Search result for: the-last-thing-you-aquired-
| # | Post Title | Result Info | Date | User | Forum |
| (Cont'd) | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | NULL NULL | General discussion | |
| (Cont'd) (cont'd) at 92, the book indicates that Harper was hired toward the end of that first year, AFTER the collection was designed, because they needed someone to design the ADVERTISING. (2) re the ball clock: The book at 111 has a great long quote from Nelson describing how it came about. Ess'ly, late one night, Nelson, Noguchi, and Bucky Fuller, as well as Harper, were all hanging out, fiddling with various new clock shapes. As Nelson describes, "At some point we left -- we were suddenly all tired, adn we'd had a little bit too much to drink -- and the next morning I came back, and here was this roll of drafting baper, and Irving and I looked at it, and somewhere in this roll there was the ball clock. I don't know to this day who cooked it up. I know it wasn't me. It might have been Irving, but he didn't think so .. . . We both guessed that Isamu had probably done it because he was a genius for doing two stupid things and making something extraordinary out of the combination. Or it could have been an additive thing, but, anyway, we never knew." ... And as to the Eames Primer -- I have read it, and I guess we just disagree about how it reads. i too am a big eames fan, but the biases in this book were too much for me to stomach. for a more objective & thorough read, i recommend Pat Kirkham's book (MIT Press 1995). (BTW - Kirkham's scholarly work is not cited or mentioned anywhere in Eames Demetrios's "Eames Primer"; I heard that this was because he was upset about Kirkham's discussion of Charles's life-long philandering & the pain that this caused Ray -- anyone know about this?) anyway, we are probably all in agreement that both the eameses and the nelson office were great designers, and that design attribution is a messy & difficult business. | |||||
| lucifersum is right | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | LRF | General discussion | |
| lucifersum is right lucifersum is right but i would not expect anything else from her. I am not a fan of knockoffs that is why i am so passionate about reporting what i see and know about phony knockoffs. I do like good deals (part of my heritage I guess, and I do like to spend lots of money part of my heritage i guess and i hate to get ripped off. by %^$holes selling phony furnitue . I have writeen till i have carpel tunnel in my hands about who is good and who is bad .. check archives ... DWR is real good , he started out selling knock offs and then got more upscale and Miller and knoll said we will not sell to you if you carry the phony stuff he cleared all that crap out and started carrying the good stuff . Sad thing Forbes said the poor guy has lost money for the last 20 quarters never showing a profit, ( i could be off since I am not a C.F. A. and this is from reading it about 6 month ago , What does that tell you???? Hard to make a living waiting for us purest to come in and by a Mies chair from Knoll for $3200.00 or A Eames Lounge chair for 4000.00 yes Lucifer(if I may call you Lucifer your logic is great, and you are well meaning and passionate but i think there has to be a happy medium reached about the Royalties of these 85 year old designs, but it is hard for me to complain.... my real business is the Oil and gas business .... my family has been in the business for over 60 years and we get oil nad gas royalty checks every month from wells drilled on our family acreage .. so i know what Royalty is all about . | |||||
| I can't see the Knoll International Label | 1 Relevance | 15 years ago | TinyArmada | General discussion | |
| I can't see the Knoll International Label I can not see the Int'l label you are speaking of, just one. When dealing with Knoll, remember, they have been around a long time and technically, they do not do knock offs. However, some people (most collectors) value their earlier pieces rather than the later ones. Through out the years, the way they construct their chairs, tables etc can change - such as from Cast Iron to Aluminum, through to Aluminum with ribs added etc. Tackling even one chair requires some research, so take on the subject slowly. Remember, if you are buying because you like it, you can not go wrong - but be sure you pay a fair price. If you are going to buy investment grade items, then you will need to know many aspects about just a single chair or table to be well informed. The people here: The people on this site will not steer you wrong, and to this day, I have not met a more smarter group and as well informed peoples as this forum boasts. But they dislike having their time wasted - because they will invest time into helping you. Advice: Just one thing, when posting pics etc. remember the devil is in the details, show edges, labels, inner workings of the items, screws, mounts etc to get sound advice as to authenticity. A tulip table on the outside (as an example) all pretty much look the same, so a photo of the table will not help to establish year, producer etc. But showing the inner casting underneath, the label, the gray felt that was at the bottom, the rod that screws in the top to hold the table - these are things we need to see to help you. Finally, never jump at a sale until you have certainty, some of these things cost pay checks, but are sooooo worth it. | |||||
