loving beehives for spring

phenomenal early sixties hair & oversized cable bands at prada fall 2010.

mini-project: gilding large stones for table-top book weights

Grace's mini-guide to paperweights excited me way more than is probably normal and/or healthy.

This particular knobbly gold nugget paperweight, priced at around $140, got me thinking... how difficult would it be to apply gold leaf to stones? and how beautiful and easy wouldn't that be?

One could do big, melon-sized stones and place them on books on a coffee table...! definitely my next project: headed off to Michaels this week for some gold leaf.



[By the request of Ms. Johnson, the images of her gilded stones, which I had cropped in such a way as to conceal her cherry-on-top addition of opalescent snail shells, have been removed.]

wanted? found...

on etsy! can't wait till it's delivered...

thanks to coco+ kelly, and to hoping for happy accidents for the link!

stunning & affordable: furniture by London firm, Unto This Last

I'm blown away by the design of Unto This Last, a UK company based in London, that I just discovered via The Style Files. Their computer-generated pieces come in a range of different neutrals, and can be altered to your specifications (color, size; & free standing or wall-mounted for the shelving units) because nearly every piece is made to order.

The best part is that none of it costs much more than a piece of Crate & Barrel furniture, which is unusual for such unique pieces.... and exciting especially if you live in the UK, considering that the firm currently does not ship abroad! If you're planning on taking a trip to London any time soon, I highly recommend a trip to this shop, as much of the furniture can come flat-packed and would be easy to carry back with you. Or wait until the exchange rate gets better (right now it's around $1.9, alas).

...I'm thinking that this honeycomb shelving might just be worth a trip to London, exchange rate be damned.

Susan Graham's wire animal sculptures

Beautiful wire animal sculptures from the Etsy shop of Susan Graham, spotted by the helpful Molly in her stint as the current d*s guest-blogger...

dutch artist worth watching: beppe kessler

I feel so lucky to be able to share with you the work of beppe kessler, a dutch artist who is fluent in so many different mediums. Her burned balsa wood brooches astonish me-- they are leopard-like, seashell-like, and yet wholly inimitable. Her commissioned work "Home" (2005) picks up the burned balsa wood motif, and turns it into something completely different-- small houses, gilded with gold leaf and color.

I love also the delicate rug that she designed on commission, and finally, this spare, perfect brooch (click "artists" to find the work).

Beppe Kessler. Wow.

sculptural chairs: white on white

"White on white" has been a look I've always been cuckoo over, and have been exploring since silk felt soil began.... More and more I am loving whites when they are layered in different textures, and given crisp structural dimension. I can't get enough of the first photograph of legless chairs, via Marie Claire Maison. It requires a Diana Vreeland-type "Why Don't You... take the legs off your chairs and turn them into a banquette?" great space saver...

Images 2 and 3 courtesy of Côté Maison and Casamidy.

our kitchen renovation: a hansgrohe faucet it is

I feel great about our choice of this Hansgrohe "interaktiv spray faucet" today! we ended up going into Home Depot determined to buy something in stock, but I just couldn't go through with it (very few goosenecks to choose from), so we checked out the H&D catalogue and found this little beauty. One more thing to check off the list!

unlikely fusion: porcelain and sea sponge make a startling vessel for flowers

oh, the possibilities offered by this oddly enchanting porcelain natural-sponge vase... how gorgeous would it be with soft, fluttery peonies, drooping over its rough sides?

According to Poaa's website, Marcel Wanders's design is made by sinking real sponges into fluid porcelain; in the kiln, the sponges burn away, leaving a perfect copy. Not crazy about the lip of the vase, but other than that, I am a fool in love for this design sponge. Would love to see a version made into a table lamp.

via the style files, a fun new blog i just discovered.

globe mobile....

In addition to being sweet in a child's room, this globe mobile would be elegant in a home office above a desk, or in a library nook of a living room. from restoration hardware, $69.

Startling shapes: puppets

*A Javanese shadow puppet. For other shadow puppets, see here...

When I was little I used to wake my father up at 4 in the morning (I kid you not)and slip puppets on his hands. Barely awake, he would groggily begin to speak in the voices of "Monkey," (high pitched; excitable) and "Foxy," (a thick french-canadian accent, very calm and mature), our main puppet players. This was our morning ritual for many years! My father, one of the best storytellers I know, swears to this day that the puppets on his hands would use expressions and offer insights that he would be surprised by.

In honor of those mornings, here are some more images of traditional and contemporary puppets....

Traditional puppets (by artists from India):
*Leather puppet from Rajasthan, India, depicting Raven, a terrible villain. For some fascinating images of Indian leather puppets, see here.

*"Kathputli," typical Rajasthani marionettes. Gorgeous photograph by Ewan Bell.


Contemporary puppets (by artists from africa, europe, and the us):
*Giraffe puppets from "Tall Horse," a production by The Handspring Company, South Africa, featured in the current traveling exhibition, At Arms' Length: The Art of African Puppetry.


*Production images from a film by Pierre Huyghe: the 24 minute This is not a time for dreaming concerns Corbu's design of the Carpenter Center at Harvard. Huyghe's film was commissioned by the University in 2004, and is currently being exhibited at the Portland Art Museum in Porland, Oregon, until December 26, 2006.


*Head of a piece by the sculptor and marionette-maker Anne Chu. Watch for her upcoming exhibit at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago.

sculpture: robert delves

Robert Delves is an aussie sculptor who works with found objects (here, remnants from old boats). I love the textures in this piece.
Via the Australian boutique, Pomme.

"Thinking of You" vase cover by Tord Boontje

I've always loved ornate silhouettes, perhaps from reading Joan Aiken's Tale of a One-Way Street as a young girl and being enthralled by the gorgeous illustrations by the Polish-born artist Jan Pienkowski.


Jezebel's silhouettes on her stationary also always seem to have that wonderful, staged, mysterious quality, and from the moment I saw her work I loved it...



Today, coming across Tord Boontje's "Thinking of You" vase sleeve, on Los Angeles's AT, I was completely drawn in by his silhouette sculpture, a 2-D piece translated for the 3-D world. It is unabashedly fantastical. Definitely speaks to the dreamer kid in me.

(Side-note: we might add that yes, this is not radically different from the Boontje work that we've seen before, but for me, this piece is particularly unaffected and lovely, and moves away from, for instance, the now-tired stag/antler motif featured in the {in}famous "Until Dawn"curtains.)

animal sculptures from hiandlomodern.com

for coffee tables, bookcases, bedside tables, office desks....
lion and cub.


herd of arabia zebras.



seibel fish bookends, below. (love these!)

danish stone chicken!






these and other wonderful, sweet, quirky pieces can be found at hiandlomodern's page of "fish and animal" objets.