By Cory Doctorow at 1:00 pm Thursday, May 24
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Sculptor Jim Rosenau's "Reading Chair" is a 6" high piece made from volumes from an old Funk & Wagnall's and some blunt pencils. It's the perfect chair for a bookish gnome. I've featured Jim's work here before.
Reading Chair
(via Bookshelf)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:00 pm Wednesday, May 23
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Etsy seller FaustX2 made this Star Wars fig display table out of printing-press trays and other salvage items, topped with tempered glass.
This mixed media custom coffee table was made from reworked vintage printing press trays and a pair of vintage steel dock pallets. The interior display area is populated with a broad survey of Storm Troopers, Clone Troopers and other Imperial officers and droids from the various eras of Star Wars mythology. The pallets have been left rusted and all woodwork has been kept rough in keeping with the industrial style of the piece and are bound together with black steel wire. For a more modern look the pallets/base could be ground to a shiny steel finish depending on environment. The table top is 3/8" thick tempered glass and can be easily removed to rearrange the display area below. The table is very heavy (close to 100lbs) due to the steel pallets but felt sliders have been mounted on the bottom for easy movement on hard floors. Shipping is at cost in North America via Fedex ($500 due to weight and size).
Star Wars Coffee Table
(via IZ Reloaded)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:43 am Tuesday, May 22
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Budapest designer Petra Nikoletti bought eight Ikea Forsa lamps and a salad bowl and had a locksmith precision fit them into a "spider lamp": "I bought 8 Ikea FORSÅ table lamp, and only used the arms and the heads. A custom-made cylinder is holding them and a Blanda Blank Serving Bowl (20 cm, painted black) is hiding the wires. A black hollow shaft is connecting the lamp to the ceiling, the cover at the end is also a Blanda Blank, but the smallest one."
I'm a bit confused about the locksmith part -- is that a translation error, or are locksmiths really an untapped source of high-quality machining and enamelling?
Spider lamp from FORSÅ
By Cory Doctorow at 9:19 am Monday, May 14
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I wandered into a temporary showroom for Trainspotters in London this weekend; they're a retailer specializing in salvaged industrial lighting, with a lot of crazy, chunk ex-Soviet numbers. Looks like you have to buy direct from them by phone, and the prices weren't low, but I'm still cleaning drool out of my shirt from my brief visit. Lovely stuff.
Welcome to Trainspotters, specialist dealers in reclaimed industrial lighting, decorative salvage and interiors. We are based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where we hold a large stock of industrial and period lighting, salvaged vintage fixtures and 20thC reclamation, from the UK and the former Eastern Bloc. We specialise in sourcing large runs and quantities of retro lighting, making us an unparalleled resource for larger scale commercial projects such as pubs, bars, clubs, shops, restaurants and public spaces. This website is our catalogue and we aim to get all new stock online as soon as it comes into us – we hope you enjoy browsing the site.
Industrial Lighting & Salvage Specialists
By Cory Doctorow at 12:34 pm Sunday, May 13
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For $110, Etsy seller JamesBit will custom-paint a Zelda-themed faux fire to size for display in your decorative fireplace.
Zelda Fireplace Art
(via Wil Wheaton)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:00 pm Tuesday, May 8
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Nicola Schiavone is the recently jailed Camorra mafioso. His Naples home was photographed by the Italian tax police who raided it. It's quite an eyefull of Mafia-chic strangeness. The Guardian has the story.
Criminal? Italian mafia interior tastes exposed - in pictures
By Cory Doctorow at 3:14 pm Monday, May 7
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Chow rounds up some delicious alternative uses for waffle-irons, ice-cream makers, and slow cookers. The criteria are: "(1) the food should taste as good or better than when made in the conventional manner, (2) the cooking time should be equal to or shorter than normal, and (3) the method should use the appliance in a way that’s totally different from what it’s known for." They were a lot more thorough with the waffle-iron than the other two (muffins, brownies, and hash browns), though slow-cooker souffle sounds lovely.
Soufflé
To make this Smoked Cheddar Soufflé in a slow cooker, start by filling a small saucepan with water and bringing it to a boil over high heat. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and let the water simmer while you prepare the soufflé. Follow steps 1 through 5 of the recipe, without preheating the baking sheet.
Once the soufflé is ready, pour about 2 cups of the simmering water into the slow cooker and place the soufflé dish in the water (the water should come a third to halfway up the sides of the dish). Cover the slow cooker and cook the soufflé on high until it has puffed and is set in the middle, about one hour and forty-five minutes.
