LBRB - the imaginary store

The left brain items are the rational-order-reality-based products. Sensible, in one word. Like an affordable, lightweight, sturdy folding chair.

The right brain items are the emotional-intuitive-fantasy-based things. Like plates with intricate decorations or an ottoman covered in scraggly wool that looks like it might come to life.

And then there's some objects that are really difficult to categorize because they're a little of both. Like this one:

hooty hooooo....

Awesome owl macrame adjustable necklaces. At $13.80 (this includes shipping) it's a sweet deal! My sausage fingers could never dream to produce something like this. That's right, my fingers have dreams too.
Turns out, the two women who make these little friends live in Argentina, and are the top most active "hearters" of things on etsy: 2284 pages and counting. FYI.
You can buy their 3 species of owl here.

want want want

Yago Hortal.

It's all about the materials

Better late than never from the ICFF:

Nice to meet you, Mr. Willenz

The path of research often turns into a fractal pattern of tangents that lead you in ever growing circles somewhere not entirely different. In this case, I was researching lamps in the two bastions of indexed design, stylepark (Germany) and architonic (Switzerland), where you can bask in the reassuring glow of well organized information. I kept stumbling over the name Sylvain Willenz, and this is because I am, as it turns out, a fan of his work. Here is why:

1. print lamp for established&sons. made from 1 piece of blown glass which has a "built in" diffuser.
2. lock for tamawa. ashwood & bakelite. nuff said. (well, no: I like bakelite. it also comes in red.)
3. torch lamp for established&sons, 2008. soft plastic shell. floor, table, or suspension.
Sylvain Willenz hails form and works in Brussels.
4. homerun chair. also nice.
5. stuff bag. seamless flat rubber. also nice. want.

Mitsura Koga

„From Stones, serendipitous finds I picked up on the seashore I make work pieces. (...) Whenever I come across stones, I ask them what processes they went through. (...) I add special care to natural objects with the hope that the artificial process counterpoints the naturalness more. Vice versa the process seems to me to search for the position of human beings in nature.“

- Mitsuru Koga about these Sea Stone Works

want want want

You should probably write more postcards.

There was a brief story in the New Yorker about a man living in the city with his wife, who has regularly been receiving anonymous postcards since 2003. Hundreds of them. They are usually black and white photographs with some pun about the image, and his name is always misspelled - but in a different way each time. Creepy? Maybe. But especially since they appear to be utterly harmless, I can't help but applaud the writer of these postcards for his or her discipline and generosity.

Speaking of postcards, people used to put infrastructure on postcards, like the ones collected in this book Boring Postcards, which looks even more boring in German:
I think there is no such thing as a boring postcard. It's not like you have to look at it for a very long time. What would an exciting postcard be? One of bronzed butts lined up on the beach in matching day-glo thongs?

Obviously, they should have called the book Interesting Postcards, but tooting your own horn like that just doesn't fly. Look at the great things inside:
Highways are cool. It's too bad the author of this book didn't just come out and say he agrees. Another place where people appreciate highways is the Infrastructurist. An amateur's guide to exploring how homo sapiens make their habitats functional. And what they call these highway intersection-formations:

The Clover Leaf.

The Full Y.

The Spaghetti Bowl. (I'm a fan.)

Matthew Barney, I still have a crush on you.

Apparently. Every time I look at the wall of straws in the recent Tara Donovan post, I just think, "My, this is nice, but it just reminds me of Matthew Barney. He has a way with whale blubber." Unfortunately there are precious few images of gloopy lipids online.

Electricity is Magical

It certainly seems that way when you look at these lamps, and that is why I love them. They were designed by Jeremy Pyles for Niche Modern.Just for fun, take a moment to imagine if you would be able to sufficiently explain electricity to an alien if the life of the human race depended on it. (You can omit the part with the murdering alien if you like.)

This reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law of predicition, which is as sensible as it is beautiful and gives me great hope that marvelously mind-boggling things are in store:
"3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

And that reminds me of Nikola Tesla as portrayed by David Bowie in The Prestige which was very good right up to the very end. Unfortunately, from my experience, this is rare in the science fiction genre. Maybe this one is so good because it's barely science fiction. Anyway, this one is worth seeing if you like magic and electricity:

Tara Donovan (coffee cups cont., sort of)

Styrofoam cups, straws, and stickers! Who would have thunk it.
Images from Ace Gallery.

Puzzles for aliens.

Coffee lids are beautiful variations on a theme. They are intriguing on their own, but even better together. If aliens came on by and saw these objects, I wonder if they could figure out what these are for!the coffee lids from a flickr set by sarcoptiform. Bread bag ties from day 107 of the "A Collection a Day" blog. Both via Swiss Miss :)

Nudibranch

(Pronounced "noo-dee-brank", as I just learned, although I still prefer the "brantsh" version I'm used to.) Everybody should be aware of these mollusks.

On a different note, I will try to start linking all the images to their original contexts to be fair to the originators. Often I just save screenshots and use them way later, but I will do my best. Here goes:

One of the Ugliest Things in Every Apartment

Aside from this fitting well into my accidental motto of late ("Tubular"), these cords by NUD are fantastic. Simple, beautiful, and much needed. And so many colors! And why not? After all, it's just a cable.

Which reminds me of something I almost bought on eBay recently. It was a vintage electrical cord, covered in a black fabric tube, with a brown Bakelite plug and a round light switch. I didn't buy it in the end, because it had Euro-plugs (I found it on the Austrian eBay site), but it reminded me how beautiful these parts can be. Those bits are the shameful shortcomings of many a lamp. Being a fan of plastics and especially the old ones, a sweet ol' Bakelite switch is something I wish I could use more often. Or a new one in seafoam by NUB.

Oh, lovely old junk on eBay. Unfortunately I don't have that picture anymore but I've found a few other things on there that convey the vibe.