Search result for: the-last-thing-you-aquired-
| # | Post Title | Result Info | Date | User | Forum |
| let's continue the... | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | NULL NULL | General discussion | |
| let's continue the... let's continue the job! koen, i understand your methodical approach but the most fun part is the brainstorming! so why not continue this brainstorm and not hurry too much to get to the final design. like i said; form, material, concept. to me the perfect form is the most important, not the use of scifi materials (in fact in my previous designs i always tried to avoid new materials and productionmethods; just to rule out future unknown problems). James' idea is also really nice; but then we must use a perfect archetype form where the only detail are the holes in it. a form similar to the one james drawed but perfectionised, and why not in glass? This said i also added a new drawing; a few nights ago is was also thinking of getting rid of the saucer and was thinking of slicing the vase...the next morning koen posted such a drawing! even though the man is twice my age he is faster!! so i tried to perfectionise his idea; the vase is now wider at the bottom and has a cross in the middle; this is the first 'divider', this cross does not go all the way to the top to stay 'invisible', also where the opening is; the cross is smaller so that it would not so obvious that the lower and upper part are connected. The colored freeform divider now shuffs over the vase, make more then 1 divider (with different diameters, so they are placed on different heights of the vase). So we create a 'flowertreevase'; like a tree; the trunk is the big middle, the vase that holds the water. the dividers are like branches. the top opening of the vase is quite small and serves just to put water in and just one big flower. as i did not wanted the dividers to have closed loops; thx to the use of at least 3 dividers upon each other 'loops' can be created. the vase in ceramic, the dividers in rapidprototyping material? just a personal addition; since a year now i am following a ceramic course and the most important thing i learned is; it's quite difficult to obtain what you want; the clay (and glazing) are not so easy to control! it all comes down to 'testing'. Click to enlarge! | |||||
| have fun with the research | 1 Relevance | 13 years ago | _ | General discussion | |
| have fun with the research as i mentioned in the earlier post, the stow and davies "predictor" desk in question as good looking as it is, by the time it came out in the mid-1960's, stylistically, the design is already over a decade late (compared to george nelson's e.o.g. line for herman miller in the late 1940's or florence knoll in the early 1950's and other works of well known designers like borsani). borsani will never do anything backwards and his desks, like most good italian desk design in the 1950's are more sculptural and not as stiff and formulaic as the stow and davies "predictor" line. also, the office furniture design in the mid 1960's has already evolved into the cubicle system (like herman miller's action office). borsani's (with eugenio gerli) all white office system for his own firm tecno, the "graphis" designed in 1968 is purely geometric in form (like sottsass work and other designers) typical of the 1960's italian design (or anti-design). as for stow and davies, the closest thing the company had ever done to have some kind of pedigree is when in 1936, the metal office furniture company (later renamed steelcase) sub-contracted to stow and davies the racetrack shape or oval desk/work station wood tops for the furniture of the offices of the s.c johnson administration building in racine, wisconsin designed by frank lloyd wright. i do have the reference/source for the desk identification(just refraining from spoon feeding too much resources) and i think doing good old fashioned research is actually good for the (design enthusiast) soul. | |||||
| Hmmmm....again | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | Olive | General discussion | |
| Hmmmm....again well maybe one thing I could do is post a list of the top 10 little changes that make a difference. then the top 10 things that require investment going from lowestto highest. One of the big problems is the perceived 'sexiness' of solar panels. They look cool and people are entranced by the idea of creating their own power. Same holds for wind turbines..."Ooooo look at the pretty windmill"... The reality is that these are the last places to go, not the first. They are expensive inefficient and take up a lot of real estate on your property. The smartest place to start is also the cheapest. Learn to use less power and make simple changes in your life to accomplish that. Sadly, many don't want to hear that they need to make any sort of a change. People make changes in their lives all the time when they move, get married, have kids, quite smoking etc. so why is adopting more effienct uses of power so hard? I wish I could answer that. BUT...the good news is that more and more people are becoming motivated to do just that. Little changes add up and are totally valid contributions. you don't need to wear hemp sandls and read by soy candle to make a