Search result for: the-last-thing-you-aquired-
| # | Post Title | Result Info | Date | User | Forum |
| Luck, as my old coach said, requires great preparation...Pt. 1 | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| Luck, as my old coach said, requires great preparation...Pt. 1 ...at least to be benefitted from. Put another way, one can (and does) have luck at any level of activity, but luck at a low level of activity doesn't bring you much worth having, except, if you're lucky, your health. 🙂 The reason for going to school, apprenticing, mastering skills, reading voluminously as long as you live, networking, discussing, taking calculated risks, and occassionally stepping off into the unknown, etc., is to build up the prize fighter in you enough to get a chance at a title fight of your own, or in the case of someone like Ettore Sottsass, to stay ever on the razor's edge of one's own present where such prize fights tend to occur. And then sometime during the long time you hopefully remain in your present moment, you eventually become the logical contender for your own title fight(s); then if the luck happens, you get to be heavy weight champion (not so much over someone else but over yourself)...briefly...which is a capstone, but not the underlying reason you fight. You fight to live, to make something of yourself you can respect, to survive long enough to solve the mystery of where your path came from and where it leads, and of who you really may be (we are all partly enigmas so certainty of self knowledge is always limited). FWIW, all great novels and movies are about the same thing: a hero is given something to do and then does it and in the process figures out at least part of who he/she really is. We are all tiny little heroes in huge worlds struggling against seemingly insurmountable odds, solving bits and pieces of the mystery of who we are, and compensating with denial and wit regarding that which we cannot bear. You may find my metaphor of a prize fighter crude, but I like to invert metaphors for people (and myself), because doing so kind of makes them come at rather simple, familiar ideas from a fresh enough angle to actually receive them instead of just shrugging and moving on. | |||||
| Hi Gustav,aww, thank you... | 1 Relevance | 17 years ago | ite (BE) | General discussion | |
| Hi Gustav,aww, thank you... Hi Gustav, aww, thank you so much for measuring the UGO for me !! So sweet of you, thank you ! much appreciated ! :o) the website does not carry this information -though it's very useful. Actually, the seat depth is rather good, I think. It's a couple of cms deeper than my ideal (= about 50 cms = perfection), but adding a small cushion would give you 50 cms easy when you're reading a book. Ah pretty good indeed ! And thank you so much for your generous offer for having me over. That would be great, now if only I had more time to travel.. The Hjelle story is very inspiring. Actually it illustrates the power of good design: it can really push a product forward. Lovely design sells. I find it wonderful to learn that design is responsible for saving craftsmanship and jobs. Naturally, it works the other way around as well: lovely design sells, even if the properties of the thing are not the best of the market. Friends of mine were looking to buy a fridge recently. They were esp interested in a Smeg, bc of its character and looks, and surprised to learn that it performs quite poorly compared to other models in the same category when it comes to energy use. I was surprised as well : somehow, it seems that if you buy a high design product, you expect somehow that it is a high quality product. I felt disappointed to learn that here the lovely design is used to compensate below average performance of the item in other domains. After all, people are liking the Smeg designs so much that they will buy them nonetheless, so the Smeg executives can afford not to care too much about the unusual high energy consumption of their products. Anyway, it simply attests again to the power design can have on a product ! I much prefer the positive vibe of Hjelle story :o) - it makes up for the Smeg disappointment. PS: Oh, btw, what an exciting blog with the orange pic ! I just surfed too much time away - a pity I don't speak Swedish.. PPS: (edit) darn typos | |||||
| Bringing back gloss and color on Artemide Selene chair by Vico Magistretti | 1 Relevance | 4 years ago | Maber_interior | Repair | |
| Hi,I’m new to this forum. Let me introduce myself. I’m Robin, living in the Netherlands and a I have a true passion for design. Some of my favourite designers are, Magistretti, Prouvé, Panton, Ponti and Colombo I like to restore the items I find and bring them back to how they were new. Here a project I really liked. I found a set of early edition Artemide Selene chairs in a really bad condition. I think they were outside for quite a while. There was a lot of dirt, scratches and the gloss was gone. First thing I did was cleaning with water and some green soap, to get of the first dirt. After that I hand polished them to get rid of the deep dirt that sat in the scratches. After cleaning them again with soap I took the machine and polished again. To finish them off I used the well known Turtle wax to give them the nice gloss and protection. Attachment: Screenshot-2022-10-30-at-09.54.58.png Attachment: selene.jpg Attachment: selene2.jpg | |||||
