We found this divine, completely original and inspired chandelier buried in MondoBlogo’s riff on 1980’s interiors. It’s right up there with this ceiling light Alexander Calder fashioned for his friend Miro.
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We found this divine, completely original and inspired chandelier buried in MondoBlogo’s riff on 1980’s interiors. It’s right up there with this ceiling light Alexander Calder fashioned for his friend Miro.
Read MoreOne of the best ways we know to create outdoor lighting magic in warm months are with Shoji Solar Lanterns…
Read MoreWe’ve long loved paper shades, pioneered by Noguchi, to give soft modern shapes to home interiors as well as jazzing up public ones like this community soup kitchen in London
Read MoreTerrain’s circular displays of their holiday lighting made us think “wreath” and gave us lots of ideas. Just coil the lighting (using a form if necessary) and tack it to the wall. There are all sorts of iterations of lighting made into wreaths, decorations and wall trees.
Read MoreWe’ve written about all sorts of practical things made out of copper pipe and tubing from room dividers to tables.The copper lighting we’ve posted has been simple, with one or two bends NOT the wonderfully freeform tangles of artist Anna Fasshauer’s light sculptures. Which seem, possibly, diy-able.
Read MoreAbout the time we spotted Nadia el-Khoury’s chic, underlighted, slipcovered chairs in The New York Times Magazine, we saw this simple bed lit from underneath on poet Ocean Vuong’s tumblr.
Read MoreOn the heels of our post about Staging a Summer Party with Modest Means, frequent contributor Susan Dworski sent this email about Shoji Solar Lanterns, an essential, inexpensive, mood-enhancing element that are, in her words “Pretty damned lunar at night”: Ironically, I just replaced my tattered red Shoji solars yesterday with the familiar bluebird ones. They are…
Read MoreJapanese design studio YOY’s beautifully minimal lamp shade made out of a single sheet of paper made us realize that we could make it or other PAPER shade iterations now that we we’ve found a bright, pleasing bright LED bulb. Since LEDs don’t get hot like incandescent bulbs, we can fashion shades out of paper without danger of fire.
Read MoreThere are a lot of things we like about this interior but this crazy tall, fabulously orange lampshade takes the cake for completely shifting our view of lampshade possibilities. It makes us wonder why most lampshades are so ordinary. We are hard-pressed to find a ready-made shade like this BUT know that the reliable Just Shades…
Read MoreAfter a great deal of testing, and disappointment, we’re happy to say we’ve FINALLY found an LED bulb we can live with; with pleasing, BRIGHT incandescent-quality light.
Read More(Video link HERE.) Just as we were writing out post decrying the ubiquitous pendant lamp, Susan Dworski sent us this charmer of a short film. Sparked, a collaboration between Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich and Verity Studios creates an unexpected dance between a human and 10 quadcopters (drones). It’s a bit slow until 1:41 when the magical…
Read MoreWhen we were designing the kitchen for the laboratory, we wired the ceiling above the island expecting to hang two or three pendant lamps. But when we got to selecting them, we realized we dislike pendant lamps for the way they seem to intrude in the space, and because of the sameness of the look we…
Read MoreAfter Holton Rower emailed this photo of a car festooned with christmas lights, we wondered if we’d find more iterations of this unusual holiday decoration. Sure enough, we found all manner of vehicles decorated for the holiday,
Read MoreInspired by Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde created a wondrous solar-powered LED bicycle path that glows luminous green in the dark. The path, which has been likened to a “river of stars, fallen down ‘Starry Night’”, is located in Brabant, the county where the painter was raised. How wonderful it would be as…
Read MoreAfter Remodelista touted the virtues of the vin ordinaire hardware store porcelain light socket, we were reminded of the one that ended up on our wall during the Laboratory’s renovation. Overwhelmed by the all the details we needed to get together to make the space livable, we improvised, adorning it with lighting designer David Weeks’ clever,…
Read More“Sensual wave“, an art installation by French architects Marion Moustey and Alexandre Arcens, gave us ideas for late summer-fall gardens lit with Soji Solar Lantern. Susan Dworski first posted about the wondrous, inexpensive solar shoji lights she festooned her garden with. “Sensual Wave” takes her idea a step further.
Read MoreI’ve been yearning for shadows since June 21st when the world took a tumble towards autumn, trailing crayon-bright, midsummer color and loud solstice revels. Parched by the bleached Scandinavian cottages and austere, no-tint white rooms that are everywhere online, I’m craving soothing darkness and a place to sequester in silence. This stark, in-your-face, white duvet bedroom suddenly hurts my eyes…and…
Read MoreSpotted in a house tour at Desire to Inspire: one swell idea. Want to add some moderne architectural interest to a prewar room? Hang a giant Noguchi-esque paper shade. We’re talking BIG: 36-inch or 42-inch in diameter We like the Maru white paper lantern available at Shoji Decor. They also sell single cord lantern kits for…
Read MoreEarly on in planning the Laboratory renovation, we started thinking of ceiling lights. Since the ceiling was only eight-feet-high, we were trying everything we could to give the illusion that they were higher, achieved mostly by replacing the squat doors with tall ones that created floor-to-ceiling vertical lines that made the ceilings appear higher. In…
Read MoreMany modern spaces, including our own Laboratory, suffer from having so many right angles, rectangles, linearity, that they can be a bit harsh. The simple solution is to shake them up with rounds, patterns, art. We love the solution in this image found at Bohemian Homes:
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