postitive impact. One of the MOST important things you cna do is think about efficiencty of energy use and about the idea of embodied energy. The first is simple, turn things off when you aren't using them and make sure that off is really off, no 'vampire loads' allowed. The second, embodied energy is also fairly simple. Where did that product you have in your hand come from? Half way around the planet? Maybe you could find something that was made closer to home. Are you buying frozen veg for dinner? Those took 100% more energy to deliver to your market than the fresh ones did. And the fresh ones just might support a local farmer! Do you buy a latte at the same cafe every day? Bring your own mugs and see if they'll keep them on hand for you. Simple things like that. I'll think about writing the two lists I mentioned and post them later on. Meanwhile if anyone's interested read the link. http://howto.altenergystore.com/The-Basics/Energy-Efficiency-and-Your-Ho... | |||||
| overall a bit busy, but great furniture | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | ite (BE) | General discussion | |
| overall a bit busy, but great furniture Hi Mark, Marvelled at the view you have got from your window. And the many lovely pieces you own (particularly the Eames stools). You truly collected some gorgeous pieces. I feel these lovely beauties deserve to be put in the spotlight a little more. Now the overall scheme is rather busy. With so much to see in your place, the eye has little resting points. In addition there is not one thing (or things) that get(s) to pop out and create a focal point in the room. Also use a good lighting scheme to put additional emphasis on your chosen focal points. I like your idea of firm editing (art/ rugs etc.) and repainting, which could calm the place down, and create a more neutral and less distracting backdrop for your furniture. I do not know what sort of colour you like, but I would choose a tint several shades lighter than you have now, as the darker tints shrink your space. Nevertheless I would definitely refrain from using stark whites as this can sometimes feel too clinical. E.g. a beige shade (with brown rather than green undertones) perhaps for the main living room. Always use (a lot of) testers before you decide on the shade that really works for you. And look whether the color is still pleasing in broad daylight, as well as by night. Personally I like paints that are a bit chalky and a bit dirty, which inevitably feels more natural than primary hues, like the Farrow & Ball neutrals range. You can buy radiator paint from them in the same color, which will make radiators remain in the background. I would refrain from glossy paint wherever possible. And I would choose one color that would work for all of your living room walls, so you do not need to visually fragment your space unnecessarily. You could paint the ceiling white, but do not use stark white: mix a bit of the paint you chose for your walls through the white for the ceiling to create color harmony. | |||||
| I agree with every tihng | 1 Relevance | 10 years ago | Zephyr | General discussion | |
| I agree with every tihng Spanky said. I would just reiterate the comment about not putting polyurethane on this, in its current state. Poly would certainly be an appropriate finish, if the the chair was in decent condition. Not period correct, but would offer good protection. The issue with adding poly in its current state, however, is that it will look really bad with the condition the wood is in. Poly application, unless you are very experienced, is really only meant to be applied to bare, clean wood in good condition. From the pictures, it looks like there is a lot of grayed, weathered, raised grain wood. The poly will soak into this surface very unevenly, and give you a blotchy, rough mess. you would also need to add many coats to even start building a film, which is necessary for poly to do its job. In fact, most traditional finishes added to the chair in its current state will yield the same results. You would really need to sand the chair back to 'good wood,' or stain the whole thing to have any good results with adding a finish. I think your best bet is to clean it really well with something like Murphys oil soap, TSP, etc, using a mildly abrasive pad. After it is completely clean, and dry, I would give it a light sanding, trying to remove as much of the grayed, weathered wood as you care to. You might then be able to add a finish, but it will be entirely dependent on the state of the wood at this point. If you really want to keep every little scratch and knick, and you dont want to sand away the damaged wood, then you could probably add a couple applications of paste wax. The paste wax will soften the roughness, and add some minimal protection. But you still risk having an uneven surface appearance, as the wax will heighten the appearance of the good wood, and soften the bad wood areas. At the end of the day, what you are wanting to do here really takes a fair amount of experience to execute properly. It will be easiest to either just clean it and live with whatever comes out of that, or sand it back and do a full refinish. Goodluck! | |||||
