Todd Selby/The Selby

We were scrolling through The Selby when we spotted these round magnet knife holders in a house in Connecticut. They are a nice sculptural change from the usual foot-long-or-so bar knife holder – the knives look like they’re floating. We hunted them down online here…

And then almost immediately we came across this re-thinking of a dish drainer by Paulina Deltour for Alessi: another round tool that has traditionally been a rectangle.

We would love to try these rectangle-turned-round tools and see if their design works as well as they look (too often not the case). Then we’d take the idea and see if we can figure something out ourselves…cheaper and as good. We’re already on the trail of magnet sites to test out some magnets for their “Pull force“…(We will write a post if we come up with something good.)

We DO believe in a kind of magnetism of ideas…that thinking about something often seems to draw it to us…

via The Selby and DesignBoom

Thank you so much for your help!

We find something incredibly compelling about Marjin Van der Poll‘s Do hit chair: hammering a chair out of a metal cube with all one’s strength, testing it out, and then pounding and hammering and testing over and over until it takes shape. The cube is smashed full force with a hammer, until it becomes… something else, a solution.

“Do hit… is an interpretation of a chair by Italian designer Enzo Mari, the ‘sof-sof chair’. Its complex looking frame to me seemed a result of good craftsmanship but as it turned out it was one of the first examples of spot welding in the furniture industry. This contradiction between craftsmanship and mass production became the concept for the chair. Do hit started as a small copper model which I beat into a tiny chair with the pointed part of a hobby hammer. The cube would be easy to produce industrially and would be moulded into a chair using a hammer. Repetition of the beating only strengthened the concept…

The Do hit can either be shaped by its owner or by me. I have shaped many Do hits and look for an expressive object with large folds which I then polish to make them stand out. Each Do hit therefore is different as I can only create the global shape of seat and backrest and have to react to the detailed form taken on by the metal as it is being shaped. This is a great challenge every time.”

Of course, we followed the trail back to Enzo’s Mari inspiring chair, designed in 1971, (now in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection)…

Museum of Modern Art

Then we tried to follow the trail in our mind from Mari’s chair to the violently smashed cube above, to try to imagine Van der Poll’s imagining…

We are happy to look closely at its unique clever design out of spot-welded rectangles, and see what it inspires…

Mari’s  is being fabricated again and can be bought here, though you can often buy the real thing here.

Michael Dumontier

Ever since an alarming number of readers reported NOT getting a video in their July 23rd Daily Email, we’ve been working to fix the glitch. When we found the clip of Martin Van der Poll’s Do hit chair, we thought it would be the perfect test to see if things have resolved. We’re asking subscribers to PLEASE let us know two things: if the image of the open book and the Do hit chair video have comes through in your morning Daily Email.

With thanks!

via Martha Street Studio via Reference Library

David Lebovitz/davidlebovitz.com

One of the reasons we’re hot to try Boccalone‘s prosciutto on our next trip to San Francisco – aside from the fact that Jake Godby features it as an ice cream flavor at Humphry Slocombe –  is the manifesto we found buried deep in Boccalone’s website. We love manifestos because we know the people who write them to be generally crazed and passionate about whatever their manifesto is about. The Boccalone people clearly are, because they’re addressing essences and serious life principles when they write about salumi (Italian for cured meat), like

Fine salumi teach us to live a patient life in pursuit of flavor, rather than a relentless hunt for ever-increasing quantity – to seek better, not more. This approach is not only good for the individual, it’s better for the world.

Were with them!

Here is Boccalone’s An American Salumi Manifesto:

Salumi are the noblest expression of meat – a marriage with salt, spice, and time that transcends individual ingredients.

Just as fine wine is more than fermented grape juice, fine salumi are more than mere salted meats. At their best, salumi connect us to the earth, reveal the essence of the whole animal, demonstrate respect for our ancestors, and inspire our humanity.

All great cultures have ancient traditions for food preservation that elevate meat beyond the realm of ordinary. Here in the United States, that tradition has been sacrificed in the name of efficiency, speed, and cost.

The time has arrived for a renaissance of American Salumi.

This movement will be led – first and foremost – by individual salumi lovers who recognize the character of fine salumi and value its place in their lives.

