Have you ever owned a piece of furniture so perfect that it made you feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven? If not then the coffin couch may be the perfect fit to bring you to eternal bliss. The coffin couch is a sofa full of beautiful details including handles and gorgeous legs. And if this furniture doesn’t knock you out then its $3,500 price tag may kill you.

Coffin Couches

The first time I saw the Blow Lounge Chair by Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen for HAY, I thought they called it the Blow Lounge Chair because this chair was so sexy that brothels would be ordering this for certain lude acts implied in the name. Of course, my dirty mind completely overlooked that this chair, in fact, looked as if it were blown up to give it structure, thus the “blow” lounge chair. SIlly me.

This past weekend, The New York Times had an advertising supplemental that was a slick magazine devoted to the watch, a dying breed of product design. Probably my favorite of the watches was the Bell & Ross BR01-97. It is, quite frankly, one of the ugliest watches I have ever seen, but there is no denying its incredible precision and craftsmanship. I guess the reason I love this watch so much is it really sticks to its 4 tenets: water resistance, readability, precision, and performance. No where do they claim to focus on beauty. These 4 things are the mantra. Designers, engineers, and fabricators look to this with laser focus. Beauty is not in this equation. It’s too abstract. And like many Swiss modernists that have come before Bell and Ross, the beauty is the product of following these four tenets.

Why do Italian furniture makers make American furniture makers look like fools? That’s not really what I think, but that was my gut reaction when I first saw the Star Trek chair designed by Roberto Lazzeroni for Ceccotti Collezioni. The chair defies all logic of the material its constructed from. It is, as you see above, a wood frame with a leather back. Today, we are jaded by modern technologies and modern forms, but when this chair was first made it was a mystery as to how the joints, from the arm to the back for instance, were brought together with such fine precision. Was the answer a CNC router hooked up to a computer? No. The answer was to hire a number of incredible craftspeople who have honed their skills for multiple generations in small Italian workshops. It makes me embarrassed to even compare this chair to most of the furniture I see today.

This bag is soooo old news. However, The Dior Samourai 1947 handbag is still one of my favorites even though Dior has probably gone on to market bigger and better pieces. This handmade gem by Dior is nothing less than a work of art. The handbag comes in a variety of colors, but I like black. Why Dior has chosen to call the bag “Samourai 1947″ is still a bit of a mystery to me. I, of course, went to Wikipedia to look at the Samurai dress to see if there is any similarities in the construction, and it is reminiscent of the Samurai outfit, but there must be a deeper meaning beyond me. I think, more likely, the bags name derives from the famous French Noir film Le Samourai. And if you know what this meaning is and really want this bag, then run over to Neiman Marcus and purchase this for a mere $3,900.

I have been contemplating giving who I am and everything I do in life a catchy tag line that will help an audience identify with me. Design Crack, as of yet, has no tag line. It pretty much explains itself, I think, with the mental visual of a design object that is irresistibly addictive- thus, Design Crack. But how about a tag line describing myself? How about a realistic tagline: “Brandon Thomas Baunach: married, overweight architect in love with his wife and expectant son”. Not too interesting. Increasingly, as I come to terms with my love of women’s fashion, I find that a better and more exciting tagline might be “Brandon Thomas Baunach: horn-rimmed shoe fetishist who hates iPhones”. (I just added the last part to get the residual traffic from iPhone-hater haters, but the first part is true.) I wear horn rimmed glasses, and I can’t stay away from a good shoe.

And speaking of good shoe… Ferragamo, seen above. The name brings middle-aged coiffed women to their knees in ecstasy. This brand is what I would consider to be the pinnacle of refined shoe. Salvatore Ferragamo makes the best shoes, but rarely does the brand take risks. They make simple, straight ahead, some would say WASPish shoes for those with the cash. That’s why I was struck by the daring of this Ferragamo shoe pictured above. It’s simple and refined from the front. But the back of the shoe looks as if it were constructed from a Roman mosaic that met it’s end on the heal of a high class call girl. It’s a dichotomy shoe. Virtuous by day. Sinful by night. But, always sexy.