Bread Shoes

For Her






For Him





and of course...





I was going to place these in my expanded definition of ephemera feature but couldn't wait, I love them so.

Caddy's and Jags and Volvos, oh my!

What's wrong with this picture?






Can we really distinguish between these cars? Where did our imagination go? What does the homogeniety of these designs say about us as consumers? What does it say about how we are perceived by manufacturers and designers?






Where is the fun? Where is the outrage?

Thank you BoingBoing for reminding us that car design used to speak to a collective American imagination, a collective spirit.

Nom Nom Nom

I intend to play fast and loose with the definition of ephemera so that I can write about any object that is intended to be short lived.

Like chocolate.



Aren’t these beautiful?

I normally don’t care for sweets but I will happily destroy a couple of these any ol’ day.




If you are the rare chocolate consumer, I recommend making sure you only eat the tastiest AND most beautiful. These are from Richart.


Yum.

Feature: Ephemera

MoMa, you make me feel so butch

Now, I like a good tool just as much as any girl. Who doesn’t? But I guess the MoMa Design Store thinks I shouldn’t.




I just bought the super cool Protocol. It’s a multi-tool, sort of like a swiss army knife but on steroids. It comes with a hammer, adjustable wrench, pliers, wire cutter, file, blades, and a screwdriver with a twelve-piece bit set. I bought 2, one for me and one for NK. I will probably buy more for gifts. By the way, it is pretty hefty so not quite pocketbook size, which is what I was hoping.

But here’s the kicker. MoMa advertised it "For Him"


A little explanation… I am writing this pre-Valentine’s day and posting it later. I am sure this was just a gift suggestion. But seriously, really? That is simply NO EXCUSE.

I would have loved that as a Valentine's day present.

MoMa, you should be embarrassed.

Feature: Product Promotion

Winter Be Gone

A quick post on the virtue of plastic. Ok, recycled plastic.


These are lovely



These are also lovely and cheaper



And they last a real long time.


I am ok with that.



Feature: Out of Doors

Raggin' on Mags

Today I was flipping through my new issue of Elle Decor. By flipping, I mean I was brushing through pages on my iPad, I think perhaps the least satisfying magazine experience. I will happily subscribe to electronic magazines if they figure out that a simulated carbon copy of the mag is not the wave of the future.

I found I was drawn more to the ads because they dealt with one idea at a time, hence less busy. I stumbled upon an ad for a designer I was just talking about with my friend, ML, last Saturday night: the painter and designer Madeline Weinrib. (thanks to DDS for turning me on to her)

ML was admiring my clutch.





Ms Weinrib is the grand-daughter of ABC Carpet and Home's founder Max Weinrib. She carries on the tradition beautifully with rugs, pillows and other textiles. This one is in our living room.








This runner is out at the humble cottage.


and if I am in an ironing mood, you might just be using these napkins at dinner.




When I was searching out a little more info on Ms. Weinrib I found a site for "Copy Cat Chic". I understand that many people cannot afford to shop at ABC carpet sample sales but please do not support direct ripoffs. This hurts the artist especially if she is a living, working artist.

How to turn this back into a rag about mags, I don't know. But if my electronic magazines continue to force me to talk about their ads, I am certain to let the subscription run out.

Feature: Cruisin' the Mags

Ain't that America?

One completely unexpected bonus from taking a design history class with Russell Flinchum, the author of American Design (for the MoMa design series) is that I sometimes get to do the “oh look at me, I own that object” dance. In this case it is an Ecko products Flint potato masher (1943-1946)





There was a certain ilk of industrial designer whose goal was to make the best possible product for the most people at the best possible price. Flint attached the handle to the tool with a rivet. The manufacturers could have made this all as one piece but that action would have doubled the cost. "Now that', as Russell would say, 'is American…willing to compromise design in favor of cost." Imagine: design for the masses at affordable prices provided by the American capitalist system.


That certain ilk still produces today. Another product with infinite extensions is the OXO good grip family.



The actual product in MoMa's collection is the spatula.



(a silly side note: if anyone owns the American Design book, take a look at the piece on the previous page. it is Arens and Brookhart’s streamliner meat slicer. it was a gift to the museum in honor of Abbie Hoffman. Huh?)





Feature: Make My Day: Gadgets

The "C" word

Cozy. That bastard word again. It keeps following me around. Hard as I try to keep it away, the little interloper keeps showing up in my living room or my kitchen. I thought the white walls were enough to frighten it, but when more and more antiques showed up in the living room, it started to have a seat in one of the chairs. The proportion of white dwindled in proportion to brown. But finally it was a book (ok, closer to 150 of them) that asked Cozy to spend the night. Then it moved in.

NK and I read a great deal. I like to buy books. I like to own them. I love seeing them on the shelves before and after they are read. Most book lovers I know like to keep these friends nearby if possible. All the existing bookshelves in the apartment were filled and my guys were piling up on top of all the horizontal surfaces and inviting in Cozy’s unkempt baggy-trousered cousin: Clutter.




Another piece of furniture, a bookshelf, had to be bought. Went to Crate and Barrel and found a simple, handsome, sturdy freestanding 4-tiered bookshelf in espresso. Viewed in the store, it didn’t look that heavy or dark. But then it didn’t have any books in it. As soon as the case was delivered and filled with my friends, I suddenly had a 4 and a half foot tall chunk of dark sitting in the living room. Cozy was here (but at least Clutter left, went down the street to get a beer in a bag from the local bodega).







