Very Varied

I'd noticed Studio JSPR some years ago because of their Plastic Fantastic line. Since then, I've come to be most impressed with how diverse their talents are. In other words, their different projects are individually very cool but also brilliant in very different ways from one another.

Plastic Fantastic is this stuff:



They're traditional looking pieces of furniture, no doubt replicas of antiques. But JSPR has coated them entirely in polyurethane rubber, so in addition to the vibrant, even shocking colors, they're perfectly fine outdoors. I absolutely love this idea. There's something almost surreal about the vision of that antique sofa, bright white, sitting outside on your lawn as a piece of outdoor furniture. Unlike plastic, the rubber allows them to be soft under your behind, unlike metal they won't rust, and unlike fabric mesh they won't be a haven for mildew.

I wanted to go the opposite direction, as well. I imagined the pieces in wholly realistic colors: brown hardware like wood and cushions painted to look like upholstery. I love the idea of seeing an ordinary chair out in the backyard, especially if guests can see it in a rainstorm and think it's being ruined, when it's actually made of rubber and completely fine.

Evidently the first rubber coat is fibrous, so it won't work with stencils. The last colored layer can take stencils. In fact, JSPR has used such a technique to add logos to pieces for hotels and situations like that. They pointed out, though, that with these pieces I've shown, because of the shapes, stenciling is very time consuming and difficult and works far better on their more modern Minimal line, which has more flat surfaces. Nonetheless, I'd assume it would be just as easy to give one of them a custom paint job as it would with any other piece of furniture.

The next project I found very cool is their Cover Tiles. It's a series of ceramic tiles that expose the plumbing in your bathroom.


This idea is just so awesome. I actually do have an exposed pipe in my bathroom, but it happens to be for the steam heat. We've all seen those old bathrooms with the exposed plumbing, though. To me, this is just the perfect, most elegant solution to that. It makes something we're normally inclined to want to hide into a design gesture, perhaps even a hindrance into an asset.

A matte black bathroom could be very chic. It might also be a little depressing or maybe just a bit too 1980s for my taste. These tiles are also offered in white, which I fear might look a bit utilitarian. I may be at risk of sounding like a broken record, but I'd love to see these in more traditional colors and patterns, even something that hints at being Victorian, for instance. I guess that's just my own aesthetic, but I definitely think it could emphasize the unorthodox, informal quality of the tiles if, in contrast, it appeared they were trying to be very formal, indeed. An upcoming post will give me additional opportunity to force my opinions on tile down your throat.

I also wish they were a bit more accommodating to using one's own plumbing fixtures.

Not only can the choice of fixtures be a significant design element in a bathroom, where the location of water sources is pretty much the most important feature of the room, but people also tend to be very picky about their water flow. Some insist on saving water, others want needles of water to scour themselves, yet others want a hand-held shower head for those hard-to-reach body parts.

This year at the ICFF, they unveiled something as different from these last two items as they are from each other. It's a number of steel and glass cases for all your treasured belongings.

Now that's interesting enough, mostly as a result of the giant glass dome on top. When they group a bunch of cases together, though, it becomes something really remarkable.


They look like some dusty old British natural history museum in the 1870s, but like you're looking at it through a kaleidoscope. Really wonderful. As in some of their press shots, the cases seem to be begging for fossilized or taxidermied animals to display. But that's what makes this so perfect for a collection of something else, whatever your passion might be.

Let's imagine something really, really awful, how about?

After you've recovered from all the violent Cute-induced vomiting, the cases would make you stop and think, "Wait a minute...is there something special about this horrifying Precious Moments figurine that I should be seeing? Why is it displayed so beautifully? Was it a one-off piece now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Was it painted by Francesco Clemente working his way through college? What's going on here?" And for a collection of less sickening art objects, even better. I'd also like to see these cases not free-standing on the floor, but custom built into a wall, with different shapes projecting out of it and exquisitely lit by sharp points of halogen light. I'm not sure if JSPR does custom work like that, but I'm sure if you lived in the Netherlands, they'd consider it for the right price.

©2010, Ryan Witte

Master at Play

And now, for the Grande Finale. 

