I love SXSW for a variety of reasons and it's almost here again!
Number one reason we love SXSW: It gives friends who no longer, or never did live here, a reason to head to Austin. Either to play a show or to cover a story. Owning Austin Modern has given us tremendous opportunities to meet a lot of fun and unique people, many work within the music and film industry so SXSW is 'old home week' for us.
If you are coming to Austin for SXSW, here are a few ideas to stick in your 'inside info' book.
The locals know that SoCo is a flippin MADHOUSE. If you are going to see a specific band and they are playing anywhere on South Congress, plan on delays and traffic and no parking. South 1st is a great place to wander around for in-store free events.
Austin is not a bus friendly town, however if you are staying near downtown you should be able to take the Number 1 bus to every where you need to go. The Number 1 runs from way South Congress to way North Lamar, points in between being 6th street, the Warehouse Dist. and Guadalupe.
RECORDS: Vinyl Shopping in Austin: End of An Ear on South 1st, Number One Stop (New, Used, Indie and Rare). Waterloo for local pressings, and Antones for those of you with a yen for Mingus, Coltrane or Speedy West (Vintage Western Swing, Blues, Jazz and Texas-centric Vinyl)
Sadly, Sound on Sound has closed in the last year.
If you like texas-psycho-billy, they're a bit long in the tooth, but I still dig the Flame Trick Subs. They put on a good show!
Think vintage Cramps meets 80s Blasters, throw in a few pin up girls and send them out to get drunk with Johnny Cash. Fun stuff.
Best Burger in Austin - Casino el Camino on 6th street (shoot for 6pm or shortly after opening) they grill guys are surly and sometimes just plain rude, but it's sooooo worth it.
BBQ- East 12th 2000 East 12th Street to be exact. SAMS BBQ. about an 8.00 cab ride from the 6th street madness. These are good people making insane bbq. Get the Brisket. The tiny white house might be packed to the rafters with a line out the door, just wait your turn and be nice. This is no place to pull that rock god bullsh*t. No one cares who you are. And sometimes, that's a nice relief, right?
Looks like any other well loved 1930s house in an older part of Austin, but this place is LEGENDARY. It's not some fancy place that every magazine in America has dubbed Austin's Best BBQ or TEXAS BEST BBQ. But this really is it. The real cool crowd goes to this place. Go here during SXSW and find yourself sitting next to rock legends hanging on the down low, taking a break from all the glitz and rah rah SXSW for some true texas bbq. Grab a seat on the patio at one of the "general seating" picnic tables and chat with your fellow man. Sit a spell, have a beer and know deep in your heart "This is the best BBQ in Texas"
Monday, February 22, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Vintage Lucite Care and Repair Pt 2
Vintage Lucite Care and Repair Part 2
We've done this several times, I strongly recommend that if you'd like to try this yourself, use a test piece first! I want to share this info but please take into consideration this requires a light touch and some finesse. This is an overview of the process of Scratch Removal. If you have a nice piece of Hollywood Regency Lucite furniture, like a chair or table or desk, consider professional restoration. Look in your Yellow Pages for plastics companies in your area.
***
Expect costs to start at around 70.00 an hour for scratch removal and flame polishing. This is part of the reason that real vintage lucite furniture is not inexpensive. The finishing process is a hands on experience!
Flame polishing is something I can't do. In a nutshell, flame polishing is taking a blowtorch to a piece of Lucite or Acrylic and passing the torch back and forth over an area. Done properly, it melts the surface and creates a glassy sheen. Done improperly, it will burn your Lucite piece and create a fine foam of bubbles. The bubbles will be on the surface and within your piece.
DO NOT attempt to flame polish on anything but a test piece.
----------------
Again, this is just an overview, please consider having a professional repair your fine piece of Hollywood Regency Lucite.
----------------
Ok. So on to your scratches. I have taped off an area of scratches. These are deep enough that they require a series of steps instead of just the compound paste.