Fine salumi begin with extraordinary meat. Humanely and sustainably raised animals from heritage-breed genetics produce the best-tasting salumi. Industrially raised animals from modern cross-bred genetics produce inferior meat not suited for fine salumi.

Salumi celebrate the beauty of animal fat. Fat balances the flavor, texture, color of fine salumi. Contrary to common perception, pork fat is healthful: it is lower in saturated fat than butter and has twice the monounsaturated fat.

Salt is an essential element in preserving salumi. Salt illuminates the true flavor of salumi, it does not overpower it. Natural sea salts lend a milder flavor to salumi than do refined salts.

Fine salumi harmonize the flavors of meat, salt, and spice. Using fresh spices of the highest quality is no less important than using the best meats and salts.

Time is the most critical component in fine salumi. Increasing salt content and adding heat will accelerate salumi production but ruin the quality. Fine salumi simply cannot be rushed – there is no substitute for time.

_____________________________________

Appreciation of salumi requires the patience to wait for the salumi to reach its peak perfection, a fleeting moment when taste is at its best. Fine salumi promote moderation by delivering a powerful taste experience in an unpretentious portion.

Fine salumi teach us to live a patient life in pursuit of flavor, rather than a relentless hunt for ever-increasing quantity – to seek better, not more. This approach is not only good for the individual, it’s better for the world.

…

Looking for an image to post with the manifesto, we typed “Boccalone prosciutto ice cream” into Google images. In the midst of pictures of ice cream and prosciutto makers, we found this, another sign of the deep and wild connections dry cured ham, and the internet, can lead make…

?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Related post: Prosciutto as Resource (w Ones to Try + Recipe)

Maria Robledo

We saw some fresh figs in the market the other day and were reminded of the simplest of dishes: prosciutto – ham that’s been carefully dry-cured for 8 to 24 months – and lush, gently-perfumed fruit like figs, melons, peaches, apricots or plumcots in summer…comice pears, fresh or roasted, in fall. We love this classic combo for breakfast, midnight supper, lone-lazy-dog supper, light lunch, and of course, appetizer.

There is a secret to a marriage of only two or three ingredients like this: that they be at their best. The fruit should be truly ripe and fragrant. The prosciutto should be of fine quality and sliced to order – NOT pre-sliced who-knows-when? and sealed in plastic packages which seem to suffocate its flavors and cause its creamy texture to turn rubbery. This means planning ahead a bit in order to have an ingredient so delicious and complete it requires hardly any effort at to serve or eat. Once you understand how prosciutto works, you can make it work for you. Here’s what you need to know…

Prosciutto is best eaten within a few hours of being sliced, two days MAX  if it’s well wrapped and refrigerated (as soon as it’s sliced it begins to change), so that’s your window. Buy it from a store known for quality (not mass-produced ones like Boar’s Head), where they slice their hams to order. If you are unfamiliar with dry-cured hams, your best bet is to buy Prosciutto di Parma, one of the world’s great hams, which will have a crown branded into the side that identifies it as the real thing and is a good assurance of quality (feel free to ask to see it). If you like bolder-flavored Prosciutto di Parma, look for a more aged one; the rivet at the top of the hock will show the month and the year the ham was began. Ten months from that date is a young ham; fifteen to eighteen months is optimal… OR go with another ham you know to be delicious, like Jamon Iberico from Spain…

…or one of the great artisan dry-cured ham makers in Americas these days. We are fans La Guercia’s stunning prosciutto made in Iowa from acorn-fed organic Berkshire pigs, and the wonderful lomo (a dry cured pork loin) and culatello, from the “heart” of the leg that Armandino Batali (Mario’s dad)  masterminded at Salumi in Seattle; we’re planning to check out Boccalone prosciutto when we go to San Francisco next month. (We’ve been known to serve lightly smoked, dry-cured Southern hams – like Colonel Newsom’s from Kentucky or A.B. Vannoy’s from North Carolina – like prosciutto.)

Always feel free to ask the counterman for a taste of whatever interests you; tasting different hams side-by-side will be a revelation. But DON’T let him trim off the thick layer of creamy white fat. It is delicious – like a kind of estoteric butter – and is part of the experience. (Check out Regina Schramblings liberating article about pork fat that ran in Slate a year or so ago.)

