In the 1970’s mysterious Italian designer Lino Schenal clad his house in sculpted styrofoam, from walls to simple, stylish furniture. Fifty years later we looked to Max Lamb to reveal the secrets of the ubiquitous material for making artful, practical creations.
Read MoreIt usually takes just a shift of orientation, or your usual route to work or the store, to work some living trees into your day and heart. Here’s some inspiration from Yoko Ono and Max Lamb…
Read More (Video link here.) “Exercises in Seating” at the Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan, is an exhibit of 40 chairs British designer Max Lamb has made over the past 10 years, from elemental thrones in stone to boxy wooden chairs and and geometric stools cast in sand. It inspires serious chair lust and illumination into…
Read MoreWe’ve written quite a bit about Max Lamb in the past because of his unique ability to combine art and simple practical design. An integral component of his art is showing people HOW he made it. At MaxLamb.org you can see illuminating how-to’s on just about all his pieces. His latest work is his Marmorial series of…
Read MoreOne of many things we love about artist/designer/craftsman/journeyman Max Lamb‘s work is that he ALWAYS has an unusual take on the practical AND he loves to reveal his process, offering in a powerful lesson in EMPOWERMENT. This video shows him making a wood stool out of huge chestnut tree log he hauled home from Springfield…
Read MoreEver since seeing designer Max Lamb‘s polystyrene bookcases, we’ve been huge fans of his work. He loves making things and lends an artist’s eye to fine craftman’s projects, documenting each step of his process to share on his website. We’ve learned a huge amount from looking at Lamb’s projects, many of which are do-able by…
Read MoreWe fell HARD for artist Max Lamb‘s work after we sat on a Lamb stool owned by our friend A.S.C. (Sandy) Rower, President of the Calder Foundation (more on that big adventure soon). The stool was beautiful and comfortable and made by an ancient process of sand casting: Lamb goes to the beach and makes…
Read MoreI’ve been so busy with ‘the improvised life’ that I can’t seem to see my way to giving a dinner party. A solution was proposed recently by my friend Burt Wolf, who has his hands full with a television show, hosting boat tours in Europe and a small child. “Let’s do dinner, pot luck”, said…
Read MoreA new study provides further evidence of the beneficial effect of trees on well-being. Being among trees can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. British sculptor Max Lamb’s recent installation shows how powerful trees are INDOORS as well. Yoko Ono expands the view.
Read MoreThe corrugated aluminum screen designer Jacques Boris made in the 1990s set off a firestorm in my head. Its elegant, visionary use of an ordinary material reminded me of Lino Schenal and Max Lamb’s transformations of styrofoam. If I had the means to cut through thick wavy metal and finish its edges and hinge it…
Read MoreWhile checking out the work of designer Meike Hardeeike Harde, we were intrigued by her wooden aquarelle room screen. We’re always looking for clever, mutable ways to divide our space or hide an in-process project. We were pleased to see that, like Max Lamb, Harde SHARES her process, allowing us to take her ideas and RUN.
Read MoreWe’ve long admired this wonderful stacked block shelf we clipped years ago. It is made of scrap wood (salvaged from a lumbar yards garbage bin) that was bored, threaded and secured with thick rope, and hung from hooks anchored in the wall. Then we wondered: What if you didn’t bother with the rope part and…
Read MoreAs we wander around the city, we often come across the often-beautiful skeletons of wood or tubular chairs and wonder what we could do with them. Usually, the structure is there, but an essential part is missing, like the seat or back. This DIY spotted on Design Millk fuels our imagination and possibility-thinking. Scraps of…
Read MoreThis sculptural mesh chair ($2,000 at yliving.com) by designer Damien Velasquez has a deep, springy ergonomic seat. It looks to us like it was made from standard punched metal sheets used for grilles and other architectural applications. We checked one of our favorite catalogs for McMasters-Carr, and sure enough, that’s what it is. We wonder if Velasquez…
Read MoreThree years ago, we posted a mystery chair whose cool design inspired us to think we could make it ourselves. We did not know who’d made it, until today, when a reader sent us a link in a Comment. It is the work of artist/designer Andy Hall. We’ve discovered that Hall set himself the challenge of…
Read MoreSpotted at ROLU: wonderful-looking though perhaps- not-so-comfortable chairs. We wouldn’t care, so in love are we with just looking at concrete and the lines of this chair. We’ve heard you can mold concrete in styrofoam boxes. We imagine molding a bunch of rectangles to build this chair…but then, how to afix them? This is a good…
Read MoreStumbling on this wonderful image of sculptural black-painted chairs on a wall of the La Gran Francia Hotel in Granada, Nicaragua got us thinking about ways to store un-folding chairs. This assemblage is a more playful, freeform take on the Shaker-esque practice of hanging uniform chairs on hooks (below). Then, moving too fast as we scanned…
Read MoreWhen we saw this cunning walnut doorknob from ModKnobs, we imagined it to be the perfect knob for our bathroom door. But when it finally arrived, the knob we thought so fab turned out to be huge and clunky, way out of scale for the space (see photo, below). We had neglected to take note…
Read MoreWe are smitten with these vintage plywood children’s chairs whose very direct, modern lines and whimsical port holes make us envision an adult version. (Turned on it’s side, a chair could easily morph into a table…). There’s something Donald Judd-esque about them, softened by the curved corners. They wouldn’t be too hard to copy…They look…
Read MoreToday, not for the first time, we mistook an artwork for a household object – a mirror actually. We saw this work by Winston Roeth at YouHaveBeenHereSometime right after seeing some images of mirrors and our brain said: “Wow, what a great deeply-orange painted mirror! Why don’t we make one of those?!!” Then we scrolled down…
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