Sneaky Orange Sleeping Devil…Er, Sofa
Forget horrible couch trundles. This thing is badass.
Doc, from Resource Furniture, is a modern sofa with fully removable covering that converts into a bunk bed with a simple movement, and comes complete with a built-in ladder. This particular model is sold for $5,590, though prices vary depending on fabric.
Resource Furniture has plenty more space saving furniture pieces, including sofas mounted to wall units and pull-down beds that are hidden styles ranging from behind wall panels (complete with shelf by day, sturdy bed leg by night) to desk units that convert to beds.
Link: Resource Furniture
For One Smorkin’ Momma
So, Gilding nearly pissed herself in a fit of hysterical laughter when she saw this.
Gilding is sooooo going to buy this for her Mother-In-Law this Mother’s Day. Imagine it…Gilding’s very Vietnamese Mother-In-Law with heavy accent telling her friends, “That’s shit man. It’s a Smorkin’ Labbit,” and it really is!
The fiberglass Smorkin’ Labbit Stool was designed by Frank Kozik and originally produced in white for Circa, a Toronto nightclub. Now available for a limited run at Kidrobot.
Six Comic Book Artist’s Weave a Black-&-White Fantasy of Horror
Spiders’ legs brushing against naked skin…
Unexplainable noises heard at night in a dark bedroom…
A big empty house where you feel a presence…
A hypodermic needle getting closer and closer…
A dead thing trapped in a bottle of formaldehyde…
A huge growling dog, baring its teeth and staring…
Six graphic artists and cartoonists have breathed life into their nightmare, bleeding away color only to retain the starkness of light and the pitch black of shadows. Their intertwined stories make up an unprecedented epic where phobias, disgust, and nightmares come to life and reveal Fear at its most naked and intense…
Darkness is the place where seeing is no longer possible and the mind is left to surround itself in pursuation that possibilities worth fearing are in fact present. In colloquial language, the “dark” colors those things perceived malevolent or insideous, from the physical–”the dark of his skin”–to the intangible–a “dark idea”, “having dark premonitions”–and is an uneasiness that has been expressed through time.
Artists, Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Jerry Kramsky, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, and Romain Slocombe, explored the origins of their personal terrors and turned them into stylized animate drawings of their nightmares.
The feature film, “Fear(s) of the Dark,” opened on February 13th in French movie theaters.
Link: “Fear(s) of the Dark”
When Conceptual Potency Ruled the Covers
“The Lois covers were virtually textless. They achieved their effect by communicating a single idea through an image. Some were untouched photographs, but, in an era before Photoshop, some were created by the primitive technique of cutting and pasting, using photographs, clip art and sometimes hand-drawn elements.”
‘I remember when we were doing the Warhol cover,” Mr. Lois recalled. “I explained to Andy what I had in mind, and he said, ‘Oh, will you have to build a very big can?’”
“‘George was there during a great age,’ said Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. ‘You didn’t have to put low-grade movie stars on the cover then to move magazines. You could put ideas there.’”
Thirty-one of Lois’s Esquire Magazine covers are currently on display at the MoMA.
Link: NYTimes–Cover Story
Just One More Egg for Mother to Nurture
But don’t feel bad. If your mother has a horrible green thumb then this present will turn out to be just as much of a disappointment as you are.
Crack open these ceramic Egglings to reveal organic soil and ready-tosprout seeds for wild strawberry, mint, and petunia–an adorable surprise to discover inside the symbol of life. After they set down roots, the trio can be replanted outdoors, biodegradable shell and all.
So let this Mother’s Day be one more chance to remind her of life’s little disappointments. Seriously though, these things are cute as hell.
Link: RedEnvelope
Braving the Cavernous Commercial Fair for the Few Rare Discoveries of Brilliance
“Let’s be blunt. Anyone reading this – or any other – report of the Milan Furniture Fair could easily run away with the impression that it’s stuffed with great things. If only. The bleak truth is that 99 percent of the tables, chairs and everything else introduced in Milan last week was either O.K. or bad: sometimes so bad that taking a wrong turn in the cavernous commercial fair made an eco-protest seem tempting.”
So said International Herlad Tribune writer Alice Rawsthorn in her cover article of the event, Designers give recycling a creative twist at the Milan Furniture Fair. Beautiful sarcastic mirth of this writer aside, she bravely charged through the hum-drum, kitsch, “‘limited’ in every sense” design, to share with us some of the fantastic pieces to be found amidst the ghastly.
To see them all, go to her page, but here are some of the ones Gilding is particularly fond of.
Of course, one of Gilding’s particularly favorite designer Tord Boontje will kick things off with his Fig Leaf Wardrobe. Within this bronze and silk design beauty clothes will be draped on the branches of the bronze tree and kept safe within the silk lines enclosure of the wardrobe doors.
The wardrobe includes some 616 enameled glass fig leaves that cover the wardrobe’s facade. Each one took as many as six hours to paint and is attached to an iron vine by a bronze stem.