| ... | 1 Relevance | 13 years ago | onegroovydude | General discussion | |
| ... "You picked some guy as an example of a starving artist. And only because his estate was worth something NOW. You didn't address my points." Some guy? I picked some guy? One of the best abstract expressionism painters in history, and a shining example of a true starving artist. You danced around the points, after I put them right in your face. I used you're starving artist against you, and you couldn't come back from it, because you're artists aren't starving. He was truly starving regardless of the estate value now, which is worth $30,000,000. I showed you a real starving artist, and you didn't want to see it. You only want to see the people you call starving, that have hundreds of photos of themselves in the press, and public, throughout their entire lives promoting all their art. You use the words starving artist too loosely. A real starving artist is someone just like Pinajian, that was never discoverd until 70,000 paintings were found in a dumpster, and stuffed in every room of his house after death, to be taken to the trash heap. That's a "real" starving artist. "My point was that even the relatively successful "careerists" -- the good and well documented contemporary artists (that will be hawked by guys like you later on) are not making heaps of money NOW. They pay 50% to their galleries, and more often than not have a day job, even in their later years." When did money these people make in their personal lives even come into what is considered art or not. I never brought that up. Highly collectable, but largely agreed upon as vapid and weak as "art". I will agree there. Something can be butt ugly, and still be collectible. Maybe that's where this whole thing has gotten turned around. You're a lover of what I would call "fine art". And that does not need to be confused with art in general. Just because it's not fine art, does not mean it's not art at all. And almost everything is life is not "fine art" compared to a Monet. But then again, neither is a warhol, if that's the case. To Monet, Warhol would be considered talentless, and if Warhol brought him an example of his work, Monet would roll on the floor laughing. You can't call something you like art, and not something else because you don't like it. Monet would call you a doofus if you told him you like Warhol. What does that say about someone who loves Warhol, and monet? It says that the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder. | |||||
| Magnets and Legos rule! Pt.III | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| Magnets and Legos rule! Pt.III Can my kid build as naturally as some other kids, who seem to come out of the womb with a carpenters triangle and box of socket wrenches? Nope. He can take or leave this stuff unless he's seen something in a DVD, or say a plane out at our small airport where I take him a couple of time a week, that he wants to emulate or improve upon. But he's getting in control of his own hands (which seems to me the real concrete reason for doing all this sort of thing) and he has a much broader and deeper grasp of a lot of forms and construction than other kids seem to have. And he learned to read quite a bit sooner than other kids without me trying to MAKE it happen. Lastly, don't think you need to buy everything new. Go to garage sales and thrift stores. I decided early on after watching him throw away expensive new toys designed specifically to turn him into Einstein or Eames that this game of triggering his faculties hinged more on massive exposure coupled with massive change (apologies to B. Mau) than on some highly intellectualized (and probably widely off the mark) interpretation by adults of what kids need. Kids need what they need and they don't know what it is any more than we do until they/we see it and play with it. So: go to the thrift stores and garage sales, especially in the trendier hoods where wretched excess reigns, and drag home something new every day if you can. Every 50 cents or a dollar you spend on something is like a neural net lottery ticket. you never know which one is the going to burn in a new circuit. and the game really does come down to who can burn in the most circuits. Randomness has its place and this is it. Let the schools beat your little person into round or square holes. You help him surf all the junk you can. And then glory in his imagination and in throwing most of it away as fast as it comes in. Teach him to recognize crap as well as good stuff. Hemingway said a writer needs a really good crap detector. So does you kid. This society is full of so much of it, it is never too early to help him experience the difference. | |||||