It has bugged me for few years and I haven’t found a solution till today. I was thumbing through some past issues of Dwell magazine and saw a rendering of the Universal Shelving Unit by Dieter Rams (for Vitsoe), Perfection! Looked up Vitsoe and lo and behold the NY store is on Bond Street. Look at me not having to travel more than 2 blocks from my house once again. Hee!





(this is not our apt. i would never have plants! i will take a pic once we get them in)

Feature: Up Close and Personal

Gimme

Over the years I’ve noticed a fairly consistent criteria for the objects on display at Moss; a high-end household retail store on Greene Street in SoHo. There are items that are handsomely made and purely, exquisitely beautiful. Other pieces tend to be handsomely made and rather funny. But overall, they tend to be seemingly rare items I have never seen anywhere before.

The objects, furniture and jewelry in Murray Moss’s collection are as intricately curated as any museum show. For the most part, what you find in a museum store is only representative of the museum’s collection, sort of a brand extension and not a picture of what the museum exhibits in its galleries. But the objects at Moss’s gallery are for sale, making this the museum store that puts the museum back in the store.

One of the most breath-taking objects was a scaled down version of the Metropolitan Opera’s central descending chandelier, designed by Hans Harold Rath and manufactured by J&L Lobmeyer in 1960. For Moss, it was replicated and brought down to household size (at least if your household was on the scale of a minor Renaissance palace). Objects such as this are the stuff of dreams, utterly unattainable, but here it was, for sale at Moss.

(You can still buy it online. Go here: http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/41765/category_id/455
and just click “I’ll TAKE IT” to put it in your basket. How remarkable, that you can “one-click” a $68,765.00 chandelier. Too much wine and an itchy finger could get you into lots of trouble.)



Moss also has some of the most beautiful collections of hand painted porcelain dishes such as the $2600 five-piece white place setting with gold trim by Wolfgang von Wirsen designed in 1944. Or my favorite, the Chinese oval platter for a mere $709 that is reminiscent of Hermes. A curatorial point well taken; one can find Hermes easily, one cannot find this 1730 plate by Johann Joachim Kaendler so readily.

But the items that delight the most are the ones that exhibit humor. A matte bisque 10” Jackdaw perched on a branch for $2350 or Cindy Sherman’s Madam Pompadour Limoges porcelain. A 1916 17” porcelain miniature Doberman pinscher for $4,000? Now that’s funny!

But not everything in the store is cost prohibitive. For my birthday one year, some friends bought me two Artecnica transSglass vases made from recycled wine bottles. One was a bottle that had been laser cut just below the shoulder. The top portion was then inverted and placed neck down into the bottom of the bottle. Sandblast and then viola, a flower vase for $62. Or there is the high-density polyethylene fiber Tvyek bag by designer Saskia Diez for $60.These items can be found on-line but the finding requires knowledge of their existence.

What heightens the museum experience is that all these pieces are behind glass, beyond reach. The couches and chairs all wear signs that say, “do not touch.” I tend to touch anyway but know that I dare not sit on anything unless I demonstrate a sincere desire to purchase. However with a charming gesture of self-parody, the store requires its employees to wear uniform t-shirts also printed with the words, “do not touch.”

Curation is not only the act of inclusion and subsequent omission; it also asks that the curator make choices that are of interest to the viewer. I find that Moss consistently shows me things that are not only interesting but are objects that I can rarely, if ever, find on my own.

(sadly i can't get pics of most of these items)


Feature: Out of My Reach

Must...Do...Homework...

In the following post I say that "For the most part, what you find in a museum store is only representative, of the museum’s collection, sort of a brand extension and not a picture of what the museum exhibits in its galleries." (ok, admittedly, i am writing and posting out of order. am trying to keep with my "features" schedule and sometimes topics get explored out of order.)

The "brand extension" aspect of my comment isn't entirely true when it comes to MoMa's store. Most of the original items do exist in the museum's collections. There simply isn't enough room within the galleries to display all of what the museum owns. And to display all would be overwhelming to visitors. Then there is curation to consider.

But I do think those who shop in museum gift shops should be a little more aware of what they are buying. I am one huge sinner in that church.

I was doing some research for something or the other and after paging through Russell Flinchum's American Design, went to MoMa's actual collection of objects to see what they had.



That's where I found that the items I bought from the MoMa store existed in prominent place in design history. For the longest time I just thought that MoMa chose certain products for their shop because the pieces were a natural extension of what the museum might have actually collected. Shame on me and boy am I embarrassed.




This glass was designed by Goran Hongell for Aarne in 1948 (for more.)



I bought a set of these cups at the Pompidou Centre a few years ago and went to the website to see about their origin but alas the site was down. Will keep ya posted.




Feature: Museum Shops

Reading the classics

Some of the originals.


Feature: The Classics

If I have to repeat myself one more time

A few years ago, I was working on a pitch for an unnamed television campaign (“Living with Ed”) on an unnamed channel (Planet Green) and was struck by one of the conceptual by-products that the uber green Ed Begley Jr. left behind.

Plastic. More specifically, recycled plastic. And maybe there are some things we DO want to last forever (or at least a very long time).



Rather than using new wood for his white picket fence, he had his made from recycled milk cartons. As long as people own property and dogs there will probably always be fencing. I would do this in an instant.



And now I am seeing this fantastic chair in all the design mags. It is the Emeco Navy chair made from recycled coke bottles. (the Dwell article here)

It would be ideal to identify objects that should have a very long shelf life and direct the recycling efforts to that end rather than just making stuff for stuff’s sake out of recycled material.



And if we are going to make things out of brand new plastic, let’s at least identify objects that should last at least a few lifetimes. (still, no reason these can't be made out of recycled material)




(also please take a look at alexandra lange's plastic defense in design observer)

Feature: "Made in US"