Lost and found

Recently reissued, La Lampe Gras makes its Australian debut at this month's designEx.

Originally created in 1921 by French engineer Bernard-Albin Gras. Production ceased at the outbreak of World War II.



Found via World Interior Design Network's blog.


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Serving it

Jean Prouvé and Jules Leleu
Enameled metal, laminated wood wall-mounted desk from the Sanatorium Martel de Janville
Ateliers Jean Prouve
France, 1936



Yes. I. Am.



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The new

King Bonk chair and footstool by Fredrikson Stallard

The prototype was created not by computer graphics but by being sculpted from upholstery foam using a chainsaw. The King Bonk chair and footstool derives its name from the largest marble in the childhood game of marbles.

A limited edition produced in fiberglass and available in four custom paint colours created by Bentley - black/green, black/cobalt blue, black/gold and black/violet.


Fredrikson Stallard is available through David Gill Galleries


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Liquid silver

Ross Lovegrove's latest project, the Alpine Capsule.

Designed for one-night stays in Piz la Ila of Italy’s Alta Badia region, some 2,100m above sea level. The solar and wind powered 8m-diameter acrylic mirror finished dome will be entirely weather controlled and energy independent. Construction is due to commence in 2010.


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When artists meet craftsmen

Art and Print: The Curwen Story by Alan Powers charts the history of the Curwen Press and its impact on art and design in Britain.



A specimen book of pattern papers designed for and in use at the Curwen Press, 1928



Sunrise at 36,000 ft print by Michael Rothenstein, 1973



Arch print by Howard Hodgkin, 1970-71

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A perfect example of how it is not just about lamps and cushions

In Episode 3 of Top Design, five design teams are asked to create window displays for five different fashion designers. Fairly simple and straight forward. That is, if the designers are able to share a common frame of reference, or at the very least be able to interpret an abstract concept. This is where everything becomes interrelated and relevant.







Blade Runner

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It really is like falling down the rabbit hole

Project Runway US, Season5 Episode1


Project Runway Australia, Season1 Episode1


Project Runway Philippines, Season1 Episode1 Runway Show


Project Catwalk UK, Season 3 Episode 1

Project Runway in all its permutations. Luckily, August is the month that time, and everything else for that matter, forgets. As September presses on it is becoming increasingly difficult to while away the hours here and there. So much more entertaining than the decorating shows. Thankfully, my favourite, Project Runway Australia, concludes next week. The suspense is killing me.

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Do you know what I have been thinking?

A phrase which has been known to strike fear in the hearts of the most stalwart of men. And how I always preface a new scheme for some change or other. Schemes which would either test the patience of Job or gamble our last farthing. Usually, it's both. Luckily this time, aside from we need to move that wall, change those doors, I want a showroom, etc., it's nothing drastic.

I have been thinking that there is something missing. In my quest for a new scent it struck me that it is richness that is missing. Not splendour, that is too superficial, but richness, like that found in old scents. That deep shading of tone that is an amalgam of different layers. Layers that are not necessarily analogous.

Life should be lived in an excessive regal way, not in a comfortable bourgeois way.


Notting Hill, London

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Part 2 : Why are the houses of fashion designers sexier than those of interior designers?

Charlie Rose interviews the supremely elegant Hubert de Givenchy.


Watercolour of the Green Salon, Rue de Grenelle, Paris.


My preference is always for tall bouquets, as here in this spray of ere murus in a vermeil bucket.



The hallway of Le Jonchet, Givenchy's country manor.
Man with a Guitar, a sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz, on a bronze table by Diego Giacometti. Above that hangs a painting by Krouchnik.


Interior of the pool house at Clos Fiorentina, Givenchy's house at Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.

All images from The Givenchy Style




Interview with the very individual Loulou de la Falaise.




Apartment of Albert Hadley, photographed by Fernando Bengochea.

In Christopher Mason's article Master Class (2004), Albert Hadley opines that younger decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious,... They’re looking to do things that have never been done before. And quite often it’s done without authority, without knowledge or a background in taste.

Further, Mr Hadley bemoans the fact that, They’re all doing beige rooms, and wishes that young designers would take more time to educate themselves. As he puts it, It’s all about acquiring a richer vocabulary.


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Part 1 : Why are the houses of fashion designers sexier than those of interior designers?

Decorno asked this question, which I have paraphrased, in her post Saw this book at the store yesterday...

An interesting observation, I thought. As I once was one and now I do the other, I thought I might proffer an answer.

The world of fashion is based on desire. A fearless desire to create a world of idealised beauty from a singular perspective. A perspective which is allowed to manifest itself from season to season demonstrating its varied inspirations.

The rue Cambon apartment of Coco Chanel.



