I really don’t think anyone goes out looking for a clock anymore. So, to realy differentiate yourself in the time telling business you have to make something like qlocktwo. it uses this weird letter matrix to spell out the time in five minute intervals. And it does this at the low price of twelve hundred dollars. I can’t shake the feeling that, although quite beautiful, the clock is not novel enough or well crafted enough to warrant the cost. of course, i can be swayed by a good arguement.

Biegert & Funk – QLOCKTWO.

Illusion Table is so expertly performed that I couldn’t quite geta handle on its expertly crafted form. First, it is made from laquered ash which is not what I thought. At first glance, it’s steel or aluminum or anything else but wood. But this illusive use of such a simple material is not where the illusion table gets its name. It gets its name from what the table looks like in plan. In plan, it takes on the form of a perfect square not the sloping curve of it’s side profile. This is quite a slick, thoughtful piece.

MICHAEL BIHAIN – http://bihain.com.

N-7 is another beautifully built table that takes on the current trend of what I call origami or faceted design. Where did this trend start? I seem to recall a modern building in Hong Kong built about twenty years ago that sort of kicked off this trend in my mind. Since then, I’ve seen so much faceted design that ranges from the Cadillac to cell phones. I’m waiting for toilet paper. Now that would be something. Making something that is normally so round and soft into something more angular and asymmetrical. For today, I’ll just appreciate this table by Casamania. It has an Escher-like quality in that you just can’t quite get a handle on it visually. It feels like it could slip away on you.

I’ve been meaning to write about this small Finnish company for quite some time. You need a fabric for your design that incorporates a kind of 80s collage DIY aesthetic? This might very well be the designers to look at. Their fabric work suggests industrial wastelands, flowers juxtaposed with grainy penwork of enlarged Maurice Sendak children’s books, and gritty abstract lines.

Handpresso, available at Charles and Marie, is your ticket to never being stuck on a back country hiking trail without a good shot of espresso easily available. I used to carry something called a Jetboil. My friends raved about this thing, so I had to have one. And as it promises, the Jetboil boils water in seconds. Here’s the catch. The Jetboil comes with a coffee adapter to make French press style coffee, but the device led to a scalded hand and lots of grounds in my cup of coffee. Admittedly, I didn’t use the press quite right when I got the hand scald, but it has never worked quite well for coffee when I did use it right. Now, my savior comes in, and its name is Handpresso. This plus the Jetboil is the one-two punch for the camping barrista.

Have you been wondering how to dispose of your old couch, but you don’t want to send it off to a huge landfill? I’ve got an idea! Rip the thing apart and break it down into its component pieces. And when you get to the springs, cut those up and turn them into a chic, modern lamp. That’s what Aswoon does every day to create the remarkable Lite Tapestry Tower. The tower, a combination of fluorescent light, springs, steel and acrylic are expertly produced and a tribute to ingenuity and the burning question: “What else can this old couch be?”

Do you remember when you were a kid, and your mother gave you a toy comprised of a board with various geometric holes in it along with a number of colored sqaures, stars and spheres? I remember this at least. It was a toy that teased your brain to fit the blocks in the right shaped holes. And when you got all of the blocks in the right holes, the feeling was quite satisfying. This sensation is no different with Bejamin Hubert’s collection of desk accessories for Welmade. These colorful blocks intise you to find just the right hole for your pens, rulers or other desk items. Sure it’s more expensive than a tin cup. But it looks so much better.

Benjamin Hubert Products

uhuru, to me, may have been the most impressive furniture designers I saw at BKLYN Designs in terms of their creative reuse of industrial products. For example: the Stave Bench and the Bilge Lounge reuse whiskey barrels from the finest white oak. These barells are charred and used only once in the barreling process then discarded or sold. uhuru purchases these barrels and leaves the barrells in a state very close to where they found them to make these beautiful chairs and tables shown above and below. This is what I would consider a very low energy intensive form of recycling which in my mind is the best form of recycling.

But uhuru’s commitment to this type of recycling does not stop with whiskey barrels. They have a variety of products that make use of whatever industrial scrap might be around. Their website features products such as the Fenced In Table made from repourposed fence parts- this table you won’t believe.