15 October 2010

flipped

Between Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library, in a city not necessarily renowned for it's great coffee ... D'espresso cafe ...
The interior was designed by Nema Workshop, and looks fantastico - a library tipped 90 degrees onto it's side.
Parquetry floor on the wall, bookshelves on floor and ceiling.  The coffee wouldn't even need to that good.  This interior features on plenty of blogs - try thecoolist for more pics.

god bless vinyl

The postman just brought us some treats ... a few reissues of our favorite hiphop albums all the way from sunny California ... already wearing out our fresh copy of Pauls Boutique.  Remember 'Hey Ladies'?
Such a highbrow bunch, those Beasite Boys ... here's an appropriately scratchy and rough copy of the video ... disco revival in the Hollywood Hills.


Beastie Boys - Hey Ladies

What's not to love?

life in the box

Hmmmmm - big metal box ... so much potential.  We're planning to turn ours into a lock-up workshop, maybe put a deck on top for the views, but having seen a bit of architect/artist/designer Adam Kalkin's work on architectureandhygiene, maybe we're lacking a little ambition ....
How's this pop-out cafe designed for illy (from a few years back now) - unfurls in 90 seconds at the push of a button ... and, most importantly, sells coffee!


Modding beats building anyday.  Nice slideshow here, too, showing a self-contained residential application ... oh, and Kalkin's PushButtonHouse2 ... super-cool!

looks good on paper

Back before fun had to be electronic and have a screen, paper dolls were a sweet way to play.  So long as somebody was available to cut out the tricky bits, a printed page could keep a kid entertained for hours ...
With access to a bit of discarded packaging, cardboard boxes can take it to the next level - small for a doll's house or large for a touch of junior architecture in constructing a fully fledged fort ...
But artist Don Lucho from Chile has taken it to the next level ...
We came across some photos of his work on styleofdesign (among plenty of great reading) - just makes us want to get a few rolls of masking tape and redecorate ...


Maybe we'll wait 'til these rains stop.

14 October 2010

the good wood

A frustrating part of this amazing interweb of ours is that you get to see fantastic and inspiring things that are too far away for you to have and touch ...

Been reading a bit about Rhode Island furniture makers STUDIO DUNN who make a compact range of beautiful and sustainable timber furniture ... really like their new Kingstown stools ...
 

The fine, spindly legs remind us of Ponti's 'Superleggera' chair, or some of Parker's finer 60's shapes ...
 

We'd love them teamed with one of local craftsman John D Waters' amazing and powerful (but so light on the eye) pieces - maybe his Ironbark bench as a kitchen setup ...


Or a set of 8 or 10 stools around his Bunya Table?


A cure for the city concrete blues!

logistics, eh?

Well ... the race has been run and won ... who would have though that a container of vintage furniture from Sunny Scandinavia would be able to sail halfway 'round the globe, pass thru customs, and take a truck-ride all the way to the farm faster than a pile of bits of tin ("yeah, mate, it'll take a couple of days to put up ... three at the most.") could be assembled into shed form?

EXHIBIT A (truck manouvering around bits of shed)

EXHIBIT B (photo taken standing atop container)


So there you go ... all good 'zen' training for us - a big steel box full of beautiful mid-century bibs'n'bobs, and we can't open it to unpack ... yet!

good ol' spring

The rain has been a welcome inconvenience, and the temperatures are up and down in what feels like a pretty random pattern, but you know that Spring is officially here when the swallows renovate their nest and start getting territorial ...


For a couple of weeks, the pair who live on our verandah were extremely busy collecting mud, grass and feathers to get their nest up to scratch ... but not as busy as they are now ...


Totally exciting - 4 babies - all ravenous, all constantly cheeping for more ... Mr and Mrs Swallow are looking skinnier and skinner by the day, but are keeping up with a pretty extreme demand.  Sure, it's a natural obligation, but for these ugly little monsters??? 

04 October 2010

have you met ...

A pretty nice range of interior products and sweet ideas ... haveyoumetmissjones is worth a look, whether you are window shopping or doin' it for real.  Here are a few pieces we would like to try living with ...




See?

polaroid news

Great news ... Polaroid have released a new instant camera, the 300!  We stumbled across an update on the mrjasongrant blog, and are happy to hear.

She's a different looking camera to the classic SX-70 and 600 series we have been collecting, and produces a smaller picture, but good to see nonetheless!


Meanwhile, after years of picking up films for our old Polaroids from US sellers on ebay (and having to curtail our snap-happy ways due to the cost-per-shot factor), we were pretty excited to find that the Impossible Project have released films that are good for both the (easier to find) 600's AND for the SX-70's from a local seller on ebay ...




Could this spell the end of digital photography?

01 October 2010

update ... excuses ...

So sorry, we've been a bit slack on blog entries lately.  Been juggling the shop and a bit of organizing ...

After almost a year of sourcing and seeking, buying and storing, our fresh shipment of vintage Swedish design gold has landed in Melbourne.  Somehow our man on the ground in Scandinavia managed to get hold of all the things we 'needed', and (even more impressively) got it all to fit into a shipping container.  Burly Swedish truck-driver Magnus is pictured below doing his bit to get it all away ...




Wow ... that drab looking steel box has enough in it to keep us occupied on polishing and restoring though most of Summer, we think.  And if that's not enough fun, we'll have a container to renovate too.

Of course, what's a big furniture collection without a home?  So we chose the wettest August/September on record to get a big workshop shed built up at the farm ...


Ahem ...

There have been a few delays, holdups, and the like (we've seen enough episodes of Grand Designs to know that even the most basic build is guaranteed to take longer and cost more than you imagine).  After a 4 month process it seems that the 'last-minute' is when things happen.

So, according to promises from one and all, our shed should be finished on Monday afternoon ... oh, and the container is being delivered Tuesday morning.  Like the Grand Final last weekend, the smart money is on a draw ... just no re-match please.