Search result for: the-last-thing-you-aquired-
| # | Post Title | Result Info | Date | User | Forum |
| The point raised about... | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| The point raised about... The point raised about Brument's experiments is a very valid one. My reasons to rejoice in seeing these objects is not that it created yet another vase, but that it widens the scope of what design is and reaffirms the point that in design, not everything can be readily applied to the mercantile aspect of it. My regrets on these pieces are that it is not done in a wider context of other attempts to translate works from one sense to the other, ear to eyes and vice versa, eyes to tactile sensations etc. But as well as Paul Klee failed in translating J.S. Bach's music into colours, Brument fails to translate sound into a similar visual experience. Although, many years ago, I spend an evening with him over good food, I have always distrusted most of Victor Papanek's publications. Especially his "Design for a real world" is a strange collection of the unlikely mix between proper ethics and improper means. The end result is a justification of un-practical and condescendent solutions for readers looking for a relieved conscience? The possibilities of our media driven society produces these things from time to time. "Cradle to cradle" is another one. So, my comments on Papanek's comments about the Bauhaus would be extremely short. What is obvious is that Papanek has not understood (and it is too late for him now) that the importance of the use of materials and the appropriate tools in design education has nothing to do with the state of technology in which the student has grown up. I am sure we could achieve the same results just by asking students to learn how to make a flint axe. There is no anachronism in the state of technology simply because the aims of that learning process have nothing to do with how we produce our artefacts now. If it was, it would automatically put the young professional in the disadvantaged position of having learned technologies that by definition are a thing of the past. Your description of an "old traditional craft technique" also strikes me as being an inadequate description of the pedagogical aims behind mastering a particular technology. Inadequate because it places that technology in a historical context (old and traditional) whereas the more important part is that the process between time, raw materials, the tools, the maker on one side and the projected end result, on the other, is the learning process. Papanek never understood that or has never given any indication that he had experienced that same process first hand. | |||||
| Pt. 2 | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| Pt. 2 The only draw back is it is a little too expensive at $15 to $17k and it is not yet geared to high mileage (it gets only 37 mpg), but its mileage could be spiked to 40-45 in the blink of an eye with a smaller engine and higher mileage tires and an egg-fairing. And if Bombardier were to domesticate one of the lightweight, small displacement, diesels fast gaining popularity in workhorse ATV's--the ones used on farms and in factories, well, then, 50 to 60 mpg would be effortlessly feasible in a snap, too. All break through machines have antecedants. The Can-Am Spyder's immediate legacy genes surfaced 20 or so years back in Canada in something called a TriHawk; that vehicle combined car like front end with a motorcycle like rear end. Another Canadian youngster experimented in the 90s with simply cutting the forks off a big Kawasaki and joining a two-wheeled front suspension and cockpit cage onto it in the 1990s; that is actually the closest vehicle to the Can-Am Spyder, but it never got past kit car status. Of course, both these late 20th Century attempts were preceded by the Morgan Autocar, and several others like it, made from the 1920s to the 1950s. But these Morgans and their bretheren were decidely three wheeled cars, where as today's Can-Am Spyder is essentially part ATV and part motorcycle. It has an ATV front end joined to a motorcycle's twin aluminum spar frame (packing a big V-twin motorcycle engine) that has an extra long rear swing motorcycle arm and belt drive. Oh, and it makes kick ass use of contemporary electronics for traction control, breaking, engine management and transmission (yep, you can option an electronic, paddle shifting five-speed trannie), as so many vehicles try to do these days. Yeeeee hawwwww! Wheeled travel is not moribund yet! And did I mention that it looks pretty right for a first try at a new vehicle? Yes, its form language is a derivative combo of contempo ATV and sport bike, but that's not all bad. ATV and sport bike designs are at least contemporary efforts at looking purposeful. The Spyder is clearly designed to look like it sits low on its haunches and hugs the ground, even though it rides almost as high as an ATV. But that look is not entirely a pose, because this machine CAN corner like a mother. James, M and Q have your next ride ready. If you want, they can TIG weld on some rocket launchers and pass the tab to her majesty. Someone in the commonwealth came up with the bloody thing. | |||||
