I am really loving this cardboard sideboard designed by Reinhard Dienes. There is also a bookcase available. They are a little pricey but if you are looking to dress up your studio with a signature talking piece this would be a great place to start. They are available at Fashion 4 Home where there are several great furniture pieces available and fairly reasonable prices.
If you haven’t kept up, I am a big big big chair freak. I love chairs. Now that I have a house and studio, I am constantly looking for an opportunity to find a little corner to put another strange chair in. I’d love to just have my own little chair museum someday. I have a pair of yellow Vitra Verner Panton Chairs in our upstairs office and bedroom that my wife still isn’t sure about. But man was I excited to finally have a space to put some Panton chairs in (and yellow makes me smile). Anyway, the Robo Chair designed by Luca Nichetto for Offecct is a modern classic and another I would definitely add to the collection if I find a way to get one from Sweden all the way over here to my little studio in middle America. It’s a sleek and beautiful little piece of functional art. I want one in a bad way.
Chair Whore is an aptly named blog dedicated entirely to my most favorite object in the entire world. I’ll let you guess what it is. The above beauty was designed by Julian Mayor.
I was happy to find this just in time for the consideration of furniture options for the remodeling of my studio.
Pirwi is a green manufacturing furniture company that was established in 2007 and is based out of Mexico City. They currently have 12 designers and over 70 pieces in their cache and all of their inventory is absolutely stunning. I would kill to own any of it.
Ali Sandifer Studio is a modern furniture maker based out of Chicago, Illinois. Sandifer uses domestic wood harvested from sustainable forests. To further their environmentally sustainable ethos, whenever possible they use water-based sealants and natural oils. Storage is a key feature for several of their undeniably beautiful pieces.
Sebastian Jansson’s people sent a note alerting me to his beautiful geometric furniture design. I would kill to have a couple of those stools pulled up next to my bar at home.
Thomas Feichtner lives and works in Linz, Austria. After his school years in Düsseldorf he graduated at the University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz. He has since established his own industrial design practice and has also established an office for visual communication. His furniture design is stunning. I am a self-professed chairoholic and Feichtner’s chair designs are absolutely fantastic.
Mid-Century Modernist is a blog that is about an era of design that is very near and dear to my heart. I am completely obsessed with chairs and am constantly trolling Craigslist to find a deal. Unfortunately, our home itself is not mid-century. It was built in 1940 and is a ‘Cape Cod’ style home. Fortunately, it was previously owned by an interior decorator and was completely remodled in a mid-century style. It’s a big house too, so I have been able to slowly begin filling it with the furniture that I love. The Mid-Century Modernist blog definitely gave me lots of new ideas. More than enough to drive my wife crazy.
T. M. Schmid’s Swiss furniture studio Strala has created some stunningly beautiful sculptural pieces. The chair above is a true example of furniture as art.
Isotrope Design was established in 2008 by sisters Micol and Sael Bartolucci. Their furniture is almost less furniture and more art. The furniture pieces bear a strong influence from topography and utilize materials that come together to create something genuinely unique and unarguably beautiful. I would kill to own one of their pieces, but highly doubt I could ever afford to.
David Sears is a furniture designer who utilizes sustainable materials to create his work. That alone is notable, but the added bonus is that his modular designs are also beautiful and contemporary.
More on Sears:
“David Sears Design, founded in 2006, is committed to modern furniture designs that are beautiful, intelligent and environmentally responsible. Principal David Sears brings superb design into homes and offices through furniture that connects people with their environments.
Sears is constantly exploring new materials and ideas, most recently - notions of modularity. He often takes his design cues from his wood – eco-friendly and high quality, harvested from sustainably managed forests. His designs are marked by clear modern forms and striking connective joints.”
Via Design Milk.
There is a great talk that was recently posted at TED given by Eames Demetrios, their grandson, that commemorates the genius of Charles and Ray Eames. Over the course of the talk, some rare footage is shown from the couples amazing foray into the design world.
More on the talk from the TED website:
“The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses, books and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process.”
Ahh, if only Herman Miller hadn’t made their furniture totally unafordable for the average middle-class furniture design lover.
I am a big fan of Blu Dot furniture design and have been searching lately for deals on some of their chairs. Consequently, I ran across their ‘Real Good Chair’ for sale at Target’s website. I was a little shocked to find Blu Dot furniture for sale at Target and even more shocked by the price tag. The chair usually goes for around $130, which is still a pretty good deal. But the light blue and red version of the chair is currently for sale at Target for only $90 plus shipping. It’s a real steal on a really well designed piece of furniture. Get it while the getting is good.
