Get Met Mania This Summer : Special Exhibitions Galore
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has outdone itself this year with a schedule of summer exhibitions to amaze its seasonal sea of visitors and keep the revolving doors turning at 78rpm until “back to school” time comes around.
We don’t usually go Baroque here, but must make note of Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, on show in the Met’s special exhibition galleries until 21 September.
Goetheian Crayons = Pure Beauty
From Better Living Through Design, we discovered these German-made chunky crayons of pure beeswax and natural pigments. The box is so beautiful, it makes sense to buy two, one to use, and one to keep. The 25 colours are derived from Goethe’s Theory of Colours. How very German. Buy them at Design Within Reach. We don’t usually post about modern product design, as there are already too many design blogs covering the territory too thoroughly. But this was too good to keep quiet about.
Tong’s Psychedelic Tigers
Illustrator Yehrin Tong has devised a stunning tiger pattern, for Maharishi Womenswear. We are mad about tigers in general, the name of our enterprise being Macan Tidur (“The Sleeping Tiger” in Indonesian).
World’s Coolest Houses and We’re Not Talking Arctic Here
The Coolhunter, a wildly-popular design blog, is at this very moment compiling its second book, The World’s Coolest Houses for December release. It’s sure to be a dizzying compendium of highly unusual homes.
Says Bill Tikos (the Coolhunter himself), “The houses we want must think like Zaha Hadid who said ‘I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthly quality.” Photographs may be submitted for consideration to bill@thecoolhunter.net.
Accommodation by Design: Which Bali House Can Make the Cut?
It’s a new website for the traveller who puts design excellence on the top of their priority list for holiday accommodation. Ok, so you have the budget to travel where and how you wish. Why should you stay somewhere that is less beautiful than your own homes? Why should you suffer from the mediocre aesthetic experience most five-star luxury resorts serve up? Go to Ultimate Hides.
Properties offered for rent on the site are published masterpiece homes designed by the likes of Tadao Andao, Ken Latona, Justin Long Pike Withers, and Philip Cox.
This elite travel newcomer so far handles properties in Australia, China, Japan and Switzerland. Selective global expansion is certain, but if you want your property listed it must meet Ultimate Hides’ stated criteria: “important architectural design, sustainability, privacy, artistic merits, inspirational virtues, natural environment”. So who in Bali makes the grade? I’m waiting with bated breath to see the first Bali property on Ultimate Hides. To get listed go to their sign-up page.
Who Put the “Boutique” in Batik?
Quarzia did. This boutique-chic little enterprise has been making slinky high art batik fashion in silk for years. Mixing a Marimekko-meets-Peter-Max eye for pattern with a subtle sense of colour and an acute understanding of cut, their clothes have given gorgeousity to the gorgeous-in-the-know of Bali (mostly Italians) for quite some time. Well last night the well-guarded secret went public.
Quarzia was a teensy little boite of a shop on the golden mile of Jalan Oberoi in Seminyak, until last week. Proprietors Marco and Simonetta, a design dream team from Bergamo have broken out from the closed circle of cognoscenti in Bali and are ready to take on the world.
They remodeled and hugely expanded their little shop and now it’s “wow”. Last night was the grand re-opening, and how grand it was, as in grandissimo, as only Bali’s Italian community can manifest. From sunset ’til long after dark the Corso-Como-cruising crowd in attendance at the opening bash sipped Negronis and slinked about in clumps, kissing, ciao-bella-ing and making like it was the day the new collections came in on Via Montenapoleane. One Anglo pundit was heard to exclaim, “It’s so Italian I can’t think straight!” But I think it was the Negronis from the free-flowing streetside bar that befuddled her mind.
Marco and Simonetta are generous by nature, and they warmly welcomed the SMS-invited crowd to their re-opening. Seen pawing the beautifully bias-cut silk batiks were artist Filipo Sciascia, designer-gallerista Susanna of Biasa, Bona Kaya Gaya the Duchessa of Seminyak, archaeologist-extraordinaire Ambra Calo (the blonde Laura Croft of Indonesia), architect Mauro Garavoglia, and everyone’s favourite warm-hearted perpetual convent-girl, Elisa Grattapaglia. Aside from the usual Italo-Indo suspects we caught up with Sophie Digby of The Yak Magazine, modern marquetier Etienne d’Souza, textile and costume designer Simon Marks and throngs of other drop-dead-gorgeous glamourati-Balinisti. There were acres of young silken flesh spread on the front steps to compete with Quarzia’s silk batik fashion; it’s the second generation of Italo-Indos, I think, and watch out for them. The only thing missing was Pino Confessa, the viviacious and congenial Honorary Consul of Italy for Bali (who never misses a good party). Perhaps he was busy with an Italian passport-holder tangled up in a messy Vespa crash?
I promise to post photos of the party as soon as Marco and Simonetta sleep off the Negroni hangovers and send me some. (I hope I get the multi-seamed indigo and ecru skirt as a prize for writing this. Although I would have written just as flattering a review skirt or no skirt. And this post is not nearly so flattering as that skirt will be on me!)
(Here are the photos I promised! Plenty of party pix below the cut.)
Chris Lehrecke Furniture : It Just Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This
Almost roshi-like in his clarity, acuity, devotion and low profile, Chris Lehrecke is a modern furniture master whose studio in upstate New York recalls Shaker values in its robust simplicity. Yet Shaker furniture his is not. The simplicity is there, and the earnest sobriety. Yet here is a collection that teaches us that what others might call asceticism is in fact abundance. Aesthetic discipline and adherence to one’s principles is not in fact self-restraint, it’s liberation. This furniture is strong, sculptural, primitive, modern, brut, and refined at the same time. And the proportions are perfect, which is something that cannot be taught. You have it or you don’t. Click. Look. Read. Learn. Buy.
Brains + Taste + Restraint = Curated.
I chose to use the word “restraint” here deliberately. Restraint as in “child restraints” or “self restraint.” The concept of restraint is something I sermonise about every day. Good design requires a lot of restraint. There are a tremendous number of wonderful products out there for interiors, from flooring to ceiling light fixtures. But you don’t need to use them all, just because they’re so cool you can’t resist. You must resist. The principles of good design demand it.
I found an interior design studio today that understands restraint. The firm is Curated. They seem to understand restraint in two different ways. They clearly understand restraint in choosing elements to combine in a space. I see a dedication to relevance and appropriateness in their portfolio that is uncommon. They also understand restraint in terms of the designer’s duty to restrain the client when necessary. Good design is not saying “yes” to every whim and watching the total spend spiral skyward (with a smug smile).
The Design Library for Textilians
An amazing resource in New York State, serving the world. The Design Library sells and licenses antique textile designs from their vast collection of original documentary textiles. Most of their clients are in home furnishing, fashion and graphic design industries. They have satellite offices in London and Manhattan, and staff who can assist clients to find what they are looking for among the Design Library’s five million or so textile designs. For “textilians” this is a mother lode of inspiration.