Brussels: Apotheosis of the Arbitrary and the Extraordinary Ordinary
We are in Brussels today, where the arbitrary is deliberate, and the unexpected is . . . well . . . expected. Eccentricity is ordinary, serendipity is a ubiquity, and we keep bumping into people we know, as if it were all scripted . . . for the theatre of the absurd. We love it. Discovery du jour, after a stroll through the marvelous Marolles flea market, was the showroom of K. Loan on Rue Blaes.
Bruno says it is like a set from Luc Besson’s Le Dernier Combat. In Brunese, that means, “it’s great.” It is. The photos here do not do it justice, nor does their tiny website. Here is a master of mise en place, who takes weathered industrial steel and juxtaposes ordinary objects and extraordinary ones against them in such a way that voilà! it is a still life. Everybody thinks they can do the same these days. But they are wrong. It takes the eye of one such as K. Loan. A very rare eye indeed. Delightful.
Tilleke & Gibbins : The Only Law Firm in Southeast Asia with a Textile Collection
We must salute these lawyers in Bangkok, Tilleke & Gibbins, who proudly display their collection of Southeast Asian textiles online and in-office. They even put a “Textile Collection” page on their official website to show off their woven assets. The collection includes this marvelous antique head cover from Cambodia (above), as well as numerous other heritage textiles from Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Laos.
The firm has garnered significant publicity related to the textile collection, including in-depth articles in the Asia Times and the highly-respected magazine of world carpets and textiles, HALI, which gave them four pages. Naturally, we would love to see law firms and other businesses in Indonesia follow suit.
Blog Backlog: Contemporary Textiles in Kolkata
Contemporary textile arts don’t get any better than this. Check out Weavers Studio in Kolkata for kantha cloth, felt, applique, embroidery, hand prints, kalamkari, zardozi, chikanwork, pintucks, pleats, shibori, and more. This is much more than a production house, it’s a textile study and development centre, devoted to fine handwork and learning from the legacy of world textile traditions.
Living Modern: Embrace Time, Return to the Mountain
The recent mass mania for rigorous modernism has tended to vivisect what is most human in our homes, workplaces and public spaces. When the seminal modernist, Le Corbusier (above) declared, “a house is a machine for living in,” the operative word was living. The intention was to shape structures, spaces, and their contents intelligently, to support human life, human dreams, and human necessities – - and always with a weather eye to nature, its rhythms and its imperatives.
Korakot: A Direct Flight from Chula Kites to High Design
His grandfather was a master Chula kitemaker, now Korakot Aromdee makes masterpieces of bamboo using the same fine materials and craftsmanship. His work includes large-scale sculptures, lighting, decorative accessories and architectural pieces. Read more…
Macan Tidur Has Got a Gateway: Our New Nutshell of a Website
We have a new website, small but cute. Which suits Macan Tidur perfectly. At last this lazy Sleeping Tiger has gotten up off its belly and made a wee site offering a peek into the Macan Tidur network of elegant little enterprises, which includes Gallery Macan Tidur (Ubud, Bali), ICON Asian Arts (Seminyak, Bali), Sumaru Sourcing (Indonesia), Macan Tidur Textiles (Bali and the World), and Sriwijaya Jewels (excavated and antique ethnic ornament by appointment and at ICON Asian Arts and Aman Resorts in Bali). Feedback welcome. And pardon us for blowing our own horn here . . . or for roaring just a bit instead of simply purring.
Linda Garland’s Latest Superstar Estate in Architectural Digest
Linda Garland has daringly directed the design for director Rob Cohen’s new island retreat in the far east of Bali. In case you missed it in Architectural Digest, read the story with photos here. The district around of this rustic retreat on the shores of Seraya, is looking to become the next Munduk. Only eleven people in the world will know what we mean by that. Fine. Read more…
Where to go when you already live in Paradise? Santorini.
Life is complicated. We just finished (almost) building a house. Building a business. Building a gallery. Bali can be stressful. Imagine that.
I rarely long to go anywhere in particular. When you live in Bali, the travel bug doesn’t bite so hard. But now, after all this stress and the complexities of making and decorating a house, I really want to get away to something completely different. And simple.
The Perivolas in Oia on the Greek island of Santorini looks exactly right. Simple. Without the formality and rigour of a modern-minimalist tropical house, which is what I live in. That’s a change I could welcome right now. Read more…
Custom Furniture: 90% Perspiration
Last week was spent with two designers from Douglas Durkin Design, Greg Elich and Andrew Horn. They were in Bali with me to work on a collection of extraordinary custom furniture for a residence in Hawaii.
For those of you who might imagine that creating high-end custom furniture is pure glamour, just have a look “backstage” at the process of design refinement. We spent hours and hours each day in the workshop, a fascinating place, but very dusty, and very, very hot and humid. And lo! Wonder of wonders! A furniture workshop normally has almost no furniture suited to comfortable sitting, so we perched and paced and mopped the sweat from our brows, all the while utterly absorbed with the work at hand.
Haunted by Gervasoni’s Ghost
We’ve found once again an extraordinary line of furniture that just works. Comfortable, stylish, elegant, confidently irreverant. It’s Gervasoni’s Ghost collection, a semi-spooky, seams-out fog of soft seating. When you have a space containing art and artefacts worthy of attention, you can either go museum-bench rigid with the upholstered pieces, or sit back and opt consciously for seating that whispers eloquently instead of shouting. Let’s all sit comfortably to take in our surroundings and the people occuppying them, shall we, rather than poising rigidly while eyeing the nearest exit?
We love the slipcovered nonchalance of the Ghost collection, with its wrinkled ease. Relaxed, after all should be authentically relaxed, yet with good bones and proportions. This is it. These pieces are draped in a way that’s more like a summer home taken by surprise than a stuffy Miss Havisham horror. And Gervasoni’s Ghost collection is emininently practical, one might add. It’s all slipcovered, ready to wash and wear and wear and wear. No ironing necessary.