Lindsey Adleman is quickly carving out a niche for the finest and most bubbly chandeliers available. Each piece is completely unique, hand made, blown glass that include significantly difficult and virtuosic glass manipulations such as incorporating a haunting golden foil into the glass surface.

Lindsey Adelman Studio: installation at Karkula

Daniel Michalik is a Brooklyn based designer who explores the boundaries of unconventional materials. His focus is cork, though. Cork, as you probably know, is the bark that comes from a particular type of oak tree. The bark replaces itself every year and therefore can be sustainably harvested for use as stoppers in wine bottles, or in this case as furniture. Cork is often used as flooring material or as tack boards, but rarely have I see a designer use cork as a material for furniture in the way that Daniel Michalik has.

What blows me away about this chair is the form that Mr. Michalik is able to create with the cork. The construction technique is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The designer starts with the cork pressed into a sort of zig zag shape which gives the cork a great deal of flexibility. It appears that a form was created to give the cork its basic shape. Very similar to the way bent plywood is formed, the cork is layered up into three sheets, laminated together, and then pressed into shape before the laminate is dried. So, each layer of cork acts as a structure for the layer laminated to it which allows the piece to hold its shape.

The shape itself is sensuous, comfortable, and kind of dreamy, but modern as well. The piece, quite honestly looks delicate and sculptural and doesn’t appear to be able to hold the weight of the user, however it’s surprisingly strong. It’s also quite pliable, so it ballances very well the feeling of strength and comfort. I give it a big thumbs up.

For more information, check out these links:

• Daniel Michalik’s personal website
• Buy the chair at Branch( if you have five Gs)

And how about an actual product to show rather than just some jibber jabber. A’ight. Here’s a sweet desk I found off of one of my sponsor’s website. Dudes! I need a good desk badly! Anyone have 5 Gs they can hand me to get this beautiful desk? I like it because it follows John Maeda’s law of simplicity which I think states: You can be complex as long as you look simple. This desk does just that. Built right in to the top of the desk are two beautifully crafted desk drawers concealed ever so slightly to keep the top looking like a wood version of the 2001:A Space Odyssey monolith turned on its side. Also, cut in the top of the desk is an “in and out” box which allows the surface of the desk to stay clean and uncluttered. I love it!

I’m not really going to talk about the RPM 10 Record Player by Pro-Ject Audio Systems. I’m going to talk about what these record players stand for. The funny thing about the modern audiophile record player is the record player inevitably likes to display every piece and part of the machine as if it were crafted from gold. I, personally, find this aesthetic a bit ugly in its purity and spartanism. Each one of these record players has a base, a record plate, a tone arm, and needle, and a belt driven motor. Let’s start with the arm. Why can’t this ever be anything fun like it being in the actual shape of an arm?! Then, take the record plate. This plate is made to be massive and heavy to keep the speed of the record more consistent due to the inertia of this plate. This plate is often made of translucent glass or acrylic. Again, I don’t see why items couldn’t be embedded in the glass to give it some texture. All I want is a flourish of some kind! Is that too much to ask? But for you serious audiophiles, get out your high thread-count comforter, get out your precisely positioned Eames Lounge Chair that you paid an expert to find the sonic inflection point in your den, get out your velcro attached foam dampers, get out your 80 mil red virgin vinyl copy of Stereo Review’s Stereo Demonstration Record, and get out your checkbook because you are going to be paying around ten grand for one of these machines.

The Knit Chair by Emiliano Godoy has been around a couple of years, but its design doesn’t cease to amaze me. The chair is made from two things: thin wood panels and cotton rope. The chair amazingly keeps its shape, even with its incredible thinness. The key to the chair, really, is the shape of the beehive-like wood pieces that lock together and give it structure. The chair uses sustainable wood and organic cotton rope, so the piece is about as natural as you can get. I guess my favorite aspect of the chair is its shape. It’s a bit like a cradle or a glove. And, when you sit down in it, the chair sort of nestles you in as the weight of your body alters the shape of the chair.

OK. Vertu is like an old-school Nokia cell phone from, like, 5 years ago given a nice packaging. Can someone tell me why this is worth over six thousand dollars, please? My first cell phone that has nearly the same technology as the Vertu cost me 20 dollars with a contract. I could have bought 320 of these phones for the same price as one racetrack series phone. And it’s not like you are going to slip in the same technology that a current 2007 smartphone has somehow. In other words: RICH PEOPLE! THIS PHONE IS A SCAM! If you want a really cool phone that is beautiful and will impress your other rich friends then wait a couple of months and get an iPhone by Apple. If you need diamonds on the phone, then get a local craftsman to add a few.

The racetrack series isn’t even  close to being the most expensive Vertu phone. They also make a diamond encrusted version that prices in the five digits. Let’s hope your cell phone company never drops this model.

Object: The Dutch Tub

Manufacturer: The Dutch Tub

URL: http://www.dutchtub.com

Category: Furniture and Housewares

Price: $6000

Lust Factor: Hot

Description: The Dutch Tub is one of those ingenious ideas where you wonder, ” Why has no-one thought of this before?” It’s a bit like an old-fashioned wood fired hot tub, but it uses a bit more advanced coiling system to heat up the water. On top of that, it’s also a barbeque complete with a wok that sits on top of the fire. If that’s not enough, consider that it’s relatively light, which means higher portability. You could bring your hot tub camping ( a dream of mine)!

Object: Concrete Shuttering

Designer: Established and Sons

URL: http://www.mattermatters.com

Category: Furniture and Housewares

Price: $6,785

Lust Factor: Hot

Description: Concrete Shuttering is a shelving product that pushes the trend: “I am not as I seem”. In Established and Sons’ take on this they have created what would probably be made from a wood caracass and used concrete. The designers have gone one step further by painting or treating the concrete to make it look as if it were wood. But, the real acheivment is making a useable product out of concrete that is as thin as this piece achieves. It’s very subtle, but if you knew much about the material, you would quickly realize how special this piece becomes.

Object: The M8 Digital Camera

Designer: Leica

URL: http://www.leica-camera.us

Category: Consumer Technology

Price: $5,300 for body only

Lust Factor: Hot

Description: I can’t say enough good things about the Leica M8. This camera company has created design perfection. The M series lenses, which are meticulously detailed to perform with the most clarity possible, had never seen a non-film body until the M8. They have decided to finally build a digital body because they got the equation right. First, Leica started by including the largest and most advanced image sensor. The larger size allows for larger and more accurate pixel information, deeper blacks, and brighter whites as well as a 10 megapixel resolution.

The controls, of course, are dead simple and geared for professional use. The one throwback of the camera is its use of a range finder. This functions perfectly, but is not really as user friendly in casual situations, but hey, I this is not a casual camera.

Object: The Tulip Ego Laptop

Manufacturer: thecommunicationgroup

URL: http://www.barneys.com

Category: Personal Technology

Price: $5,000

Lust Factor: Tepid

Description: The design is perfection, there is no doubt. The innovation on this machine is the computer’s ability to change skins from white to red. Also, it is somewhat of an innovation for the computer to look more like a woman’s handbag than a box. I love this product because it’s quintessential Barneys. That is, who cares about computing power, screen size, or even operating system. Just give me the feminine styling. This gift preys on old, rich women in the most overt way.