Just-sliced prosciutto is a great thing unto itself, the slices arranged side-by-side in a plate; it is also satisfying on some excellent bread with fine unsalted butter. We view a good prosciutto as an essential resource and have been known to buy a fat chunk to keep in the fridge for slicing ourselves – it will last several weeks wrapped in wax paper – on our cheap home slicer, or by hand with a long, thin tensile knife usually reserved for slicing smoked salmon.

Note: If you want to bring prosciutto home from Europe, we recommend buying a chunk and having it sealed in Cryovac. When home, unwrap, let air out in the fridge for a day or two covering the cut end only with a piece of plastic wrap, or wax paper. Slice it as you need it.

If you want to cook with prosciutto, the shank – the last couple of inches left after a whole leg has been sliced – often offers great value.

Recipe (well, an approach, really): Prosciutto with Figs and Raspberries

You can replace the figs and raspberries, with ripe, fragrant melon –  from honeydew and Cassaba to Charantais, peaches, apricots or plumcots. In winter, we love it with Roasted Pears.  We find a grind of fresh pepper, or a few slivers of fresh basil or thyme leaves can add a nice hit of flavor, like a teeny surprise in the midst of fruit and ham, although the greater the ham, the less embellishment you need.

Serves 4

12 paper thin slices of prosciutto di Parma, or other fine dry-cured ham
Freshly ground black pepper (optional)
4 ripe medium figs
1 cup raspberries
6 lime wedges (optional)
8 to 12 small basil leaves (optional)

On each of 4 large dinner plates, loosely drape 3 slices of prosciutto in a single layer.

Slice each fig into 4 sections, either wedges or slices. Arrange the figs on each plate and scatter 1/4 cup raspberries across figs. If desired, garnish one lime wedge and torn basil leaves. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Squeeze a few drops of lime juice from remaining lime wedges over figs just before serving. Pass a peppermill.

Related post: Recipe: Roasted Pears for Sweet or Savory Improvisations

Manifesto about Dry-Cured Ham and Life

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…

Todd Selby/The Selby

…we never thought of using safety barriers (already painted)…

Todd Selby/The Selby

…The bio on his website describes Sachs’ liberating philosophy of making:

“All the steps that led up to the end result are always on display. On a practical level, this means that all seams, joints, screws or for that matter anything holding stuff together, like foamcore and plywood, are left exposed. Nothing is erased, sanded away, or rendered invisible. On a more philosophical level, this means that nothing Sachs makes is ever finished. Like any good engineering project, everything can always be stripped down, stripped out, redesigned and improved.

The reward for work is more work”.     –Mark van de Walle

Yep!

Check out the inspiring tour of Sachs’ place on The Selby.

We love this workstation Sachs devised…

Todd Selby/The Selby

…As he does at the end of all his shoots, Todd Selby published a handwritten interview with his subject. Here’s part of Sachs’ cryptic answer to “What are the ten rules of your studio?”:

Todd Selby/The Selby

Thanks for the inspriation Tom Sachs! Thanks The Selby for showing us the way in!

Now we’d love to know if there is anybody whose daily emails might be coming through without pictures, and for how long? (a possible subset of this problem). We welcome your emails to info@theimprovisedlife.com.

(We LOVE technology but when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong…)

Although the title of this video is Jessica’s ‘Daily Affirmation’, we see it as a video of a little kid counting blessings. Not only does she list the stuff she has, she really LOVES it. Her fierce, slightly-playing-to-the-camera soliloquy is quite a celebration of the GREAT ordinary.

We find that counting blessings, though seemingly New-Agey, works: the practice changes your view from NOT (“enough”…”able”…”worthy”..) to appreciating the A LOT that’s there already, that has the potential to be used in different ways, to support what we want to do…

Don’t take our word for it. There are many studies that affirm this idea including one published in Journal of Personal Psychology and Social Psychology called Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life:

“The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined… The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.”

How do you count blessings? Just look around and name what’s in your life that you’re glad to have. Like Jessica does…HOUSE…HAIRCUT…COUSINS…

You can do it anywhere, anytime, in secret or out loud…it’s a good subway practice when you’ve got nothing to read…

We really appreciate your help!

