Reflections on kitchens.

I took this kitchen quiz at houseandgarden.com this evening and it showed me a slew of unnattractive kitchens including this horrifying one by Jonathan Adler.

There are elements that are quite charming, but...
Point A) It looks like the 70s.
Point B) that wallpaper is too intense. Its like a bad trip.

I looked throught the kitchens which weren't suggested as my style and found one that I liked:


kitchens, I decided, should be bright and airy and good for mornings. They should speak of cereal and pancakes and nooks and utility, but with a touch of the unexpected, like a glass chandelier and neon trim. A dark kitchen? What could be more depressing? Kitchens are simple places where one goes to escape the stuffy and overbearing miasma of the dining and living rooms. Kitchens shouldn't [try to] impress anyone, they're where you go to live, not to ostentate.


So I've recently come to realize that I live my life something of a slave to aesthetics. I feel caught up in a endless web of connotations, like the universe is one big venn diagram and I am unable to separate one concept from all the others surrounding it. I feel like a broken record when I explain why I like things, aesthetically, because I'm only listing associations, even though it is those associations which give depth and place to an image or idea for me.
Or are associations and connotations weighted so heavily with other people as well? Somehow I doubt it.

If there's one thing everyone loves...

...it's office supplies. No, really, I've never met anyone who didn't love new office supplies. It's because they feel clean and organized, like the first day of school, and even the most disorganized among us love the idea of organization. Okay, maybe not everyone, but those people are slobby freaks.

If there's one thing I love, it's cute animal-shaped everyday parephenalia. My tape dispenser is a snail and my floss dispenser is a frog (why hasn't anyone made a crocodile stapler?? Wait, actually, I'm sure someone has).

Anyway, Sydney brought this to my attention quite a while ago and I was just looking through the Moma design store and came across it again. I thought it bore posting. Someday I will own this tiny spring-fresh green hedgehog.

I found these lamps browsing Etsy. The seller makes them from recycled materials. They're sort of a combination between art deco and the glories of the space age. This one reminds me of little boys' lunch boxes in the 50s, but shinier (and thus better), and without the naivete of that particular decade.


This one is very architectural, reminds me of a london lamp post at night. Foggy and mysterious. Sherlock, Moriarty, and a spaceship.

They're far too expensive for me at the moment, and in my opinion perhaps a bit overpriced in general. However, I believe in supporting artists/designers even when they overvalue their work (especially because its often from necessity).

New York

I'm currently in New York, interning for Interior Design, a trade magazine for interior designers. Interior design isn't really my thing, I think I'd like to do product design, but you take what you can get, right? If you open the May issue, which you won't since you can't get like anywhere since it's a trade mag, you'll find my name in lights! Or, at the bottom of the editorial masthead. For this privelege I ship magazines to special people and giant boxes full of very expensive samples to France. I also fuck around with excel a lot and wonder just how organizationally incompetent the previous intern was.
A really nice thing I've learned about myself is that even though I run my life in about the most disorganized manner imaginable, I'm very organized at work. I can now apply to jobs requiring "good organizational skills" without the feeling that I should feel guilty.


This week is NY Design Week. And by "week" they mean "three days". As a member of ID I'm free to go to any of the parties that ID got invited to, which includes TWO Moss launch parties. Honestly, I only know to be smug about this because Syd and Sarita like Moss, I haven't been there myself yet. However, not to sound flip, but I have nothing to wear!

Anyway I promised Sydney I would bring my polaroid camera, as its the only camera I have right now, and take pictures. Hopefully I can upload them at work. So perhaps they'll be up next week.

Mike Libby

My friend Sydney sent me a link to this beautiful site with these beautiful insects. As I have pretty severe things, as it were, for naturalia, clockwork, and things that are creepy in a beautiful way, I haven't been able to take my eyes off the site since it loaded.

They're made by a man named Mike Libby who works out of South Portland, Maine.

I even love the spider. Yes, it's creepy, but in a good way. Okay, I wouldn't want it in my bedroom, but I would like it in a bookcase.

Aren't they breathtaking? I was reflecting earlier while perusing his collection on the origins of my love of clockwork, which itself is tied into my love of steampunk. I believe that this aesthetic was instilled in me early by Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, which is a fantastic little steampunk epic for children (and adults). Smoggy London, steam-run flying machines, clockwork spy beetles. There's a real rush in that sooty air of innovation and cacophony of clinking gears. I don't know why it's such a subgenre. Bring back Jules Verne.

An ill-concieved venture! I'm so glad.

So I'm trying something here and I'm not really sure why.

While I expect for this to peter out and slowly go defunct, I hope it doesn't. So, cheers!

Crate and Barrel 2

I picked up the mail for my parents this morning and in with the bills and gardening magazines was CB2! Crate and Barrel - for young people? Revamped? Anyway, I wasn't particularly struck by most of it but they did have 3 things that I loved.

First and best are these hanging vases. They come in diamond and in beaker styles, and they're only $5 a piece. That's really quite amazing, although I'm sure shipping adds a wee bit on.

Brilliant, right? They're so delicate and organic. I guess the only catch would be that you have to hang them, which is always a pain if you're as useless as I am, and that you have to make sure you can easily unhook them for cleaning, because anything with water and plant matter in it needs to be cleaned somewhat regularly, unless you want a greenish film in your glass baubles.

And then there are these black bamboo string lights, which are GREAT if the lights inside are green, which I think(?) they are, although the pictures don't look like it. Anyway, they're bamboo, so they're eco-friendly, which is nice. They look like they should light the stage for a bit of " double double, toil and trouble" action.


And this clock, which is in the same vein as the lights. Sort of witchy and baroque and lovely.

Although I would have given the face more ornamentation, both because of my taste and my stupidity with blank clocks, I think it works because the hands are so intricate.

I also liked the Tord Boontje curtain, but I kind of feel like anyone with a mind to design liking Tord Boontje goes without saying, and he's also sort of overplayed. Beautiful, but overplayed.