| Tolmeo/Tizio | 1 Relevance | 23 years ago | Annette.sco | General discussion | |
| Tolmeo/Tizio Stephen, I think cwoo is right to pick out the size and ceiling height of the room as key here, however I am using these lights very successfully together. The room (building from the 1830s) is about 22x16ft and has 13ft ceilings with a decorative plaster cornice and no central light fitting. I use the Tizio on a Victorian pine chest of drawers in the corner of the narrower (fireplace) end of the room, where it contrasts nicely with the grey marble mantlepiece and blue and white delft tiles and is the same colour as the Morso squirrel stove. Because it is rather tucked away, the strong design is an advantage, rather than being too dominant. It is also good as a downlight for the beach pebbles and bowl on top of the chest. The Tolmeo Mego is at the window end of an oversized sofa - comfortable rather than of any design merit - which has cream slip covers and various throws and cushions in natural linens and wools. The cream shade of the light is above the middle of the sofa and of a similar colour. The windows probably dominate here, since the room is south facing and overlooks a large communal garden. I'm not sure how these lights would look in a very plain room with no views or decorative features - probably pretty good if there was plenty of ceiling hight. The other lights in the room are two cream Best and Lloyd floor (reading) lamps , a Technolumen Bahaus lamp WG24 (glass shade and stem) and a glass block lamp - also a plain black uplighter which is functional rather than decorative. They all go together, which is lucky, since none of them were particularly bought with this room in mind. Re the Tizio - i bought two of these as bedside light. they looked pretty cool on top of old wooden wine crates. However after a couple of years the joints seemed to loosen so the light end wouldn't stay in the right place for reading. The shop where we got them couldn't seem to fix the problem. We replaced them in this site with white frosted plastic IKEA lights which cost practically nothing and function beautifully. Has anyone else have the same thing happen with a Tizio, and, if so how did you fix it? One shop suggested inserting a coin into one of the sections (which one?) for balance, but I haven't tried this yet. | |||||
| cont. | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | Gustavo | General discussion | |
| cont. This house is like good wine improves through the years. And now that we have the possibility of tell something to Lois, tell him that please. The Kindness of the people!!! I've already commented that, if it's necessary to say more about it... I couldn't find the words... The Collection Another unexpected interesting thing was the P&A collection, can be read somewhere that they have a 1500 pieces collection, so I could expect to find some kind of museum, with lots of display cabinets, full of objects, or something like that, but very far from that, and much more connected with the owners' spirit the collection was in the place souring our friendly and relaxed conversation, the chair where was somebody seated, the armchair was other-one seated, the cup of coffee we had, each one of them had a story, some a rich story, some a simple story, some classics but not too many, some pieces by a renamed old designer, other the last piece of a young designer, even some beautiful pieces with no sticker or renown history but really interesting, that some of them later will appear in some magazine as the ,,last discover,, and others that will remain as an undercover beauty until who knows when, but who cares? all had some cleverness in some point: I identified some, other was explained by Patrick (i.e: some new Dutch excellent designs), but many were there with quiet, silent, with the story to tell, if somebody asked. Many of those that were quit, some days later I saw them again this time visiting some galleries, or in a museums, or in shops and expositions; so I could recall some of the pieces that was there so quiet, but now with a written explanation. One of the upper rooms is the a real designer paradise, The "60's 70's Designer-land paradise", was full of 60,s 70's pieces, many plastic and some POP pieces. Later Alix told us that if somebody is "boring" goes to the storage and pick some pieces to change temporary the mood, just a designer land paradise! Patrick work And hidden between some objects, the work of Patrick, he is a wonderful artist! enigmatic art pieces made through a kind of photographic photo-montage, as I understood, I wanted to made an opinion on some of them, but was interrupted, over there a huge artifact: three wood tanks in different levels, with water interconnecting them as an ecological-ecosystem machine, that was made for some exposition... He sells his work in some galleries through Europe, and was chosen to be at the Venice art Biennial!! I asked my-self why we never know nothing or almost nothing about it. Would be really interesting for many of us if we could see more about his work. About Alix work, we see it every day! (a real work of art,(we know that, we help to shape this masterpiece, as in some corners as in this forum, or anybody doubt it?)) Or does she also has another secret work hidden? | |||||
