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Boffi Los Angeles
First to recommend
Description
When it comes to clean, timeless Italian design, nothing compares to Boffi Los Angeles. “I incorporate Boffi products into my designs because they are unique,” says Arizona-based architect Peter Magee. “When I first saw their Po tub, it blew my mind. It took me two months to track it down—and after it was delivered, I saw that the pictures didn’t do it justice.” Named after Italy’s Po River, this gorgeously simple tub is carved out of pure limestone and weighs an awesome 1984 pounds. It usually has to be delivered by forklift—but it would be the center of attention no matter how it arrived. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Flos
2 people recommended this item
Description
One of my favorite lighting fixtures is Flos' classic Parentesi lamp. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Jun 14, 2006
Orange Skin
First to recommend
Description
Wrapping up a recent project for the offices of Invisalign, Chicago-based architect James Papoutsis didn’t have to look far for the finishing touch: The local pros at Italian-design-crazy Orange Skin had just what he needed. White lounge chairs and Philippe Starck’s clear plastic Ero[s] seats made the offices clean and spare, adding a subtly stylish nod to its functional, transparent product: contact lenses. Even Papoutsis was impressed. "Orange Skin’s owners and operators, Giuseppe Cerasoli and Obi Nwazota, are two accomplished designers who are able to understand the particular language of my projects," he says. "They are able to make informed recommendations, saving me endless amounts of time. It’s like having my own personal design department." Striking contemporary Italian furniture and modern design objects can also be seen on the company’s website. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Design Public
First to recommend
3 people recommended this item
Description
When “design nuts” Drew Sanocki and Sina Djafar launched Edge Modern, a Web-based company dedicated to modern furnishings and bedding, their well-edited offerings quickly won the attention of modernist design devotees like Sherry Black. “I was trying to track down a specific rug for a restaurant client and I needed it in short order,” says the Wilmington, NC, interior designer, who discovered Edge Modern during her search. “After one conversation with Drew and Sina—and no luck with the rug—I trusted them to help me choose another one, which turned out to be perfect.”
Now the pair are flinging open the “doors” of their cyber store to hold an ongoing design town meeting. The expanded and renamed site, www.designpublic.com, will continue to offer selections from both well-known design sources (Blu Dot, Dwell, Angela Adams) and lesser-known ones (Variegated, John Kelly Furniture). But users can also click their way into forums, photo galleries, chats with guest designers, blogs on new products and primers demystifying such subjects as thread counts. “I want the site to be as interactive as possible, one where customers can share information, opinions and resources with one another,” says Sanocki, who has been known to direct clients away from his site and to Ikea for certain products. This kind of openness may explain why Sherry Black and other designers and architects plan to keep up with the ongoing designpublic.com conversation. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Contemporary Cloth
First to recommend
Description
As a child, Sondra Borrie spent hours watching her aunt, New York abstract expressionist painter Margaret Milliken (above), apply oils to canvas. “I was just mesmerized by her work,” Borrie recalls. But her admiration didn’t stop with her aunt. “Being around her opened my eyes to abstract art and contemporary design,” says the former occupational therapist who, after struggling to find the right retro fabrics for her own design projects, launched Contemporary Cloth.com, a Cleveland-based website, in 2001. The site reflects Borrie’s love for mid-century-modern textiles and features a selection of striking but affordable fabrics for upholstered pieces—a welcome source now that the designs of the 1950s and ’60s have taken off, with the soaring prices to prove it.
When visiting Contemporary Cloth, head for the Interior Design Textiles section, where you can choose from an assortment of medium- to heavy-weight retro fabrics. For help with selecting patterns and colors, click on Continue Shopping after fabrics have been placed in your cart and go to the Interactive Design Wall, a handy tool for mixing and matching digital swatches. When done, you can feel virtuous about virtually shopping here: Borrie donates 1 percent of her profits to a local homeless shelter. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
www.1stdibs.com
First to recommend
2 people recommended this item
Description
When planning the guest bedroom for the owners of a log-and-stone home in the Colorado Rockies, Vail-based designer Melissa Greenauer wanted to create a cozy seating area where visitors could relax, read and soak up the spectacular mountain views. She turned—as she often does—to 1stdibs.com, a designer’s dream resource of antique- and contemporary-furniture dealers in markets from Paris to Los Angeles. Launched by Web entrepreneur Michael Bruno in 2001, the site features seating, lighting, tables, mirrors and other furnishings that are high-end and unique, says Greenauer. Prices are negotiable, she adds, and most designers purchase directly from dealers. For her clients’ guest bedroom, she found two Art Deco chairs with soft rolled arms, a pair of Murano glass sconces and pendant fixtures that lend the space the warm, inviting look she was after. Visitors to the jam-packed site can search for furnishings by city, country of origin, century, dealer, category, designer or price, then store items for purchase in a virtual stockroom. New items are posted every Wednesday. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
The Brass Knob
First to recommend
Description
“I recently restored two mantels I found at the Brass Knob, and underneath years of paint, there were two bisque angels and an incredible amount of detail,” says Washington, DC, interior designer Beth Peacock. “It’s impossible to find that kind of artisanship in new pieces today.” Peacock relies on the DC shop—and its 9,000-square-foot sister, The Brass Knob Back Doors Warehouse—for many of the projects she oversees, including a recently completed renovation on Capitol Hill for which she tapped the store for five fireplace mantels, not to mention lighting fixtures, door knobs and other hardware for nearly every room in the house.
Those of us outside, or even way outside, the Beltway can go online to view roughly 60 percent of the Brass Knob’s store inventory of architectural antiques. The Web catalog includes hardware, several types of lighting, decorative tiles, ironwork, columns, bath fixtures and stained glass, among other categories—items that date mostly from the mid-1800s through the 1930s. Owners Donetta George and Ron Allan—who Peacock says “could not be more knowledgeable or helpful”—are happy to answer questions, provide detailed digital photographs and ship anywhere. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Family Heirloom Weavers
First to recommend
Description
Antique fabrics were made of all-natural materials: silk, cotton, hemp and wool. And it’s because of those moths, and the ruinous effects of water, rot and sunlight, that relatively few survive. Even fewer are actually usable, and those that are lie quietly in museum-storage drawers: cool, away from the light, and archived for textile scholars. That’s why, if you’re designing a bedroom with a linsey-woolsey coverlet in mind (especially one with your or your client’s name in the corner), you shouldn’t expect to find one on eBay or at a local tag sale. But you can find it at neighborly firms like Family Heir-loom Weavers, who’ll make it right in their workshop in Red Lion, PA. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Thistle Hill Weavers
First to recommend
Description
If the only thing for the kitchen seems to be curtains in the eighteenth-century plain-weave, unglazed worsted called camlet, Thistle Hill Weavers in upstate New York know what it is and how to make it. Lovers of the formal can carefully carry their faded shreds of Versailles-era silk to Scalamandré in Manhattan for perfect copies, or even send a picture of the original, though this old, family-owned firm is also happy to re-create the velvet of Scarlett O’Hara’s (and Carol Burnett’s) Tara-drapery dress. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Charles Rupert
First to recommend
Description
The colors of early wools, silks and cottons were, naturally, limited to the vegetable and other dyes available at the time, and many of today’s re-creators of old textiles prefer to offer those old hues. This means that if you want to hide a TV set under a baize cloth (the way they once covered dining room tables and budgies), you might be limited to the very few colors once used. Charles Rupert, for example, which also sells reproductions of William Morris and Voysey prints, imports traditional baize from England and has it in the traditional dark green (think billiard tables), burgundy, navy and red. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
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