April 18, 2011

TRADhome

The combination of a nasty cold + my birthday has kept me from from blogging for the past few days but never fear, I am back!  While I was illin’, I got a chance to check out the latest e-zine, TRADhome and am pleased to report that it is well worth a read.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that they were kind enough to ask me to contribute to a story on fresh takes on Louis XVI chairs, which I will post separately).  That said, I genuinely think this love child from the editors of Lonny and Traditional Home is a winner.  It is chock full of good stories, resources and design – my only beef would be that at 347 pages, it’s a little overwhelming!  Don’t let that deter you, though.  Arm yourself with a big cup of coffee and dig in.  I have pulled out a few highlights below but I am just scratching the surface of this new design tome. First up, I was thrilled to see a piece on Ferrick Mason fabrics and its designers, Brian Ferrick and Alex Mason.  I have been a fan of their fabric for a while now and you can see why (from top, Warfield in orange and blue, Calliandra in green and brown and Criss Cross in orange and brown):
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March 16, 2011

Fornasetti!

As I was trolling through 1stDibs this morning for a screen for a client, I came across these gems by one of my favorite designers, Piero Fornasetti:

Ti amo! For those of you who are not familiar with the man, Fornasetti worked in Milan from 1935 until his death in 1988 and created a look and style all his own, using a range of materials and decoupage to create his tongue-in-cheek, trompe l’oeil masterpieces. Read the rest of this post »
February 16, 2011

Confessions of an E-zine Virgin

OK. I know that a few days ago, I mentioned knowing about some online design mags but what I negelcted to mention is that I had never actually looked at them. Oops! Today I rectified that with a tour through the current issue of Lonny. I had been wary of online publications since my battle with the original Williams Sonoma Home catlogue but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. It took me a while to get used to having to zoom in on the pages and clicking through instead of flipping, but it was well worth the e-learning curve. For those of you who are as leery as I was about the world of online magazines, it costs absolutely nothing to subscribe so jump into the 21st century with me, won’t you?

Right off the bat, their was a fantastic ad for Chairloom (one of my favorite companies):

And one for an extremely cool exhibition at the San Francisco Legion of Honor of an artist named Isabel de Borchgrave who recreates grand couture gowns out of paper. What? There may have to be a trip up north in the near future… The market section is full of great items to incorporate into your design and lists of what’s getting the editors hot and bothered this month. I particularly like the page on color blocks. Go figure.

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