| For cheap art, nothing beats a print of a great artist.'s... | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| For cheap art, nothing beats a print of a great artist.'s work....Pt. 1 that was exceedingly simple in execution and which was basically intended to be a print. Matisse and Picasso late in their careers did some deceptively simple things. I just think they are wonderful. You get about 99.999 percent of the image quality of the original for almost no cost. I mean, Matisse was working with scissors and blue construction paper and Elmers there at the end and in some ways was at his most brilliant. A print may actually enhance these wonderfully childlike works. Same for some of Picasso's things, when he and Matisse were communicating toward the end and after Matisse's death, when the P-man had no peer left to talk with. I know that poster shops in the 80s-90s so flooded the market with these that it seemed to cheapen and commoditize them, but if you look at the original in a museum or gallery and at the print you get in the store for diddly, it has to be one of the great art buys of all time. I have Picasso's crazy king and his hand full of posies and a Kandinsky print and I love them. Just like I don't care if everyone else has the same wonderfully designed coffee pot I do, I don't care if everyone else has the same Picasso print I have. My art is for me. Now for oils, there's no substitute for the real thing, at least if you love oil painting. Looking at a print of an oil painting is like looking at a flower dried and pressed under glass. I can't afford my taste for Picasso and Matisse, Pollock, or just about any of the now famous painters. But there are many many little known schools of American art, for one example, where a lot of fine oil painting has been done and that's the kind of art to look for. alas, all oils seem to be inflating. For glass, its hard to beat Blenko. Each piece is unique and beautiful. And even though it is being collected, only a few pieces (crazy floor decanters) bring a lot of money. Most goes for a song. But I occassionally find some Murano like glass in the thrifts stores and yard sales for little or nothing, too. Good sculpture, imho, is very hard to find cheap. | |||||
| Specific Questions | 1 Relevance | 22 years ago | Brandon | General discussion | |
| Specific Questions Shooter- I am an attorney who specializes in Intellectual Property Litigation. This is a very broad subject with an infinite number of options for a paper. If you have specific question I would be glad to help. To generally help narrow your search there are three broad areas of IP. 1. patents 2. trademarks 3. copyrights. Within patents there is a special subset called design patents intended to deal more with the visual presentation of an object as opposed to its functionality. With patents in particular there are time limits. These time limits are put in place to limit control of a patent since they run counter to the basic U.S. economic model (allow more people to make the same product and price will go down while quality goes up). Any patents on the Barcelona chair would have long since expired, allowing anyone to legally make the piece. What is still in place are copyrights and trademarks associated with the Mies name and signature. This is the only thing that is protected. Any company in the world has every right now to make a chair exactly the way Mies designed it. The only exclusive right Knoll has is in the signature. How much is in a name? What Knoll also does is protect its business by producing pieces of only the highest quality. I am rambling now because I am not sure where you want to go. I believe an exploration into competing forces of patent law as they relate to design would be interesting. i.e. is it best for the world to reward a designers creativity by giving him or her exclusive rights to produce thet product they conceive - or is it best to make deisgns more accessible by allowing anyone to produce them once the idea is out in the open? Or, does the answer fall somewhere in the middle as our current system suggests (allowing limited patent protection for a number of years and then opening it up). Just a few thoughts. I will ellaborate as you have questions. | |||||
| Heath couldn't have said it better IMO | 1 Relevance | 16 years ago | whitespike | General discussion | |
| Heath couldn't have said it better IMO "Thanks to Whitespike for prompting this. I'd be a bit concerned that breaking it up too much might dilute the forum into something that is a bit arid, personally I'd favour just one separate channel for ID threads and group everything else together. One thing I would like but which is probably too difficult would be the ability to contact other posters privately or off site, perhaps profiles? I would gladly pay an annual fee if there could be a members section." I wholeheartedly agree that dividing into too many categories could make the board lose energy and make it appear to to be stagnant. I think one separate area for IDs and one for discussion would suffice - part of the charm of this site it it's simplicity. While some newbies occasionally bash the simple nature of the site it's the long time memebrs that appreciate it and who have earned a right to keep it that way. I vote for small gradual