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Hive
First to recommend
2 people recommended this item
Description
For the best in modern furniture, lighting, and accessories, no one does it much better than Hive. Since 2002 the retailer has been a de-facto internet source for modern classics by Alessi, Artemide, Artifort, Cassina, Flos, Kartell, Knoll & Vitra, to name a few. With several hundred items in stock, even browsing the site one can get visually inspired and stimulated. Here one can find modern classics such as the Barcelona Chair, to lesser-known originals as Verner Panton's Living Tower. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 14, 2006
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Wolf
First to recommend
2 people recommended this item
Description
Imagine a stove that doesn’t require electrical elements or gas but instead operates by way of iron and steel pans; which cooks better than petroleum, and heats quicker than any other stove on the market. No dream actually. This is Wolf’s new induction cooktop.
The technological method is kind of like rubbing two sticks together. When an iron or magnetic steel pan is placed on the burner, electricity passes through the cooktop coils beneath the surface to produce a magnetic field. Molecules in the pan then vibrate at high frequencies, thus creating friction and instant heat in the pan, not on the stovetop. In the end, 55 percent of the energy that would escape in typical electric and gas cooktops is saved. Additionally, the pan heats more quickly than with conventional tops, and the burner immediately shuts off when the cookware is removed, again avoiding energy waste.
This seemingly ideal stove, which also prevents burns, has been widely used in Europe for a number of years. Now American companies are picking up on induction cooking, possibly due to the skyrocketing demand for green products, and Wolf is one of the first. According to a statement from the company, “induction seems to be popping up everywhere; but it isn’t about creating a trend, it is about looking at energy conservation, and this is what we pride ourselves on.” (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 13, 2006
David Hicks
First to recommend
Description
Pop quiz. Was this London living room completed yesterday or 35 years ago? Look carefully: oversized geometric–pattern carpet, a boldly modern sofa covered in raw silk and flanked by Empire bookcases, and a plain sheet of mirror topping a Regency fireplace mantel.
If you chose 1971, go to the head of the class. This was just one of innumerable spaces designed by David Hicks (1929–1998), arguably the most influential designer of his generation. Hicks was one of the first to create deliberately photogenic rooms. No wonder his client list included equally close-up–ready clients such as John Schlesinger, Helena Rubinstein, Vidal Sassoon and the Prince of Wales.
Indeed, Hicks’s dynamic mix of antique and modern pieces has a deceptively contemporary ring. Designers including Jonathan Adler, Kelly Wearstler, Muriel Brandolini and Tom Ford—young guns who learned his coveted look pouring over the 11 books Hicks authored in his lifetime—have adopted his signature style. Hicks’s second coming is due partly to the work of his son, Ashley Hicks, who designs new collections of carpet and fabric inspired by his father’s designs for Lee Jofa and Saxony Carpet. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 13, 2006
Circa Lighting
First to recommend
Description
New York–based architect-turned-designer Glenn Gissler is a traditionalist who likes to throw in a splash of modern to keep things interesting, which is why he heads to circalighting.com when he’s looking for lighting solutions. The website of a company with stores in Savannah, Atlanta, Charleston and Houston, circalighting.com appeals to Gissler for its vast inventory and wide range of styles, and the knowledgeable staff required to navigate through both. Looking for an eighteenth-century-style lantern or a Deco-ish table lamp? You’re in the right corner of cyberspace. “The site allows me to solve lighting dilemmas quickly, efficiently and inexpensively, especially for projects where the budget is a challenge,” says the designer. “The quality is good, and many of the designs are quite thoughtful and well proportioned, with simple, strong detailing.”
Gissler’s choices from circalighting.com have landed in projects including a small powder room (it called for a Star Flush Mount); a long hallway in a traditional Jersey shore summer house (it’s lit by an Edwardian Single Pendant) and a number of clients’ bookcases (they get Dorchester 18-inch fixtures; Gissler has a strong aversion to recessed lighting). The website offers clients individualized assistance, via email or phone, in finding the right lighting for the effect and feel they are looking for. And the collection categorizes lamps and light according to their placement in a house—wall, floor, table, ceiling, or exterior—so it’s easy to zero in on a particular need. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Design Within Reach
First to recommend
2 people recommended this item
Description
Joel Mozersky’s transformation of an empty warehouse in downtown Austin into the latest set for MTV’s <i>Real World</i> required nothing less than the ability to turn on a dime. He immediately turned to dwr.com, the website for the catalog and retail store Design Within Reach. “The project was time sensitive in the extreme,” says the local Texas designer, “and I knew that dwr.com would have the modern, really interesting pieces I needed, in stock and ready to ship.” Mozersky’s confidence was well placed: Three weeks after he presented his ideas to MTV, the fully furnished spaces were ready for the cameras to roll on the sixteenth season of the popular reality show.