Unfortunately the world of interiors is rooted in the mundane. There is no longer fantasy. Just spaces filled with what is deemed to be fashionable. True daring and style have been exchanged for respectability, acceptance, and accessibility. An inequitable exchange, in my opinion.

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The Devil Wears Prada

While the interiors industry is certainly gentler than the fashion industry, it is governed buy the same principles.
Lumpy nondescript blue sweater or lumpy nondescript blue cushion, it's all the same.

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Batgirl

Pipistrello lamp: designed by the multi-talented Italian designer Gae Aulenti in 1966 for Martinelli Luce, Italy.
An absolute favorite. Thankfully, seldom seen in contemporary use. After all, only a very few are actually that cool.

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Back to basics

Moderne: Fashioning the French Interior
by Sarah Schleuning







Before colour photography in magazines there was the pochoir. Moderne is a catalogue of these sumptuous hand-coloured stencil brochures favoured by French designers of the 1920s. With the likes of Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Pierre Chareau, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Charlotte Perriand, and Eileen Gray represented this really is required reading.

More than two hundred plates, selected by Sarah Schleuning, a curator of the Wolfsonian Museum, and faithfully reproduced to preserve their original color palettes.

Kitschy, kitschy, cool?

Uh, NO.
Nine out of ten times kitsch is simply the last refuge of the dull, desperate to appear interesting.



This is in direct opposition to Peter Ward's Kitsck in sync, which asserts that kitsch is the style-setter's anti-style. In my experience this has only ever been true with a few individuals who were either artists, or, people who viewed themselves as living works of art.


Chinese Girl, by Vladimir Tretchikoff

Vladimir Tretchikoff refused to allow his Chinese Girl to adorn the cover of Ward's book. His work, he maintained, was symbolic realism. And rightly so. After all, Tretchikoff could not be held responsible for his audience's rather limited frame of reference. Instead, Ward chose the work of the French artistic team of Pierre et Gilles for the cover as they cited Tretchikoff as an influence. Which, quite frankly, I do not see.


Pierre et Gilles, Medusa

Neither, Chinese Girl nor Medusa is particularly kitsch. What really separates and further defines the two works is their availability. The work of Pierre et Gilles is produced in the same manner as any fine art photograph and is therefore far less accessible. Tretchikoff' s work on the other hand, as everyone knows, was readily available as inexpensive mass produced reproductions. This, incidentally, made him the most commercially successful artist after Picasso, but gained him none of the aclaim.

Unfortunately many contemporary designers have also opted to travel down this mass produced route for their highly derivative products. Two in particular immediately spring to mind. Time alone will tell. Given the slew of offerings of their goods on ebay, we shan't need to wait long.

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Up, up, up!

Tony Duquette iron stand holding three fiberglass clam shells originally made for the Helis estate. Available from JF Chen

If I were ever to shamelessly steal an idea, this would be it.
It is one thing to have something copied for one's own house, it is an entirely different matter to commercially gain from it.


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And the winner is...

Now, as for the decorator...hmm. Tricky.
Trickier than I thought it would be.
The choices were endless. Mr Albert Hadley would be my first choice. And ultimately, I would hope to grow into the type of person who should hire him. However, at this point in our lives, I have neither the desire nor the inclination to edit out all that is superfluous. So, I shall have to wait until I am that person.

Well, here are my choices and why.

Past:
My first choice would have been Monsieur Henri Samuel, but as I grew up in a house that he had helped with, I felt that would be cheating. So I finally decided on the legendary Mr George Stacey, "who was not meant to be an employee in someone else's decorating firm", to quote Mark Hampton.

Present:
Mrs Ertegun of Mica Ertegun




Year-round Porch Room in Chessy Rayner's Southampton House (MAC II)

Although she eschews trends, believing “that the basic taste never changes,” Mrs Ertegün keeps an eye on innovations in the field. She finds that new products can shape her vision on projects — “a million things in a million different ways”— and she suggests that technological advances “have made it possible to create almost anything imaginable.” Other sources of inspiration are the projects that take her abroad. “It’s nice to go to another country and adapt a client’s tastes to yours and yours to theirs.”
I don't think it would be smooth sailing, but the combination would be dynamic and we certainly would respect each another.

My other choice would be Miss Rose Tarlow






Miss Tarlow is driven not only by her sharp eye but also by her sense that homes are deeply personal. Rooms “may be perfectly designed,” she writes in , The Private House, “yet if they fail to reflect the personalities of the people who live in them, the very essence of intimacy is missing, and this absence is disturbingly visible.” Tarlow, guided first and foremost by her own keen sensibility, is wary of trends. “Everything goes in cycles,” she says, “and so it is with interiors.” What haven’t we seen yet in design? “Something new.”

The only area I can for see us clashing on is a lack of bold pattern. Other than that, I think living in a house done by her would be bliss.

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