Archive for the ‘Furniture’ Category
Posted by Margo Cochran to Design and Furniture and Home + Garden on
14 June 2010, with 2 comments so far.
Who would’ve thought that you could relax in a bathtub in your living room? Ruff House Art Letter Press and Design Studio clearly did, with their couch made from a vintage bathtub and vibrantly patterned cushions. Designer Jill Morrison originally designed the bathtub couch to be a part of a retro game room, where she hoped to have a unique collection of furniture, and was inspired by Audrey Hepburn’s couch in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This tub can be custom ordered with the colors and patterns of your choosing, and will definitely result in the most interesting living room in your neighborhood.
[Images from Ruff House's Etsy Shop via handmade spark]
Posted in Design, Furniture, Home + Garden | 2 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Furniture and Home + Garden on
9 June 2010, with 3 comments so far.
Found this before/after montage in the ReadyMade Flickr pool. Maker ckilgore writes:
I found this crappy old table by a dumpster (yeah for living in a college town!) and it was in bad shape, but I liked the base. I had some more metal file boxes, so I painted them up and put them together to make a new end table with a little storage.
We love the international orange/baby blue color combo, and the Frankenstinian approach to furniture (re)making.
Go ahead…add your own photos of things you made to the ReadyMade Flickr pool.
[Photo by ckilgore, on Flickr]
Posted in Furniture, Home + Garden | 3 Comments »
Posted by Andrew Wagner to Craft and Design and Events and Furniture and NYC on
1 June 2010, with 1 comment so far.
Last summer I helped curate the first ever Makers Market at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. It was an amazing event that found everyone braving some wild weather on opening night which finally gave way to a gorgeous weekend of sun and mild tempuratures. The over 4,000 guests who made it out to the event were treated to some of the most unique and finely made goods from makers from all over the east coast.
If you missed last year’s market, never fear, the second annual Makers Market takes place this weekend, June 4th through the 6th.
Friday’s opening night festivities will give guests the first chance to check out the goods and pick up one-of-a-kind product that is sure to go incredibly fast. You’ll also have the chance to enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on the waterfront as the sun sets over the Manhattan skyline amongst the sculptures featured in Socrates’ spring exhibition, Cityscape.
If you can’t make it Friday, be sure to come by on Saturday from 11 – 7 and/or Sunday from 11-5 when the park will be open and you’ll have the opportunity to meet “approximately 40 American makers and shop a broad selection of skillfully crafted one of kind objects, including: ceramics, turned wood bowls, glassware, motorcycles, knives, tableware, jewelry, furniture, lighting, and more.”
So come on out and be sure to stop by our ReadyMade booth and say hello! Look forward to seeing you this weekend…
Posted in Craft, Design, Events, Furniture, NYC | 1 Comment »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Design and Furniture and Home + Garden on
28 May 2010, with 2 comments so far.
I was noodling around on the web yesterday when I stumbled upon a design find I am quite taken with. Carlos Motta is a Brazilian designer who, according to the bio on his website, began to work with wood in the early ’70s, as an offshoot of the surfing he loved to do on the coast off Sao Paulo—the waves would wash driftwood ashore, and Motta’s first experiments with furniture were born.
As befits its maker’s surfy roots, Motta’s work—he is also an architect who has designed gorgeously rustic buildings that undulate from level to level with the landscape—projects an organic, laid-back vibe. Probably because the first hot days of summer are upon us, bringing in the season of outdoor lounging, I’m feeling especially drawn to his reclaimed-wood “Asturias” chairs today. They seem as though they could make just about any space feel like a lazy tropical patio.
Some of Motta’s pieces will be on display this weekend at the Steven Alan shop in East Hampton, New York. If you’re one of the lucky New Yorkers who’s making it out that way for Memorial Day, stop by and give them a sit.
[Images: Espasso]
Tags: brazil, carlos motta, espasso, Furniture, patio furniture, porch furniture, steven alan
Posted in Design, Furniture, Home + Garden | 2 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Furniture and Home + Garden on
26 May 2010, with no comments so far.
Those who know me know that I’m no friend of plastic. As a material, it has many obvious selling points—but the throwaway culture it makes possible has spun madly out of control. (In the unlikely event that you’d contest such a claim, Google “North Pacific gyre” or, if that seems too far from home, see the recent spate of articles about plastics and your health.)
Plastic isn’t just famously non-biodegradable; it’s also difficult to recycle. Less than 7% of the plastic used in the U.S. makes its way into the recycling stream. (Only about 25% of PET bottles, like the ones that water and soda comes in, do.) And what does get used again is often “downcycled”—for a number of reasons, plastic is notoriously difficult to form into new containers, so recycled plastic vessels are commonly turned into more basic items like plastic lumber or fiber fill for pillows and garments.
All that said, I do get interested when I see people trying to do new things with recycled plastic, and the 111 Navy Chair by Coca-Cola and Emeco is one such experiment. Made from “at least” 111 recycled plastic PET bottles (and, the press release notes, some other materials as well, including fiberglass), the chair mimics the shape of the iconic Emeco Navy Chair designed for the use of the U.S. Navy in 1944. It has a much smoother look than other recycled-plastic furniture I’ve seen (mostly benches made for outdoor use).
Design and/or soda afficionados can purchase the chairs, which come in a number of colors, through Design Within Reach. If the chairs sell as projected, the Coca-Cola estimates that their production will give a second life to more than 3 million PET bottles a year.
Pretty neat, though don’t forget…plastic is forever, so keep recycling, but remember that “reduce” and “reuse” come first in the saying for a reason, ‘kay?
