From old India to a new Sofa

Design duo Doshi Levien cite the above painting as inspiration for their new Sofa entitled amusingly enough "My Beautiful Backside" - personally I think the painting is nicer than the sofa but it's interesting to see the process exposed and great to see some non-Western source being used. The Sofa reminds me a bit of 1920s Art Deco, I can imagine people doing the Charleston around it.

When Japan meets Italy

A cool new range of chairs from Italian designer Enzo Mari for Japanese company Hida Sangyo - the leading wooden fruniture makers of Japan, based in the Takayama region. This company is known for its wood craftsmanship which goes all the way back to the 7th Century when craftsmen from Hida-Takayama were responsible for constructing the magnificent wooden temples of Kyoto and Nara including the now World Heritage site Horyu-ji, still standing after 13 centuries. This collection is made with Japanese sugi wood and realized with state-of-the-art industrial wood compression. Available in the US from Ameico.

Here's an interview with Mari about the series - sadly it's just in Italian with Japanese subtitles but it does show the whole series of products that extends beyond the above chairs into tables, benches and more (some of which aren't available in the US).

Bilberry Lamp

Really feeling this reintroduced Alvar Aalto lampshade design for Artek - the Bilberry A338 lamp. Maybe it's because I like Biberries - my mum makes a great wild Bilberry pie made from Bilberries she finds on the Yorkshire hills.


Bilberries are found in damp, acidic soils throughout the temperate and subarctic regions of the world. They are closely related to North American wild and cultivated blueberries and huckleberries. They also known as European blueberry, blaeberry, whortleberry, whinberry (or winberry), myrtle blueberry, fraughan, and probably other names regionally. They were also called black-hearts in 19th century southern England, according to Thomas Hardy's 1878 novel, The Return of the Native. Billberries are also claimed to enhance vision and help protect against cataracts.


The small, round, white painted steel, light fitting was originally known as Juolukka (a kind of whortleberry). Originally there were two slightly different versions of it - one (like above) in which the opening for the light was cut asymmetrically in the side of the spherical shade and another in which the opening was cut so the light shines directly downwards. It appears Artek have chose wisely to just reintroduce the very contemporary asymmetrically cut version.


The lamp was first designed by Aalto for use in the living room of the Maison Louis Carré - a private house Aalto designed in Bazoches-sur-Guyonnes (about 40 kilometres to the southwest of Paris) between 1956-1959 for prominent French art dealer Louis Carré (the agent for Leger and Picasso). The house is considered to be one of the most important private houses designed by Aalto.




The house is now a museum and open to the public - see more of it here

Kitchen Love

This photo from the NY Times way back in 2006 was so appealing to me that it lived on my fridge door for over a year before it got damaged. It's the kitchen of Hiroshima born, Tokyo based self-taught cook Misato Hamada.



You can find her cookbooks here (Japanese only sadly)

Bucky celebrated

Fuller with models of the Standard of Living Package and Skybreak Dome.

Great to see the genius that is Buckminster Fuller celebrated at the Whitney in the first ever US comprehensive survey of his work - Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe opening June 26th and running until September 21st. Read a story on Fuller from the New Yorker



Running alongside the Whitney show will be an exhibition of sculpture and prints by Fuller at the Sebastian + Barquet Gallery, 544 W.24th St, New York - opening June 11th. The six sculptures in the exhibition - The Closest Packing of Spheres, Complex of Jitterbugs, Ninety Strut Tensegrity, Six Part Push/Pull Tensegrity, Twelve Degrees of Freedom, and Duo-Tet Star Polyhedra - incorporate many of the same basic geometric principles as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic architectural structures. There will also be an exhibition at
Max Protetch and a number of Special Events

Also excited to see that a catalogue for the 2006 exhibition Best of Friends: Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller is finally coming out this month - compiled by Shoji Sadao.




Project for Floating Cloud Structures (Cloud Nine), by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao. Fuller envisioned a future in which floating communities would “hover among the clouds.”

How to Excel

"To excel in the structuring of a problem, we must be committed to a concern for quality in everything around us. We must learn to care deeply"

Charles Eames - from the forthcoming book

being released to celebrate 100 years of Eames. On June 17th the post office will also release EAMES stamps -

Not Japanese - British !!

Images from the new retrospective exhibition by UK design duo Industrial Facility at the Design Museum in London. Running alongside the exhibition is a selection of items designer Sam Hecht has amassed that cost ‘Under a Fiver' - cheap everyday items that act as a touch point and source of inspiration for his own work. In this sense Hecht is another designer that reminds me of Sori Yanagi who wrote a serious of classic essays on everyday anonymously designed objects and their importance. I am also hoping that the coffee pot above (designed for Muji - as is the telephone, toilet brush and wine bottle opener) will be available in the new MUJI store opening in the New York Times building this coming Friday.

Here are some of the "Under a Fiver" (aka under £5 / $10) items from the show and an essay by Hecht.