Sitting over on my table here was one of the last things I had to go through.  It was an envelope saying "A Century of Chairs" and very simply "barcelona design" at the top.  I had no idea what it was.  Finally I popped the CD in and took a look.  At first, I was kind of like "eh, this is okay, but it's a little...weird."

But then I kept looking...and looking...and sinking deeper and deeper into this universe, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was looking at some of the most brilliant work I'd ever seen.  Not for a very, very long time have I been so overwhelmed with respect for a single designer.  I'm agog.  His name is Jaime Hayon.

What.  Shut up, he's dressed for dinner at Björk and Matthew Barney's house.

I should warn you, I tried to narrow this post down as much as I could, but it will still be a big one.  There's just too much to see and making matters worse, his publicity photographs are absolutely gorgeous, in and of themselves.

This will be another one of my goofy analogies, but it's almost like an alien from another planet with a bad memory was sent to study earth, but accidentally arrived in the 1930s, and then was asked when he got home to try and remember what earth people's houses looked like inside to recreate them for the Alien Planet Museum of Art.  And coming from me, that is a very high compliment.

I'll go into the individual pieces, but to understand why I say that, you really need to see all of them together.  Individually, each piece is remarkably distinctive, a little bit Baroque, vaguely familiar but a little bit...off somehow, and profoundly interesting.  But together, they just create the most bizarre universe, and this, ladies and germs, is the Future of Furniture Design.  Click these:

The line is called "Showtime" and Hayon was actually inspired by films from the 1930s.  So a lot of the cues are coming from that period.  But he's got every decade from the '40s though to the '80s in there as well--there's even a little Eames--so seamlessly fused together into one crazy new aesthetic.

Here are some closer shots of the sideboard and table in blue:

And by the way?  That deep, rich cobalt blue could make sweet love to my eyeballs all day and all night.

Here's the armchair with a canopy, which I'm fairly certain can be attached and detached at will:

And the loveseat:

I have to show you the glamour shot, too, because the photography is amazing:

And a close-up studio shot of the vases:

When you see a grouping like that it becomes obvious this guy has the most impeccable sense of color.  None of the colors are all that unusual, but the combination of them is extraordinarily suave.

But you see what he's doing here--he's so adeptly walking all these extremely fine lines like a tightrope.  It's just campy enough to be fun, but without ever being gimmicky.  It's so very rich in cues from the history of design, but without ever being clichéed.  And there are all these elements that seem strangely familiar, but he's combined them together in a way that becomes almost Surreal.  It's completely blowing my mind.

And there's more!

He did a small number of pieces for Bisazza, who I've written about before, truly at the very top of their game in the art of mosaics.  Here's the mirror, table, and vases--click this:

Moving on.  Here's Hayon's bath line, "Artquitect," click this:

I think some of this gets a little bit too delicate for my taste, but there's still some incredible things happening.  Namely the sink:

Don't ask me why the shocking yellow isn't bothering me; it just...works.  He also did this in shiny metallic gold, which is so rich and beautiful.  But what's really getting me is the integrated mirror, which is like this isolated Art Nouveau sort of detail, and evidently it can also be a lamp.  Here it is in black:

The legs have a vaguely Art Nouveau sensibility to them, also, but it's so subtle and anything but derivative.

Speaking of lamps, here's "Josephine" in silver:

That gun-metally grey is delicious.  It also comes in gold, which you can see here in the sconce version:

It's sort of like Sears Catalogue circa 1973 on crack.  Out of control.

And here's "Bubbles" in white:

I actually think that'd be great in a bathroom, like a bubble bath.  In copper it's just completely from another world:

And here's a glass candle holder shaped like an old oil lamp:

I'm fairly certain I don't have to tell you how unbelievably clever I think that is--especially since it's in the shape of an object that's supposed to give off light, but then it's black, which is the polar opposite of lightness?  No, didn't think so.