| A built a coffee table for a | 1 Relevance | 12 years ago | Lowe9 | General discussion | |
| A built a coffee table for a buddy of mine. He came to visit me in Chicago and I challenged myself to build something flat pack that didn't look like it came out of an IKEA factory. The top is an 8/4 live edge Elm slab. I love the burl through the middle of the table. My friend elected to keep the bark on the slab. The base is solid 1" bar 6061 aluminum. All of the joints were hand machined on an old Bridgeport mill. Each joint was then drilled and tapped to accept a 5/8-16 counter-sunk machine screw. Each cross member fits into a tight pocket on the other. The whole thing comes apart by removing the 6 machine screws. The base is attached via machine screws passing through aluminum plates that were welded to the cross members. These go into wood inserts, allowing to be removed as many times as needed. While I was at it, I built a second base for myself to replace a pair of hairpin legs I had on a previous black walnut slab table I built. I can't stand hairpins anymore, they're much too cliche and played out. | |||||
| Whats wrong with consideration and politeness? | 1 Relevance | 22 years ago | Annette.sco | General discussion | |
| Whats wrong with consideration and politeness? Sorry to those (always hiding behind pseudonyms, I notice) who enjoy the cut and thrust of insult and hit and run posts, because you are not going to like what I say. One of the unfortunate thing about being interested in design issues is that it enables complacent people to act superior to others. Not just to feel that they have better taste but that they are better and more interesting people and that those who don't share their views are not worth consideration. I hate it when posters reveal interesting information about themselves - tell us about their tastes, or describe their homes - and then get sneered at by barely literate one-line posts. I want this board to remain a forum for exchanging views and information and feel that this works best if the atmosphere is largely supportive. Take Koen, for example, who seems to know more about design than the rest of us put together. He could make everyone feel small, if he were that way inclined by parading his superior knowledge in a sneering and superior way, as some of the other posters with less to feel pleased with about themselves do. Instead he is always tactful and supportive. It would seem that this forum is just starting to recover from the multiple personality crisis of one poster who invented a series of cyber buddies to support his often hostile or self-pitying posts. it wasn't pleasant for those under attack and, arguably, should have been stopped sooner. The number of interesting posts seems to have increased recently and this looks promising. A modicum of politeness and a bit of consideration won't lead to dull boards and perhaps those who only come for the buzz of traded insults should look elsewhere. And, incidently, why have we suddenly become age conscious? I'm 58 and a mother and grandmother and if those three facts makes anyone automatically think I must be boring, you have a problem, not me. I may indeed be boring, but it is in spite of my gender and age, not because of these. Finally, it would be good to have an editing function so that posters can view posts before sending - and a spell check would be useful too! | |||||
| Quote: | 1 Relevance | 17 years ago | SDR | General discussion | |
| Quote: "I don't think I like all the trim work painted. It looks a bit dated in a retro 70's ranch way and mot mid century modern - especially in the windows with the big X's." The problem with that is, [ahem] this ISN'T a mid-century modern house, and never was. It IS a "retro 70's ranch" (or a late 'forties ranch, for that matter). . . The advice to "paint out" the trim (make it the same as the body color) is of the same motive as removing the shutters: that is, to try to make the house "more modern." Shutters are of course a sham, on virtually every house built in the last century (at least) -- since central heating and the disappearance of marauding Indians ? But this house was designed to look bare without them -- so, to my way of thinking, they belong there. Grandma on stiletto heels, with a miniskirt and a beehive hairdo ? "Lipstick on a pig" ? No -- rather, to each its own. Trying to plaster one's favorite "look" onto every building on the block does nothing to advance either modernism, nor civility -- as I see it. And I say this after initially promoting the concept of "stylizing" this little house into something vaguely Wrightian -- simply (and shamefully) because that is MY favorite "look." And I'll probably fall into that trap again, somewhere, given half the chance. (It would be one thing to strip a house -- of a favorable shape and roofline, say -- down to the sheathing, remove the windows and doors, and rebuild it with more likable components and materials. But to try it just with paint and some molding -- no.) So -- I argue for giving this house what IT "wants," not what YOU (or he or she) might want for it. That's aesthetically "green" -- organic -- as I see it: responsibility, rather than willfulness. And the result will be harmonious and whole. Not that I advocate doing nothing to the house. Rather, improve it within the limits of its own style and substance. There have already been some good ideas presented. Yet except for the landscape work, almost every "improvement" shown above leaves me thinking that the photo at the top of the thread looks pretty good ! Nice color, almost acceptable arrangement of parts. . . This has been a wake-up discussion for me, and I thank you. | |||||