| "But, do you actually USE... | 1 Relevance | 16 years ago | whitespike | General discussion | |
| "But, do you actually USE... "But, do you actually USE the china contained within the cabinet? If not, maybe that's why you find the concept vaguely embarrassing. The reason why china cabinets have gotten a bad rap is because people tend to use them as uselss shrines, I think." I don't use the dishes. Or not regularly at all. I see your point, however it's a slight miss to say I am embarrassed. Rather, I am just not overly in love with the concept. There are a few reasons for me to display these. My grandmother has horrid taste, but is a very prominent figure for me. It's purely sentimental, which many modernists seem averse to, but for myself I believe in sentiment in interior design. After all we design for people, right? People are sentimental in general. The other reason, is simply a lack of another place to put it. My cupboards are already full of my daily dishes ? my Russel Wright ? which I actually prefer. I like built ins. I am considering just doing two handing cabinets bought from the same manufacturer as my kitchen cabs. The bottom 15 inches deep with the same white counter top material, and the top just 12 inches deep with glass doors instead of wood on these. But my hesitation is it's close proximity to a door way. Afraid that permanently dividing up the wall plane to close to the door would be too busy. A pice of funriture, while it does the same thing in a way, seems more temporary and thus less involved with the actual architecture. The other idea was some rough hewn type wood made into floating shelves on the wall.But I'd need to store the stuff in the cabinet elsewhere, which would be a con .... it holds paper towels, odds and ends, and our sodas... | |||||
| Hi James | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| Hi James You must be tired by now from reading all these suggestions and nobody offering you a hand to cut or sand the pieces... Considering that you found my comment on the corners worth trying, may I suggest something else? I suspect that dcwilson's suggestion on using a Coca-cola type of curve (which you could do, but I would never suggest it because it is another product, not an improuvement on this one)is inspired by his disconfort with a "constructed" curve. No matter what you do...and letter (font) designers have known this for centuries...you can not construct a curve that the eye will not "de-construct" in different radii, straight or curved lines. What they do and would you could do is ti draw it by hand, large on the wall or to use a flexible rod (not wood, which is not homogenious enough) and fix one end it on a board with a few small nails on either side. Than you take the other end end curve it into the "S" shape that you want and fix that to the board to. Now you have a template of a curve that is uniform and not "build". If you are interested in dcwilson's suggestion the best thing toi do is to draw the obtained curve on two different sheets and move them horizontally from each other until you are pleased with the result. Good luck! By the way, all our desks here are egg shell varnished MDF, which is a pleasant colour combined with the grey blue screens...but...I find that it does not age very well and in spite of 4-5 layers of varnish it wares off and condensation or a spilled cup of coffee is enough to make the fibers expand under the almost un-visible cracks. As far as the ideological aspect of it goes, I do not think that covering the MDF with an opaque colored paint is less "true to the material" as the transparent varnish. In your case I think that anything beyond the simple geometrical shape detracts from the logic of this interesting succession of waves. | |||||
| Geez | 1 Relevance | 17 years ago | SDR | General discussion | |
| Geez What a grab-bag of veneer ! Note the off-center seam in the back, and the swing grain on both faces of the vertical member (do those "chassis parts" have names, in the Eames vocabulary ?). Note that the "best" grain -- which I still say looks like teak -- is found on the FACE of the seat, and the REAR of the back. And what I call "secondary" veneer -- with its unfortunate asymmetry -- is found on the FACE of the back. Was the DCW ever offered in teak ? My book mentions that the DCM was offered in walnut, ash, birch and rosewood. There is no rosewood on this chair, in my opinion. I am going to posit that the back panel was veneered in reverse -- by accident. Yes, this sort of thing happens in production, from time to time, in any veneering operation in the world. If so, this chair would be comparable to a postage stamp with an upside-down airplane in the middle -- for instance. In other words, a rarity. And I'd stake a lot on that being the correct explanation for what we see in the photos. (The alternative explanation is that the maker had a truly "hands-off" policy for selection of veneer, face vs back. That is, there was to be no selection of where a veneer was to be placed, once it was permitted to used -- once it had passed initial inspection. But I'd like to think that this wasn't the case. Such policy could of course have held, for one manufacturer at one period of time, and been altered at a later date.) "Thanks for bringing it in to Antiques Roadshow. You have a genuine blah blah. It would perhaps fetch, at auction, on a good day, $ XXXXX.00 ! " "Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Seriously ? Are you serious ? I had no idea. . .!" | |||||
