I’m mesmerized by this door photo by Anna Dorfman-Stark, whose Door Sixteen is one of my favourite blogs. This amazing doorway is in New York City, and I’m probably going to think of it as “door sixteen” from now on. Anna is a book cover designer, so I’m not surprised she loves these doors – double doors always look like a bookcover to me. These are reminiscent of my all-time favourite book covers – the Die Farbe cover below, and the beautiful Brian Wildsmith illustrations of my childhood (click below to see more examples by Wildsmith). More people with solid slab doors should try something like this! Thanks to Anna for permission to use this photo (and to d.sharp for the photo of the “die farbe” book). You might also want to take a look at Anna’s excellent Flickr stream. See another photo of this door here.

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Ann Margret as Nora Walker Hobbs in Ken Russell’s 1975 film “Tommy”. This scene, not to mention the whole film, was absolutely formative for me (and apparently I’m not alone). It opens with a drunk Nora watching TV in her all-white glam boudoir; on the screen is an ad for baked beans, “Fit For A Queen.” Nora throws a champagne bottle through the TV set, soap suds and baked beans pour out into the white bedroom, and she writhes, laughing, in the surreal, psychedelic mess.

 See Hilly Blue’s excellent collection of film stills at  Flickr.

A final post on great DIY furniture from Spiros Zakas’ 1979 “More Furniture in 24 Hours” book. If you want the building plans for any of  these pieces, go to our Flickr set. The plans for the long bench chair at top, “Sculptural Seating by Gigi Hernaez”, are at the bottom of this post – click below or see Flickr. It’s almost reminiscent of Carlo Bugatti’s famous folding chair of nearly 100 years earlier. The next 3 pieces are the Laplander Chair by Mark Nøre, the S.O.S. Night Table by George Thomopoulos, and Folding Screen by Mark Nøre. Click on the photos to go to Flickr. If you still haven’t had enough, there are lots of second-hand copies of the book at abebooks! Please, if anyone makes any of these designs, can you possibly send us photos and tell us how it went?

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Paul Smith is not only the classic English mischievous rogue type, and a self-effacing dandy, but he also reads. We wish he would drop by our studio. The photo of his cluttered office is from Vancouver magazine The Block. There’s a funny story there about an anonymous fan who’s been sending him objects in the mail, with Smith’s address and the correct number of postage stamps just stuck to the surface. Smith apparently loves practical jokes and he keeps these eccentric presents – including a traffic cone, a fishing net, and a pair of children’s chairs – amidst the books in his office. Smith prefers to decorate his stores as if he’s decorating a house, as in his flagship store in London, below.

English textile designer Barbara Brown produced these superb textiles in the 60s and 70s. We found her designs by chance on The Textile Blog, a well-written site out of England covering “the history of interiors and interior furnishings over the last three centuries.” The writer is John Hopper, a trained textile designer from Cornwall. As he has also written here, Brown is one of his favourite designers. Brown was quite a prolific designer, and it’s odd that her name isn’t better known. Perhaps it has to do in part with the lingering stigma attached to the geometric prints of the 60s and 70s, a stigma we’ve never been able to understand.

The Textile Blog is one of those small islands of historical information in a sea of blogs that simply collect good design. Collecting is great, but it’s sometimes a relief to be provided with some historical context for design traditions and innovations. Perhaps it’s because objects are so decontextualized these days that there’s a strange kind of thrill when they begin to make sense again. Or maybe we’re just textile nerds. In talking about the short-lived 1960s flirtation with bold, futuristic design, Hopper argues

Brown embraced the new optimism and confidence that swept through Britain in the 1960s… This small period in British design history was a brief moment when Britain embraced the future… The oil crisis and following economic slump put paid to Britain’s flirtation with a confident future, and with the likes of Laura Ashley leading the way, Britain started looking backwards again to a nostalgic rural past that existed largely in the imagination.

Hopper’s post on Annie Albers is interesting too.

“What do they DO in there?” I think that’s what many women wonder when they hear the term “gentlemen’s club.” There are some of us girls, you know, who would actually like a comfortable club like this of our own where no one ever mentions Sex and the City. This club isn’t our usual decor style, truth be told, but it’s so well done it transcends the usual boundaries. The rough-hewn tables juxtaposed with velvet settees, and the harlequin floor that just fades into whiteness – it’s a seamless eclecticism mixing medieval tavern, 18th and 19th C furniture and early 20th C modern. That clock – is it Father Time’s wristwatch? We can’t find a mention of the interior designer’s name anywhere.

From here via here.