Perrin Drumm – Page 3 – DesignApplause

About Perrin Drumm

Perrin Drumm is nothing if not a road trip enthusiast. After moving from her hometown of LA to NY and to LA again, she hiked through half a dozen National Parks, snow-shoed a sizable portion of the Adirondacks, and resisted the overwhelming charm of the South to get back to Brooklyn, where she struggles to learn the trumpet, aspires to be a better Scrabble player, and lives and writes, and remains, as of yet, catless.

Norway's biggest export: magnus pettersen.

Oct 8, 2012

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Norway, often overshadowed by the proximity of Scandinavian powerhouses like Sweden and Finland, has been producing an impressive number of promising young designers in recent years. Foremost amongst them is Magnus Pettersen, the Sarpsborg-born (yup, that’s in Norway) designer who established his studio in London after studying Product & Furniture Design at Kingston University and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins. Still, it wasn’t until early 2011 that Pettersen designed his first product, a wildly popular table lamp that was immediately picked up by a yet-to-be-named manufacturer when it debuted at London Design Festival that year. It’s currently schedule to retail in Fall 2013.

Since then Pettersen has designed a new lamp called Beacon that takes its design cues from lighthouses. Though the connection isn’t immediately apparent, Pettersen explained how he “wanted to find a way to reflect a warm light from an energy efficient bulb, which can seem very cold.” The inspiration for his furniture series, which he took from industrial lockers, is a little more obvious. Available in ash and aluminum, the chest of drawers, sideboard, credenza, and side table are typically Scandinavian in their focus on manufacturing and simplicity of materials, yet also completely new in their use of shiny gold metal.

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Mine, by anna kraitz. NYIGF 2012.

Sep 7, 2012

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I was drawn to the Mine cup even before I learned that leading Swedish designer Anna Kraitz was inspired by Meret Oppenheim’s 1936 “Object,” better known as the fur-covered tea cup. Though Kraitz’s cup isn’t as experimental or surreal or hairy as Oppenheim’s, its subtler play with form also succeeds in turning a simple bone china cup into a statement, and perhaps even a sculptural object.

Unlike its furry counterpart, Mine is full functional as a vessel for hot liquids and will deliver tea or coffee to your mouth just fine. The simple delight here is in details like the bowl-like saucer, which is much deeper than a normal saucer. The handle is the more obvious difference. It extends beyond the point that a handle usually ends, dripping down the side on one end and dipping into the cup itself on the other. The handle, which Kraitz fits into each cup “with the utmost skill,” is available in white, hand painted gold or platinum.

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Osio clock by jussi takkinen. NYIGF 2012.

Sep 6, 2012

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Jussi Takkinen, a furniture and lighting designer who splits his time between personal and freelance projects and design work for Harri Koskinen, needed a new clock. When faced with the decision of finding one to buy that met his standards or designing his own, he opted for the latter. The question now was what form the clock would take. Around that time, Takkinen noticed “a pile of newspapers on the floor which formed a series of steps.” According to him “the sunlight happened to fall onto the newspapers creating a striking series of shadows on the different steps that gave [him] the idea for Osio.”

Like am updated, geometric wall-hanging sundial, Osio (Finnish for sections or steps) bridges ancient methods or telling time with contemporary design. The white bone china clock face has no numbers. Instead, it’s divided into 12 sections of varying heights, one for each hour. When sunlight hits the clock the shadows fall across the sections to give the time. The hands are simply a back up methods for nighttime and cloudy days.

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Design with conscience: transglass.

Sep 5, 2012

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Every year Artecnica pairs a well known designer with an artisan working in a small community to collaborate on a product for their Design With Conscience project. Though each product is typically greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm, the TranSglass collection designed by Studio Tord Boontje and Emma Woffenden has become one of Artecnica’s best-selling items. Aid to Artisans, a non-profit organization providing assistance to artisans worldwide, worked to bring Guatemalan craftsmen together with Woffenden and Boontje and ultimately, to bring their design to market, where MoMA saw it and acquired TranSglass for their permanent collection. The recycled wine bottle vases have been much copied, but Artecnica is the only place to get the original designs. The collection also cleverly repurposes wine bottles into carafes, candleholders and dishes.

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Themis mobile mono. NYIGF 2012.

Aug 31, 2012

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You’ve probably seen at least one of the first three editions of the colorful Themis Mobile collection that Stockholm-based graphic designer Clara von Zweigbergk created for Artecnica, but the company swears that Mono, the newest edition, is “vastly different than any other mobile of its kind.” First off, Mono has more sides than von Zweigbergk’s previous mobiles. D&D fans will know even without counting that this baby is a dodecahedron – that’s 12 sides – each in a different eye-popping color “painstakingly handpicked by Clara in her creative process, which she describes as ‘intuition and the way the colors work in contrast to one another.'”