| Dear Gustavo... | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| Dear Gustavo... I hope you do not intentionally wanted to start a discussion on brands... I guess we all read Noami Klein's "No Logo", so I am not going to comment on the book. One aspect that always seems to get lost in the process is that most large brands pre-date branding. In other words branding is like politics: predict the inevitable and take credit for it. GM, Ford, or Kodak, K-mart, Kleenex, Knorr for those who think that strong brands have something to do with the letter "K" (as in Koen) Philips, IBM, BMW, Mercedes, Addidas, Chanel, Samsonite, Tupperware, you name them, they all existed long before anybody had mentioned the word branding. All these brand names had been build up by earned reputation. Simply as the direct consequence of the quality...or lack of quality of the products or services they produced. There is little doubt about the fact that a brand can be build up, in fact it builds itself just by being there. But it is not proven yet that it can be build artificially. When I joined what is now Mepal/Rosti BV. the company had never ever spend a dime on advertizing...and yet it had almost a monopoly on melamine kitchenware in the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg)and was the second best recognized brandname after the Dutch electronic giant Philips. Not only is "Branding" wildly overrated, the critics of it are also overestimating how easy it is to influence people. Look at the amount of times the Ford brand shows up on your TV screen. Has it made any difference in how the brand is seen and does it gets Ford out of there well deserved financial nightmare? No. They pretend there is a conspiracy, when it is just the nature of the system. Unfortunately it's a well oiled viscious circle: All our media, without any exception, are kept alive through advertizing, so...who is going to tell the advertizers that it does not work...? I know there are brands that have been build up in the last 10-15-20 years, with the help of advertizing, but I suspect that in most cases, (Starbucks, etc.) the advertizing came when the product and brand had been proven. I know for a fact, because I was part of that effort that we introduced the Bodum brand in Canada to a level where more Bodum was sold in Canada than in the 10 times larger U.S. without ever spending money on advertizing. We started to advertize when the brand was so well known that you could simply ask for a Bodum coffee in a restaurant and get it...most of the time. My hope is...with Olive...that the "green" brand and "green-washing" get's people upset enough to start talking about the real thing. | |||||
| The sale of the hippo has not been cancelled | 1 Relevance | 16 years ago | belgianchess | General discussion | |
| The sale of the hippo has not been cancelled In order to provide this forum with a counterpoint on this issue, I (as the winning-bidder on the hippo) would like to respond. To begin with, my wife and I have been quite disheartened with all the nonsense that has transpired since placing the winning the bid on the hippo. However, we are encouraged by the fact that the sale of the hippo has infact NOT been canceled. A cancellation of sale requires BOTH buyer and seller to agree to the cancellation (which I have not done). To clear another thing up, ebay has not forced a cancellation of this sale (since no violation of any ebay policies have occurred). The following are not a violation of ebay policy: 1) contacting a seller and identifying oneself as an international customer. 2) having a short ebay buying history with little activity. 