So after taping off your area, you'll start with sandpaper in a 400 grit. Wet your sandpaper and sand in the opposite direction of the scratches. The scratches are vertical, so you'll sand in a horizontal motion. This will sand out the scratches. You don't need to really GRIND at the scratches, they'll come out without too much pressure.
Next, use a piece of 600 grit and sand in a vertical direction. 800 grit horizontal. End with 1200 grit in a vertical direction. Your piece will look something like this.
I removed a portion of the tape to illustrate that it is still fairly fuzzy, but the scratches are gone.
Next you'll need your polishing compound. I use Novus Level 2 and 3
Novus is a liquid polishing compound, available at most plastics shops and some intensive hardware stores. Not likely to be found at Big Box hardware stores. Novus is a specialty product.
In the Image below, the last of the scratch is a dot towards the bottom of the image below the word Koefeds and over the N in chandelier.
Grab that pink and blue can of cleaner from yesterday and clean the whole piece again to get the last of the polishing compound off.
You are a few steps closer to having a clearer cleaner piece of Hollywood Glam furniture!
More images and progress pics tomorrow!
And in case you are wondering about the make up of Lucite, Acrylic, Lexan and Plastics I have this info from Wikipedia
We've done this several times, I strongly recommend that if you'd like to try this yourself, use a test piece first! I want to share this info but please take into consideration this requires a light touch and some finesse. This is an overview of the process of Scratch Removal. If you have a nice piece of Hollywood Regency Lucite furniture, like a chair or table or desk, consider professional restoration. Look in your Yellow Pages for plastics companies in your area.
***
Expect costs to start at around 70.00 an hour for scratch removal and flame polishing. This is part of the reason that real vintage lucite furniture is not inexpensive. The finishing process is a hands on experience!
Flame polishing is something I can't do. In a nutshell, flame polishing is taking a blowtorch to a piece of Lucite or Acrylic and passing the torch back and forth over an area. Done properly, it melts the surface and creates a glassy sheen. Done improperly, it will burn your Lucite piece and create a fine foam of bubbles. The bubbles will be on the surface and within your piece.
DO NOT attempt to flame polish on anything but a test piece.
----------------
Again, this is just an overview, please consider having a professional repair your fine piece of Hollywood Regency Lucite.
----------------
Ok. So on to your scratches. I have taped off an area of scratches. These are deep enough that they require a series of steps instead of just the compound paste.
So after taping off your area, you'll start with sandpaper in a 400 grit. Wet your sandpaper and sand in the opposite direction of the scratches. The scratches are vertical, so you'll sand in a horizontal motion. This will sand out the scratches. You don't need to really GRIND at the scratches, they'll come out without too much pressure.
Next, use a piece of 600 grit and sand in a vertical direction. 800 grit horizontal. End with 1200 grit in a vertical direction. Your piece will look something like this.
I removed a portion of the tape to illustrate that it is still fairly fuzzy, but the scratches are gone.
Next you'll need your polishing compound. I use Novus Level 2 and 3
Novus is a liquid polishing compound, available at most plastics shops and some intensive hardware stores. Not likely to be found at Big Box hardware stores. Novus is a specialty product.
In the Image below, the last of the scratch is a dot towards the bottom of the image below the word Koefeds and over the N in chandelier.
Grab that pink and blue can of cleaner from yesterday and clean the whole piece again to get the last of the polishing compound off.
You are a few steps closer to having a clearer cleaner piece of Hollywood Glam furniture!
More images and progress pics tomorrow!
And in case you are wondering about the make up of Lucite, Acrylic, Lexan and Plastics I have this info from Wikipedia
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a transparent thermoplastic.