| Long, but pricing on UK Unlaced Black cord | 1 Relevance | 14 years ago | danawcook | General discussion | |
| Long, but pricing on UK Unlaced Black cord The third writing of this post. I am concerned that I am not doing the right thing, but in this day and age . . . Email from UK Supplier: Thank you for your enquiry. We do ship materials to the US, but unfortunately the cost of transport can be very high so is usually only worthwhile if the amount ordered is large. For example the cost of sending two reels of black Danish cord to the US would be £62, four rolls would be £91. However, as an export outside of the EU we can send the materials VAT free, this would mean that a bobbin would cost £58.34 instead of the VAT inclusive price of £70. I understand that Jim Widess will be stocking black cord soon, so it may be worth contacting him, transportation should be considerably less expensive! Email from Jim Widess: Dana, I will only be getting Unlaced Black Danish Cord. I don't believe Laced is made in Black - only unlaced. I hope this does not cause problems for Jim. This means for me: A roll/reel is enough for four to five chairs according to UK website. Website uses COIL and this email uses both reel and roll. I assume (at my own peril) that they are synonymous. Roll/reel/coil cost and shipping per - £62 = $96 £58.34 = $90 £91 = $140 So, my singular purchase results in $186 which is $46.50 per chair. Me plus one, $276 which is $39 per chair. Me plus three, $456 which is $28.50 per chair All this based on the numbers provided. If there was interest, I would broker and would not up charge on the shipping from CT to elsewhere - just the exact charge per USPS or whatever service you would like. I think we should split the UK shipping evenly. I cannot estimate if there are more than 4 coils as shipping data is not provided. I can accept paypal. I wrote an email back and clarified that he is using roll/reel/coil synonymously (is that a word?) Let me know. If it helps, I am a public school math teacher (so, you can verify employment and location if needed to feel comfortable) and am a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy if that means anything to anyone regarding integrity. | |||||
| Furniture Monster | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | LuciferSum | General discussion | |
| Furniture Monster Sorry to make a bad first impression. Any radical shift in thinking represents a risk. Humans are hard-wired to like things just the way they are - the status quo is our comfort zone. So, designers like Arne Jacobsen represent enormous risk-taking in terms of development, material knowledge, design, and production techniques. Sometimes these leaps succeed (Jacobsen, Eames, Saarinen etc) Sometimes they fail. When something new succeeds and reaches a tipping point the status quo suddenly sees itself as out of touch, and races to catch up. What then happens is a cultural shift resulting in a new vernacular language (of art, architecture, music, literature, design, etc) What was once cutting edge is now the new status quo. Jacobsen's success spurred companies like Overman to rapidly produce a slew of products that mimic the most successful qualites of the original design. The same thing happened to Eames (with Plycraft & Kruger) and Saarinen (with Burke). Overman products are perfectly decent, usable, and fun - just like a Plycraft chair or a Burke table. But as other people have said, these companies don't have the same 'genius designer' structure as Knoll or Herman Miller or Fritz Hansen. Much of the decisions were made based on the unglamorous market forces of designed-obsolescence (Plycraft released dozens of variants of the Eames chair) marketability, and popular tastes. Even a company as renowned as George Nelson Associates rested on the laurels of it's principal, but on the reality of anonymous staff designers. | |||||
| New DA | The small things | 1 Relevance | 12 years ago | Admin | General discussion | |