3) making the winning bid on an item. 4) requesting a particular shipping preference or address. These four reasons have been cited by the seller as justifications for canceling our sale. While the seller could have allayed her suspicions by simply contacting us, she instead chose to air them (in detail) to other prospective buyers on both this forum and her blog. The following conditions (copied and pasted from ebay's website) detail the grounds by which a seller can legitimately request a sale's cancellation. *Bidder contacts you to back out of the bid. *You cannot verify the identity of the bidder, after trying all reasonable means of contact. *You want to end your auction early because you no longer want to sell your item. In this case you must cancel all bids on your auction before ending the auction. My understanding of these ground rules is that they restrict sellers from making cancellations based on whim or prerogative. If situations similar to the present one become common practice on ebay, I fear that the balance of power between buyer and seller will begin to disproportionately favor sellers. On a related note--after some simple research into USPS, I can confirm the cheaper shipping rates provided in the last couple of posts. According to the USPS Express Mail International calculator (Mail Express International http://www.usps.com/international/expressmailinternational.htm Postage Price Calculator http://ircalc.usps.gov/), the hippo in question should be able to be shipped to Japan (being both trackable and insured up to $5,000) for somewhere in the ballpark of $60. | |||||
| I am looking for a way to... | 1 Relevance | 18 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| I am looking for a way to... I am looking for a way to tie all of this to design. If design is just one of the many ways to improve people?s lives I guess we can discuss this on a design forum. Having lived through the abolishing of the six days work week, I was expecting that a president that ran a campaign on "change" would take this overproduction problem...because that?s what it really is...and turn it into a win/win situation where we would all go to a four days work week, enjoy three days of rest, family life, or whatever our heart desires, combine it with a well deserved softening of the environmental footprint we so heavily put down on our planet, and share. Share the reduction of work, share the increase of free time, share the amount of time we can spend with family and friends...you name it...and not this lottery of who is affected who is not. I do not think that improving on infrastructure is a bad thing, especially not if it is not done in a hurry, but it will not put to work the architects that Riki?s son used to work for and with. To build roads and sewers is not part of the high qualified jobs that requires the education that Obama wants to encourage. We are looking for a reduction of roughly 20% of our production and consumption and polution. That?s about what a 4 day work week instead of five represents. 60 or so years ago we loved the idea that we did not have to go to school on a Saturday and if I remember well nobody complained very loudly. It is strange that what dear prof. Huizinga predicted in 1938 in his book ?Homo Ludens? ?the playing human?is still a concept that is so difficult to grasp, simply because we a stuck in this biblical concept that you can only survive by working and sweat. How long can we robotize and apply other technical improvements that increase production dramatically before we realize that the mixing bowl that used to require two hours of work by a skilled potter, now rolls out of an injection moulding machine at 140 bowls an hour. (I take a simple example just to keep it clear in my own mind) and that at some point we have to settle for just enjoying the 279 hours that were saved. Yes we can use them to produce other things, we can also use them to produce very costly weaponry that will either be destroyed or destroy itself like a bomb, but at one point we exceed what can be sensibly consumed. We have reached that point long since, and those who have pushed consumers that far should not be bailed out, regardless if they were the president of a bank or small investors like myself looking for a place to put aside an income for retirement. We have been warned 70 years ago! | |||||
| Here is | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | SDR | General discussion | |
| Here is the Wright/Rand project, and a text by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, the principle historian-in-residence at Taliesin: AYN RAND STUDIO-RESIDENCE, 1947 In 1937, novelist Ayn Rand wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright about her work on a new novel concerning the career of an architect. She made it clear that although she was not writing specifically about Mr. Wright, she was writing about a man who followed his own convictions throughout his life. "A man," she said, "who has an ideal and goes through hell for it. ... His story is the story of human integrity. That is what I am writing. That is what you have lived. And to my knowledge you are the only one among the men of this century who has lived it." She requested an interview with Mr. Wright, hoping to come to Taliesin at Spring Green, Wisconsin. At that moment, however, Mr. Wright was in Arizona searching for a site for the building of Taliesin West. The following year, Miss Rand once again introduced herself in a letter in which she recalled their meeting at a dinner party in New York. And once