“Elements” by Jaime Hayon was inspired by cacti: ““I have always been seduced by the perfect form the cactus symbolises,” explains Hayon. “The fact that it is modular, allowing for multiple combinations, has always seemed interesting. I wanted to exploit this quality, building up the piece with different shapes. The priority for me was that each part, if removed from the whole, would still be appealing but also have a function of its own. So, a functional sculpture it was: A piece that could be as beautiful as the cactus, but that would offer a variety of uses.”
The Flower Pyramid by Hella Jongerius is a commission piece for Royal Tichelaar Makkum. As an artist, Jongerius believes that the archival records of a museum or company achieve their fullest impact when placed in a new context.
“The tulip vase that she designed for Tichelaar in 2008 alludes to traditional tulip vases in both form and decoration. The precisely painted motifs of the past now give way to a pattern of blue stripes while the entire form has been perforated with the number of holes, increasing from bottom to top. Despite the heaviness of the material, the piece that emerges seems ephemeral, almost rarefied. The handle and the straps allow the vase to function as a mobile object, challenging the nature of a static showpiece. Therefore the vase is not displayed upright, but hung on the wall.”
The inspiration for these “Bouquet chairs” came from an installation piece by Japanes designer Tokujin Yoshioka in which some 30,000 paper tissues were used to create the installation for the New York showroom of Italian furniture manufacturer Moroso. Yoshioka reworked the concept using fabric in order to create this contemporary, romanticised version of old-fashioned rag furnishings. Each one of the hundred of fabric sqaures were sewn in individually to create the petal-like effect of the flower-like shape of the seat.
A few other pieces features in the show and found on dezeen were:
The “Lolita” lamp by Nika Zupanc, who, by the way, has entered the list of Gilding’s favorite designers.
” “My imagination chases female archetypes intentionally. Frivolous, even naïve objects are my favourite victims.
And when, during such a process, I manage to be creative in an evidently reserved way, then I touch the purest meaning of my work and frivolity becomes timeless elegance.
Lolita is here to play with your emotions. She is here to break up your everyday routine.” ~~Nika Zupanc
Marcel Wanders, also a favorite of Gilding’s, was positively prolific for this years show. Wanders speaks the haute in Gilding’s haughty little heart. This hand carved wood chair is but one of the fabulous pieces exhibited, such as: the Poliform Cradle; the Crystal Shower for Swarovski; Couture Wallpapers for Graham & Broom; and the new Superheroes concept and photography by Wanders and Erwin Olaf.
Links:
International Herald Tribune–At Meta
dezeen–Moooi in Milan
Hella Jongerius–Flower Pyramid
Marcel Wanders Milan 2008
A World of Crystals
Who needs diamond encrusted skulls when there’s Swarovski. For this years Swarovski Palace Crystal Palace Collection (Milan, April 15th-21st), Studio Job created this amazingly spectacular 175cm diameter spinning globe, applying 500,000 Swarovski crystals.
Related Links:
yatzer designtoshare–Swarovski crystal palace collection 2008
International Herald Tribune–Designers give recycling a creative twist at the Milan Furniture Fair
MoCo Loco: Milan Design Week 2008:Swarovski Crystal Palace
A Lily of a Flower
The fleur de lis, translated from French as “flower of lily,” is a stylized design of the lily and is used both decoratively and symbolically. It may be purely ornamental or it may be at one and the same time political, dynastic, artistic, emblematic and symbolic, especially in heraldry. While it has appeared on countless European coats of arms and flags over the centuries, the fleur-de-lis is particularly associated with the French monarchy on a historical context, and nowadays with the Spanish monarchy as the only remaining monarchs of the House of Bourbon. It is an enduring symbol of France, but, being regarded most notably as the emblem of the monarchy, was not adopted officially by any of the French republics. On the contrary, as Spain is a constitutional monarchy, the fleur-de-lis symbol is associated with the Spanish King Juan Carlos I (of French dynasty origin) and the Kingdom of Spain. In North America, the fleur-de-lis is often associated with areas formerly settled by France, such as Quebec and Louisiana and with the Francophones in other Canadian provinces. It is also the emblem of the Swiss Municipality of Schlieren, Zürich.
The lily itself is native to the northern temperate regions and finds home in the Old World extending across much of Europe, the north Mediterranean, across most of Asia to Japan, south to the Nilgiri mountains in India, and south to the Philippines. In the New World they extend from southern Canada through much of the United States.
In the Victorian Era, when flowers were often used to send messages, allowing the individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken, the white lily often spoke to purity while a scarlet lily meant High-souled aspirations.
Oh, and then there’s Lily Allen.
Links: Wikipedia–Fleur de lis | Lilium | Floriography
Hope I Look This Good at 300 Million Years Old
Did you know the protea is also commonly referred to as sugarbushes.
The genus Protea was named in 1735 by Carolus Linnaeus after the Greek god Proteus who could change his form at will, because proteas have such different forms.
The Proteaceae family to which Proteas belong is an ancient one. Its ancestors grew in Gondwanaland, 300 million years ago. There are many species of Proteas, of which 92% of them occur only in the Cape Floristic Region, a narrow belt of mountainous coastal land from Clanwilliam to Grahamstown. The extraordinary richness and diversity of species characteristic of the Cape Flora is thought to be caused in part by the diverse landscape where populations can become isolated from each other and in time develop into separate species.
