Can you cite the specific object that first sparked your interest in design?
For me, it was an 1940's industrial sun-lamp that I unearthed in my grandmother's attic, at age twelve or so. I thought it was THE coolest thing I'd ever seen, and promptly installed it in my bedroom to use as a reading lamp (why YES, a pitted iron industrial floor lamp IS the perfect accent piece for a room carpeted in orange wall-to-wall shag, thanks!).
Hmm --
I found a somewhat similar lamp in a junk shop and prized it, forty years ago -- it seemed like something from a doctor's office, maybe. "Purposeful" design has always been prized by us modernists -- a fore-runner of "Hi Tech" ?
I don't know what started it for me -- maybe it was cars, which I started drawing and naming at age four. I had my own nonsense words for body styles, not knowing the real ones. When I was that age many cars from the 'thirties were still on the roads . . .
I was a compulsive sketcher a...
Love it 🙂
I was a compulsive sketcher as a kid, mostly houses,cars and spaceships, never people. Mad tree and cubby house builder too. Then dropped it in my early teens until my folks bought a lathe manufacturing business and discovered making pot smoking things in my fathers workshop (its something for...school) and then what really grabbed me was sitting in a library one day and seeing a picture of the Barcelona chair when I was about 21, this was before all the copies and when not every second cool young mother had an Eames chair.
I very nearly bought a pair at the time from an antiques store for $1200, kicking myself now. Sad because its still a beautiful thing but familiarity really does breed contempt, well perhaps not but certainly boredom and indifference.
These days its completely unknown objects lying in skips or parts of things that get me excited.
W.H.C.
You said, "For me, it was an 1940's industrial sun-lamp... I thought it was THE coolest thing I'd ever seen, and promptly installed it in my bedroom to use as a reading lamp"
I hope you fitted it with a regular bulb so you were not sitting and reading under a sun lamp! My cousin was "tanning" under her sun lamp and dozed off only to wake up with a nasty burn.
As for your "rosebud" question, I can't point to one specific thing that sparked my interest. From very young I was always drawing and making art, so my interest in aesthetics flowed easily from pictures to objects. I do remember when I was in college there was an elephant-hide gray Eames armshell in my studio. grew so fond of it I trolled the art department until I found another. Then I took them home. I still have them today.
And like Heath's story, for many years I lamented not buying the Noguchi coffee table that was in the second-hand shop because I was a poor art student and could not justify paying the $80 pricetag.
You've been that poor too huh...
You've been that poor too huh? Its a horrible thing. I even slept in a bus shelter once as a student. Thank god thats all over but the lessons are still with me and think I live better than many of my friends on half the income.
But if there was something I really wanted I would happily go without food, or at least eat rice for a week. $200.00 dollar book? No problem, just starve.
When I was five, my family...
When I was five, my family went to spend a weekend with my young uncle who was an art potter at the time (later went into glass as a medium). This was in 1959. I am lucky enough to have a table lamp that he made back then. That was also the first time I saw a Japanese round paper lampshade. I was fascinated.
A year or two later, a new guy was hired at my dad's place of work and we were invited to his family's house for dinner. They'd just been living in Sweden for a few years and I vividly remember her showing us the rya rug hanging on their living room wall and explaining how it was a popular thing in Sweden. My mom had good taste and liked it, and I think that made me pay more attention to it. I remember it had a lot of orangey-red in it.
Their two little boys were running around dressed in Scandinavian wool sweaters and wooly tights and I thought that was very strange (boys wearing tights??) but also adorable. I don't know that that was a style influence on me as much as giving me a sense of how differently people lived in Scandinavia. I mean, really! Boys in TIGHTS. (This was in small town Illinois, I should add.)
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Spanky, you should read this, its hilarious. Similar time period though with a Danish couple featured in Illinois, I think. Very funny descriptions of the architecture and habits of the time too.
Bring back tights and proper shorts I say, for the last 20 years men have been dressing like two year olds, sandals and canvas sacks on 40 year olds.
pegboard is a bad influence
I've been having regular conversations with myself about why I should *not* help myself to one (or more) of the armshells or sideshells in one of the buildings on my campus. I see there are a few missing here and there and I wonder if others have had the same idea as me (possible justification for my crime) or if they were removed because the shock mounts broke (more likely). Surely nobody would miss a single lousy chair, would they?
I am not a thief! Jebus, help me!
Barcelona chairs
For me it was a pair of Barcelona chairs in an auction catalogue my father (obsessive antique collector) had. I remeber they made £80,000 so they must have come from the pavillion itself. That was sometime in the early 90s and at the next few sales I bought some Pieff furniture and a Ghyczy garden egg and a couple of Italian bits and over the following years I turned into a total obsessive.
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