For five days, the Irish team behind Makers & Brothers (an online retail site that celebrates making, founded by siblings Jonathan and Mark Legge) recreated their off-the-radar shed in the garden of The Standard, East Village…
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Each year Maison & Objet awards a Designer of the Year and the 2013 edition celebrates French designer Odile Decq. Decq’s work…
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by Elyssa Goodman After working in advertising for over a decade, Britain-based designer Andy Poplar was burned out—he decided to quit his job and be a stay-at-home dad. Then one day, two years ago, he decided to teach himself how to etch glass,…
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The continuous blossoming of Asian designers is both evident and spectacular, especially concerning their contributions to innovation. It’s no surprise that Singapore will host the inaugural Maison & Objet Asia in March 2014, as this year’s Parisian exhibition already offered up a taste…
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by Dora Haller With special focus on kitchen utilities, this autumn’s Maison & Objet—the Parisian design trade show which ran from 6-10 September—offered simple innovations alongside more decadent wares. CH enthusiastically trawled through the vast array…
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Offering a discrete, portable and rechargable lighting alternative is Lumio, a book-shaped lamp now on Kickstarter. Inspired by the idea of a modular home that could fold flat for transportation, the lamp is designed to adapt to a multitude of environments with its accordion-like structure. As the cover is…
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We talk to the master of paper, glue and glass in this behind the scenes look at the finest découpage in NYC
We always strive to discover and document the most phenomenal people, places and things around the globe but there is something extra satisfying when we find a real gem in our own back yard of New York City. In our latest video we visited John Derian who has been making découpage housewares sinces 1989. Derian, whose production facility sits quietly tucked away on 2nd street in New York’s East Village, collects 18th century imagery, which he lovingly transforms into beautiful découpage pieces.
Six housewares brands delightfully confusing indoors and out
At the biannual housewares tradeshow Maison & Objet we found many of the winds of innovation blowing from the outdoor arena this year. The contemporary, nomad-like movement reverses the use of indoor and outdoor spaces. When indoor moves outdoor, along with bathroom and kitchen, the whole living room and dining room seem to follow as well—sometimes even surrounded by walls and a ceiling. Designing for dual living, this shift brings with it the quest for new materials to face outside elements, while keeping the elegance typically reserved for interiors.
Since outdoor furniture requires sophisticated technical materials, working with them often becomes a source of inspiration for designers, like Patricia Urquiola. A Spanish native now working in Milan, she recently created a collection for leading Spanish design firm Kettal. In our interview with Urquiola, a trained architect, she explained that the collaboration with Kettal was all about researching a new material called “Nido d’Ape” (honeycomb) consisting of a PVC fabric knotted in a three-dimensions reminiscent of the “macramé” technique. The team pulled materials from other fields, creating a new manufacturing process to achieve the desired effect.
Urquiola’s idea came from observing a common organic fabric, a coffee filter, under a microscope. The result, surprisingly thick, smooth and rug-like, provides a pleasant cozy feeling with the visual treat of seeing all the filaments formed into mini pyramidal grids. Stretched taut between aluminum frames, the chairs combine the elegance of indoor fabric-based furniture in a range of colors for outdoor—with all the resilience needed for sitting and resistance to any kind of weather. The “Vieques” collection comes out in January 2012.
Also riding the nomadic wave and the constant problem of limited urban space, the newly-formed Dutch company Flux came up with a cutting-edge folding chair. The end-of-studies project of two Dutch designers was launched in March 2011 and already 40,000 units have been sold all over the world.
The durable chair consists of a flat rectangular sheet of polypropylene weighing less than five kilograms that can support up to 160 kg. You can refold over and over (testers gave up after 800 tries) and hang six chairs all at once on the wall thanks to a special belt and wall mount system. UV-resistant and waterproof, it combines stiffness and flexibility in a contemporary design, offered in a wide range of colors.
There is even a kids model also available. Prices run from $200 for the regular model to $110 for the kid’s version, selling purchased online.
While indoor furnishings continue to move outside, urban citizens aim to bring some outdoor favorites inside by gardening in any corner of space. Be it on the balcony, in a courtyard or even inside the apartment, the young French company Bacsac meets this need with their simple accessories. The work of a designer and two landscape architects, their ultra-light bags are easily transportable and can be used both indoor and out. Made from double-walled geotextile fabric (100% recyclable), the containers maintain the necessary balance between air, earth and water and are frost resistant. U.S. shoppers can find them at Sprouthouse.com.
Living al fresco also inspired hybrid leisure objects, like the gracious suspended wooden cradle, half garden hammock and half swing chair, designed by two the Frenchmen of Concept Suspendu. The company, created eight months ago and located in the Alps, specializes in woodwork (one of the pair is a former carpenter) and makes their signed, limited-run furniture from ash—wood known for its solidity and usually used for tool handles.
The Green attitude, an enduring key point of contemporary interior design, was present throughout the show in a number of the projects based on recycling and reuse. Parisian eco-design agency Art Terre pursues a double purpose. Along with recycling materials and reusing objects, their concern is to reconsider the production process and to facilitate social integration of disabled people or former prisoners.
The resulting collection consists of well-designed and well-manufactured original and beautiful items, like ginko-shaped placemats and inflatable flowerpots (as well as a full collection of other flower pots). They all share an innovative process using recycled PVC fabrics made from car industry remnants; the inventive cushions are made of air-bags and customized with a seatbelt to remind the user of the origin of the product. Coatracks and dustbins are made of salvaged bed slats. But the most beautiful achievement is the handmade series of paper lamps, resulting from a paper folding technique similar to Japanese origami.
Form and function meet in a Japanese architect’s beautifully understated housewares
Japanese designer Oji Masanori makes everyday living more comfortable, designing a range of objects in various materials that are as refined as they are functional. Graduating with degree in architecture, Masanori seemingly applies those tactics to building small objects, starting with the foundation and allowing the beauty of its shape to lead the design.
His studio, Oji & Design, works with Japan’s preeminent manufacturers to ensure the quality he instills during the initial design isn’t lost during production. Spanning bottle openers ($40), lighting pendants ($450) and a knife keeper ($300), for his brass objects Masanori collaborated with the metal workers at Futagami in Toyama-Takaoka City, who have over a century of experience with hand-casting objects that will develop a distinctly beautiful patina over time.
The young designer looked to the skilled woodworker Hidetoshi Takahashi to craft the Bagel trivets ($80), who meticulously carved Japanese maple, cherry or walnut into perfectly round trivets with smooth flat bottoms. The bagels are great for their intended purpose or as wall decorations when hung by the attached leather string.
Masanori carries out his concepts to the very last detail, doing all of the graphic work and packaging himself. Oji & Design objects sell at various retailers around Japan, and online at Merchant No. 4 and Mjölk.
Architectural dish rack dries delicate glassware safely and beautifully
With the
High & Dry dish rack,
Black + Blum’s architectural artistry transcends humdrum household ware into a harmonious form and function showpiece. Intent on turning “something quite mundane into something spectacular,” creative partners, Dan Black and Martin Blum, designed a sturdy, sculptural rack with fragile glassware as the protective focus.
The Calatrava-esque solution allows delicate glasses to safely air dry. A sleek cupholder for cutlery adds a design-conscious accent to the accessory, topped off by the rack’s spot-on flip up spout for water drainage.
Made from easy-to-clean polypropylene and stainless steel, the no-fuss High & Dry offers a collapsible and compact answer to an urbanite’s cramped but creative-minded kitchen.
Available in white, green or grey, the High & Dry dishrack retails for $50.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
