Image of the Day

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George Nelson at the American National Exhibition, Moscow, 1959, which is partially recreated in the Bellevue Art Museum's retrospective George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher. The show features over 220 objects – furniture, lamps, clocks, graphic works, architectural models, films, prints – a comprehensive examination of the former Herman Miller design director's highly influential career. Through February 12 – go here for info.

Art & Industry

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Trailer for Eames: the Architect and the Painter, opening later this month in NYC. Click here for more info.

Leave the Light On

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MOTEL is a new purveyor of vintage home furnishings in Ballard, celebrating its opening with a party this Saturday evening. Stop by and browse what appears to be a phenomenal collection of mid-century furniture, lighting, and curiosities – and stay up-to-date at motelballard.blogspot.com.

Motel is located at 5009 Northwest 20th Avenue in beautiful Ballard Washington.

Image of the Day

. Chair by Roy McMakin from five chairs & ten tables, a great exhibition of McMakin's recent work at Ambach & Rice through December 5th.

Powers of Ten

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Charles & Ray Eames Powers of Ten (1977, Distributed by IBM)

In case anyone missed it (say, I don't know, because you were caught up in football, or stuck in traffic behind a rockslide on Snoqualmie Pass on the way back from Idaho), Sunday was 10/10/10 – and with that in mind, New York design network Core77 is inviting videographers to create 2-minute video responses to Powers of Ten, to be judged by a panel of six judges including MoMA Design & Architecture Curator Paola Antonelli, filmmaker Gary Hustwit, and Eames Office director Eames Demetrios. The winner gets $2,000 cash, an Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair, and a bunch of other cool stuff. The competition opens October 18th and all entries are due by January 9th – click here for details.

The Rules of Attraction

I have always hated it when people refer to inanimate objects as "sexy" (as in, and I know I'm dating myself but it's the first example I thought of: "Lotus is such a sexy space"). It just kind of makes my skin crawl. The thing is, there are very rare examples where it's kind of the only thing you can say. Are you going to call this chair sensual? Do you wear partially unbuttoned shirts with a tab collar? How about sultry? Hey, clean it up, you. (Or was that seriously a Throw Momma from the Train reference? Either way: fail.)

I suppose this chair – the Cervo Chair by architect Antonio Pio Saracino – is literally steamy, as that wood is not going to curve itself, and is clearly provocative, as I felt provoked to stare and talk about it. But really, what is it? It's sexy. It's a sexy chair. I admit it.

Also available in black leather (pretty much seals it). Click here for info.

[via AnOther]

Second Life

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Yesterday the New York Times business section featured an article called "Finding New Life (and Profit) in Doomed Trees" about Meyer Wells, a small business which makes custom furniture from trees naturally downed in and around Seattle. It's worth reading on both a business level and on a cool-product level.

[Meyer Wells], started four years ago, bears all the markers that would seem to point toward collapse and extinction in a recessionary economy. It’s founded on idealism and emotion. It’s riddled with huge and unavoidable inefficiencies. And it tenders a high-end product that asks buyers to take risks and have faith.
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“People who buy furniture here are adventurers,” says Mr. Meyer. “They see the tree and get to be part of the process. They have to have an adventurous spirit, they have to be patient, and they have to trust. There’s an element of risk.”
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He suddenly becomes a tour guide to a whole geography embedded in the wood — “islands” and “cathedrals” in the grain. “I’m looking to see how the grain of one board flows into the next so that the composition feels harmonious,” he says.
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If there’s one rule in the shop, it’s this: Respect the tree’s narrative — including the chapters about its hard urban life. Mr. Meyer once found a steel snippet embedded in a beautiful cherry slab, perhaps a remnant of a nail used to hammer a “lost cat” sign to the tree. He left it in place, a piece of the story.

Read the rest at nytimes.com and visit Meyer Wells blog here.

Need vs. Want

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Emily and I (independently of each other) spotted this Porter chair in the window of Area 51.


These ones are cool too...

...but I like the potato sack burlap of the top one. However:

No room for a new chair
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$1495 price tag
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Cats would destroy it inside of 8 seconds in the apartment
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Want.

Bo Knows...

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A pop-up gallery show at BoConcept,
curated by Jay Clark aka Fankult
Opening reception this first Thursday, 7–10pm,
and up through January 31
BoConcept is at 909 Western Avenue
between Madison & Marion

De Pas, D'Urbino and Lomazzi

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If you have to ask, one thing I really want for Christmas this year is the Joe chair, designed by De Pas, Durbino and Lomazzi for Poltronova in the late 1960's. These guys were a cool-ass design team with incredible originality. Back in their heyday they made design seem full of possibilities, crazy and serious at the same time. Among their designs, spanning 40 years with almost as many companies, they are responsible for the Sciangai coat rack (also on my list), the Milano sofa (oh man, also on my list...maybe this post should have been about the sofa...), and various other classics of Italian design. Some of their work has landed in MoMA's permanent collection and they are still going, despite the passing of De Pas in 1991.

Back to the Joe. I do not want it in the plastic, outdoor, Heller version, which, despite my respect for Heller as a strong American design brand, is not a correct representation of what this chair is about. I do not want the Vitra miniature.

I want the soft, brown, leather, full-size chair. Imagine how good it gets as it wears in like a true glove.

