A Haiku of a Home by Roy McMakin
Last week The New York Times featured a fabulous farmhouse by eccentric designer, Roy McMakin. The article aptly describes McMakin as an “artist-designer based in Seattle, famous for tweaking archetypes of domesticity, from wing chairs to cottages, and blurring the lines between art and architecture in a variety of captivating and disquieting ways.”
Set on an island within commuting distance of downtown Seattle, the featured farmhouse is a contemporary interpretation of the idioms of the region’s rural architecture, which stirs emotional memory for an ex-Northwesterner such as myself. I am reminded immediately of my old house in Seattle, hand-made in 1900 by a Norwegian boatbuilder. McMakin’s poetic recapitulation of the local vernacular also recalls the Scandinavian heritage which has informed rural and urban building in the Pacific Northwest for nearly two centuries.
Tim Girvin on Resort Design, Lautner, Las Brisas Et Alia
Visual and intellectual boundary-breaker, Tim Girvin has begun blogging his brilliance in a series of essays which pierce like bright rays from a distant star, shining through the disparate galaxies of fragrance, film, fashion, architecture, TV, branding, identity, and thought as it is thunk. Girvin is more than a designer, he’s a serendipitous genetic experiment let loose upon the world. Best known as a brand, identity and typography master (Apple, Amex, Bloomingdale’s, Bravehart, Urban Decay, Wolfgang Puck, Yves Saint Laurent, WIRED, The Matrix, and more), Girvin goes where no simply sane design mind has gone before. And he collects fine Japanese bamboo baskets, too.
See his latest blog post, Resort Design Development | Brand, Patterning, Identity, Placemaking | John Lautner, Visions & Las Brisas, MX. Now there’s an essay title for you. Delicious food for thought. Find it at Tim’s place, blog, personal site, agency.
Be Bedazzled: Ancient & Antique Jewelry at the Walters Museum
The jewelry collection of the Walters Museum in Baltimore is vast and diverse, spanning five millennia and a broad spectrum of world cultures, yet most of it is rarely seen. Here’s your big opportunity to ogle over 200 pieces from the collection, many never before shown publicly. Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry opens 19 October and runs through 4 January 2009. In this exhibition the riches of the Walters collection will be augmented by numerous finger rings from the collection of New York gemologist Benjamin Zucker, scion of one of the great Antwerp diamond families, who has a passion for antique and ancient rings from around the globe, and has been dubbed “Lord of the Rings” in recognition of his passionate pursuit of fine antique finger rings for his personal collection. Be there. With bells on. And plenty of rings on fingers and toes.
Image © 2006 The Walters Art Museum
Lost Weekend
Friday night was the “Shhh! Speakeasy” dinner fundraiser for the Balinale Taksu Film Festival at the Ritz-Carlton in Jimbaran. What with the illicit teacup martinis on arrival, and brown-bagged bottles of hooch (excellent New Zealand red wine) handed out to every attendee, not to mention the fine works of literature on the tables hiding bottles of vodka . . . we were absolutely reeling drunk. Ooops. When referring to ladies (and I am purported to be one), the correct and polite term is “tired and emotional”. So I was “tired and emotional.” After winning the best-headdress contest and being Charleston-wrestled by Taksu Film Festival mascot, Kadek Krishna, I was fit to be tied.