| RE: Panton Ball Lamp/Wonder Lamp | 1 Relevance | 4 years ago | Herringbone | General discussion | |
| Posted by: objectworship That’s not the same question at all! What’s the lamp do when it’s turned on? Does it do something cool? What specifically about the lamp makes it so particularly valuable? Why is simple feature/benefit analysis on this so much like pulling teeth if the thing is so great? @objectworship As you know, value is often not based on rational arguments. A Chieftain made by Niels Vodder is not necessarily superior in practicality to an Ikea armchair, with the exception perhaps that it is better made, the leather is of a higher quality, and the wood is better selected. But in principle it is a chair. The Clam by Arnold Madsen was sold in the 90s for a few hundred dollars, now it is traded for 20,000 and more. In this respect, the design market works just like the art market. Panton falls into this category. The lamps are well made and produced to a high standard, but of course it's not the material value that you are paying for. It's about the name of the designer, it's about the rarity of a sought-after product, and it's about the quasi-mystical closeness to the creator that is inherent in originals. That's why a Chair by Johnannes Hansen will always be worth more than an identical chair that you've recreated with hand tools in your own workshop. I understand that you reject this concept and that this is the point of your post. And whether it has to be that way is of course debatable, but it's the reality. Man is not rational, nor is the art and design lover. By the way, capitalism also makes use of this effect. | |||||
| Voss Belysning? Danish lamp/pendant | 1 Relevance | 14 years ago | bj | General discussion | |
| Picked up this lamp from a house, just yesterday. The place was already emptied out, exept for some little things, overlooked by the owners. There was a Pilastro wall-rack in the garage (serving as a shoerack) and in the shed, stocked away, a large schelving systems with poles (just shelves no, cabinets). As I took a look today, in the daylight, the shelves appear to be solid european walnut. The only thing in the house itself was this lamp: inside opaline, heavy pieces of metal all laquered a beautiful wine-red and a piece of teak on top, with assymetrical shape. Inside it's labeled 'Voss Belysning'. Somewhere on the web I found a reference that this was produced in Fredericia. Quality is superb. I would like to know if there is still some information to be found about this company, how long they existed and what they made. I assume this would date arround 1959 (a year or so later than the house). Thanks for looking! | |||||
| koen, regarding your 'Tip'N Mix' Bowls... | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| Ever since I did some research in grad school about what people liked and disliked about certain real estate projects after they were built, I have been intrigued by, what shall I call it? Forensic market research; i.e., research into why consumers rejected something. What one can learn from product failure seems especially useful to me. And a well thought out product creates enough clarity of fit between product and context that the reasons for rejection may be more reliably understood--after some digging. Unfortunately, in my field success had many parents, but failure was an orphan. Product failures are rarely studied and those involved tend to distance themselves as much as possible from the product failure. I wondered if it were any different in home product design? Looking at your Tip'N Mix bowls, they seem like one of your usual rigorous and systematic designs, yet they were not commericially successful according to the DA comments beside their picture. Two questions: 1) In hindsight, do you have an opinion about why people did not embrace these bowls? Was it a sound concept that needed different execution? Or was the concept invalid. Or was the product marketed poorly? Or were the concept and execution sound and the marketing adequate, but the consumer just to routinized to accept innovation? 2.) Do producers or designers do forensic market research into why certain furniture and houseware products that are soundly thought out fail? In science, researchers and engineers learn about as much from failures as from successes. In the professions, the study of failure seems taboo in comparison. I even feel a little uncomfortable asking you about this issue. Tis a pity. I do believe we've much to learn from this sort of thing. Koen's 'Tip'N Mix' bowl | |||||
