Having had a mother who was obsessed with busy, French-provinical wallpaper, I’ve always steered clear from any semblance of a wall covering. Until, that is, companies like HP devised a latex printer that will digitally print your own designs to make cool wall-coverings. A number of companies will help you do this…like New Era, 4walls, FlavorPaper. Apparently, the HP…
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We are BIG fans of using found rocks as utensils. Rocks hauled home from beach or forest have become paper weights, doorstops, toilet paper holder “bricks” for our bricked-chicken recipe, even a prop to keep a cactus standing upright. They float around the Laboratory; if not in a direct use, they make lovely still-lives. Wary…
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Always on the lookout for things that shift our view and spark ideas, we were very happy to discover that Yoko Ono’s 1970 book Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono has been reprinted. It is a FINE book of instructions— koan-like meditations that will, in fact, make you see a little…
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From an April 28, 1934 NY Times photo: Jack Wolff of Manhattan College “running the race of his life.” That’s what it looks like: to be so flat-out…you’re almost flying. We’ve been mulling what the real “race of our life” has been, or is… ..and the times when we have given our all, flat-out,…
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Spotted at Desire to Inspire: this Alec Hemer‘s photograph of a flight of stairs whose extra room at the side makes a fine, surprising set of bookshelves. Related posts: staircase of succulents + succulent sculpture reverse-painted stairs (a carpet of wood) stairs in colors
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Knowing that I am in the process of designing a wall of bookshelves with a berth-like murphy bed built-in, Maria Robledo sent me pictures of the bookshelves in Creative Director Anne Johnson’s country house. The simple wooden shelves are held up by triangular wooden brackets nestled into horizontal supports. It’s a way to have a…
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Rooftop gardens are still blooming in cities everywhere. No matter how small or large our gardens, or how large or small we gardeners, we all share a farmer’s joys and vicissitudes, so delightfully illlustrated in this New Yorker cover by Ivan Brunetti entitled “Urban Bliss”. Poet Marianne Moore observed that poetry cultivates “imaginary gardens with real toads…
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Heather Chontos puts her colourful spin on a fleamarket find, dipping an old wooden spoon in tangerine paint to transform a low-tech stirring implement into something…fab. It’s from a selection of homewares chosen by Will Taylor for The Simple Things. We’ve painted new wooden spoons this way but somehow hadn’t thought to do it with oldies-but-goodies. Why not…
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These very beautiful cloth-draped sofas Max Zambelli teach an essential lesson: ordinary raw materials, artfully arranged, can easily outdo “done”. Zambelli has tucked and smoothed in just the right places, leaving the rest to fall as it may. It’s a chic play on drop cloth covered sofas. Of course, it has much to do with the shape…
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(Video link here.) A friend sent us this LOL video after someone told her she sometimes appears to be scowling. It seems that she suffers from occasional “bitchy resting face”, even when everything is dandy. Although we are great believers in tuning in and “reading the signs” of people’s behavior, we also know how wrong…
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Spotted at French by Design a weeks ago: simple geometry shapes in related hues make for a pleasing optical illusion (our favorite). You get a feeling of light falling on the wall. We recommend Benjamin Moores flat matte Aura paint. It hides the flaws in imperfect walls and gives a deep, slightly chalky feel that…
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Encouraged by our friend Bruce McKenna, we tried Benjamin Moore’s flat matte Aura paint in The Laboratory’s very hard-used kitchen, instead of the usual oil-based eggshell, which we’d assumed was the only really washable paint. But even eggshell would have shown up the really ugly imperfections in this wall. So, in desperation and against our…
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The other day a friend came over carrying the book she’d been reading on the subway: Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. We were struck by the lovely frayed, striped ribbon she used as a bookmark. Such as swell little idea: a fragment of beautiful ribbon, perhaps leftover from gift wrap, repurposed into…
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It’s Labor Day, the tacit end of summer. I’m wondering if after all the s’mores have melted, the frisbees thrown, the lanyards woven, the barbeques fired up, the cocktail schmoozes sloshed through, and the group hikes up a trail to see the sun rise… after all these activities, maybe what’s really important about summer is simply…
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We are UP TO OUR EARS redesigning ‘improvised life’ AND creating a bunch of mind-altering new interactions for our readers. After 4 years of posting, we’re tearing things apart and hatching plots. But doing all that AND posting 3 times a day is breaking our heads and running us ragged. So we’re taking a break…
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Over the years, we’ve relied on bungee cords for all sorts of uses, from strapping things onto a dolly or bicycle to lashing our patio umbrella to the terrace rails during a high wind (below). Having never loved the look of the old-fashioned rubber bungees that eventually unravels and loses its elasticity (EXCEPT on Rene Herbst’s…
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A year or so after moving into the Harlem Laboratory, we’re finally mulling building bookshelves and horizontal Murphy bed (called wall beds these days)…like a berth in the living room. We’ve had that forelorn space hidden behind folding screens FOR A YEAR, waiting until we could wrap our head around designing it (at bottom, with…
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At But Does it Float we stumbled on this J.G. Ballard quote that titles an exhibition of drawings by Mark A Reynolds. We weren’t crazy about the drawings, but Ballard’s words are a gift we didn’t expect. Words to live by. Related posts: sister corita kent’s enduring rules for making + her art the collected wisdom…
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Our minimalist self generally thinks classic white toilet paper is just about a perfect design. If you want to make it more graphical, stack it sideways to make a rhythm of its black dot/holes/sides (below) or forge a unique holder, like Alexander Calder‘s…
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Please enable flash to view this media. Download the flash player. (Video link here.) This afternoon Holton Rower texted: We’re at the MET on the roof. You have to see the installation. It is fu*king awesome! So we ran to the Metropolitan Museum’s website and found this illuminating video and a bit about Imran Qureshi: Three…
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