again she requested the chance to come and visit Mr. Wright. She sent him a copy of her novel We the Living as well as the first several chapters of the new work about the architect. "These, I think," she wrote, "will be the best references that I can offer you. If you will glance through them you will be able to decide whether I am a writer good enough to deserve any further consideration from you .... If you do not approve at all -- please let me know that, because then I'll stop torturing myself with attempts to reach you and I will have to proceed on the novel without the thing I would like to have -- your blessing on my undertaking. Mr. Wright read through the outline she sent and replied to Miss Rand: "Dear Ayn Rand: No man named Roarke with flaming red hair could be a genius that could lick the contracting confraternity. Both obstruct themselves disagreeably and he is not very convincing. Will try to find time to see you in New York and say why if you want me to do so." When she telegraphed for a definite appointment, Mr. Wright had again gone to Arizona, and the two did not meet for many years. Her book The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and immediately became popular throughout the nation. At that time they finally met in Hollywood, where Miss Rand was making arrangements for the film version of her book. Mr. Wright went frequently to California to work for various clients. His son Lloyd was a practicing architect in Beverly Hills and his granddaughter, Anne Baxter, lived in Hollywood and introduced him to many of the stars, directors, and producers that were her friends. During one meeting with Miss Rand, Mr. Wright told her: "If you and I were living in the Renaissance, they would burn us as heretics!" "Not me," she retorted, "I don't burn!" | |||||
| Excellent! | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | Robert Leach | General discussion | |
| Excellent! I found a reaslly good article that puts it all in context, including the US It also cites Ernest Race as being a designer for HK too Here is some of it, and I'll add a link for the whole thing: "The outbreak of war in 1939 brought great shortages of materials in Europe. As a result the Advisory Committee on Utility Furniture was formed, with Gordon Russell as its consultant and two High Wycombe designers, H J. Cutler and Edwin Clinch, providing working drawings which were distributed to manufacturers. Utility furniture began to appear in 1943. It was considered too advanced by the furniture trade but too conservative by the intelligentsia, so Russell thought he had got it about right! It has since been appreciated for its functional, clean lines and has a specialist following. During the war the Americans continued to evolve, softening the modernism of the Bauhaus. Charles Eames combined metal and moulded plywoods in a range of simple functional chairs, going on to use moulded polyester. These chairs considered the seat quite separately from its legs or supports and used technological advances developed in military research for bonding materials. Eames collaborated with Eero Saarinen in several prizewinning furniture designs but his best known work is the famous lounge chair and ottoman now highly prized by collectors (including Peter Mandelson, who is often depicted in his Eames chair-ottoman), associated with his collaboration with the Herman Miller firm. Working with Eames in the 1940s was Harry Bertoia, who subsequently worked with Knoll and, in the 1950s, produced a steel mesh diamond-lattice chair much used by architects. In Britain after the war the designers Ernest Race, Dennis Young and Robin Day are considered to be leading influences even if the USA was in some ways their inspiration. Race's button-upholstered chairs for H.K. Furniture were a modern variant on a traditional design whereas his slender, prize-winning BA chairs were designed as a means of recycling wartime aluminium scrap" http://www.50connect.co.uk/index.asp?main=http%3A//www.50connect.co.uk/5... | |||||
| tinyarmada,Thats an... | 1 Relevance | 15 years ago | spacepirate1 | General discussion | |
| tinyarmada,Thats an... tinyarmada, Thats an awesome story! I had a similar thing happen to me about 2 years ago. I had to drive 30 miles from my home one Saturday afternoon to pick up a beat up Craigslist teak lounge chair that I wanted for a project. As I always do I brought along extra cash in case he had other cool stuff for sale. When I got there and finally saw the chair in person I realized it was worse off than I expected and passed on it. I didnt want to waste a trip, so I jumped on my phone, looked up garage sales within a 10 mile radius and found one about 1 mile from where I was. The ad was short and only gave the address, time and named "furniture plus other household items" for sale. The sale had already been going for a few hours so I wasnt very optimistic as I drove over. To my amazement, as I