Chemically, it is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate. It is sold under many trade names, including Policril, Plexiglas, Gavrieli, Vitroflex, Limacryl, R-Cast, Per-Clax, Perspex, Plazcryl, Acrylex, Acrylite, Acrylplast, Altuglas, Polycast, Oroglass, Optix and Lucite and is commonly called acrylic glass, simply acrylic, perspex or plexiglas. Acrylic, or acrylic fiber, can also refer to polymers or copolymers containing polyacrylonitrile. The material was developed in 1928 in various laboratories and was brought to market in 1933 by Rohm and Haas Company.
Monday, February 15, 2010
When good lucite goes bad
We were renting some pieces for the set for the pilot for the TV show SwingTown and for the 5th time I was going over the care of the lucite and acrylic pieces to the prop master. I was being a little over protective but the last load of stuff I had seen at a prop sale contained several pieces of hazed lucite. It may have come from another shop already messed up or it may have happened during the shoot. I wasn't to jazzed to find out using my store stock as the confirmation.
I won't buy hazed lucite, in my opinion it's gone bad. Lucite in a purplish smoke color has hazed. I'm sure there is a technical name for the hazing but basically window cleaner or anything else with high ammonia content will haze Lucite. Real lucite reacts poorly with Window cleaner, strangely plastic isn't bothered by it. Hazing is not instantaneous, but with repeated applications and high heat like sitting near a window or under studio lights, the reaction can be fairly rapid.
Pure heat can cause internal crackling. Neither can be cured. Hazing cannot be polished out and crackling cannot be filled. Once I was told by a less than stellar dealer that hazing can be removed. It can't. It's all about proper care and feeding from the start.
If you don't like the purplish color, don't buy it thinking you can polish it out. You can't.
I've wanted to post a piece on vintage lucite for a while but the last large pieces we had, a giant Hollywood Regency desk and a gorgeous heavy Italian Chrome and Lucite chair, didn't have any real issues to post about. So today I was excited to find a nice Charles Hollis Jones vanity bench in need of full, but not intensive, restoration.
How dirty can it get?
That's just not right. This is almost 80% lack of cleaning. And 20% poor care and consideration.
The rotating bearings on the underside of this piece were made in Italy, a high quality piece that got lost along the way. It's ok, she'll be a glamor girl again shortly.
We recommend this stuff for cleaning real Lucite, Lexan and Polycarbonate
You can get it in the flooring section of home hardware stores. Just remember - Pink & Blue Can. This stuff is excellent, it foams a bit and loosens all sorts of dirt and grime. You might not know that an item is actually yellowed from nicotine until you go over it with this a few times.
So once your piece is cleaned up, it's time to assess the true damage. Chips, flakes, surface scratches, gouges, rust to trim pieces, upholstery.
Chips and flakes are permanent so it depends where they are. On the underside, that's one thing. Font and center? that's another.
For a difficult to find piece like a CHJ rotating vanity bench, we're a little more forgiving than if it was just some bland bent piece of clear plastic.
Also bear in mind, upholstery is almost a non issue. If the piece is great, you'll want to reupholster it to match your decor. If the upholstery is a mess and the piece is of marginal quality to begin with, you don't want it anyways.
How do you tell the difference between lucite and clear plastic? The first clue is weight. If you pick something up and it weighs WAY more than you expected, it's most likely Lucite, Lexan or Polycarbonate. Newer plastic weighs nothing compared to the heft of a solid piece of lucite furniture. This small bench weighs almost 40lbs, the same bench in acrylic would be under 20 lbs. It's a real difference you can feel.
Plastic LOOKS like plastic. Lucite looks like dense clear resin, Plastic looks like clear plastic trying to look like glass.
Handle enough pieces of both and you'll get a feel for it. If you haven't handled a lot of pieces, you'll think I'm nuts for professing to spot a difference. That's ok, it's why I do what I do.
This difference in density is part of the reason vintage Lucite can go toe to toe with brand new acrylic and kick it's butt every time. Real lucite is tough, plastic is brittle inexpensive stuff and frankly imho not suited to furniture applications.