| If this Chieftain chair were | 1 Relevance | 10 years ago | leif ericson - Zephyr Renner | General discussion | |
| If this Chieftain chair were mine, and I were thinking of selling it, I would hold onto it until I could sort out why it is not properly marked. Until then its value is a fraction of what it would be. Not being 'normally' marked makes buyers very nervous, and that makes them close their wallets. I would not do a single thing to alter it, not cleaning, not leather conditioning, and keep it out of sunlight. It may well be the case that re-upholstering it would diminish its value, regardless of who does the re-upholstery, because everything about the value of the chair has to do with its authenticity. It is barely even a chair anymore. Think of it as an artifact. And I would dig in all your family's collected documents for anything relating to purchasing Danish furniture. The closer related to the chieftain the better, but I would not exclude things that don't directly pertain. There are a lot of clues in there that may help authenticate the chair, and might help solve the mystery of the missing mark. I have it on very good authority that the 78 number is incorrect. There were roughly 2 1/2 times this number produced. And Søren Horn never had anything to do with producing the Chieftain. Niels Roth Andersen took over Søren Horn's shop and he personally asked for the license from Juhl sometime after that. This is why when you see photos of a Chieftain with a 'SH' mark for Søren Horn it also says in smaller print Roth Andersen Efterfolger. Finally, Ivan Schlechter produced the Chieftain after Niels Vodder closed his shop. There are very few of these Chieftains around, as they did not sell well at all in that time period (mid 70s to mid 80s). Ivan Schlechter chieftains are very similar, if not virtually identical, to Niels Vodder Chieftains. | |||||
| I think | 1 Relevance | 16 years ago | SDR | General discussion | |
| I think poly may be the modern miracle. You can try rub-on instead of brush-on -- and there are different levels of gloss to try as well. There are also acrylics. I have been using an exterior-grade product called "Breakthrough !" (love the exclamation mark) that is supposed to be bulletproof -- and it may well be. These acrylics are especially colorless -- to the point where it is hard to tell where you've applied it, on the second coat. I'm experimenting with the ceruse finish for the first time, after long anticipation. This is well-suited to ash and oak; a color coat is applied, and when dry a second contrasting color is wiped onto the wood, where it settles into the recessed pores, and the excess is wiped off. I don't know all the ins and outs of this yet -- so far I have applied paint to raw and sanded red oak, and then sanded the coat off with an orbital sander, leaving color in the open grain. Then I applied a coat of clear acrylic. Pretty sexy, if you care for that sort of thing. Has anyone tried this ? The ceruse pieces we may all have seen have a Hollywood/hothouse look; pieces made in the 'forties and 'fifties (and maybe earlier) were often black with white graining. A Parisian named Frank apparently made his name with this finish, in the late 'twenties or early 'thirties, as I recall it. I have a brainstorm for the poster, to replace the existing pulls on that handsome credenza: a single bar of wood, either matching the wood (to look like an original feature) or contrasting. This would be attached through the existing holes, so (no matter how valuable) the furniture piece would remain unaltered and undamaged. . . Cool, huh ? Who says there's nothing new under the sun. . .! | |||||
| Some feedback | 1 Relevance | 17 years ago | Olive | General discussion | |
| Some feedback Well, I think you should do some additional thinking before you proceed. My hubby and I have had marine aquariums for years and years. THEY ARE A LOT OF WORK! You must be ready for the commitment they take. For example, if you go on vacation you'll need to have someone come and check the salinity and the filters and all that. Lots of people pay a maintenance person to care for their tanks just like hiring house cleaners, it can get pricey. Understanding what you are getting yourself into is way more important than the furniture you'll put the tank on. Marine aquariums also are much harder to stabilize and maintain if they are smaller than 75 gallons. If you want to put in a smaller tank your best bet is to stick to fresh water. There are many forms of fresh water tanks, you do not have to do the ticky-tacky stuff you see in Petco. Back in our fresh water days we had an Amazonian Cichlid tank that was gorgeous. Another thing to consider is that salt water tanks wreak havoc on anything made of wood. It also will mist into the room that you put it into so salt deposits will form in the area of your tank. Don't put furniture you love near it and certainly keep electronics away. Many stands are metal so that they can survive the abuse. With a marine tank you need to enclose the sump and filtering systems so there are usually doors. Oceanic is a good company to deal with, both for the stands and for the tank itself. I recommend you spend some time online reading about tank maintenance. There are lots of forums just like this one for aquarium enthusiasts. I don't want to scare you off but, it's a big commitment, especially a marine tank. Proceed with caution and good luck! | |||||
