Design, Products
November 18, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
What does the Los Angeles County Museum of Art do when they need a vintage Eames Hang it All for their California Design: Living in A Modern Way exhibition? Head straight to Daniel Ostroff, editor of EamesDesigns.com, Hollywood producer and design scholar, who sources not only a vintage piece but finds it in its original box. LACMA’s request didn’t come out of the blue - in the past year San Francisco’s MOMA, Yale and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have consulted with Ostroff for design scholarship.
“When LACMA announced that they were doing a California design exhibition which overlapped with my area of focus in studying applied art I looked for ways to assist the show’s curators – my friends Wendy Kaplan, Bobbye Tigerman and Bill Stern,” says Ostroff. “With regard to Eames designs I appreciated how selective they were. They had already sourced an Eames surfboard coffee table from Joel and Margaret Chen who have been generous supporters and donors to LACMA at a very high level.”
The Chen’s Collecting Eames show which we wrote about here on Lifework is another Pacific Standard Time exhibition – this time devoted entirely to Ray and Charles Eames’ extraordinary body of work. It was the Chen’s who had the Hang It All in their extensive collection. “Connecting Bobbye and Wendy and Bill with Joel Chen was easy – we all know one another.”
Chen let the LACMA curators choose and they picked the one in the original box from the first year of production. “It is the only precisely dated example because it comes with its original box postmarked first year of production,” says Ostroff. “Plus the Eames Office designed the box and label. This is “new old stock” as the original buyer never used it.”
Photo credit: Box images by Grant Taylor
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
November 18, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Seachinstagram liberates all those amazing images from the popular iPhone app. You can access them from your computer and they are searchable. Genius. I found lots of great shots of Herman Miller furniture including this shot of an Eames wire based side table and giant lego head. Via swissmiss.
2. Architectural Record for their review of 5 exhibitions that are part of Pacific Standard Time in Los Angeles – a celebration of art and design that includes the Eames house living room recreated at LACMA.
3. Contemporist for their post on Pupa – a fascinating office within an office.
4. Daily Tonic covered the wonderful Sapphire Gallery (above) by XTEn Architecture.
5. Homebodies for letting us into Philip Lopate’s world of books (above).
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Design, Products
November 17, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
These aren’t the virtual kind of desktop accessories we often write about. Here are three ways to organize your real desktop.
Desk Accessories in Ash by Farrah Sit. “Own less and own well,” writes Sit on the Etsy site she shares with Dana D’Amico. She and D’Amico met in 2005 when they both designed for Calvin Klein Home. We couldn’t agree more with that sentiment.
Pratt Wall Accessories Set is a collaboration between students at Pratt Institute’s School of Art and Design and retailer West Elm. It’s a nice clean simple design that’s also hard-working.
Zen Garden desk organizer by Dublin-based Karolin Felix. An elegant little garden on your desktop that also keeps your pens organized.
Design, Technology
November 17, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
A few weeks back unplggd’s editor Gregory Han was invited to answer the following questions: What defines a workspace and what technologies do I find impressive today? One of our favourite bloggers, Design Milk, posed these questions to a panel composed of designers, artists, creatives, and yours truly, including Joey Roth of ceramic speakers, the always impeccable design spotter Tina Roth Eisenberg of swissmiss, Gretchen Jones, fashion designer and winner of ModKat, the most stylish litterboxes out there.
• Check out the full post over at DEFINING THE DESIGNER WORKSPACE.
This story appears in partnership with Unplggd, a site for people who embrace technology and design in their home.
Balance, Design, Technology
November 16, 2011
By Amy Feezor
In this week’s Playlist, I wanted to turn the spotlight on Lifework‘s fearless leader (and my editor) Cerentha Harris. We’ve been working with each other for a while now, but always from opposite coasts–and I often wonder what it would be like if we were creating this blog together in the same workspace. At least now I can get a taste of what it would sound like. Take a listen to her music mix below.
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Balance, Technology
November 15, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Depending on what kind of a user you are, you might use or ignore the widgets on your Dashboard. Lion has made them easier to access, thanks to a swipe gesture, but what widgets will serve you best? Anyone working from home will appreciate this round up.