Link: Wikipedia–Protea
Witchy Goodness
Sexy Witch has an interesting post on one of Albrecht Dürer’s works, Four Witches.
“Since the engraving is frequently reproduced–with artistic liberties and variation present–Sexy Witch points our attention to a few key details. First is the grouping of the Four Witches, which seems to be modeled on the common Classical motif, the Three Graces. However, Sexy Witch explains that these are, in fact, not the Graces (Beauty, Mirth, and Good Cheer) for a few reasons. The most obvious being the devil burning in the background. Note also that the doorway through which we see the devil is on the left-hand side (think the left-hand path, the left-hand of God, etc.).
Scattered on the ground at the feet of the four figures are skulls and bones, suggestive of maleficia (harmful magic).
If these four figures are witches (as the devil and bones suggest) then it is likely that the figure facing away from us is a young neophyte and the three figures facing us are the three witches who are about to initiate her into their circle. But there is a problem with this interpretation: these elegant and graceful witches are emphatically not the witches of medieval tradition or theological debate and they appear not to be much indebted to the image of the witch engendered by popular superstitions or the witch craze of the seventeenth-century. They are also certainly not peasants: the figure on the left wears an elaborate head-dress, suggesting high social status.
Margaret Sullivan argues that Dürer’s witches represent a ‘humanist fascination with the underside of the classical world–the magical and occult, the world of dream and fantasy’ (‘The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien’, Renaissance Quarterly 53.2 (2000), 393). Rather than being contemporary, ‘frightening and demonic’, the ’seductive and nubile young “witch”‘ is a new take on a classical subject, one that gives the artist an opportunity ‘to display the provocative female nude’ (394).
If we return to the engraving with this in mind we note the classical postures and dignified nudity of the figures and that the young witch wears a classical wreath.
Nicoletto da Modena removed the classical vs contemporary or Pagan vs Christian conflict in Dürer’s composition by engraving a version of this scene in 1500, minus the devil and bones, and changing the title to ‘The Judgement of Paris’ (the Judgement being a beauty contest between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, and the result being the Trojan War).”
Link: Sexy Witch–Dürer’s Four Witches, 1497
P.S. Sexy Witch is worth regular visiting for anyone with even a modicum of interest in witches–sexy witches, elegant witches, hot, naughty, femme fatale witches, real life witches, fictional witches, witches in art, plays and poems, novels, movies, cartoons, paintings…a whole compendium of witches. Consider a one stop shop for witchy goodness.
When Galaxies Collide
The Hubble & Spitzer Telescopes caught this remarkable collision between two spiral gallaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster, located in the constellation of Hercules. The galaxy cluster is part of the Great Wall of clusters and superclusters, the largest known structure in the Universe. The two spiral galaxies are linked by their swirling arms. Arp 272 (NGC 6050/IC 1179) is located some 450 million light-years away from Earth and is number 272 in Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
This is one of a collection of 59 images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Link: Yahoo! News
Nothing Says Good Morning Mom Like a Blackberry Champagne Cocktail
Brunch is the perfect occasion to serve a Champagne cocktail. Here, the bitterness of triple sec and Angostura bitters pair well with the sweetness of blackberries and sugar cubes. Other berries, such as boysenberries, raspberries or huckleberries, can be substituted.
Ingredients:
4 blackberries, quartered
1/4 cup triple sec
4 sugar cubes
Angostura bitters as needed
1 bottle (750ml) Champagne, Prosecco or other dry sparkling white wine, chilled
Directions:
In a small nonreactive bowl, combine the blackberries and triple sec and let stand for about 15 minutes to let the fruit macerate.
Place 1 sugar cube in each of 4 Champagne flutes and add 1 or 2 dashes of bitters to each one. Spoon 4 pieces of marinated blackberry into each flute. Top with Champagne and serve immediately. Serves 4.
Some Tasty Alternatives:
Black Raspberry Champagne Cocktail: Substitute 8 halved black raspberries for the blackberries and Chambord for the triple sec. Garnish with black raspberries.
Red Raspberry Champagne Cocktail: Substitute 8 halved red raspberries for the blackberries and framboise for the triple sec. Garnish with red raspberries.
Blackberry Kir Royale: Substitute 3 Tbs. crème de cassis for the triple sec. Omit the sugar cubes and Angostura bitters.
Link: Williams-Sonoma
Pukey McPukeykins
There is some crazy cool talent out there.
Based on the drawing “I Love You” by artist `delya, `Divine Error set about creating the 3-D rendering entitled Love Juice.
Built in Maya 6.5, rendered in Mental Ray 3.4, and a puke mesh created in RealFlow 3 and voila, 
you get this goofy Mr. Good Vibe creation of love induced pukeage. But don’t let the description fool you into thinking this was an easy piece to create. The puke alone totalled out at over 1.8 million polygons and 100 gigs worth of meshes and particle files to create.
The artist also gives us a peek into the work in process with screenshots
Links: `delya, “I Love You” | `Divine Error, Love Juice