Here's the horse vase you may have noticed in the bathroom up above, in black:

And platinum:

Okay, so it's a vase...but it's a vase that hangs on the wall, which is already a little unusual.  And then it looks like something taxidermied, but it's a horse...people don't hunt horses and put them on their wall like a trophy, do they?  I think that would be weird.  And then the flowers come out of the center of the horse's head, like a unicorn's horn?  It's just fascinating and beautiful, anyway.

But that's nothing compared to this.  Hayon is also art director for Lladró.  Remember I posted about them?  I should have known they had some insane genius at the helm.  Here's his "Conversation Vase 1B" for Lladró, click this:

Uh...

Did I just have an acid flashback?

On the vase part, it's maybe a clown with hearts on his face? wearing some kind of strange cartoon bunny costume.  Then on the top of the vase is a jester holding a staff with a heart at the top, wearing a Michelin Man shirt and a bunny helmet with a huge arrow through it and a bird on one of the ears.

Who comes up with something like this?  "Conversation" is right.  Your house-guests could probably spend the majority of the evening just trying to figure out what this is supposed to be.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that was the whole point.

Hayon Studio

info@hayonstudio.com

And I'm still not done.  I've asked if Jaime would be willing to do an interview with me, also.  His representative said it wouldn't be possible until after August, but stay tuned.  I definitely need to get into this guy's head if he consents to answering some questions for me.

©2008, Ryan Witte

The Bittersweet End

To finish up my coverage of the ICFF, I'd like to combine a few smaller companies together, each of which had a couple of very cool items.  In the interests of being impartial, I'll go in alphabetical order.

So first up is Gaia & Gino, from Istanbul.  They do a lot of extremely wonderful housewares and art and design objects, so I highly recommend a trip around their website, which they just recently redesigned and relaunched.  I'd discussed them elsewhere before, however, so the new items I really liked were their "Mistic" candelabra/ vase, which is beautifully laboratorial in clear glass, but completely different in this new gold:

The metal is applied very lightly, so from certain angles, it gives off this mysterious, smokey bluish hue.  It makes it a timelessly fascinating and lovely piece, in my opinion.

G&G also have a line called Gino The Dog, which is all this amazing stuff for our pets.  New this year was their "Loop" doggie bed:

For kitties too, I suppose.  It also comes in silver, which is fairly glitzy.  But it can be unsnapped, unfolded, and laid flat for storage or transport.

Gaia & Gino

(Turkey) 90-212-234-4472

office@gaiagino.com

Next we have Denmark's Hay, which I actually discovered via their distributor, MOD Objects, who were running the booth (MOD's website is kind of cool, by the way, because the color theme of the homepage images is different each time you go to it).  MOD is mostly doing contract furniture, and Hay's pieces, like most of MOD's offerings, are seriously hypermodern, but there were a couple of striking pieces that I quite liked.  This is their "Mormor" sofa:

I think it's that the vibe is vaguely the interior of a 1970s muscle-car--very groovy--but the combination of the lines, colors, and volumes end up being very 21st Century, somehow.

And one of a number of differently-named lines that all appear to develop a similar idea (and would actually look quite graphically interesting together): "One," "Round One," and this, perhaps the latest in the evolution, "Other One":

There's an ottoman for this, and they can be lined up as a sectional, as well, in different complementary colors and so on.  It's a little bit on the sharp side for me, but I think it's still stunning and I love that deep blue.  It's one of the very vivid primaries that doesn't shock my system.

Hay

(Denmark) 459-942-3870

hay@hay.dk

Obviously, a company as huge and established as Kohler doesn't really need my press, but nevertheless I was pretty inspired by their new Karbon faucet:

You should go play around with the animated webpage and watch the videos, they're pretty cool and very well-done.  But while a little bit more industrial than some of their fancier, more voluptuous hardware, it's just about the most flexible, functional, adaptable, useful kitchen faucet imaginable, and for someone who really loves to cook and entertain, I'd think indispensable, as well.

Kohler

800-456-4537

Norway's Mokasser appears to be a young company also doing some very sleek pieces.  Boy, those northern countries sure do know how to do some Modernism, huh?  This is their "Eshu" line.  There's an armchair, ottoman, and loveseat, but I thought the sofa, "250," showed the elegance of its lines best:

Not unexpectedly, I'm having color issues again.  But they show this also in a pale, soft beige which is just exquisite.