PS: to be fair some of the work here. notably the USB enabled Ten Key Calculator, is designed by a Industrial Facility member Ippei Matsumoto who is originally from Japan and the majority of these designs are for the Japanese market or Japan based companies. A couple of the great exceptions to the rule are the cutlery set and the knife for Taylor's Eye Witness that are both produced in my home town of Sheffield.

“An object is no more important than the thing that it rests on or the room that it sits in.” Sam Hecht, Industrial Facility

Kitchen Envy

I got it bad for this amazing kitchen in architect Ron Radziner's LA house as featured in the NY Times.

Chairs at Milano Furniture Fair

French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have designed this "Papyrus Chair" for Italian plastics manufacturer Kartell - probably will be as popular as Kartells best selling Philippe Starck's Victoria Ghost chair. What looks interesting her to me is how thin is it. Curious about that.



New name Chistophe Pillet designed this high gloss fibreglass "Orbital" chair with an upholstered seating for British company Modus. It reminds me of the stage sets for Kubrick films in a good way and looks like a lot of fun. Also reminds me of THX 1138. In the right setting would be ace. Looks comfortable too.



London designer Alexander Taylor made this replica of a chair he found in an antique shop for Established & Sons. Supposedly the big idea here is that seven sheet steel cut-outs were substituted for wood. Nothing special if you ask me. Sampling is one thing, modifying is another. Don't really see the point of this chair.



"Rotterdam Chair" by Dutch designer Hella Jongerius for Vitra. Seems to be quite a bit of subtly at play - notice the small strip of color for example. Also the use of different textures and colors. I imagine this is probably very contemporary and slick in person. A chair to investigate further.



Swiss designer Philippe Bestenheider made this eskimo inspired "Nanook" chair for Moroso. As much as it's trying to be futuristic and cool this take on Inuit tribal patterns with the assistance of digital tools kind of makes me feel like vomiting.



New design by German Konstantin Grcic - the "MYTO" aka "Cantilever Chair" commissioned by German chemicals company BASF and produced by Italian manufacturer Plank. What I like about Grcic is how he plays around with balance and unusual shapes and this is no exception. Maybe not as radical as his Miura stool from a couple of years back but still interesting. Again the pertinent question is how does it feel to sit in this ?



New design by one of the best British designers Jasper Morrison - "The Pipe Chair" produced by Italian manufacturer Magis. I think Jasper is going for a "simple is best" approach here along the lines of his friend Naoto Fukasawa's Deja Vu stool for Magis but this is sadly too conservative and boring. I see no point to it at all. A step down for a fantastic designer.



Never been big on the designs of Frenchman Philippe Starck and this "Monseigneur Armchair" for Draide is no exception. I hate how the armrests disappear. Seems like he's just trying to be clever. But that is his shtick right ?



An as yet un-named design by Dutch designer Maarten Baas made by Shanghai craftsmen and is inspired by their skills of which Baas says "they can do things that you just couldn’t find in Holland and can copy very well." Seems very kitsch to me and kinda ugly. Wood can be so beautiful but this is not what I think of when I think of using wood for it's beauty.



Ever the exotic, comes this design - "Enlaced Antibodi" from hot Italian Patricia Urquiola for the Italian furniture manufacturer Moroso. The metal structure of the chair is enlaced with colored PVC string. The interweaving of colors is very much in line with the rich hippie organic loose lifestyle aesthetic of previous Urquiola designs. Curious if this would seat two or just one ? Looks like a good outside chair but would it survive ? is that the intention ?
It is sexy.



Another design by Patricia Urquiola for Kartell - the transparent polycarbonate "Frilly" chair - not an exciting work compared to her psychedelic chair above. The pattern maybe more interesting in person though but looks like a pain to keep clean.



London duo Committee designed this "Soft Rocker" for SCP - supposedly the big idea is that it is meant to look like it is made of granite or concrete. The success of this has to be in how it moves and feels.



Marvelously asymmetrical chair from German designer Matthias Demacker for Italian company Ferlea - part of a family of seating called "Take Off." Very sci-fi and bold. In the right setting this would be ace. I like them a lot. I also like the bold red. Again something I could imagine in a Kubrick film but somehow a bit more up to date than Chistophe Pillet.



Another design from German Matthias Demacker - the "Formula Chair" for Italian company ArrMet. Again angles but not as successful as above. Just looking at these I imagine being uncomfortable and falling off. Seeing this makes me like his red chair above a little less.



This design from Brit Tom Dixon reminds me of Konstantin Grcic's Miura stool, but even though this looks like plastic it isn't. It's made from oak and is stackable underneath itself, thereby also occupying as little space as possible. The stacking might be innovative but the design to me at least seems almost ugly. Not quite sure what to make of it - would need to see it in person. Not a winner I imagine.

The winner here ? Hella Jongerius

Read Alice Rawsthorn's preview of the Milan Furniture Fair featuring many of the above.