So this is the same piece cleaned:
Better already but we still have to address the surface scratches near the base, the bent chrome wheel caps, the seat bearings AND the upholstery.
Which I'll do tomorrow. Removing scratches is a long elbow grease intensive process, but worth the results.
The bench will need re-upholstery, a small and easy job. I have three choices at hand Grey Suede, White Patent (so 90s!) or White Tibetan Lamb (So 2009! lol) we might just go with pure and simple muslin since whom ever buys it will most likely have a fabric preference different from mine.
Next post will be disassembly, cleaning, polishing out surface scratches, and upholstery.
I won't buy hazed lucite, in my opinion it's gone bad. Lucite in a purplish smoke color has hazed. I'm sure there is a technical name for the hazing but basically window cleaner or anything else with high ammonia content will haze Lucite. Real lucite reacts poorly with Window cleaner, strangely plastic isn't bothered by it. Hazing is not instantaneous, but with repeated applications and high heat like sitting near a window or under studio lights, the reaction can be fairly rapid.
Pure heat can cause internal crackling. Neither can be cured. Hazing cannot be polished out and crackling cannot be filled. Once I was told by a less than stellar dealer that hazing can be removed. It can't. It's all about proper care and feeding from the start.
If you don't like the purplish color, don't buy it thinking you can polish it out. You can't.
I've wanted to post a piece on vintage lucite for a while but the last large pieces we had, a giant Hollywood Regency desk and a gorgeous heavy Italian Chrome and Lucite chair, didn't have any real issues to post about. So today I was excited to find a nice Charles Hollis Jones vanity bench in need of full, but not intensive, restoration.
How dirty can it get?
That's just not right. This is almost 80% lack of cleaning. And 20% poor care and consideration.
The rotating bearings on the underside of this piece were made in Italy, a high quality piece that got lost along the way. It's ok, she'll be a glamor girl again shortly.
We recommend this stuff for cleaning real Lucite, Lexan and Polycarbonate
You can get it in the flooring section of home hardware stores. Just remember - Pink & Blue Can. This stuff is excellent, it foams a bit and loosens all sorts of dirt and grime. You might not know that an item is actually yellowed from nicotine until you go over it with this a few times.
So once your piece is cleaned up, it's time to assess the true damage. Chips, flakes, surface scratches, gouges, rust to trim pieces, upholstery.
Chips and flakes are permanent so it depends where they are. On the underside, that's one thing. Font and center? that's another.
For a difficult to find piece like a CHJ rotating vanity bench, we're a little more forgiving than if it was just some bland bent piece of clear plastic.
Also bear in mind, upholstery is almost a non issue. If the piece is great, you'll want to reupholster it to match your decor. If the upholstery is a mess and the piece is of marginal quality to begin with, you don't want it anyways.
How do you tell the difference between lucite and clear plastic? The first clue is weight. If you pick something up and it weighs WAY more than you expected, it's most likely Lucite, Lexan or Polycarbonate. Newer plastic weighs nothing compared to the heft of a solid piece of lucite furniture. This small bench weighs almost 40lbs, the same bench in acrylic would be under 20 lbs. It's a real difference you can feel.
Plastic LOOKS like plastic. Lucite looks like dense clear resin, Plastic looks like clear plastic trying to look like glass.
Handle enough pieces of both and you'll get a feel for it. If you haven't handled a lot of pieces, you'll think I'm nuts for professing to spot a difference. That's ok, it's why I do what I do.
This difference in density is part of the reason vintage Lucite can go toe to toe with brand new acrylic and kick it's butt every time. Real lucite is tough, plastic is brittle inexpensive stuff and frankly imho not suited to furniture applications.
So this is the same piece cleaned:
Better already but we still have to address the surface scratches near the base, the bent chrome wheel caps, the seat bearings AND the upholstery.
Which I'll do tomorrow. Removing scratches is a long elbow grease intensive process, but worth the results.