[Image from Coca-Cola]
Tags: bottles, coca-cola, coke, DWR, Emeco, navy chair, PET, plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, recycling, reuse, rPET, soda
Posted in Furniture, Home + Garden | No Comments »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Design and Events and Furniture and Home + Garden and Materials on
14 May 2010, with 1 comment so far.
Liles’ Crested Comb-Back Chair and Sweester Lamp inject modernity into classics like the Windsor chair and a traditional woven basket.
Timothy Liles. You may know him from his Crayon Rings or his work as a sneaker designer for Converse (the double-uppers were his), but we’d like to introduce you to his latest work.
The RISD grad’s New England-inspired collection debuts at CITE on Saturday from 6:00-8:30, and it’s the product of four months spent in the remote woods of New Hampshire. New New England takes a modern spin on traditional American craft techniques and aims to close the gap between consumer and maker.
After the CITE exhibition, Liles’ work will find another temporary home in loft 1011 at the Ace Hotel from May 15th-20th before embarking on a North American road trip in a refurbed camper van, which of course, he did himself.
Braid Dead Rug
Posted in Design, Events, Furniture, Home + Garden, Materials | 1 Comment »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Events and Furniture and NYC on
13 May 2010, with 1 comment so far.
Here are two more finds, of special ReadyMade interest, from last weekend’s BKLYN Designs expo. (Read our first post on the show, here.)
Red Hook, Brooklyn-based design team Uhuru was out, introducing their “Coney Island Line” of funiture: tables and a wonderfully swoopy chaise (inspired by Coney Island’s famous Cyclone roller coast, natch) made from wood reclaimed from the Coney Island Boardwalk itself.
The boardwalk wood in question turns out to be Ipe (pronounced “EE-pay”), a tropical hardwood prized for its durability (the boardwalk was first installed in the 1940s, meaning that some of the Ipe has been working hard for 70 years).
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Uhuru’s designers found working with Ipe to be an uphill battle: it took forever to sand and plane the weathered boardwalk strips into the sleek, shiny boards that form their furniture. But the hard work paid off: the finished pieces are beautiful and, we have to presume, made to last.
Over in another corner of the exhibition, the EcoSystems company was showing off a modular furniture concept I really love. The “Snug-it!” is a series of metal fasteners (they come in three-way and two-way varieties) that can be used to hitch together any type of 3/4-inch-thick material.
The combinations are literally endless…this Snug-it! bed is a California king made from nothing but Snug-its! and three sheets of 3/4-inch plywood.
See more photos at our BKLYN Designs 2010 photoset on Flickr.
Tags: BKLYN Designs, boardwalk, brooklyn, coney island, coney island boardwalk, ecosystems furniture, modular furniture, reclaimed lumber, reclaimed wood, recycled wood, reuse, uhuru
Posted in Events, Furniture, NYC | 1 Comment »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Creative reuse and Design and Furniture and Materials on
4 May 2010, with no comments so far.
Mauricio Arruda takes plastic crates out of the dorm room aesthetic and into a mid-century mindset with his Jose Collection. The brightly colored trays and baskets, taking cues from those found in Brazilian street markets, are designed to help transport items instead of using bags or boxes. Multipurpose and multicolored, I like that. It makes me want to collect all of the milk crates I can find and get to it.
[from TreeHugger, via dezeen]
Posted in Creative reuse, Design, Furniture, Materials | No Comments »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Design and Environment and Furniture on
26 April 2010, with 3 comments so far.
Books are heavy and somewhat difficult to transport if you want to bring, say, more than 10 along with you. But thanks to David Garcia Studio’s mobile bookcase (Archive II), you can roll your personal library with you wherever your feet take you—and it even offers a place to curl up and read a few chapters. A gerbil wheel for bibliophiles, this interesting concept was “inspired by ancient traveling libraries from the Far East, which visited courts and cities, Archive II transforms this into a personal space, where walking and reading coexist as refuge and transport.”
[via Bookshelf]
Posted in Design, Environment, Furniture | 3 Comments »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Contest and Design and Furniture on
22 April 2010, with no comments so far.
So, the contest happening at Modernica right now combines two of my favorite things: cute pets and amazing furniture. You have until April 30th (during weekdays only) to enter a photo of your prized possessions for the chance to win this in the color of your choice:
Good luck!
[from sfgirlbybay, via Modernica]
Posted in Contest, Design, Furniture | No Comments »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Design and Furniture and Materials on
9 April 2010, with no comments so far.
The dreamy Cloud Stool from Joon&Jung makes me want to drift away while perched on top of one…just look at that fluffy fabric. There isn’t much else about its construction on the site, but the first exhibition of the pieces will be at DMY International Design Festival Berlin in June.
[Images from Joon&Jung]
Posted in Design, Furniture, Materials | No Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Design and Furniture on
14 January 2010, with no comments so far.
Sometimes, I have a weakness for conceptual furniture. Especially when it has a sense of humor. Takeshi Miyakawa, whose “Rite of Spring” shelving installation I loved at last year’s Bklyn Designs, describes his “Infinity Chair,” above, like this:
minimum structure of this chair has infinity shape on the plan and when two people sit looking at opposite directions, someday in the future they can look at each other according to cosmophysics.
Who said modern design can’t be romantic?
Posted in Design, Furniture | No Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Design and Furniture on
13 January 2010, with 2 comments so far.
Whoa. Not exactly my style, but pretty amazing nonetheless. I found this polar bear bookshelf from the French company ibride’s “mobilier de compagnie” collection on Vectorealism, a fun blog all about extoling the wonderful things that can be done with a laser cutter. The 3-D bear is made out of interlocking laser-cut 2-D panels.
[via Vectorealism]
Posted in Design, Furniture | 2 Comments »
