, pilllows and curtains, we didn’t think about CLOTHES!
This timely reminder came from Ebay, via An Ambitious Project Collapsing. Imagine the possibilities…
Related posts: copy this: paint a pillow…sofa…bedspread…curtain…
blank canvas furniture
Dirty Bils Interiors/Etsy
The other day we stumbled on some oddly wonderful, sculptural bookshelves made of black pipe. They’re for sale at DirtyBils shop on Etsy for $79, a fine deal, we’d say. But as we looked closely at the pictures (below) we couldn’t help thinking “Why not monkey around with this great idea”, and started searching for resources.
We not only found a source for gorgeous black pipes and fittings... read more…
Wary Meyers
The endlessly clever Wary Meyers, designer and author of Wary Meyers’ Tossed & Found: Unconventional Design from Cast-offs
Why not do-it-ourselves? We’ve been seeing painted upholstery all over the place (see below), and then remembered that we’d written a post about fabric paint some time ago. This takes the idea a step further, using acrylic paint, which comes in a glorious range of colors, including precious metals. Why not paint just about anything made of a textile: bedspreads, shower curtains, upholstered chairs…? Check out these gold-spliced chairs from Anthropologie’s exhibit of New Orleans artists… read more…
Lhoas & Lhoas Architects
Painting is a great solution for sprucing up wooden floors you don’t want to sink too much money into.
We hadn’t realized that we always think of neutrals – white or gray or black – as the formula for a stylish painted floor…
…until we saw apple green work so well!
Related posts: a painted (floor) rug
painted floors with a surprise
Pamela Hovland
Pamela Hovland sent us this email after the blizzard that hit the East Coast last week:
“I went to my local FedEx/Kinkos last night and saw this post-it note masterpiece on the wall behind the counter. My friend, who helps me with various service bureau needs there, had created a portrait of the Simpsons the day earlier, during the big snow storm. He said he was totally bored that day as all the local businesses were closed and the store had no customers. He came up with the inspired idea to MAKE SOMETHING with found materials – a plethora of colored post-it notes at his disposal. Voila!
My friend said that although he suspected FedEx/Kinko’s marketing executives may not approve of his personal artistic expression compromising the corporate brand, his local customers were loving it.”
The improvised life is about making and doing with what is at hand…. read more…
aluminum foam
We have a THING for new materials, and have, until today, mostly just imagined what they could do. We couldn’t lay our hands on samples since we’re not a big commercial entity; suppliers didn’t want to bother to sell small quantities or answer our novice’s questions. So we’d read descriptions in Transmaterials, the compendium of new technology for use as walls or floors or textiles, that is our idea of pornography. We’d fantasize, our brains heating up with ideas and possibilities.
Then we discovered Inventables, Zac Kaplan’s brilliant online database of cutting-edge materials where you can actually order samples to fool around with, something that was previously impossible for lay-inventors (no pun intended ) to do.
We are enthralled. Today we checked out Cold Spray Metal, Sound-Dampening Paint, Talking Tape, Paper Board, read more…
Laura Marsden
Laura Anne Marsden is a textile designer who created a technique for transforming waste plastic bags into lace. She uses a combination of traditional hand-stitch and needle lace-making, along with various processes to change the properties and appearance of the plastic bags (Although her technique remains secret, we imagine cutting the bags into thin strips and heating them to form them into fine filaments…) She forms her lace into jewelry, wall adornments, Christmas ornaments, pilllow covers.
With her ‘Eternal Lace’, Marsden hopes to challenge preconceptions about undesirable recycled products. And she does, indeed, makes us view the ordinary plastic bag differently: as a raw material full of possibility.
We’d be happy to wear one of these strangely beautiful bracelets… read more…
Tracy Shumate/Covent Garden
We found this good idea in Covet Garden, an appealing online shelter magazine that features spaces of real people (slightly ripping off The Selby‘s questionnaire). Here, Photographer Tracy Shumate’s converted factory space…”Necessity being the mother of invention, Tracy uses large MDF panel covered in chalkboard paint
Here’s another iteration we found in Annaleena’s Hem: read more…
The maker of this cool little video saw a sewer grate and made the connection to a skeleton’s ribcage, and went from there: one of the many tiny miracles of vision and association that happen daily.
And then he/she took that revelation, and the technique of stop-motion, and made something wonderful …
via BoingBoing