The bench will need re-upholstery, a small and easy job. I have three choices at hand Grey Suede, White Patent (so 90s!) or White Tibetan Lamb (So 2009! lol) we might just go with pure and simple muslin since whom ever buys it will most likely have a fabric preference different from mine.
Next post will be disassembly, cleaning, polishing out surface scratches, and upholstery.
Lighting
Always create with the assistance of tylenol 3. It makes everything a little more interesting!
This weekend, after spending all week asleep, I was finally able to give Jim a hand with his two latest creations.
Lunar Landing - 8 feet of Aluminum goodness. Vintage self leveling industrial tripod paired with a vintage 24" flood light dish.
No joke in monumental lighting! Lighting is one of our favorite categories but some things were just never produced. Things like this.
It's what should have been used to light the photos for the lunar landings, it's very space age without trying too hard to be 'atomic age'.
This light is brilliant, we're undecided if we'll sell this one. Several of our other 'created lights' have been picked up by the interior design crowd, but this "Lunar Landing" is one of a kind.
The heater lamps are doing very well and someone just bought 10 of our glove mold lamps for a steakhouse in Chicago. I love sending pieces out and having them go to public spaces.
Jim finished the Street/Floor lamp as well. Its a very loose interpretation of the Marc Newson Super Guppy. I like this one since it's just under 5 feet tall and has an on off foot switch in the base.
It's not quite steampunk, not quite pop art, solid aluminum and has been retrofitted to take standard light bulbs. Makes a great reading light! This one will probably go online to BondandBowery, though I am enjoying its solid presence around the house. It's like a quiet sentry, ever alert and always available to light the way.
We've been thinking about copyrights a lot lately. I've been following the HidenSeek/Hidden Eloise - Paperchase mess with great interest. Seems like a clear case of copying, the artist admitted to tracing Eloise's artwork, it's fairly cut and dried. However Paperchase is still failing to step up and offer H.E. royalties for images sold. Paperchase is hiding behind the designer who copied the item saying we bought it from so and so, go after her. That's wrong. Doing something unwittingly doesn't make it ok.
Early in our career someone brought us some 1940s lawn chairs, we bought them, not knowing they were stolen. The owner contacted us and long story short, she got her chairs back and I was out the money I had paid for them. I was happy she got her chairs back and I never bought from anyone after that without getting a long list of info from a seller, but I never once dreamed of holding the original owner of the chairs responsible for my mistake.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it's still annoying to be copied.
We've seen portions of our entire website lifted, copied and pasted into someone else's website code, we've seen designs we've put together pop up here and there and it's always somewhat amusing, somewhat annoying. We've tried to find the amusing side but sometimes it just annoys me. Go get your own copy, think up your own taglines and designs.
Once we heard another shop in (OUR OWN TOWN!) using our tagline "Eclectic furnishings with a little bit of soul" in their TV commercial. They're out of business now, but it's blatant copying like that, that is less amusing and more annoying. Coming up with a decent tagline is tough, people spend $ and time coming up with those, don't swipe them! It just makes you look stupid anyways.
We're about to put a chair into production but have decided that trends being what they are and copying being king, we've decided to have the chair design copyrighted before production and our new website (still in creation) heavily copyrighted as well.
After hearing some nightmare stories from other designers about selling their custom item to Company X and seeing the Company X version released 6 months later... It's an extra annoying step that you either take or you don't. I didn't go after copycats for 7 years and have now decided that it's time to rectify the problem.
Have to say: Having your own creation ripped off is slightly different than selling a vintage item and seeing it reissued as someone else's design. That doesn't bug me so much. Sometimes when that happens it's kind of cool to know you helped, in a small way, rescue and resurrect a neat design.
