TacTile

I can't remember whether I spotted Bobby Silverman at the ICFF or if he approached me, but either way, we ended up having a nice conversation for some time about his work. I definitely think his booth was visually arresting. His Brooklyn company is called Alsio Design, and he's doing some fantastic ceramics.

He told me his work is a lot about experimentation. He's playing around with a process where he fires the tiles twice with two different colors of glaze, to see how they'll interact. In my opinion, he's getting some incredibly beautiful, uncommon results. But he's also an artist, not just an artisan. That is to say, he's doing somewhat conceptual things with his work, as well.

First, here are the tiles labeled with their colors:



Here's the word "Red" translated into bar code:


And the word "Red" translated into Braille:


He's doing a lot of interesting things with Braille, which is thought-provoking on a couple of different levels. The most obvious is that the text is the word for a color, something of which a person blind from birth could have only the most abstract or symbolic understanding. But Braille is a language that invites, even demands touch. I didn't happen to touch the tiles, as far as I can remember, but I believe they do have some bit of a relief texture. So these could potentially be read by someone who reads Braille. It's sort of interesting to think that someone who can't actually see the tiles could be made aware of what color they are, especially if a number of tiles of different colors were used together in some interesting or meaningful pattern.

Most deeply, it's the idea of touching them at all. Tile is not something that typically encourages touch. It's usually a hard, glassy surface without any particularly appealing texture. Radiant flooring is often employed to mitigate its seemingly icy temperatures. To call attention to this in the very design of the tile is ingenious. I suppose this is somehow related to some of the things I was saying about web design in a previous post, but who knows?

Silverman has also done some wonderfully poetic things with this, as well as conceptual. Here's a quote of William Butler Yeats translated into Braille:

Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair.

This is a quote of the artist/ designer Andrea Zittel:

Ambiguity in visual design ultimately leads to a greater variety of functions than designs that are functionally fixed.

This is especially cool because it is ambiguous. That is, perhaps more than the simple Braille "Red" (or perhaps less, I can't quite be sure), it might be obvious to the random observer that this says something...or at least that it's more than just a pattern of abstract marks. But very few people will be able to read it, which would make this a great conversation piece. Here in the detail shot you can see the glazing up close:

Is it just me, or is the tile smiling at me?

My favorite of the contexts he shows for his tiles were these very large ones installed poolside for a house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Allowing the ivy to surround them was a fantastic idea, and I think this is so dramatic and beautiful. He did tell me that because the work is so time intensive, the tiles can be somewhat expensive, especially these large ones which can so much more easily crack in the kiln. So I started brainstorming. I wondered if the majority of the wall couldn't be tiled with a much simpler (less expensive), single-glazed matching red tile, with the more artistic double-glazed ones at isolated places. He thought about this and said "yes," and asked me if I'm a designer. I told him I'm a writer, but of course, if I'm going to do this at all properly, I kind of have to think like a designer. And that's easy enough. I'm constantly imagining all the incredible things I'm going to do when I win the lottery...or Architectural Record calls to offer me that ten-year contract. I should be around this afternoon, Architectural Record.

Before we parted ways, Silverman gave me this very cool little tile/ business card.

I think now that this post is finished, I'll find a special place for it in my bathroom.

©2010, Ryan Witte

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

Powered Up

Here's a couple of cool things from a company called Bocci, from Vancouver, BC. First of all, here's their "17" coffee table:

It's a slab of marble with those bowl-shaped indentations carved out of it. Then the ceramic bowls rest inside them. Each of these tables is unique, with custom made bowls. I love in this one how that longer bowl is cut off with a straight edge.

I'm really impressed by the "22" electrical system, which does away completely with the switch-plate:

It allows the sockets to be imbedded right into the sheetrock.

The randomness of those three is so infinitely cool, and it's stunning in wood, as well:

They have sockets for cable television, ethernet, and phone, and they even have an LCD screen for controlling other sorts of devices. They're working on a light switch presently.

"Yeah, but...what if you need to remove it? How do you get it out?" you ask? Simple enough. You're provided with this tool, which you slide in around the socket and twist, and it just pops right out:

What's remarkable to me is that I don't think anyone has really re-conceived the switch/switch-plate model in the entire century that we've been wiring buildings. Is that really possible?

©2009, Ryan Witte

Use/ Re-Use

I recently came across another designer doing some extremely fascinating work, Jo Meesters from the Netherlands.

First some furniture, this is "Reshaping Wood":

He used water jets to cut the wood in a pattern inspired by traditional woodwork.  It has a strange relationship with its use, and certainly it would be perfectly easy to cover this with a glass tabletop.  But I think that misses the point.  What I find really interesting about this is how the form of the table guides and dictates the way it will be used.  There's no reason this can't be a showcase for floral arrangements or a place to put your mail.  But where and how it can be used like a normal table is decidedly uncommon.

He's also doing some interesting things with reclaimed materials.  This is "Odds & Ends, Bits & Pieces," the stool:

All of the pieces are made from reclaimed wood and overstocked blankets, cut into strips and rewoven.  The discarded blankets are beautiful reinterpreted as upholstery, but where it becomes really interesting is in a piece like the shelves:

So it's an item with one traditional use, a blanket, reinvented to become something else, upholstery, but applied to a piece of furniture that one wouldn't normally expect to be upholstered.  Very interesting.

Similarly, "My Secret Garden" is made from discarded wool blankets and also incorporates needlepoint work:

The floral patterns would also come off as being particularly traditional, but at the same time, it's a very unusual design.  He calls it a "carpet," but it appears to have almost more negative space than positive.  It's a complete reinvention of the idea of a carpet, and it becomes more a sort of adornment, accessory for the floor, rather than a floor covering.

There's even more reinvention in "My Home is My Wardrobe."  Here shirts become curtains:

And the rug becomes a robe:

I'm especially reminded of some of Martin Margiela's revolutionary Deconstructivism from the 1980s (Margiela's website is freaking brilliant, by the way).

Onto some housewares, here are a few vases that use rapid prototyping technologies, which I've discussed before.  Here's "Botanical Ceramics":

And "Redefining Genetics":

I was really impressed by "Ornamental Inheritance," though:

They look like more or less traditional vases with some kind of ornamental pattern in blue glaze.  But if you look more closely, the designs are actually executed with very modern imagery, airplanes, architecture, and so on:

That's extremely smart, and they're quite beautiful, on top of it.

©2008, 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