In my neverending search for cool stuff to put in my new house I stumbled across the Woofer Speaker System. The best part really was finding the Generate Design website where you can find all manner of strange little knick knacks to fill your living space and enrich your life with bizarre designer jazz.
The discovery touched off a larger issue for me that I wanted to discuss. I do love these speakers and really a lot of the stuff on the Generate Design site but my question (and its a broadly encompassing question) is why is this stuff always so expensive? Usually a lot of these things are made from fairly cheap materials and does the ‘designed by’ tagline really justify such a huge expense. If you can find a knock off, who would know the difference and what difference would it make. It’s always made me laugh that Charles and Ray Eames wanted to make good design affordable and accessible to middle class people and then Herman Miller swooped in and put a premium on the Eames name. Who really wants to pay or can justify paying $400 plus dollars for a plastic chair?
One of my favorite chairs of all time, that I am considering getting a pair of, if anything just as a conversation piece in my home is the ‘Chair One‘ chair designed by Konstantin Grcic. I love that chair. It looks like it rolled out of a U.F.O. that crashed landed from outer space. The hard geometry just screams so loud in any space it occupies. It really is a beautiful mesh of art and function. But again, it’s a stackable aluminum chair, can you really justify spending $420 dollars on a stackable aluminum chair that no doubt could be easily mass produced? I have nothing but love for Grcic’s beautiful and thoughtful work but I just don’t see the point in paying the Magis brand premium. Spare me the elitist B.S. Make design affordable so normal people can enjoy it.
When I lived in Miami around 5 or 6 years ago I worked for a company called Luminaire as a Flash web developer. The job payed miserably, but the one great thing was that I was continually surrounded by was absolutely mind blowingly beautiful design. I got to rub elbows with Paola Lenti, Phillipe Starck, people from B&B Italia and the beautiful women of Boffi who sell $100,000 kitchens to the filthy rich. The furniture I saw was amazing. All of it gorgeous and sculptural. It was a tough time for me financially but a rich time in terms of design inspiration. It was definitely a unique experience but aside from being completely cost prohibitive, I was really turned off at how good furniture design was more of a status symbol to a lot of the people who could afford it than something they really relished and appreciated. Wealthy people in Miami would move into an ocean front condo for 6 months while their 30 million dollar home was being built and spend a million furnishing their condo and then completely discard that furniture when they moved back into their finished home and spend another 2 million furnishing that. It was obscene and seemed like a wasteful scandal to me. We sold a couch at Luminaire that cost more than my annual salary. I would look at it and think to myself, “that is what one year of my work is worth.” I would have cut off my arm just for a cool side chair, but I could have never afforded it. I can barely now.
So from one hardworking family man (or woman) to another, try this as an alternate to the Eames molded plastic chair and this to Gricic’s chair one. If anyone asks if its the real deal, just respond, “Does it really matter?”
Will I get the headless speakers you ask? I doubt it, unless I want my wife kicking my ass. But I might cop me some knock off Chair One chairs. Times are tight. Gotta hold those dollars close to the chest.
Duffy London has produced a chair that first appears to sit mysteriously only on two legs but the black metal ’shadow’ acts as a cantilever supporting the weight of the chair. Its a really cool idea and an equally cool and beautiful piece of minimal modern design. Wish I could afford the sticker price.
If anyone really understood just how bad I want one of these Infinity Benches, you might actually feel sorry for me. All I need is $4,200 dollars. That’s it. Or maybe Carl Fredrik Svenstedt could just send me one and I will promise to promote anything he does from here on out. I am ready to offer that up for just one bench. I know exactly where it would go in my home. Pretty please.
DoubleButter is a Denver, CO-based furniture design and manufacturing company founded by David Larabee and Dexter Thornton. They have just launched an entirely new website featuring an online shop that ships within 10 days of purchase. The stock consists of modernist, hard-wearing and high-quality chairs, tables and case goods in a range of colors and materials. The site is also now featuring photographs of every piece in the line (in every color and material combination) and a set of publication-ready, high-resolution images for download. There are some really unusual materials to choose from as well. It is absolutely fantastic to see some really high caliber furniture design coming out of Denver. It is wonderful to have Doublebutter on our scene. I started a new category today just for the occasion.