pulled up to the home I could see the entire driveway filled with mid-century furniture. I figured most of it had to be sold by this time of day. I quickly jumped out and instantly recognized a few pieces. I asked the pair of ladies holding the sale what was available and to my amazement they pointed out a single Dux upholstered armchair as sold, everything else was still available. I literally went crazy running around looking at everything and asking for prices. In the end, I scored a matching pair of Greta Grossman for Glenn of California desks in Walnut w/ black formica, a pair of matching end tables from the same line, A walnut Dresser & Highboy by Milo Baughman for Glenn of California, a Danish coffee table and a Greta Grossman Cobra Lamp all for a bundled price of $380 dollars!!! It took me a second trip to get everything home but I knew I had probably had the greatest day I would ever have Craigslist hunting. My only regret from that day was passing on a very nice dining set that I did not recognize. I also did not have any room at home for it so I passed. A year later I finally realized that it was a set designed by John Keal for Brown & Saltman. I ended up selling all of the pieces over a 6 month period with the exception of the Cobra Lamp that sits on my desk today. I've had other good days since then, but nothing remotely close to the pure excitement and quality I experienced that day! | |||||
| stepping up to the plate | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | hey there | General discussion | |
| stepping up to the plate hey lrf this is the message we got from alphaville on 9/15: "Dear Customers, It has come to our attention that some of you are selling our reproductions using trademark names from other companies. This causes confusion in the market place. Please discontinue this practice today or we will be forced to stop shipping to you until the corrections are made. Our products are unique to us. We make a chair called the Exposition Chair (aka Mies Pavilion). Please do not reference our chair as a "Barcelona chair" or "Barcelona-style" chair. We do not make the Barcelona chair and we are not affiliated with Knoll in any way. We recommend that you add disclaimers in your advertising of these products as advised by your legal counsel. By the way, we had a recent return of a low quality knock-off. The Pavilion chair frame was complete broken. Upon closer inspection (RA), we discovered that this was NOT our chair! It used thinner 3/8" (10MM) steel and lower grade stainless steel. It did not have our secret frame marks and proprietary sewing techniques. Another give away was that this frame was not fully welded, but rather "bolted" together with the bolts hidden inside the straps. Alphaville's Exposition chair is fully welded into 1 solid single frame. And we use premium 1/2" (12MM) thick Korean #304 (8% nickel) which has less sand particulate than Indian, Taiwanese or Chinese #304. The result is that Alphaville Design's chair is smoother, shines better, resists rust and lasts longer. Please do NOT switch-a-roo a competitor's product to get money/credit from us. That is not a nice thing to do. Soon, we will post images to our website exposing our competitor's products from China, South America and even Italy, and that Alphaville Design is the ONLY trusted brand name out there for a high quality reproduction chair. Caveat emptor! Let the Buyer Beware. Alphaville Design's Exposition chair (Mies Pavilon) chair is extremely high quality. Yes, we have many competitors and we believe that most or ALL are lower quality than ours... detail for detail. This is a bold statement, but we are confident that it is true. We welcome any consumer product or lab testing against our competitor's similar product. See attached for DETAILED FEATURES of our Exposition Chair. Best, Your friends at www.AlphavilleDesign.com" http://www.alphavilledesign.com/details_details_details | |||||
| it is called mis-information... | 1 Relevance | 21 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| it is called mis-information... by omission...I have no idea if "...Cassina has filed and won major lawsuits in all European countries..." is true or not. I am not in a position to verify it either, but it does not specify under which legislation they have done so. There are three different ones, and each takes care of a particular aspect of intellectual property. Patents cover inventions; they are not 'form' related and require both originality and inventiveness. Both aspects are researched by the patent office before a patent (usually for 20 years) is granted. The copyright law is based on a claim made at the first publication of the work. It is limited to texts, music, all forms of imagery from paintings to plate decorations and photography. It protects the rights of the creator for 50-70- years after his or her death. So how does a museum get a copyright on a Da Vinci? By prohibiting