Here's their "Whole in One" chair:

Ow, my retinal cones!  I sat in this one for a couple moments toward the end of my exhausting time at the show, and it's totally cradling and comfortable and offered the relaxation I needed.  A sharp square profile with a hyperbola carved out of it, the whole thing canted slightly: very simple, pure geometric relationships, but the entire thing comes together perfectly.

Mokasser

(Norway) 472-260-1944

office@mokasser.com

Doing some remarkably clever work is another very young company from Cincinatti called Refined Sugar Studio, headed by sculptor Matt Kotlarczyk.  First are these small tables called "Albee Remains" tables:

The light fixtures were rescued from Cincinatti's Albee Theater, when it was being demolished in 1977.

--Photo origin unknown.  The arch was moved to Cincinatti's Convention Center, and a flyer from '77 seems to indicate everything in the entire theater was put up for sale.

Kotlarczyk repaired and restored them and enclosed them in a protective acrylic casing to preserve them for all eternity.  The bulbs are very similar to the Edison ones originally used in 1927.  There's even silent exhaust fans in the base to keep the table top from getting too hot.  I think this is so smart.  It talks about our historical, interior architectural legacy, issues of preservation and destruction, display, presentation, and the artistry of old-school ornamentation, the nature of recycling and reclamation, and at the end of it all, it's just an aesthetically beautiful piece.  These are in a limited edition, not surprisingly.  Being remnants of a grand old theater, and giving off such a soft ambient glow, I think these would be delightful in an entertainment room or home theater.

I think his "Eat Me" table was one of the cleverest things at the show:

The glass tabletop sits on 1800 tiny light bulbs.  At each of the six place-settings, a sequencer keeps changing the lights to read in red a number of different words made up of the letters in the word "MEAT" and all having to do with eating.  

The words rotate on a time-delay, or can be hooked up to a microphone to respond to the sounds of your dinner guests.  I got the impression other text could easily be entered in, as well.  This one has silent exhaust fans, as well, to prevent it from getting too hot.  Certainly this would require just the right--even Punk Rock--interior, but the only problem with this one would be getting your dinner party guests to eventually talk about something other than how incredibly awesome and fun your table is.  The table is a sensory experience before the meal even begins.

Refined Sugar Studio

513-235-8526

Finally, this is a piece from Stua in Spain.  They're being distributed in the U.S. by Design Within Reach, which is another outfit that doesn't really need my press.  But I thought this deserved mentioning for a couple reasons.  I spoke to the guy at the booth, who said he was the designer--although the chair is credited to Josep Mora, who doesn't look familiar to me.  Anyway, the guy I spoke with was extremely nice and cordial.  I grabbed the opportunity to ask him the question I've mentioned before: "'Within Reach' of whom?" since their prices aren't all that low.  He explained that it's not about price at all, but rather that a lot of this work by smaller European design houses is very difficult to get in the U.S. so DWR makes this stuff more accessible to the North American market.  Oooooohhhhhhh!

Also, the chair is a really great piece of design work.  It's called "Egoa" and "Egoa on Castors":

The wood is somewhat warm here, but it looks somewhat unfriendly to a butt.  I sat in one to speak with the rep, though, and I was really impressed.  The contours of it, and also the fact that it flexes under your weight when you lean back, make it remarkably comfortable.  The hardware, itself, is very sleek and tight, as well:

They also have an upholstered version, which I'm sure would be more practical at a desk over the long term:

Myself, from purely an aesthetic standpoint, I thought the wood was more elegant and dynamic.

Stua

stua@stua.com

There were a few additional companies with designs that were mildly interesting, but who couldn't be bothered to respond to a simple email, even after several attempts on my part.  I suspect they'd be just as unhelpful with potential customers, so I'm not going to waste my time or yours discussing them.

I have one more post from the ICFF on the way that I'm extremely excited about.  Otherwise, that wraps up my coverage for 2008!  Hope you enjoyed it, I know I certainly have.

©2008, Ryan Witte