| Why vs. How gets to the heart of it...Pt. 3 | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| Why vs. How gets to the heart of it...Pt. 3 It follows then in such a society and economy that humans need to be further constrained, and then engineered, and then perhaps even genetically redesigned to make them accept what we are going to make for them no matter what, because we have discovered how to make a particular thing. Frankly, this is all kind of scary, is it not? Not original--I've heard others get at it from other directions--but scary in a Star Trek Borg kind of way. An intellectual capacity to quantify and formalize, a receptivity to educational indoctrination, a capacity for cost/benefit training, susceptibility to political propaganda, religious training that explains the why of everything in a single god, superficial aesthetic standards and media propagated tastes, etc., all seem to have produced a civilization that doesn't ask why in any functional sense, only in an existential sense. Why is life a living hell? Why is life so lacking in purpose? Why must it all be this way? These are all why questions people ask without expecting answers? These are emotions expressed as questions. So, Koen, we do not merely need to return why to the curriculum, but we need to return a particular kind of why to the curriculum. We need to characterize the why to be asked as the kind of why with an answer. We need to distinguish it from the helpless, unanswerable emotional why? And all of this because a few mathmaticians found it easier to formalize what and how than why? This is a great example of the chaos theory concept that a butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and precipitate a vast storm system somewhere else, because chaotic, complex systems are sensitively dependent on intitial conditions. Descarte, it would appear, was such a philosophical butterfly. | |||||
| Eames fiberglass sideshells, real or not? | 1 Relevance | 6 years ago | bushy | Identification | |
| Hi Guys and Girls, I'm following this forum sice a long time, but it is actually my first post here.I came upon a bunch of fiberglass eames shells. Some have the embossed H logo, a small v, some have the black herman miller sticker, They are all attached to new dowel base (copy). The only thing which I find strange is the irregular shape of the raised area where the shockmounts are attached , shouldn't these be a perfect circle? What do you think? Attachment: received_1120455578327195.jpeg Attachment: received_3183746465015449.jpeg Attachment: received_2548391175414358.jpeg | |||||
| Sometimes investing in a single process | 1 Relevance | 14 years ago | Eameshead | General discussion | |
| Sometimes investing in a single process is the bravest thing an artist can do. Putting all of your eggs in one basket and going down the river with it, for better or worse, is what many artists never get up the courage to do. That is one problem you DON'T have! Getting out of the way and going with something you stumble upon is just nature asserting itself in another way. I agree with you about getting out of your own way and letting things go. And speaking as an OCD type person myself, I can very much relate to the satisfaction and/or sheer pleasure that you might experience in carefully cutting out every last bit of negative space around those lines. The obvious time element itself is something that I enjoy. Learning that you make such a huge investment of time to cut each line edge by hand gives the work more meaning for me. It has a much different feeling to me than if the cutting out were done by some "automatic" or machine process. The cutting out of each line objectifies each gesture in a way that is double edged for me. (No pun) Your flawless craftsmanship steals the show, and mostly in good ways, to be sure. I guess there is a "synthetic" feeling that I wrestle with. It is both a strength and the possible weakness.. Again, in a good way. The almost sterile "cleaning up" of the gestures gains something and loses something simultaneously. But It is this very dilemma that gives your work its meaning though, in my opinion. Gives it its edge, and its question. All artists have to make choices and go with them. It's obvious that you have developed things to a very high level in your work. Thanks for not misunderstanding my "tone" the first time around. I would not have commented on your work if i didn't feel it was strong in the first place. I love the complexity and the overload. So beautiful. Keep at it! (And interesting story about your friend Tktoo. Life is so weird, huh?) | |||||
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