any form of photography in the museum and on claiming copyrights on the pictures that are made of the work of the artist on their behalf. Last but not least the protection of models of industrial design, in the U.S. this is called a design patent and the number of the patent is preceded by a 'D'. Most of these registrations are simply that: a registration. No research is dome on the previous existence of a model. The protection last a minimum of 20 years depending on the country. One can not apply more than one legislation on the same feature of the product. What Cassina does is confusing the issues. There is not such a thing as a copyright protection of products of industrial design, unless they mean a picture of a product of industrial design. It is true that Italy was not keen on the intellectual property legislation. In post-war Italy it was seen by the legislator as important to have full freedom in industrial production. The U.S. just after independence had the same attitude, which allowed a lot of immigrant craftsmen to copy the things they had learned in England and other countries of origin. So the sentence should read:" Since 2001, Italy has also finally been complying with the European directive, recognizing the protection of products of industrial design." The way it is formulated in their text it gives the impression that this change in attitude of the Italian government applies to their production of 'Classics' which is not the case-it is just smart writing. No, I am not a lawyer. As most of you know by now, I am an industrial designer and as such knowing about intellectual protection legislation is a must. After almost four decades of practice I have seen more cases and more court rooms than most of us, but? | |||||
| Sounds fanciful ? Well... | 1 Relevance | 22 years ago | GanS | General discussion | |
| Sounds fanciful ? Well... Sounds fanciful ? Well consider this: there are 3 types of Eames chair. (i) licensed. (ii) accurate reproductions from reputable manufacturers trying to stick to the design (iii) out and out knock-offs from companies wanting to make an easy buck. Whitespike argues that (ii) cannot exist, for technical patent reasons; Koen argues that this is incorrect. I respect both of them for making coherent points. What I don't respect is the mindless thinking which argues that brand-name is everything and there can be no distinction between (ii) and (iii), and a fake is just a fake. I am even less convinced by the argument that there is no *moral* difference between (ii) and (iii): actually I think that by promoting a free market in accurate high quality reproductions, we are doing the artist/designer a greater service in the long run, than if we restrict "the real thing" to such a closed distribution that efventually the general public knows of Eames lounge chairs only from wacky half-plastic $200 pastiches with 4-spoke legs and a beer chiller built into the armrest. That's what's going to happen if everyone takes the brand-name fetishism of 'b', who sneers at the very thought that there should be any sort of middle ground: if this thinking had applied to artists, no matter how long dead, then Van Gogh would not be valued as much as he is today. A modest proposal: after 20 years, any licensing and copyright should be revoked and replaced by an internationally-administered "Authenticity test": a 200-point checklist for any given piece, covering everything from grade of leather, to quality of metal joints, to method of manufacture. Perhaps the original designer would be expected to contribute to this. This information, along with all design drawings and data, would be in the public domain after 20 years, and any company would be allowed to try to manufacture to meet the specs, rather than try and reverse-engineer a lookalike. This would leave a free market but with added value for authenticity: just as with Van Gogh posters, there might be some cheap-n-easy knock-offs around, but those already exist and there will never be any way to stop someone making a deliberately different near-copy: instead my proposed 'International Classic Design Registry' would aim to *reward* companies for faithfulness to original design. | |||||
| More Laszlo...Pt. 3 | 1 Relevance | 19 years ago | dcwilson | General discussion | |
