April 9, 2009
This gets points for adventurousness and imagination and magic, if not success. It’s another image from The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970.
More far out interiors from The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970.
April 4, 2009
I love this art object/piece of furniture by artist Fia Backstrom, who has had a number of exhibitions in Vancouver. From the NYT article “Artful Lodgers“:
Fia Backstrom describes her apartment near the Gowanus Canal as a perpetual battle between organization and chaos.
April 3, 2009
The writer Douglas Coupland (“Generation X”), who has been interested in Canadiana for a long time, recently went about finding a classic 70s “builder’s special” house slated for demolition, filled it with objects constructed from the Canadian paraphernalia of his childhood, and then staged a party in it.
From Portland Monthly Magazine. A monochromatic painting resting on a teak credenza becomes a sort of contemplative feature wall. Why is this picture so compelling to me? It’s not as if it’s that different from the thousand other midcentury modern still lifes I’ve seen in the past few years, but sometimes one variation on a theme stands out from the others.
April 2, 2009
The photo above shows the central living area of a rural farmhouse on the border of Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures. The house was restored by Kenji Tsuchisawa who bought it as a rundown heap when he was only 20, after seeing a photograph of a traditional Japanese farmhouse on a Tokyo magazine cover.
March 15, 2009
There is something so beautiful about the way photographs and other objects are hung on the walls in traditional rooms in Greece. The objects are prized yet there’s also something casual and unprecious about the way they accumulate.
February 18, 2009
This graph shows the occurrence of the terms “decor” (blue) and “interior design” (red) in The New York Times between 1984 and 2009. What happened to the word “decor”? It fell out of usage in approximately February, 2001, maybe a result of a change in editorial style policy?
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 4, 2009
The use of woven textiles in peasant interiors is so beautiful. The level of pride in the textiles is so evident, and that’s no doubt the result of the intimate connection people would have had not only with knowledge of the work and artistry involved, but also with the plants and animals from which the fibres came.