| Let's continue to explore the new forum. Today, the small things. Word balloonsYou will have noticed the new icons next to the titles of the threads. Our web designers have had great difficulty getting us to accept them. But when we got used to them, we must agree that it is a little bit more practical.The left icon that you can see below, is a sticky thread, which remains at the top of the page when we think it is useful to be visible for a moment.The following tells you that there there has been a new message in the thread since your last visit.Same thing with the right one, which indicates that there has been several new messages.If there is no pictogram next to a thread, it is that there is nothing new since your last visit and it's not worth opening. Thread footerIn the bar below the first post of each thread, you will find this (from left to right):- A share button to broadcast the content that you would like to share on the social networks.- The number of messages in the thread- And a little star ... My Watch ListThis little star deserves some explanation because some of you will find it really convenient. When you click on it, the thread is automatically added to your "Watch List" where you can keep in one place all your favorite content! Not only content from the Forum, but also the Blog posts, the content from the Atlas or items you like in the Buy & Sell. Convenient, no?How to access your "Watch List"? Easy! Go to your Dashboard via the button on the right column. Choose the « My Watch List » tab. All the saved content is there for you at any time. Enjoy these small changes.PS. There are many more tools available in your Dashboard. The explanations will follow in the coming days. For more information about the new Design Addict Read also:New DA | How to login New DA | Forum changes | |||||
| I dont know what the issue is | 1 Relevance | 8 years ago | Spanky | Identification | |
| I dont know what the issue is that makes photos load sideways---sometimes I get that too and the only thing that fixes it for me is to rotate the image at least one full turn on my computer, then close it. Then upload it to DA. Yours are the right way up if I right-click on each and then open it in a new tab/window. Usually that doesn't work but on yours it did. But back to the real problem: cushions like these aren't sold anywhere in finished state. All you have to do is go to an upholsterer and get new ones made. Doesn't even have to be someone who specializes in Danish style furniture. You just need a simple boxed cushion with a zippered closure. It should be either 4" thick or 5" thick foam for the seat and one inch less thick for the back. Request firm foam for the seat and a slightly less dense foam for the back. A poly batting wrap is a good idea because it keeps fabric from gripping the foam and ending up creased and wrinkled. Just tell them one layer no thicker than 3/4", otherwise they will add a lot to make it feel like a poufy down cushion. That's fine for traditional upholstery but all wrong on a Danish style chair. The seat cushion should cover the whole seat deck and the back cushion sits on the seat cushion. You can decide whether you want a bit of the back frame to show at the top, or you can have a higher cushion that covers the back frame. Don't go much higher than the frame back, though. It should have a low profile. If you want to shop for new fabric, check out Modern-Fabrics.com for a lot of good Danish wool remnants. I am not affiliated with them, just a satisfied customer. You should ask your upholsterer for yardage needed, or google "upholstery yardage chart". I think it's about 2.5 yds per chair. looks like your webbing might need redoing, or maybe it's just that that fabric makes it look like the webbing is sagging. An upholsterer can redo the webbing or you can do it yourself. | |||||
| Dear Chris and all. | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| Dear Chris and all. Let's see, where should I start...Yes seen from a distance in time, 1959 would not be that far and yes it will take soem time before Norman Foster is out-dated. My reaction is inspired by two major considerations. The first one is that dates do not tell the whole story. You might find 1959 very close and I to, have very little trouble remembering what I was doing and what I was studying at the time and yet...Spoutnik (the first satelite) and Laika (the first dog in space...and because of that probably "..the most important dog of all times...")was only two years earlier. We did not know or even expect that computers would one day be the size of a laptop or made for individual use...and if the information would have been available I do not think that it was a priority for desk designers. One can say more or less the same thing about our vision of managment. The user of this particular desk was still a power of authority, and probably quite paternalistic compared with "his" collegue in 2004 ("his" because in 1959 it was most certainly not a woman). The desk is a reflection of that time. I would love to go into details like the the choice of rosewood, or even more so the detail of the spacer that lifts the wooden double desk upp from the frames. In order to create this succesful visual effect the designer chooses to weld an extra flat piece of steel on the frame. (Which inspired my remark that Poul Kjaerholm would have done this better, he would have crossed the flat bars) My suggestion is that this reflects a certain period (where labor costs, even in Denmark) were not considered the same way we do it now. So, yes time is relative...My other point is a more complex one and should be read in light of the essay I wrote on originality (somewhere else on this site) It deals amoung other things with ones commitment to a particular product. What disturbs me more about the re-edition is not the re-edition as such but the fact that the production was at one point discontinued. In the "better" world that I envisioned, both the designer and the manufacturer would show their commitment to that particular product by improuving it, and in doing so a re-edition would not be necessary. ...and sorry for assuming that we all know a few words of Danish. | |||||