| More Laszlo...Pt. 3 But looked at another way, Laszlo's furniture could be viewed as an iconoclastic virtuouso's unique jazz and swing inspired take on modernist design that was subsidized by perhaps the 20th Centuries largest, most ingenious, and most influential colony of artist refugees. Hollywood of the 30s, 40s and 50s attracted much of the greatest talent of Europe in graphic arts and music and film. There was steady work, high pay, good weather and no brown shirts there. Whether you were from Berlin, or Hoboken, it was a great place to sit out the depression and the war. In short, there were alot of persons in old Hollywood, directors, producers, stars, musicians, art directors, etc., who were knew great art and design when they saw it. For this reason, Laszlo needs to be given a serious, long look to understand what he really was up to. There's something about his work that seems like a lot of American stuff of the time. It is unhesitatingly experimental. Most of it was bad. Some of it was brilliant. The Eames are far easier to place, because they not only innovated, but they popularized what they innovated and they had the imprimatur of an acceptable, known pedigree--Cranbrook. Laszlo was a guy the affluent of Hollywood went to when they wanted modernist design that was unique, so that for the next pool party, or dinner party, the guests understood they had the good taste and money to have some thing one off. It is a long tradition for the affluent to want such things to distinguish themselves from the riff raff. An Eames lounge chair was all well and good, but there were thousands of them. Get Paul Laszlo to do your house and the Van Johnsons and Desi Arnaz's come to dinner to mix biz with pleasure, they won't be bored with the same damn table they saw at the William Powells last week. Now, remember, these Hollywood nouveau riches were alot more like you and me than the old wealth of Boston, Newport, Connecticutt, or of Europe. Some of them weren't rich at all, just making good enough money and divorced enough from their roots to want to indulge themselves while they had the chance. Do these sorts of persons selecting Paul Laszlo (he was probably the guy Victor Laszlo was named for, as the Cassablanca screenwriters were a couple of wiseacre New York street kids who had never been to the Casbah) make him special? Yes. Do they make him a great designer? No. Still, there is something about Laszlo's designs that gets under one's skin and makes one think about them far more than the typical custom designer of modernist furniture. I apologize for not being resolved on him yet, but that's how it is sometimes. | |||||
| Dear Gustavo | 1 Relevance | 17 years ago | koen | General discussion | |
| Dear Gustavo The other day I was listening to Schubert's "Hymnen An Die Nacht" for piano only, interpreted by the North-Africa born French pianist Brigitte Engerer. She plays a wonderful Steinway and does it with such understanding of the possibilities of both the music and the instrument that I was speechless for hours after the last note was gone. I envy musicians, both composers and interpreters for being able to create art with such intensity and to do it with relatively simple means of production: the piano. They do not use much energy, not much more energy than what the human body can produce. Not only that, but this piece has been played thousands of times, by hundreds of the best interpreters and yet, so many years later (I guess that the poems that inspired Schubert dates back to the very end of the 18th century) someone like Mrs. Engerer, with her two feet in the 21st century can play it in such a way that it is highly relevant for our times. Considering that I can enjoy it without imposing on anybody else but those who want to enjoy it with me and you have to admit that this is a higher form of art. In all those ways, music seems to be a different form of art than most others. I use this introduction because in previously stating that I do not consider architecture and design to be art, I did not imply that it was not "an" art, and I recognize that there are differences between different arts. First of all I have to say that I am not impressed by statements like the one by Jaime Hayon: that there is no longer a clear border between product design and art. It is highly self-serving and can not be taken seriously. It is true that fine arts in it's pictorial or sculptural form is all but dead and in passing away it has created numerous orphans like Jaime Hayon and many others. These poor orphans are left without means of surviving in painting and sculpture before even getting a chance to become good at it. So they did the right but self-serving thing, they moved to another area. To consumerism and its icons: products. They are so overwhelming and convincing in our culture, that it was not a very difficult to step into that field. In doing so they had to declare of course that there was no difference between art and design. They did it successfully, in part because post-modernism had opened a few doors. The fact that they never got a chance to hone their skills in those dying visual arts, made it a little bit awkward because the results were all but attractive and would never compare favourably with good paintings or sculptures, but they got some much needed help from the novelty hungry media and Voilà: the emperor has cloths! Another transcendent idea was to use the lack of skill and judgement and tell the world that it was intended that way. | |||||
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