When your decor is a romantic deal-breaker: a female visitor fled upon seeing this NYC lawyer’s sheets. My sister, by the way, had those exact sheets. When she was 12. Via the NYT where there’s also a really gratifying condemnation of Klimt posters.
Things for your garden, from right to left: Roman column, menacing bird of prey statue fit for a military dictator, mass-produced standing stone with Chinese inscription, birdbath/fountain with peeing cupid and his parents, cartoon meteorite.
Acutally, this is neither a meteorite nor a fake. It’s a real, naturally occurring rock of some kind. Must be volcanic but I have no idea what it is. Does anyone?. It rusts so it must have iron in it, and it’s hard. If I had the room and the money, I’d buy it.
This is Karim Rashid’s new “Bite Me” Chair, a garish blobject in the shape of a bubblegum-pink molar. There was a pretty unanimous chorus of dislike and disapproval of this chair on the CDR (Canadian Design Resource) blog in May, and Rashid – the master of plasticky furniture that looks carelessly cheap when it’s made and then ages badly – totally deserved it. Lately I’ve let this blog’s Monday Cringe List feature lapse, but the Bite Me Chair has forced a revival. Not only is the chair bad enough on its own – and that’s not even taking into account its arch, attention-seeking name – but thanks to one of one of the CDR’s commenters I see that it is also suspiciously like Wendell Castle’s 1968 fibreglas Molar Chair, shown below. I suspect it’s not the only piece of Wendell Castle furniture that Rashid has, well, paid homage to. Wendell Castle occasionally falls into the gimmick furniture camp too, but somehow he never quite tips over into unapologetic, crass grossitude the way Rashid loves to. Castle’s work has more solidity and authority, even when it’s really weird, but Rashid just doesn’t seem to understand this. If you’re going to reference 60s biomorphism, do it well, for heaven’s sake. Castle didn’t have to be troubled in the late 60s/early 70s by the problem of plastic’s unsustainability, because it wasn’t a known issue, but Rashid… what decade does he think he’s in? Some of Rashid’s new chairs are apparently recyclable but that doesn’t make them environmentally superior to no chair at all. Wendell Castle is still designing, so if we’re going to have plastic blobjects at all, let’s have Castle make them. And even then, let’s edit.
Above, Wendell Castle in 1973 with his Molar side chairs. More work from Castle below, from the 60s to the present. He’s 77 now and was nevertheless listed in a 10 to watch list this year.
Above, Wendell Castle at his Scotsville, New York, studio, with his 2007 Black Widow chair. Photo by Ben Hoffman, via artinfo. Wow, does he look good at 77. Above that, his Enclosed Reclining Environment, 1969, photo by Eva Heyd from the NYT, Courtesy of R 20th Century, New York. Top photo, plastic lights via the NYT. Below, a bench from 2007.
Below, a rare molar sofa. And see here for a closeup of the red chair.
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For months I’ve been meaning to start up a regular feature about the worst in decor – maybe call it Chamber of Horrors or something – but I haven’t had the heart for it. For one thing, locating the kitschy and the hideous and then mocking it is like shooting fish in a barrel and it isn’t very nice. For another, there’s no way to compete with the compendiums of design disasters that other people have already put together: Ugly House Photos or Eurobad ‘74, for example, or if those don’t satisfy your appetite for disaster, there’s also an endless supply of frightening objects on Flickr. Or on the craft end of things, try Regretsy. But I still want to be able to tear things apart on occasion so I’ve decided to do an occasional Monday feature on things from the world of supposedly high design that many people seem to like, but that for whatever reason – and maybe that’s what I’m trying to figure out – I consistently hate. I’m starting with Alessi. The corkscrew above, Marilyn with her dress blown up over the grate, actually makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a fork. Don’t even get me started about Alessi. Or do, by clicking below. Please feel free to weigh in.
