(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…
Read Moregeometry painted walls
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…
Read Morepaint test: beautiful hardworking flat matte Aura
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…
Read Moreribbon bookmark + a field guide to getting lost
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…
Read More‘always maintain a kind of summer’ (thoreau)
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…
Read Morevirtual heat relief/summer fun (we’re taking a staycation)
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…
Read Morefound: chic, little black dress of bungee cords
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…
Read Morelookbook for our next project: bookshelves + murphy bed
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…
Read More‘surrender to a logic more powerful than reason’
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…
Read Morewhy not?: bold printed toilet tissue + unusual holders
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…
Read Morei qureshi’s met installation: tragedy —>hope —> growth
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…
Read Morereminder: play in the sand (it’s an art material)
As though wanting to pack in every ounce of summer, Coney Island has been host to a number of sand sculpture contests. Last Friday, arts instigator Creative Time headed back to Far Rockaway to host its second annual Artist Sandcastle Competition. And this Friday’s competition is open to experienced artists and amateurs alike. Artist’s sand creations can be…
Read Moredesign love: bauhausian bicycle
We look at this Bauhausian bicycle and feel a visceral WANT. We love the way it looks and its moderne hecho-a-mano rusticity. Apparently it follows the principle of the golden section. Beautiful. … though you’d have to be pretty agile to get on and off. More images and specifics on the Bau Bike: It It’s Hip It’s…
Read Moresummer collecting: improvisations for shells, stones…
Summer vacations in the great outdoors can result in some ferocious souvenir fallout: gazillions of shells, kilos of stones, and fistfuls of feathers from unidentified birds. We hoard this memorabilia like The Hobbit’s Gollum hovering over Sauron’s Ring, unable to part with our “precious”, be it a single sand-filled shell or random feather. Truth be…
Read Moreannals of tiny: elevator shaft museum
Somewhere in downtown New York City, in an inconspicuous urban alleyway, an abandoned elevator shaft has been transformed into a tiny museum, a one-room exhibition space displaying an assemblage of unconventional artifacts and found objects. The museum documents everyday human history, a quiet reminder that art is everywhere…and the human ingenuity can transform even the most lowly and…
Read Morebest of il: diy plant watering globes
www.sha.org/bottle/wine In tandem with Anthony Giglio’s summer sparkling wine recommendations, it seems fitting to reprise the idea we published a couple of years ago: using water or wine bottles as plant watering globes. These are simply inverted bottles that you fill with water and slam into the moist soil of a containered plant; they will slowly trickle…
Read More5 delish, affordable sparkling wines for summer
Ellen Silverman sent this image of the charming chairs her friend Lauren Malkasian‘s daughter made out of the wire cages from bottles of Champagne drunk during a celebratory dinner one evening. That got us thinking about sparkling wines so we asked our trusty wine/spirits/entertaining advisor Anthony Giglio for his recommendations. He sent us FIVE plus…
Read Moregrowing is no easy not matter how long we’ve lived
Growing is no piece of cake no matter how tall we are or how long we’ve lived. We progress, we fall back, we start all over again, ferblungeoning forward into our future even while kicking and screaming. The universe commands expanding, and we obey, improvising every step of the way. The side of the bookshelf at the door of…
Read Morerelax + re-envision with commes des garcon’s moving six
(Video link here.) Whenever we are in Saks or Barney’s, we make a point to check out what’s going on at Commes des Garcons, fashion designer Rei Kawakubo’s line of consistently imaginative and unexpected clothing. It always shifts our thinking about what a shirt, dress, pant, coat can be, indeed what even constitutes men’s or…
Read Morediy or buy: stylish frayed-edge linen pillows
Flipping through the new Crate & Barrel catalogue, we came across what seems like a bargain: “eyelash pillows”— big square two-tone linen pillows whose edges are sewn inside-out, to show their frayed edges. It’s a lovely play on a trend we’ve reported on quite a bit, most recently in Paola Navone’s frayed-seam slipcovers. It appeals…
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