1. PEMDAS Scientific Calculator: This calculator widget has won an Apple Design award, and it’s quite easy to use. There’s an equation history view, and you can switch between degrees and radians. It’s a step up from the calculator included with OS X and will serve when you need to crunch numbers.
2. iStat Nano: This little widget (above) allows you to check up the stats of your Mac, including CPU and memory usage, hard drive space, bandwith usage, fan speeds and temperatures, thanks to animated menus and transitions. If it’s not enough, you can upgrade for free to the iStat Pro.
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Balance, Design, Products
November 15, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Wim Crouwel is a renowned Dutch graphic designer who created the cover of April’s Wallpaper magazine. The cover coincided with a retrospective of the designer’s work at London’s Design Museum and the image below, of Crouwel in his book-lined home office reclining in an Eames Lounge Chair, accompanied the story.
“The connection between Charles and Ray Eames and renowned Dutch graphic designer isn’t related to furniture, even though in this picture Crouel is sitting on an Eames 670. I found the connection here, in an on-line biography of Mr. Crouwel’s work. ‘Although his ideas were Bauhaus-related, unlike many Crouwel was not a dogmatist. He was fascinated by the ideas about serial and mass production, as he stated ‘we need the machine since we have no time.’ But he also believed ‘the machine cannot replace the precision of the human eye and human feeling.’ Crouwel’s work has always consisted of these two essential elements: the emotional aspect and the rational one.’ That’s also a good way to describe the work of Charles and Ray, who always attended to the human element, and who brought ample craftsmanship to their industrially produced designs. Another connection – Charles and Ray always made clear that they were not ‘ists.’ Their work addressed needs, not abstract principles.”
Daniel Ostroff, editor, EamesDesigns.com
Balance, Design, Products
November 14, 2011
By Amy Feezor
1. Soft Pale Beige Hexagon Shelf, $40.00 Made from reclaimed pinewood, this shelf can appear pale grey, warm beige, or pale pink depending on your room’s lighting. Get it: Junglai
2. Worther Woody Mechanical Pencil, $14.00 Designers, artists, and engineers favor this writing instrument’s comfortable (and ergonomic) hexagonal shape. Get it: Canoe
3. Hex Paperweight, $26.00 Bring cool graphic simplicity to your workspace with this design from Seattle studio Iacoli & McAlister. Get it: The Ghostly Store
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Balance, Design
November 14, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
When I first wrote about Tham & Videgård’s glass treehouse it got 911 comments and a couple of million pageviews, so many that TreeHugger completely crashed. Once built, it turned out to be truly a thing of beauty. Now you can own your own Mirrorcube; the TreeHotel people have put it up for sale as a prefab.
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Balance, Design, Products, Technology
November 11, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. New York Times for Pilar Viladas’ piece on these vintage Eames Lounge Chairs covered in Maharam fabric. They are on show at Moss in Soho and are the first in a planned series of one-off furniture pieces on which Moss and Maharam will collaborate.
2. Core 77‘s coverage of Toyko’s Design Tide. Spotted this cool concrete pencil by designers Sean Yu and Yiting Cheng.
3. Design Milk‘s post on designer workspaces (above).
4. Baubauhaus for some great workspace inspiration.
5. Home Designing may have an awkward title but there are some good home office images coupled with helpful links.
6. Urbis Magazine for their coverage of the New Zealand architecture scene. There’s some beautiful work coming out of that country. Including this house by architect Thom Craig (above).
7. Write your next To-Do List in crayon … just for a change. These are stick crayons from Shipley & Halmos will do the trick.
8. Inspiring talk from former New York Times design director, Khoi Vinh. Interesting to hear this well-respected creative talk about his process. Via MediaBistro
Khoi Vinh – on the grid from The Color Machine on Vimeo.
9. Rejuvenate your home office with these new “Wallrounds” from Not A Gallery. They are oversized dots of heavy gauge wallpaper.
10. The Decoist covers some great houses including this A-Frame gem from architects dmvA.
