Have a spooky night, everyone ...

Cut him open, scooped out his guts and made a fire inside ... and then we made soup with his innards - now that's proper ghoulish.

oh good.

Found in a lake near a nuclear power plant in Argentina - a 3 eyed fish (left) closely resembling Blinky, the fish caught in Lake Springfield almost 20 years ago ...

Plenty of online reports if you want to know more ... 

Not saying the fish would have been any less ugly if he had the standard 2 eye configuration, but it's just not as funny in real life, that's all.

In other news, so far no reports of mutated wildlife in areas of solar power generation.

tim-berrr ...

In a perfect world, your nan would call you up tomorrow and tell you that you're ready to inherit her old 'woody' station-wagon ...

Or was she a van driver?

Either way, it's about time that all these designers coming up with sleek carbon fibre mod cars realized that a boxy vehicle with some wood panels is all the world really needs.
Though there are limits ... eg: Lee Stoetzel's wooden Kombi Van.  Not for the splinter-prone.

cabinet craziness ...

Sideboards are always pretty popular in the shop - seem to be the 'must-have' interior item of this end of the 21st century ... perhaps even more than those repro eiffel-base Eames shell chairs the real-estate agents insist on including in every house photo you see.
This past week we have had a stream (or at least a few) people asking if we had any more tucked away in storage (sideboards, not repro Eames chairs).  Good motivation to dig deep into the shed and take some photos.  Now we just wish we had a few more lounge-rooms so we could fit a few more in at home.

And that's the ones we could get to!
So - if you're looking for something really nice in the way of Scandinavian made vintage storage, please pop by the website or contact us and get us motivated to move 'em on!
Thanks.

mmmm, dark ...

As a 'look' for the interiors of our place, we have been leaning towards the lighter end of the spectrum. 
The main walls are pale mud (mud-bricks made from the clay out of the dam), and this summer we plan to make time to paint out the rest of the place in white.  Most of our furniture is teak, with a mix of olive-greens for upholstery and the ceramics and bits'n'pieces we're collecting up.  We have gradually been stashing away a bunch of chairs in beech and maple timbers to brighten up the front room - which will hopefully give us a pretty breezy feel.
But, gee, seeing this interior makes you think ...

A country house in Nordsjælland, Denmark, the styling is pretty amazing - a timeless sort of 'lodge' look.

You should take a look - the place is pretty nice.  The photos (by Birgitta W. Drejer) are from VartNyaHem, via MyScandinavianRetreat.  We'd live there if we had to ...

thanks steve ...

Love 'em or hate 'em, apple corporation have become the design touchstone of the current generation.  They have made some very beautiful things and stuck to the 'Think Different' commitment Steve Jobs gave.



RIP Steve, and thanks.

tough times

Well then ...

After a few years of rampant and undisciplined chair collecting (we classify most of the collection as 'stock' to help us feel better), we have finally picked up our first 'proper' Featherston chairs ...

Sure, we have had plenty of his Aristoc pieces, which we love, and a few of the crazy 'numero' chairs in various forms, but never anything from the early 1950's 'Contour' range for which he is most well-known.

But this week ...

... a couple of super-cute D350 dining chairs have come into our lives.  So sweet and small, and more usable (to us) than the lounge chairs.  They need a lot of love, restoration and refreshing, but that's pretty much our favorite part of the job.

So here's the problem - from a purist's point of view, the chairs should be left in their original state - worn upholstery, scuffed timber, missing buttons - proper evidence of 60 years of life.  It may masquerade as respect, but there's a bit of cynical 'protect the re-sale value' in that attitude.  If they were oil paintings, I'd say leave them exactly as they are ... but we reckon commercially produced consumer goods should be maintained and refreshed to keep them living on.

But we want them to have a future as well as a past ... AND they do have to fit into the family up at the farm too!

 

So, yeah, one grey chair and one red one are going to look a bit out of place.  We want them to settle in and play-nice with everybody .... so the hunt is on for the perfect vinyl to freshen 'em up.  Promise they will be going to the most respectful and professional upholsterer we know.

We'll keep you posted.

solar gets niftier

We're in the process of upgrading our solar setup at the farm - graduating from 12v to 240v, which means bigger panels on the roof, and more of 'em.  That's an exciting prospect, but seeing this incredible development makes us wonder why EVERY roof and wall in the world isn't decked out ...

Marketed as 'solar ivy', it's a pretty beautiful looking setup - loads of small photovoltaic cells all clipped to a mesh that feeds your battery and beautifies at the same time.

Pretty nice, huh?

Or maybe we'll just move to Palm Springs ...

Sure, every decent town has it's enclaves of nice modernist architecture ... driving through parts of Kew, the back-blocks of Toorak, or the side-streets of Beaumaris reassure us that Melbourne was well-blessed during the 60's. 
But Palm Springs!

That combination of Hollywood dollars, mega-star extroverted reclusiveness, and the future-inspired architects working out of California in the mid 20th Century made for a pretty cool little area.
These are pics of William Krisel's work - haven't seen much of it, but it looks kind of nice.

From an interview Krisel gave to Dwell magazine a few years back -
My ideal project is a tough challenge with a minimum budget and lots of conditions to be met. I like doing houses with a minimal square footage that have all the comforts of an expensive place; budgets and costs aren’t criteria for doing good design. Design is design, and it has nothing to do with dollars and cents.

"Here's a story, of a man named Brady ..."

Despite the near-continual re-runs that made the Brady family a part of many of our lives (in the same way generation Y will remember the Simpsons forever), we sometimes forget ...

The perfect family, sure ... but later we realized that it was the perfect house that was the best bit ... the central lounge, Mike's fantastic home-office ...  that great open-plan kitchen and dining area ...

Too cool - I think Mike Brady was the inspiration for a generation of architects ... maybe?

Would love to live there ... maybe we should hang onto the plans in case we somehow end up with a construction budget and a nice spot on a sunny suburban street ...

Thanks Sherwood Schwartz ... RIP.