We wish there were a way to beam ourselves (a la Star Trek) to a conference taking place in Lahti, Finland on March 24 to 25, called “Designing Slow Life” “…international experts of design, service design and wellness talk about and develop services under the main theme of better, slower and more meaningful life…The Slow…
Read More
Atlas Industries, who makes gorgeous, furniture-like, fiercely expensive shelving and storage, sent us an announcement of a new product: a folding screen. We are always on the look-out for folding screen options to divide rooms and hide the stuff we don’t want to look at in our small space. The screen costs $2400 and we’d…
Read More
In a recent New Yorker Talk of the Town, we came across this surprising image: a Japanese ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi made in 1842 (from a show at the Japan Society). It’s called “Haysuhana Prays Under a Waterfall”. The idea knocked us out: of praying, meditating, thinking… just plain sitting… under a waterfall, for a…
Read More
via the late, great Platform 21’s “Remarkable Repairs” archive…
Read More
Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal is famous for making music with unconventional objects. (Miles Davis called him “the most impressive musician in the world.” ) Here’s Pascoals astonishing Musica de Lagoa, made in a lagoon…the lagoon made into a instrument… According to his bio, Pascoal is self-taught: “Fascinated by the sounds of nature since he was a little…
Read More
Last December, Pam Hunter, the mastermind behind Studio 707, THE Public Relations firm in Napa Valley, closed its doors to take a sabbatical. On her website’s last post, she told the story of meeting two artists over the years whose practice of taking long sabbaticals from their work had impressed her deeply. Spain’s Fernan Adria, considered…
Read More
The produce section of my local supermarket is so lackluster that it generally discourages me from buying of any fresh vegetable except onions or bananas. Wandering through on my way to buy ice cream yesterday, I spotted a trove of Meyer lemons – six for $2 – and knew that these fabulous citrus had finally…
Read More
Aside from endless design ideas, last summer’s trip to Finland has yielded a several part series at Atlanic Onlines’ Food Blog, starting today. The Atlantic posts will be ongoing for the next few weeks and will be mostly food-centric – woven through with cool design – until we get to the home of a Finnish…
Read More
I was in Savonlinna, Finland last summer poking around at the ancient town where there is a huge opera festival each summer inside a castle that was built in 1475. I spotted this flower arrangement in the market… (If you think we’ve got a long winter…)
Read More
Blu Dot is offering a surprisingly compelling clock widget you can download to your computer. It is a one inch square that sits anywhere on your screen you like; with each new minute, a new number image appears. The effect is constant surprise and little jostles to your mind about change and possibilities. For free!…
Read More
….One of Christoph Niemann’s oddly illuminating maps, from his Abstract City blog in the N.Y.Times.
Read More
Twenty years ago or so, I designed a kitchen for a space I thought I’d be in forever. I had cabinets made in a Shaker style that I hoped could walk the line between classic and modern for a long time, and bought myself a restaurant stove. Ten years later, life changed, and I had…
Read More
The other day we got lost in a website that is so useful and inspiring, it has become a sort of role model. “THAT’s some of what we’d like ‘the improvised life’ to do for people”, we thought, and put it in the file of bits and pieces that mirror what we imagine for its…
Read More
Right after news of Gourmet Magazine’s demise hit the food world like a missile, Lydia Wills sent us an article written by Stefany Ann Golberg, an artist, musician, and founding member of the art collective Flux Factory. She writes really smart, thoughtful, acute articles for The Smart Set and is worth following. Buried within her article…
Read More
In the vast Times Square subway station in New York City, there are always lots of musicians busking for money, many of them pretty great. (We love the old guy who plays a saw; it echoes through the tunnels to sound like a high soprano…). Everybody is in such a hurry getting where they need to…
Read More
Constance Old recently alerted us to Crispina ffrench’s work: “Crispina ffrench is an artist/crafter who makes terrific “improvised’ work. She is author of a recent book called The Sweater Chop Shop: Sewing One-of-a-Kind Creations from Recycled Sweaters which teaches how to cut and felt cast-off sweaters to make them into cool new things: like mufflers,…
Read More
For several years, this sign from Thomas Ashcraft‘s site Heliotown has been my browser’s home page. In all that time, I’ve never tired of it, nor become blind to it (though Tom has since made it invisible on his site, having moved on to other things). Every once in a while, a friend will be…
Read More
OK Go is the band that made that hilarious treadmill video a few years ago. Their frontman Damian Kulash has issued tiny mission statements here and there: “We’re trying to be a DIY band in a post-major label world” …and the essential: “Our whole bag is having good ideas and making cool shit.” Their new…
Read More
Ellen Silverman sent this image* to us in response to yesterday’s post about four-year-old Marco Giglio’s snow being. The subject of her email read: “Two Feet of Snow.” …All that effort and imagination for this fabulous, fleeting sculpture that had to make people smile and think: Human creativity is so amazing! *There was no photographer’s…
Read More
“A snowman is an anthropomorphic snow sculpture of a human. They are customarily built by children… in celebration of winter.” –Wikipedia Anthony Giglio’s four-year-old son Marco spent last Sunday afternoon improvising his first snowman in Jersey City’s Overlook Park. Once he had rolled and stacked three giant snowballs, he hunted for natural scraps around the park to…
Read More