The Design Crack Guide to Metal
Circumflex Accent Chair by Zoe Mowat
Zoe Mowat has come up with something I find quite special. Her Circumflex accent chair is a perfect triumvirate of steel, cast plastic, and walnut which creates something that is forward thinking and yet retains an old-world richness. Usually, when I see chairs like this they’re either too clumsy or look like a robot made [...]
MKD Outdoor Furniture
MKD Outdoor appeals to the anyone who grew up playing with an erector set. Their furniture is made up of dozens of parts and pieces and fit together elegantly into a perfect symphony. The furniture is quite elegant, but it certainly appeals to anyone who might have more of a fetish for industrial [...]
Periodic Table by One and Co for Council Design: Fourty Two Grand of Pure Luxury
Back in Early 2007, Council Design came out with a fabulous new collection they called “Optimism“. At that time, they were just prototyping the periodic table which they showed on their website for a while. But Derek Chen, owner of Council Design, had not yet perfected the table which he had commissioned from design [...]
Die Electric by Scott Amron
Scott Amron sent me a link to his Die Electric project months ago, and I loved it so much that I wrote a post about it and but somehow it was lost in the ether. Finally, I’m back on the case: Die Electric is a play on dialectic mixed with a little die and a [...]
The Hover Collection: Seating That Nearly Floats
The bench, part of the Hover Collection, brings me back to a memory I had experienced nearly twenty years ago when I was traveling in Guatemala. In this country, the streets are filled with music that come from hand made instruments that resemble over-sized xylophones not unlike the bench you see above. This bench somehow [...]
Lite Tapestry Tower: a Floor Lamp by Aswoon
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, [...]
Reader Request: Licht Im Raum and Dix Heures Dix
A reader has requested that I send a quick shout out to all in the interior design community: Do You Know of a Product Rep. in the United States for the two companies Licht Im Raum and Dix Heures Dix? Both manufacturers produce exquisite work, and I would very much like to know if there [...]
The Smoking Gun by Design Glut: Where Pun Mixes with Double Entendre
Design Glut is an extremely fresh design group of two making some of the smartest products out there in the world. The product that caught my eye at the recent ICFF 2008 show was The Smoking Gun: a cigarette holder with a deeper, blunter sense of the act of smoking. The iconography of the cigarette [...]
Mixko: A World of Undiscoverd Similarities
Mixko, as their namesake indicates, is a company that mixes multiple unlike things together to come up with completely new meanings. They look at an object like a whistle, for instance, and say, “Hey, if the scale of that whistle were multiplied in size by, like four hundred times, then that whistle would make a [...]
BKLYN Designs: uhuru
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 [...]
BKLYN Designs: Produce Redefines the Kitchen
I’ve been thinking about how to create a fresh approach in my own kitchen recently, so it’s no surprise that I was extremely excited to see the work of Produce to get some inspiration of what my kitchen could be. Their work, as shown in their pot and knife rack, wall bins, and wine rack [...]
BKLYN Designs: Vexell
This Sunday, I attended BKLYN Designs in the Dumbo Neighborhood of Brooklyn and was impressed with the level of craft by the offerings. Over the next few days, I hope to feature a few of the most exciting small companies I observed.
Today, I’d like to mention Vexell. Vexell’s furniture, as was the case of many [...]
Coffin Couches
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 [...]
Armani Casa: Classic Big Brand Design Perfection
I’ve made it a point to cover big, chunky fantastically fashionable brands over the next few weeks, and today is one of my favorites: Armani Casa. Armani Casa is like the stage set for a highly stylized 1940s noir film with a good budget. Each piece evokes one of two feelings in me. Armani [...]
Umbrella Stand by Take Care
Take Care’s Umbrella Stand brings a little piece of nature into your home. Granted, the image of the stand shows a green grass growing in it which might be impossible, but I’m sure house plants could easily survive in the planter as well. The concept is pretty smart though: the residual water from [...]
The Iris Coffe Table by Michael Bihain
I recently covered a chair by Michael Bihain which I liked, but this piece I love. It feels like an instant classic. Why? First because it’s so simple. It is a single piece of plate steel or laser cut into shape and bent precisely into its final form resembling an iris. It’s iconic, easy to [...]
