I’m anxiously awaiting the 2009 NYT Trender tool so I can see how things have changed since 2008, a year in which Cassandra, oddly, ended on the decline while Pollyanna was on the ascendant. Maybe that’s just because of December’s holiday spirit? @derekg, I certainly hope you plan to update this tool for 2009, because it offers hours of amusement. There are less than two weeks left to get it up and running.

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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This writing studio somehow comes as no suprise. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Dahl’s disturbing adult stories were written in this cramped, somewhat decrepit room. From The New York Times Magazine, 2006. Roald Dahl died in 1990; the house and studio are now a museum. Take a 3D tour of the shed here.

It was a surprise to see this little piece of Canadiana on Dahl’s door – apparently it was a longstanding family joke.

I love this art object/piece of furniture by artist Fia Backstrom, who has had a number of exhibitions in Vancouver. From the NYT article “Artful Lodgers“:

Fia Backstrom describes her apartment near the Gowanus Canal as a perpetual battle between organization and chaos. ‘‘It is simultaneously studio and bed in one,’’ she says. But she has silence, solitude and a full view of the sky. Backstrom’s question-mark chaise was part of her summer show, ‘‘that social space between speaking and meaning,’’ at White Columns, and the wallpaper is her 2003 work ‘‘1.000.000 people incl. satellite suburbs.’’ Her shows ‘‘A Choreographed Exhibition’’ at Le Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson in France and ‘‘Pottery and Poetry’’ at the Apartment in Vancouver, Canada, both open this month, and she is currently reading ‘‘The K. Protocol,’’ a book of haiku by the artist Karl Holmqvist, whom Backstrom calls ‘‘pivotal to my practice.’’

We found this neat tool after Jer Thorp made us some design-related graphs. Actually, Jer found it. It allows you to compare the frequency of any two words or phrases in the entire text of the New York Times for 2008. The results are not as pretty as Jer’s graphs, but it’s DIY and it’s a very easy way to lose half an hour. You can search anything from the ridiculous to the sublime.