“Prior to DWR, you would either have to have access to trade-only merchants or order retail and wait up to twelve weeks,” says Jordan Benjamin, a manager at Design Within Reach, which features such classic design names as Ray and Charles Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, George Nelson and Marcel Breuer. Luckily for Mozersky and other modern-furniture lovers, DWR’s business model is borrowed from Europe, says founder Rob Forbes, where “furniture design is taken more seriously and the public has greater access to well-designed products.” With DWR, that concept has come across the Atlantic and, now, straight into the heart of Texas. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Niche Modern
First to recommend
2 people recommended this item
Description
The art of lighting first inspired Jeremy Pyles as a photography student. “I learned that you can make or destroy an object with light,” he says. Ten years later, Pyles, cofounder of Niche Modern, creates the illuminating objects that make spaces exquisite. The company’s eight pendants, as well as its Trumpette table lamp, can be ordered on Niche’s website, where precisely shot images show off each piece’s warm modernism, text conveys the inspiration behind the merchandise and web surfers get to choose the color of their purchases. Just one forewarning: Part of the appeal of these hand-blown glass lighting fixtures is the uniqueness of hand-blowing, so what you see online is not exactly what you get. (via Elements of Living)
Updated May 26, 2006
The Soniat House
First to recommend
Description
Zip code by zip code, the merchants of New Orleans are returning to the Big unEasy. Amazingly, the antiques district, which lies in the city’s highest elevation, sustained no flooding, no damage and, by and large, no looting. “People were looting who were hungry and thirsty,” says Rodney Smith, owner of Soniat House Antiques Galleries in the French Quarter, who was on a buying trip in Paris when Katrina struck. Fortunately, his inventory and staff are both safe, as he explained by telephone from his Paris flat.
Smith is the leading dealer for painted French antiques in New Orleans, and even now, in the aftermath of the hurricane, he can’t stop selling. His first sale after Katrina—an early- eighteenth-century painted tray—came from a dealer who had ordered from his website after having visited his gallery. But soniatantiques.com is as popular among designers who have never been to New Orleans as to those who have.
Until she discovered Smith’s virtual shop, Laurie Steichen, a Los Angeles designer and lover of eighteenth-century French antiques, found working in contemporary-leaning Southern California frustrating, to say the least. A Louis XVI sofa shown on Soniat House’s website satisfied her recent quest for the right piece to round out the sitting room of an art collector. “The finish had the perfect amount of worn gilt, and the carving on the legs was meticulous,” says Steichen. “And it was photographed meticulously from every angle. If Soniat carries it, you know it’s going to be very special.”
Soniat will be open again for business by mid-October, says Smith, and will start shipping in November (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Rugman.com
First to recommend
Description
Kashmar persian, Indo-Tibetan, Gabbeh tribal. Rugman.com features more than 12,000 examples of braided, fringed and weft-faced woven floor coverings representing a full range of traditional and modern styles and construction techniques. Besides its meticulous attention to detailing a product’s features, the site includes a visualization tool for consumers to better understand how a potential purchase would show against slate, marble, wood or other materials. Presenting multiple flooring options is just one advantage the seven-year-old website has over bricks-and-mortar shops. The other? As much as an 80 percent discount off full retail. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 12, 2006
Lyric Tile Company
First to recommend
Description
In the Philippines, says Sarah Cox, "shells provide a real livelihood. Locals will dive for the shells, eat the animals and then use the discarded shells to make all sorts of things." Once small factory transforms them into dazzling, if delicate, mosaic accent tiles that Cox sells, through her company, Lyric Tile. The tile colors are in the natural range and come in a variety of patterns including checkerboard, herringbone and hexagonal, which further enhance the iridescence of the tiles. Lyric Tile also carries a line of semi-precious gemstone tiles. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 10, 2006
Zuzu's Petals
First to recommend
Description
Leah Holman shapes the sinuous metal frames of each of Zuzu’s Petals chandeliers in a rural workshop outside Seattle. She outlines each curve with a succession of sparkles drawn from her trove of antique European, Czech and Austrian crystals, rosettes and beads. The creations are frothy, delicate and delightful. (via Elements of Living)
Updated Apr 6, 2006
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