My wife will never go for it.

Here is a bonus pic of the Milano sofa
(understand, it has down cushions and is probably the softest man-made thing you will ever sit on.)

Miller Time

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[ via SwissMiss ]

Image of the Day

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An image from Nomadic Furniture, a 1973 book by Victor Papanek and Jim Hennessey, a friend of my uncle's who lives on Orcas Island. Order it up from Amazon or Abe.

Playing Hooky

I went over to The Pacific Galleries down on Lander the other day, blowing off the last few hours of my Friday to look at some antiques and get inspired. The first time I went in there, shortly after arriving in Seattle, I thought it was all grandma's costume jewelry- but I was wrong, it keeps getting better and better the more I go. Stuff really flies out of there so the displays, which can get pretty intricate, get reworked over and over, some stalls begin to feel like places you could camp out and maybe spend some time, like visiting grandma without her being there. Here are some camera phone pics of some off the things I was drawn to. The signage really got me good this time...

The Supervillain strikes again without warning.

A Warm Hello!

The ever eloquent Jimmie Dale.

A little Damien Hirst you can take home with you.

Closeup of the price tag on the study form.

The Horror!

Badass Baby.

Vintage signs. They had the original 42nd St sign for sale, priced at $18,000, but shipping to the West Coast is free..

Self explanatory.

Glas Italia

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I want these shelves by Shiro Kuramata.
Designed the year I was born.

Also by Glas Italia, this backlit mirror by Jean Marie Massaud. Massaud is so smooth with his designs, he always captures an aesthetic that is the epitome of futuristic: clean lines, ultrathin and lightweight. He has designed for a range of luxury furniture companies like Cassina and Poltrona Frau, among others.

Glas has worked with some of my favorite designers from the '80s such as Kuramata, Sottsass and Branzi. Similar to another Italian contemporary of theirs, Fiam, they work exclusively in glass and mirrors, an interesting limitation with limitless possibilities. The Glas Italia website has a nice feature showing images of their factory and production process.

Nature of the Experiment

Topping the list of places to see next time I'm in New York is the newly-opened Droog store on Greene Street between Spring and Broome. Founded in 1993, Droog is a gigantic, worldwide collective of highly conceptual designers whose self-stated mission with each project is to "tell a story about themes such as memories, nostalgia, re-use, craftsmanship and nature."

With all of that in mind, here are some of my favorite Droog works:

Milk Bottle Lamp by Tejo Remy. Stuff like this is everywhere now but when this came out it was something I hadn't seen before.

Do hit chair by Marijn van der Poll. Emily and I had the (very loud) pleasure of visiting the Droog studio in Amsterdam one time when they were banging away at this thing. The hammer comes with the metal box and you make your own chair design out of it.

Limited fungi shelf by Katharina Mischer. This reminds me a little of a series of hand-carved tables my dad made in the '80s with animals coming out of them:

(Click to enlarge)

Visit droogusa.com for more info.

Unrelated:
Tokyo Police Club Nature of the Experiment mp3
From Lesson in Crime

Home Sweet Home

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I took some snapshots of our apartment and junk the other day before we started packing. We are both looking forward to moving into our place in Seattle but will really miss this place in Fort Greene, which was built a century earlier and has the high ceilings and beautiful details to prove it. (Click to enlarge any of these.)

Pacific Standard centcom.

I found this pear box on the sidewalk when we first moved in.

We had this big bulletin board up with several layers of pictures, flyers, and other stuff tacked to it.

The cupboard doesn't usually look like this, but it was right after a party so it was kind of stuffed. The two rectangle tins are vintage sardines I picked up at Fairway in Red Hook. They've been aged since the early '70s and are supposed to be great – we will see. Janice brought us the Hudson Manhattan Rye Whiskey as a going away present (thank you!)

This is looking up the stairway. One other thing that dates this house is the way it has settled – the floor is totally uneven and when you walk down the stairs you get a little dizzy if you're not used to it. It's like living on a boat, you go below deck. I like it but it could be treacherous if, say, you had some Hudson Manhattan Rye Whiskey in you.

No we haven't hiked it. Well, a little bit of it in various places, but not the whole thing. I would like to do it some day.
These are paintings by my Uncle, Perry Woodfin. Much more about him later. The one on the left is of a telephone booth on Whidbey Island that marks the informal border between North and South Whidbey. South is (in general) the more politically progressive side and the North tends to be conservative because of its proximity to the base. The one on the right is of some Guamanian mussel harvesters on Penn Cove, where Perry lives, and my mom has a place next door. Lots more about that stuff another time.

Chad calls this the man's lounge.

I designed this quilt for a typography class when I was at Parsons – the quotation is from Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message.

We got these from Lee Quiñones at a party several years ago, at Bob on the Lower Eastside.

Some old mix tapes I made for Emily.

Our bedroom is right on the street, which leads to some middle-of-the-night annoyances such as the rare gunshot (not so much anymore) or the less-rare drunk guys sitting on the stoop. But it's usually fine and we can sleep through just about anything now.

Jeans will be happy anywhere as long as he has his chair and some birds to look at out the window. So spoiled.


Lord Have Mercy (featuring M.O.P.) Home Sweet Home mp3