The Italian design firm Sawaya & Moroni often commissions new furniture pieces by guest designers who are primarily artists or architects. Many design firms follow this strategy, but for some reason most of the really original design commissions come out of Sawaya & Moroni. I’m not sure why. I’m not a fan of all their work (especially the Zaha Hadid benches), but they take chances. What I find interesting about these two pieces in particular is that they’re tipping over into the realm of art and fantasy, or even the weird, without seeming jokey or childish (like Karim Rashid or Alessi) or too arch. Above is by Marcello Morandini, Italian designer and architect, Chair, 1991, from here. Below is “Sit-Sat” by artist/architect Massimiliano Fuksas (video here) with Doriana Mandrelli, who works for Alessi. I’m really not a fan of Alessi, but nearly 20 years later this object still seems quite arresting. I wouldn’t want either of these at home, but I’d like to see them in a public space.

“Sit-Sat” is a giant seating sculpture made of painted multilayered plywood. Photo from dezeen. “The piece “invites you to find new ways of sitting,” according to Sawaya & Moroni, who compare it to an ancient eroded rock, sacred Aboriginal mountains and Dogun earth dwellings.”

This disassemblable spiral staircase by French industrial designer Roger Tallon is, not surprisingly, in the design collection of the MOMA. It’s both industrially ingenious and ridiculously beautiful. Tallon is one of those wildly prolific versatile designers responsible for a diverse variety of projects. Among many other things these include the Wimpy chair, cutlery, TVs, sinks, France’s streamlined TVG high speed train, and more recently he was the design director for the Eurostar trains. Yet oddly he’s not all that well-known outside France – for example there’s no Wikipedia entry for him in English, which is strange considering his work. How does that happen? This 1964 staircase, officially called the model M400 adjustable helicoid spiral staircase, has a central steel column on which ten cast aluminum steps, one wide landing stair and spacers, are strung. The M400 is still being made, and if you are sitting on a lot of disposable income you can have one. The top image of the staircase is a recent photo by an auction house, and shows an after-the-fact hand rail. The staircase comes with no rail so there were many interesting custom made solutions to the rail problem, not usually as nice as this one. I recently found photos of the staircase as installed in a modernized 60s room in an old Paris house, below, in the 1973 decor book 1601 Decorating Ideas for Modern Living. Closeup photo via stairporn (others here, and see other stairs from stairporn here).

Linda and John Meyers of Wary Meyers Decorative Arts assemble these mod, chic, distinctly 1960s and 70s interiors almost entirely from furniture and objects they find in thrift and vintage sales. They’ve produced some great interior design projects for clients but shown here is their own house in Portland, Maine, which is by now quite well-known. I’m showing it rather than their other excellent projects because here they’re free to be the wildest and the most purely 60s. Their entertaining new blog documents their peripatetic treasure-hunt in what amounts to a decor road movie (photos at bottom are from the blog). There’s something really unerring about their  creative re-use and re-work of the past, their re-introduction of the 60s with its emphasis on pleasure and experience and its occasional psychedelia, and just generally their sense of adventure and adept historical juxtaposition. Much of their material is actually early modernist to midcentury modernist but the ultimate effect is the specific risk-taking quality of the post-50s era. I wish there were more members of this particular design army but it’s gratifying to see that their work is getting plenty of recognition. See the article in the NYT (or click below to read the text). 

Below, from the blog: 

Still life with Dansk salt and pepper shakers.

Above, “Linda walking toward disappointment.” Below, their post says “This worn old Le Corbusier Basculant chair was at a middle school’s sale on Saturday amidst piles of shin guards and Harry Potter books.” Further below, Gerald Thurston lamp. Photo at bottom is just captioned “dreamhouse.”

Lastly, “Waffles grabbed a bee.”

(more…)

Joe Colombo, 1930 – 1971, a prolific Italian architect, designer, artist and filmmaker, produced a substantial, instantly recognizable body of work before dying far too young at 41. 60s space age design owes much of its look to Colombo, who seemed to innately understand the capabilities of new injected molded plastics and other contemporary materials and who innovated with them to explore ergonomics and a kind of  space age psychedelia. The Tube Chair above, like many of his pieces, is an art object as well as furniture. The small selection of his work below is from Flickr.

This tiny sample of photos is from the new website of Vancouver interior designer April Tidey. They include shots of her own amazing loft in Gastown, one of Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods. April is a landscape and outdoor designer as well, and in that capacity she worked as designer and stylist for the HGTV series “Take It Outside” for several years. Photographs here show great interiors by April in Vancouver and on nearby islands. Photos by Vancouver photographer Heather Ross.

This almost surreal Polished Steel Coffee Table by Italian architect and designer Gabriella Crespi looks like a metal crystal formation of some kind. Ca. 1970s. Very beautiful, and also multifunctional. The staggered leaves are retractable, as you can see, and it’s covered with a mirror-finish steel. It’s unfortunate that Crespi’s work never went into mass production – she did a lot of custom work – and that she eventually pulled away from design altogether. Read her bio by clicking below, via Todd Merrell Antiques. If I could have anything on his website, and I like most of it, it would probably be this.

(more…)