Photographer Carl Kleiner and his recent campaign for IKEA proves that flatware is anything but boring. If he can work that kind of magic with IKEA’s simple line of dishes, imagine what he could do with Alessi’s new flatware collection “Dressed,” designed by Marcel Wanders. If you’ve never heard of Wanders, you can think of him as “the Lady Gaga of the design world.” Wanders has worked with Puma, Droog, B&B Italia and Moooi, where he serves as co-owner and art director. His pieces have been exhibited and collected by museums like MoMA and the V&A.

Now he’s turning his attention to the formidable Italian brand Alessi. What I love about this collection is its play with embellishment and restraint. The plates and serving trays are adorned with curlicues and floral patterns that give a nod to ancient Islamic art. The design of the side plates and bowls is one-step more  refined, with the pattern showing up only along the edges. There are some marvelously delicate touches, like the silverware. It’s stainless steel, of course, but the simple form of the utensils is set off by decoration that is both lavish and quiet at the same time. My favorite piece in the collection is the saucer for the Mocha Cup. The cup itself is a very simple, minimal coffee mug, yet the saucer, which is perfectly flat, is encrusted with the collection’s signature pattern. True, it’s probably not the most practical saucer – I’d use it more like a coaster – but it’s quite beautiful and hey, there’s no blood!

 

about perrin drumm

Did you know that if you reduced your room temperature by just 2 degrees you would, according to Jacob, “save a ton CO2 a year and cut cost by 40%?” Since my heating bill skyrockets in the Winter months, that last part sounds awfully nice, but if I lower my room temp by even 2 degrees, won’t I freeze to death? Jacob makes the excellent point that the old style of radiators were made for poorly insulated homes and need to be stored beneath a window in order to create a heat wall. But if your home or apartment has been updated in the last couple of decades, you can free yourself from the wall-hugging radiators of the past and get one of Jacob’s campfire-inspired heaters instead.

“The design refers to the analogy of a campfire,” Jacobs says, “which represents the social aspect and essential importance heating once had in our culture. Heat is a emotional value.” Made from wood and plastic, Jacob’s radiator also works with hot water, but it can be integrated into the center of the room to distribute heat more evenly and increase the interaction between user and object, which just might encourage you – and by you I mean me – to think twice before jacking the heat up to 85.

about perrin drumm

From The New York Times:

“Dana Barnes is a fashion designer – a Seventh Avenue veteran…who has lately turned to textiles, felt rugs in particular. Ms. Barnes’ felt-making is a homegrown adventure that started several years ago with a simple problem: how to cover the vast expanses of her 3,250-square-foot loft to muffle the pitter-patter of her young daughters’ feet.”

That doesn’t mean this is the hobby of a stay-at-home mom. While most of Barnes’ pieces do serve a functional purpose, to me they’re more like touchable, user-friendly objets d’arts. Tactile as ever, Barnes’ newest wall coverings are evocative of nature and wild, outdoor places, like the “thick crop fields, rolled bales of hay, grazed hills and meadows, Spanish moss and gnarled tree trunks” of her childhood.

It’s the scale, of course, that makes the work so impressive. Small, woven goods are nice, but to see those individual fibers blown up and out, covering the walls and floors in traffic jam of knots or a coiled on the floor in a muted gray braid – is overwhelming. How can you look at her work and not want to take a running jump into that wall of knots, to dig your fingers into its soft mass of whorls? How do you not want to roll around on her rugs, or climb that knotted staircase?

about perrin drumm

The scissor principle in design dates back at least to the New Kingdom of Egypt, in 16th century BC , where one finds early archetypes of furniture design that pollinated and influenced chair forms across the Mediterranean. The cross-legged chair is refined and variations are created by the Greeks and Romans. Here, numerous designs can be accounted for on pottery and relief sculpture. In these early scissor-shaped seats, known as Curule chairs, the axis of the frame was generally found in the front to rear elevations of the chair in a symmetrical composition with versions appearing in the middle ages and throughout the Renaissance. In these cases, the chair is more like a stool, as it lacks a backrest. Finally in the 19th century, Thonet produced an economical folding deck chair that predicts later forms by Mies. The most direct precedent for the Barcelona chair, however is not a folding chair, but rather a cast iron garden chair by Karl Frederich Schinkel in 1825, whose work had a tremendous influence on Mies.



barcelona pavilion, 1929.


In pursuing a solution for the furniture to accompany the free walls and planes of the Barcelona Pavilion in 1929, Mies sought an object that was to be more than a chair, but a Monumental and silent object. Mies sought a formal solution, something more substantial, perhaps, than the tubular steel furniture designed only a few years before. It had to be more than a chair, but a monumental object and not disrupt the spatial flow of the building.

Inside the Barcelona Pavilion, furniture was to be fixed in place, as part of a spatial concept. This theory was repeated in the Tugendhat House in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1928, whose interior furnishings were never to me moved or rearranged on a whim. It is noteworthy that this is in complete contrast to Crown Hall which represents an open plan that is free of any encumbrances or constraints, and furniture could be placed as the function or need dictates. The solution to this otherwise contradictory pursuit became the scissor shape which has an inherent structural integrity with an air of transparency.

Using thin flat-bar steel, this advancement of the scissor principle in chair design produced a highly cantilevered seat that only became possible with materials produced in the Modern period.