changes, as this site doesn't doesn't seem like it will ever dissipate (unless our generous hosts so decide). There is no hurry as nothing is actually broken. If there was time/energy/money flowed into the site for something that could be considered drastic, I also agree on the idea of "profiles" and ways to contact members. I think many of us, at some point, have wished to contact another member for one reason or another ... but posting your email on the www makes me queasy. I think this could increase the sense of community and the chances of DAs meeting person, with easy tools for knowing where our DA friends are, and what their "real life" personalities are ... which adds to the humanity and opportunity for real long standing friendships. And while I am piss poor, I would not mind paying a small annual fee (donation) to include this feature. Even a 20 dollar fee would help provide a decent donation every year to the cause and weed out those who just wanna stop by and get one question answered about their tiki eames era atomic scoop chairs. | |||||
| The body seems less of a problem than the mind... | 1 Relevance | 20 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| The body seems less of a problem than the mind... My wife's a physician and increasingly the problem seems to be we outlive our minds. As the baby boom ages, it will be interesting to see the largest age cohort in America be largely demented. One can almost foresee a new field of marketing emerging in response: Alzheimer Marketing for Dummies. Oh, to cut to the chase, our minds are pretty crappy from the very start...full of nightmares, fears, prejudices and phobias. And then they are susceptible to being misinformed with the basest, cruelest ideas. And then once so misinformed very difficult to unmuddle. And of course neuroscience shows empirically that the massively complex neural network of our brains is highly prone to misfires and irrational burn patterns even under the best of circumstances. Eye witness testimony is most unreliable as a result of everyone subjectively recalling what they have seen without even knowing they are distorting what they saw. Add in a human mind's insidious tendency to self-actualize and self-aggrandize by creating out of hole cloth others it is better than and you have a highly untrustworth hunk of brain meat. Add to that it is encased in a skull that can barely protect it from harm from even slight trauma and you've got a very poorly designed organ and carrying case in my humble opinion. that it can hallucinate and operate opposed thumbs is in many persons--particularly contemporary American politicians--its greatest distinction. Were it not for the brain's capacity for compassion in some, but apparently not enough persons, I am not sure its gifts of abstraction, logic, problem solving, and creation of beauty and function would be worth the horrible misuse the mind makes of virtually every worthwhile thing it develops. Don't mean to be glum. The brain just does seem, on balance, a pretty weak design effort. | |||||
| How to define kitsch ? (part 2) | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | ite (BE) | General discussion | |
| How to define kitsch ? (part 2) For instance, Koen did argue (Koen, please correct me if I am getting it wrong, or if I misrepresent your opinion) that for him the label kitsch applies when something uses style without (..philosophical..) content and is in general poorly produced /rendered, often lacking in originality. He sees the new postmodernist kitsch as often displaying a sense of humor, whereas the default kitsch often lacks the ironic twist or comment the more highbrow kitsch seems so often to embody. My personal definition feels somewhat different. I never had to actually write out this definition before (cf. the implicit sensor thing is the default in daily life) so I hope I manage to produce some decent formulation the first time around. Here it goes: kitsch seems to me all things that display a very high impact eye popping quality, where the characteristics constituting this quirkiness (be it by using hard, bold or fluorescent color/ or by mimicking the shape of a completely unrelated object of being/ or by deliberately distorting proportions) are completely unrelated and unnecessary to the actual function of the object. But in fact, this quirkiness seems to be at least as important, if not overshadowing, the original functionality of the object. Guess I lean towards Gerrits point of view. There. I tried to define it. I know it is still pretty vague, but I can not do much better at this point I am afraid. Notice that for me: poor production/ or poor production does not play such a role in classifying something as kitsch or not, nor does good taste / or would I want it in my house. However, what constitutes you personal definition of kitsch was not Stephens original question. I tried to avoid the definition - hot potato for fear of hijacking Stephens thread, but alas, it seems to be stronger than myself Perhaps I can be excused, as it is something of a heavily trained workreflex. Unfortunately, it occasionally seems to turn me into a nerd outside work .. :oD | |||||
| i went into a furniture ... | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | LRF | General discussion | |