Common Appliances, Uncommon Uses - Feature - Food News - CHOW
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:55 am Monday, May 7
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The UnWaste Bookcase was jointly created by Ben Milbourne, Leyla Acaroglu and David Waterworth to act as a loft apartment room-divider that could be opened and spun completely around, depending on the needs of the residents. It's a very clever solution:
A split-level open plan warehouse conversion in Melbourne’s CBD needed a flexible solution to divide the open space into 2 rooms, while retaining the option of keeping the larger combined space when needed; an answer that would allow for light and airflow throughout the spaces but also a division between living and sleeping areas. The James Bond inspired solution involves a 4.6 metre high by 3.8m wide rotating library allowing books to be stored and accessed from either side and maximising air-flow and light when needed by simply pushing on the corner to allow for full 360 degree rotation.
Producing the least environmental impact possible was paramount with this project. Conventional ‘virgin’ MDF, Timber or Melamine all came with unacceptable environmental impacts, leading to an impasse that threatened to derail the project. The solution came via the collaboration with David Waterworth who specialises in reclaimed and recycled materials in his designs. Reclaimed plywood from construction site hoardings (the temporary barriers at the edge of construction sites) were sourced and the material’s unique characteristics of posters, weathering, graffiti and mismatched paints was incorporated into the design. The ply was sealed with natural beeswax, and with the construction processes minimising off-cut waste, 30 sheets of plywood were saved from landfill for this project further limiting its environmental impact.
UnWaste Bookcase
(via Bookshelf)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:10 pm Sunday, May 6
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FeLion Studios, an ironmonger with style, has made a set of 48 interlocking "Made in America" skillets, in the shape of each of the continental states. Buy them one at a time or get the whole set (which, admittedly, would probably be a little impractical to store in most kitchens -- it's 500lbs including a maple mounting block).
Exclusively from the den of FeLion Studios, comes the 48 cast iron skillets of the “Made In America” original state-pan art piece. Now available for individual pre-sale, every skillet from the “Made In America” series fits together with the surrounding states, making these items fun to collect and build your own geographic regions of functional skillets !
Enjoy being the life of a party by hamming up your favorite baked and fried delights with state-shaped proportion! FeLion Studio’s cast iron art is a functional example of design concept meeting utility with a fun and social emphasis.
Buy “Made in America” Skillets
By Cory Doctorow at 2:00 pm Friday, May 4
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Maximoriera, creators of the memorable Octopus Chair, have a new offering: an elephant chair. Pretty regal.
Elephant
(via OhGizmo)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:06 pm Friday, May 4
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Andrew writes, "A new designer chair from Andrew Miller at mSurfaces.com uses soap bubble physics to unlock their unique structural advantages. While architects have used the shape of a soap film to provide canopy, as in the 1972 Olympic Stadium by Frei Otto, the chair will be the first built object to support a human's weight with the form. It is the equal distribution of curvature throughout a soap film that makes it so aesthetically pleasing to the eye. However, this formal quality also redistributes the structural forces. If you could harness this property, you could use lightweight and inexpensive materials instead of steel. Imagine multi-story tents able to support the weight of electrical and plumbing lines, swiftly deployable in the aftermath of natural disaster. This chair will demonstrate the proof of concept towards such real-world load-bearing applications. 3-D printed models and renderings of the chair are now available on their Kickstarter page."
Soap Bubble Chair
(Thanks, Andrew!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:47 am Wednesday, Apr 25
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Belgium's Maarten De Ceulaer displayed his knobbly chairs and sofas at Milan's Spazio Rossana Orlandi. The series is called "Mutation."
Each piece in the Mutation series is made from foam spheres, cut so they fit together, attached to a frame and coated in rubber or flocked. De Ceulaer’s work is also on show at the Triennale di Milano and as part of IN Residence at Ventura Lambrate.
Mutation by Maarten De Ceulaer
(via Crib Candy)
(Photo: Nico Neefs)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:00 am Wednesday, Apr 25
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Doorman turned the headboard of his bed into the gang from Mystery Science Theater 3000, ready to critique and ridicule whatever goes on in that bed.
MST3K headboard
(via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:02 pm Saturday, Apr 14
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"Everything is coming up roses" is an electrical sculpture by Robert Weschler: it's a clothes-iron that's been modified to scorch images of the Virgin of Guadalupe into any garment upon which it is rested.
The steam holes of a working iron were re machined to mirror the iconic aura of the Virgin of Guadalupe. When cloth is scorched by the iron an image of the Virgin appears in the burn. The text on the T-shirts (everything is coming up roses) accompanies the burns and refers to the Virgin of Guadelupe's first appearance when she caused roses to grown on a barren hillside for the lone peasant Juan Diego.
Everything is coming up roses
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:41 pm Wednesday, Apr 11
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I'm not entirely clear on how Studio Intussen's "PixelTable" works -- the outer layer of square bamboo pieces appears to be permanently affixed, while the interior rows simply rest on one another. When you insert an object into one side, it pushes out the wooden pieces on the other side, making little table-like extrusions. I can't decide if this would be an endlessly delightful fidget-object, or instantly tedious.
PixelTable (via OhGizmo)