| I can't advise on places, but I can pass on | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| I can't advise on places, but I can pass on a technique for viewing Berlin a former neighbor of mine found fascinating. He collected images of locations of Berlin before WWII and after WWII and coded them on a map of Berlin. Don't ask me how he did it, for he's moved away and I've lost track of him. I'm sure there are probably urban design or architecture books that consider before and after the war Berlin. Why do I suggest this? Because it is fabulously enriching to be able do distinguish how a city came to be what it is at the time you are in it. Every city has a story--a spatial legacy so to speak. I grew to appreciate this dimension of cities when I worked as a real estate consultant on feasibility studies for developments. Take Los Angeles for one example. To drive through it and see it simplistically as some grotesquerie of sprawl is to miss the whole wonder of Los Angeles. A book called Ancient LA by Michael Rochlin creates a kind of historical atlas of Los Angeles that brings it all into coherence. I would recommend finding an equivalent book for Berlin before going there. Historical atlases are an increasingly lost art, despite the marvelous suitability of Geographic Information Systems to embrace them. Geography is taught less and less and so cartography focues less and less on creating historical atlases for ordinary persons. This is a serious loss. To know the spatial history of a place is one of the most intimate and revealing forms of experience of a place one can have. I would highly recommend not only experiencing the great design artifacts of Berlin, but also the design of Berlin itself...and not only what you can see as you walk from one design museum to the next, but the historical dimesions of its design. One thing I learned from Rick Steves, is that preparation to travel enriches travel. You are right to make a list of what to see in Berlin. Just make sure to put Berlin on that list too. http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=mRz,KrGTIadpMrceYeg6LT,... | |||||
| We now build... | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | SDR | General discussion | |
| We now build... We now build well-upholstered benches and seats in our houses, trying to make them all part of the building. But still you must bring in and pull up the casual chair. There are many kinds of "pull-up" chairs to perch upon -- lightly. They're more easy. They're light. [He shows a broad version of his "barrel chair" and a round-seated four-legged plywood chair I've never seen before.] But the big chair wherein you may fold up and go to sleep reading a newspaper (all that kind of thing) is still difficult. I have done the best I could with this "living room chair" but, of course, you have to have to call for somebody to help you move it. [Origami Chair] All my life my legs have been banged up somewhere by the chairs I have designed. But we are accomplishing it now. Someday it will be well done. But it will not have metal spider-legs nor look the way most of the steel furniture these days looks to me. No -- it will not be a case of "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating of curds and whey, when up beside her came a great black spider and frightened Miss Muffet away." I am for "Little Miss Muffet" frightened by the spider -- away. Yet every chair must eventually be designed for the building it is to be used in. Organic architecture calls for this chair which will not look like an apparatus but instead be seen as a gracious feature of its environment which can only be the building itself. So the stuffed-box-for-sitting-in is not much better than the machine-for-setting-it-in. No doubt the most practical sitters are troubled by these chairs, too. Finding a good comforable chair in which to place one's trunk is never quite easy and so most sitting to date still lacks dignity and repose. But it is possible now to design a chair in which any sitter is compelled to look comfortable whether he is so or not. And there is no reason why he, or she, should not be comfortable in mind as well as body folded up or down. When the house interior absorbs the chair as in perfect harmony, then we will have achieved not so minor a symptom of a culture of our own. [Whew! The poor man -- what was that woman he lived with DOING to him?] | |||||
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