| i went into a furniture ... i went into a furniture store in my hometown today looking for a a makeup chair for my wife, they sell really funky modern furniture and bad reproductions, I saw on the floor for the first time the eames lounge chair made by alphaville for 2400.00 i thought for a moment and said to my self i hope no one buys that sucker, as it look good just not right. the base was to shiny The leather was nice and it was the Eames hidden wood seams and said on the bottom alphaville design, I talked to the lovely lady who worked at the store and told her what i did and told her i am real familiar with Alphaville she responded and said i am glad you are cause there stuff is horrible after thinking that we have beat this subject to death about Alphaville being the best of the worst of the China villains, she said every thing that they have purchased one time or another has had problems. I said how awful! she said they bought 4 nelson bench's for a doctors office and all had to be remade re drilled and screwed and repainted (and the one i bought from them had to be remade just like it ) They bought 2 Eames chairs one broke completely through the ply wood the other on the floor for your eyes only she said, a LeCorbuier lounge with pony leather a broken tether on the back unable to be fixed, at all, I use to like this company but I feel real sorry for a brick and mortar company that has to make a living from their stuff, not like the Interent companies with low overhead, she did say they do make the best barcelona chairs they call them the exposition chair and good brnos and a nice Noguchi table but after that buyer be ware. so no recommendations on the Alphaville eames knockoff a nice dead ringer but trouble up ahead. for 2400 no deal at all. stay with Herman miller on that one. | |||||
| Barry | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | LuciferSum | General discussion | |
| Barry Off the mark? I'm not sure you even know what country the mark is in. Watching you reply to postings is like watching a blind guy swing a baseball bat at a hockey game. Take the following interaction (edited for time and content) Woody (to Riki): your space looks cluttered. We need to photoshop some things out of it (referring to the thread "I hate Purple", in which Woody progressively photoshops objects out of a room until the room is pure white; link posted above) Barry (missing the humor): He said the same thing about my space. I don't think it looks cluttered. (amping up the passive aggression) Some of us live in real spaces, not showrooms. Woody: Dude, I was joking. Don't you remember the thread about the all white room? (again referring to the thread "I hate purple" in which Woody progressively photoshops objects out of a room until the room is pure white; link posted above) Barry (clearly NOT remembering the thread): I don't understand why us readers must study each posting to see if the post was meant to be serious or humorous. How about giving us a clue? (also not remembering that Woody had, in fact, just given a clue about the thread "I hate purple" in which Woody progressively photoshops objects out of a room until the room is pure white; link posted above) Woody: (astutely silent on the issue) Enter a brief and charming dialogue between Barry and Whitespike in which they quaintly refer to each other as 'bub' and something is said about poopypants. And, in order to keep this posting from being completely off topic, Riki, this site must be getting boring if we're resorting to dissecting dialogue between a group of people we can only assume are adults. By the way, love the paintings! For inspiration I would point you to Rothko, Joseph Albers, and even Jasper Johns 🙂 | |||||
| glassartist | 1 Relevance | 16 years ago | Pegboard Modern | General discussion | |
| glassartist My thoughts on the RAR in question are this: While I have had, and have seen, quite a number of original vintage Eames rockers (not hundreds... that is a hell of a lot of chairs, but enough to know something about them) almost all of the vintage rockers have had tabs that attach the base to the shell with squared off edges. The 1st generation rocker I posted images of has rounded edges (also, note that they are not uniform) and I know without a doubt that chair is 100% original and vintage, having never even had the base removed or altered in any way (notice the larger screw heads?). Also, notice the dimpled oval shape on the tab? I've personally never seen a knock-off with that shape on the tab. Like glides and boots that appear on different generations of Zenith chairs with X bases, it's entirely plausible that the tabs affixed to bases could have blended from one generation to the next. Just because they changed the wire configuration does not mean that they changed the tab, or perhaps they used up the rounded tabs before moving on to a new batch that was squared off. So the base may well be correct (that does not mean it is original to the shell, buy the way). The armshell certainly looks correct... except for the label. While I can't say with any certainly that the label is a new reproduction, It does look VERY bright and clean, not to mention in perfect condition with no