One popular misconception of the Barcelona chair was initiated by Mies himself. In the early 1960s, some 30 years after the design was made, Mies suggested that he created the chair knowing the King Alfonso XIII would be visiting the pavilion and so he designed a chair that would be fit for a king. This has been discredited somewhat, given that the initial thrust of the Barcelona Pavilion was to express the new spirit of the Weimar Republic, one of democracy, progressive culture, prosperity and pacificism, not an elitist, monarchic approach to design. Furthermore, Mies was a member of the socialist November Group, and designed a revolutionary, anti-monarchist monument three years prior. This structure had incredible detailing and complexity of brickwork that Mies never repeated again

In the end, Mies sought a chair that expressed pure construction and materiality, a chair that was free of ornamentation, but was symbolic of the new era of progress in the twentieth century. Reduced to the simple intersection of a stationary curve and an elongated S, the Barcelona chair appears to us now as if it existed forever.

Only two examples of the Barcelona chair were originally made for display at the Barcelona Pavilion. Their bolted and chrome-plated construction supported ivory colored pigskin cushions. Quickly thereafter, the chair took on cult status because of the increasing fame of the designer and the publication of photographs of this seminal building. Mies was an influential architect who was revered and copied, and his chair became famous. Mies went on, of course, to use the chairs in numerous commissions in the common areas of his buildings and as these projects were photographed and disseminated to the world, the chair took on a greater iconography.

The first production examples after the originals were created by hand in the workshops of Joseph Muller. Only one year later the Barcelona chair design appears in the 1931 product catalog of the Bamberg company. At this time, chrome plating was a completely new kind of process in furniture manufacture, borrowed from other industries. Because of this, there was limited access to chroming vats large enough to accommodate the single welded steel frame of the chair, and so early frames were created in chrome-plated steel, and assembled from five individual parts. These component parts were then assembled with a screw connection at each intersection of the frame and cross-member. Joseph Muller examples began with a screw connection lap joint at the corners of each element, and this detail migrated inward, to be concealed by the straps and cushions.

in 1931, lap joint screws moves to horizontal section for stability and later (below) migrates inward to place screws under strap.

Single-welded and plated frames were expensive and labor-intensive because the filing of welds was done completely by hand. In 1932, Thonet took on production which continued until World War II ended production in 1934. In 1938, Mies had settled in the United States. Knoll took on its earliest production in 1947 as a chrome-plated steel version after an initial experiment in aluminum failed. The Knoll production was the first in the United States but not the only one. In the early 1950s the first examples of the Barcelona chair produced in Chicago appear. These revered and considered examples were produced by Gerry Griffin and commissioned by Mies for several of his buildings in Chicago. These were also the first to utilize stainless steel, a material that Mies stated he would have used from the beginning had the technology be available to him. Knoll did not create their version in stainless steel until 1964.

worker gerry griffin welding barcelona chair in his studio in chicago.


Examples by Griffin have a distinctive clarity to them, with less material utilized at the X-intersection of the sides and a precise corner at each backrest and seat that is razor sharp. The clearly delineated X-intersection was also a flaw, and we sometimes encounter examples from this period that have flattened somewhat over time.

The authentic Barcelona chair has been in nearly constant production since 1929. Like any great design, the temptation to copy or knock-off occurred and is rampant with the Barcelona chair. Vintage examples that are screwed together can be found in the market, but they do not have a sensitive lap joint with small countersunk screw at the corners, but rather the bars are butted together and connected through the ends of the steel with long screws. There are also examples that are currently created in aluminum, or in configurations that were not designed by Mies such as a double-wide sofa version.

[ author: michael jefferson, senior 20th century design specialist, wright ] [ mies van der rohe society ]

[ icff ]

cool!

designer: aruliden
producer: bernhardt design

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designer: jonah takagi

[ national museum shop ] [ wasara ]

about phil patton

The 2011 International Housewares Show in Chicago discovers product design formally for the first time. Under the theme “Discover Design” the invitation-only competition design criteria is based on inspired design, quality, brand positioning, outstanding craftsmanship, exclusive market focus, retailer and consumer favorites, and design-focused sustainable product. Discover Design was developed based on attendee feedback regarding the type of companies they would like to see at the show.

the 2011 winning products are…

best collection
elevate collection – joseph joseph
taste the world gravity mills – adhoc
pure black – stelton
kor water black collection – kor water
vipp kitchen tools – vipp

best product
lunch pot – black-blum
callista lemon squeezser – blomus
the laundry pod – storebound
bottlesup glass water bottle – bottlesup
citrange – royalvkb
box cutter – slice
bird feeder – born in sweden
bq-10 tour foldable bbq set – legnoart
magisso cake server – magisso
zebag – zebag

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This car is based on the earlier limited edition car model from Audi AG sold through their subsidiary Quattro GmbH. The car is hand finished and made of aluminum and carbon-look material. It can comfortably seat children or grown-ups of up to 1.80 meters (5’11’’) in height. The study is 2.32 meters (7.61 feet) long and 97 centimeters (38.19 inches) wide.

The electric motor produces a peak torque of 60 Nm (44.25 lb-ft) and steadily 40 Nm (29.50 lb-ft). The Audi e-tron reaches a top speed of 30 km/h (18.64 mph) and has a range of 25 km (15.53 miles). Charging can be done through a standard 230V household socket; a recharge will take 2 hours depending on the battery charge status. It also comes with a reverse gear. Ages 8 thru senior citizen.

The show will be held from February 3 to 8.

[audi gran prix history] [uncrate]

about boo hill

Price: $80 USD and link to the online store.

about phil patton