Maria Robledo

Maria Robledo sent us this snapshot of a gift a houseguest left for her, with very rough-and-tumble improvised wrapping with built-in card. …Wonder what book they gave her, wrapped so straightforwardly and oddly-festively, with clear love.

Thanks Maria!

?

This wondrous chair was posted on Atelier a while back, unattributed. (We searched its roots using TinEye, but didn’t come up with anything). This strangely elegant little sculpture of a chair made us imagine going to the lumber yard – even an art supply store would have this wood – and getting out a hammer and nails to follow the path of this design; it is so beautifully clear and forthright.

(If anyone knows who made this chair, please send us an email…)

Tara Mann

After 10 pm, I am driven by a sweet-tooth so fierce, I never keep actual sweets like ice cream or cookies on hand; I’m afraid of what would happen. Then I find myself foraging through the cupboard, looking for something that will satisfy my craving. When I stumbled on the milk chocolate disks I usually use for dessert-making, I had a vision: peanut butter cups…chunky organic peanut butter sandwiched between really good chocolate…instant and brilliant to my mind.

I tried out the idea with both Valhrona chocolate and Guittard (which has a more overtly peanut-butter-cup shape) in a side-by-side tasting to discover how much better Valhrona really is: more deeply flavored, creamier, stunningly good. Then I swapped out the peanut butter for some Hazelnut Praline I had in the fridge and found myself savoring the taste of gianduja – chocolate with roasted hazelnut – that made me think of a wild truffle-hunting trip to Piemonte, Italy, where they love the stuff. I’d once hauled back kilos of gianduiotti, the little foil-wrapped candy shaped like an upturned boat, from Turin, and parceled them out until they were, finally, gone…

Tara Mann

This improvised two-ingredient midnight snack will deeply feed a crazy hunger.

(The picture is the recipe…)

Valhrona milk chocolate “feves” are available at Whole Foods Markets, or by mail-order here.

Andrea Zittel

While we were writing about Andrea Zittel the other night, we stumbled on a post from her blog called “Still Working on the Kitchen Table“.

The photo shows one of her half-done billboard paintings on the kitchen table, in a living space that is clearly in action, work and living woven together. Even though Zittel could try discipline herself to work in her studio – a shipping container fifty feet from the house –  she doesn’t. She works where it feels best, and things happens organically…

“When I was twenty and studying art in undergrad, I house sat for my parents one summer and built my entire senior show in their kitchen. I remember the feeling or horror one day when cutting out a shape with the jigsaw and accidentally making a slice into the tabletop that my mother had hand stained when I was an infant.  Three decades later and I’m still making most of my work in the kitchen…”

We wonder how many BIG THINGS in the world were figured out at the kitchen table?

(In the background, you can also see the cardboard shelving we were so taken with…stuff beginning to be stored in it.)

Related post: Andrea Zittel: Investigative Living

Daniel Hale

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:

“She seemed invisible. He even stripped some of the ivory from her fingers. He did not see her insides. Until one day it was time…..Too much debris, all those pieces and scraps that he would someday use had instead become an obstacle to progress…. He actually took a sledge hammer to her… Then she showed him her insides and he was thrilled, he had rediscovered her. Each finger a work in and of itself. Some ivory left, her small lead counterweights could still swing. Her fierce red felt lining still seared. He made a light of her. Her soundboard still intact, he chopped that free with his hatchet and he hung it on the wall…

…

Hale made a bathroom ceiling made of reclaimed oak …

Daniel Hale

…and transformed an iPad into something of another time, “bound in a (set into) a wooden binding (think sketchbook). The cover is combed black over brown over wood (has a parchment panel) and was then waxed. The binding has a zinc plate with my initials and then a parchment tab with my lucky 13 homage to dewey. The inside surrounds flush to the IPAD and has a small thumb access to slip it out to recharge. The gilt lining flashes; winks at you. The inside cover is sheathed in an ancient music sheet, complete with musicians pencil scribble/notes”…

Daniel Hale

Hale loves making geometrically perforated doors so that hints of light or dark come through…like this one in a bathroom that slides to illuminate the tub boxed in zinc…

Daniel Hale

…towels rest on an old three-legged milking stool, a little sculpture unto itself…

Daniel Hale

…

Daniel Hale

We want to hammer lead!!!!!

You can see more of Daniel Hale’s work on Flickr.

Thanks, Lydia!