February 17, 2009
70s space age armchair, via backgarage, origin and name unknown. Does anyone know who or what made this? Does it actually bounce on that spring? Imagine eating breakfast in this chair.
February 16, 2009
There’s something compelling about this photo of the bedroom of novelist Marguerite Duras in the house she bought in Neauphle, outside Paris, in the 1960s. The thin cot bed is so peculiar, like something she might have grown up with during her impoverished colonial childhood in French Indochina.
February 14, 2009
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.
A few more spreads from our collection of the sadly long defunct Nest Quarterly. So many magazines have died this year, but I still miss Nest the most.
February 11, 2009
While on the topic of Afghanistan, here are some examples of Afghani war rugs. Production of these pictorial rugs began in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and persisted throughout the civil war and into the US invasion.
The so-called “afghan blanket” seems to go to Value Village to die. It’s hard to know which is more disturbing: the synthetic nature of the object itself, or the fact that it is still, amazingly, given everything that has happened over the last fifteen or more years, called an “afghan.” A search online to discover the origins of this craft object immediately turned up “The All American Denim Stripes Afghan.” No lie!
February 10, 2009
Sometimes after seeing too many chichi, precious, and citified houses, too much shiny, overproduced design, and everything just starts to look too estranged from the materials it was made from, as an antidote I go look at pictures of handbuilt houses.
February 9, 2009
February 8, 2009
Martin Margiela is never entirely serious nor entirely flippant, which is part of what makes him an interesting artist. For example his site. This waistcoat how-to was produced by Maison Margiela and is courtesy The Guardian, where you can find many other odd DIY tutorials, like Jade Jagger’s punk bracelet.
February 7, 2009
Terunobu Fujimori has been called the world’s only “surreal architect.” Obviously this is false, but there is a fantastical quality about his work that isn’t typical among architects, even when they’re trying for the new, strange or sci-fi.
This fantastic new pendant lamp or chandelier is by my friends Propellor, an award winning collaboration of three Vancouver designers whose ridiculously beautiful studio is a few blocks from mine.