Which brings me to my next point, which is somewhat tangential, but bear with me. As you might imagine, I read a lot of copy for product descriptions, and sometimes when designers, manufacturers or distributors aren’t content with a basic item description they go to great lengths to entice potential buyers with language so belabored and verbose it becomes comical. Nothing against Artecnica -they’re a truly wonderful company – but is this not just the long-winded way of saying that Mono is fun and colorful?

“The harmonious play of colors instill into the viewer a sense of visual pleasure and fulfillment further enhanced by the faceted nature of the geometry of Mono that allows each individual color to appear in four different shades.”

All critiquing aside, Mono works equally well above a crib and a dining room table, and there aren’t many design objects you can say that about.

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Form pendants, by form us with love. NYIGF 2012.

Aug 30, 2012

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The stockholm-based design studio Form Us With Love contends that “lamps are like people; They are happiest in families.” The sentiment is certainly true for their eponymous pendant lights. The three forms that make up the happy Form family (Cone, Globe and Tube) are handblown in shapes inspired by bare light bulbs.

The affordable lights are sold individually as opposed to being sold in sets that you can choose what combination suits your space and taste best. A row of three or four of the Tube pendants works just as well as a 25-piece cluster of all three shapes combined. “With very modest means and simple forms, Form Pendants can make a big difference in an interior. There is almost an infinite number of possible combinations.” [ design house stockholm ]

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No time bracelet, by katrin greiling. NYIGF 2012.

Aug 29, 2012

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Katrin Greiling came up with the concept for her faceless, clock-less watch, the No Time Bracelet, while she was working in Dubai. “In an environment where there are lots of status symbols to be worn o nthe wrist, my cheap, digital, plastic watch suddenly became an item for discussion. I designed a piece of jewelry in gold, based on my old wristwatch, that turned everything upside down. The simple item suddenly became expensive, but with a twist.”

As an avid watch collector, I regularly wear several kinds on both ends of the spectrum, from practical Swatches to the shiny gold kind. I’m also a believer in the watch as an ornamental piece, and like to wear several pretty but defunct ladylike vintage gold-toned watches as bangle bracelets. With that in my I feel like Greiling is really speaking my language with the No Time Bracelet. Since I like wearing a fancy watch with a t shirt and jeans, I love how she combines an everyday object like a digital watch with higher end materials like gold or white gold plate. [ design house stockholm ]

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Porcelain tableware by mud australia. NYIGF 2012.

Aug 26, 2012

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Mud Australia‘s line of handmade porcelain tableware easily caught my eye at the ever over-packed New York International Gift Fair this year. A rough wooden tabletop set off the collection’s picture perfect palette of soft greys, rich red, butter yellow and cheery robin’s egg blue. The exterior of all the plates, bowls and cups is left untreated, giving it a vitrified stone-like surface that’s balanced by the shining, glazed interiors. All the pieces are over, microwave and dishwasher safe, so they’re not only beautiful but practical, too.

Mud crafts their porcelain in their Sydney studio, where they also sell Chilewich’s place mats and table runners, Kobo soy candles and Vitsoe furniture. While their products are carried by a number of retailers in the United States, Mud has never had an American storefront of their very own until now. In just a few weeks they’ll be opening up shop in Soho on Crosby Street. Stay tuned for more news of the opening.

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Ferm living. NYIGF 2012

Aug 25, 2012

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Ferm Living, a Danish interior design company, is riding high on the ever-surging trend towards Scandinavian sensibilities. They produce a line of well-crafted everyday objects with eye for color and pattern and a focus on highlighting natural materials. Retro, yes, but not kitsch. Their Autumn/Winter 2012 collection includes textiles with strong geometric prints in black and white and neon orange color combinations. The neon is something of an anomaly, however, as most of their products this year are more subdued – dark mustard, dusky mauve and rich, deep turquoise balanced by grey and wood tones. The images here are just a smattering of their hundred-page catalog. See all their products and continue on to their online shop or see if they’re stocked in your city.

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Destination mexico. NYIGF 2012.

Aug 24, 2012

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It was abundantly clear that Destination Mexico’s big hot pink NYIGF booth full of bright, shiny things was meant to convey this message: We are here. We are fun. We are commercially viable. MoMA Design Store certainly agrees – their New International Design program is a partner. They currently sell a number of Mexican designers featured in the show, like Ariel Rojo, who’s Energy Saving Pig Lamp was prominently displayed. The ceramic lamp comes in black and white, with the curly-Q compact fluorescent bulb attached to the back like a tail.

My favorite Destination Mexico product is the Paper Strip Bowl by Yolanda Resendiz and Jesus Renteria. If MoMA’s goal with their Destination series is to highlight contemporary design that references regional traditions, the Paper Strip Bowl does a beautiful job of making the handcrafted tableware Mexico is known for into a durable consumer product. Discover more contemporary Mexican design at the MoMA store.

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About Perrin Drumm