scuffs scratches, or marring of any kind. Expo67 pointed to issues with the label (registration, etc) but I'm not sure that is a serious defect. When I look at my early RAR, which is in the most perfect condition that is likely to be found, the label is still slightly yellowed. All the nit-picking aside, I think the larger point is that if a seller exhibits dubious practices, or misrepresents things, they destroy their credibility. If someone has lied to you once, why would you think they would not do it again? When doing business, I think that the most important thing a person has is their integrity and their credibility. Honest mistakes are just that, mistakes. And everyone makes mistakes. But if someone knowingly misrepresents something, it's easy to see why people would question them from that point on. And maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see how that point can be disputed. | |||||
| If the foam has deteriorated | 1 Relevance | 10 years ago | Spanky | General discussion | |
| If the foam has deteriorated to the point where the fabric is slack, then you can't measure the thickness using the needle-poking method. But your fabric doesn't look loose at all. Latex foam doesn't get significantly softer as it ages, it just oxidizes into a hard crust that crumbles in to orangey-yellow sand that gets all over everything. It cannot be revived once this happens. It also doesn't compress, if that's what you mean--not the way urethane foam does from someone sitting on the same end of the sofa for years. It's way more resilient than urethane foam, which is why it's so comfortable. I recommend this out-of-print book (but still easy to find) on upholstering---very clear drawings and instructions, very well organized and easy to follow. I learned the craft from it a long time ago and still refer to it when i get some weird thing. I liked it because if I got to a point where my piece didn't look right and I couldn't figure out how to do what it was showing in the book, all I had to do was check the step before which was invariably where I went wrong--then just correct that and move on. You do have to be meticulous and detail-oriented, but you sound like that type. -- Furniture Upholstery (Sunset Books, 1980-ish editions) --- lots of cheap used copies on Amazon You can learn a lot about fabrics by collecting swatches and just studying new and old furniture of all styles when you are out and about. There's a lot of cheaper new furniture that is really badly upholstered---and new, better quality stuff that looks pretty much flawless but isn't always comfortable to sit on (another big part of upholstery--getting the support and foam density just right). I wouldn't advise starting on something like a Karpen chair though---but you probably already know that! Ottomans are a good starter project. You also don't have to invest in a lot of expensive tools to get started. | |||||
| There are some discussions on | 1 Relevance | 9 years ago | Spanky | General discussion | |
| There are some discussions on the board about this particular weave in cane---look for Bambi chair and the Wegner round chair with cane seat. I rewove an Olsen settee with this weave and did a pretty good job without any prior experience with the weave and only a little experience with cane, though I had a lot of experience with paper cord weaving which helped in some ways. There are tricks to it that are essential to success. If you don't know the tricks, you'll want to tear your hair out! There will be a learning curve that will take up at least one section of the piece; if you can stick with it through that, you can do it. If you really would rather have someone else do it, then ask furniture dealers who does their caning. This type of work isn't specific to mid-century modern style; the particular weaving pattern may be but most of the technique is in working with cane and any talented caner can figure out the weave pretty quickly, especially with the original cane is in place to study. One thing I discovered when I had a lot of frustration the last time this caning: cane these days is cut by machine and is much more prone to splitting. I don't think it's an issue on the finished work, there's just a lot more damaged canes in any given bunch and it's frustrating to have a long piece start to split in the middle when you've woven half of it already. Cane from the 50s and 60s on old Danish chairs & settees has a more uniform width and just looks like better quality. I once saw a brief video clip of a guy peeling cane by hand from a rattan vine; he made a small notch at one end of the vine with a knife and then peeled an entire length of the "bark" off. I think when done this way it splits off with the grain. Now they run an entire vine through a splitter machine and many canes at once shoot out the other end. The blades cut even widths but not necessarily with the natural grain. You end up with fibers sticking up along the sides and these end up splitting off when you try to weave with the cane. Some retail sources have better cane than others but I've gotten junky stuff from at least three places and have concluded that there are no guarantees. It's frustrating! | |||||
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