There is a porcelain designer I know who makes unique porcelain items, she sold a set of 6 to someone at "major home design company", 6 months later the items were on all the shelves of all the stores of this company. Two changes, now the item was made of ceramic and with a spelling change in an embossed word. Perfectly legal. Perfectly shitty, but legal.
Of course she was devastated because it had been copied perfectly, her item had been used as a mold for the copy.
Since she's a small artist, she, like Hidden Eloise, couldn't afford a lawyer to go after Giant Corp.
Giant Corp. like Paperchase gave her the stock "unfortunate similarity" letter.
I don't understand how that can be karmically sound, wouldn't it be better to just pay the original artist for the copyright to the design and avoid a potential public kerfuffle? It's a win win. Beats the heck out of #Paperchase on twitter.
Since our lights are created and assembled from vintage pieces, it's possible that the same lights could be created by someone else. Working with vintage pieces makes it almost a given that your work is going to have a similarity to someone else's assemblage piece.
An item that we have newly custom designed and put into production? Yes, I'd be annoyed to see a copy somewhere.
This weekend, after spending all week asleep, I was finally able to give Jim a hand with his two latest creations.
Lunar Landing - 8 feet of Aluminum goodness. Vintage self leveling industrial tripod paired with a vintage 24" flood light dish.
No joke in monumental lighting! Lighting is one of our favorite categories but some things were just never produced. Things like this.
It's what should have been used to light the photos for the lunar landings, it's very space age without trying too hard to be 'atomic age'.
This light is brilliant, we're undecided if we'll sell this one. Several of our other 'created lights' have been picked up by the interior design crowd, but this "Lunar Landing" is one of a kind.
The heater lamps are doing very well and someone just bought 10 of our glove mold lamps for a steakhouse in Chicago. I love sending pieces out and having them go to public spaces.
Jim finished the Street/Floor lamp as well. Its a very loose interpretation of the Marc Newson Super Guppy. I like this one since it's just under 5 feet tall and has an on off foot switch in the base.
It's not quite steampunk, not quite pop art, solid aluminum and has been retrofitted to take standard light bulbs. Makes a great reading light! This one will probably go online to BondandBowery, though I am enjoying its solid presence around the house. It's like a quiet sentry, ever alert and always available to light the way.
We've been thinking about copyrights a lot lately. I've been following the HidenSeek/Hidden Eloise - Paperchase mess with great interest. Seems like a clear case of copying, the artist admitted to tracing Eloise's artwork, it's fairly cut and dried. However Paperchase is still failing to step up and offer H.E. royalties for images sold. Paperchase is hiding behind the designer who copied the item saying we bought it from so and so, go after her. That's wrong. Doing something unwittingly doesn't make it ok.
Early in our career someone brought us some 1940s lawn chairs, we bought them, not knowing they were stolen. The owner contacted us and long story short, she got her chairs back and I was out the money I had paid for them. I was happy she got her chairs back and I never bought from anyone after that without getting a long list of info from a seller, but I never once dreamed of holding the original owner of the chairs responsible for my mistake.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it's still annoying to be copied.
We've seen portions of our entire website lifted, copied and pasted into someone else's website code, we've seen designs we've put together pop up here and there and it's always somewhat amusing, somewhat annoying. We've tried to find the amusing side but sometimes it just annoys me. Go get your own copy, think up your own taglines and designs.
Once we heard another shop in (OUR OWN TOWN!) using our tagline "Eclectic furnishings with a little bit of soul" in their TV commercial. They're out of business now, but it's blatant copying like that, that is less amusing and more annoying. Coming up with a decent tagline is tough, people spend $ and time coming up with those, don't swipe them! It just makes you look stupid anyways.
We're about to put a chair into production but have decided that trends being what they are and copying being king, we've decided to have the chair design copyrighted before production and our new website (still in creation) heavily copyrighted as well.
After hearing some nightmare stories from other designers about selling their custom item to Company X and seeing the Company X version released 6 months later... It's an extra annoying step that you either take or you don't. I didn't go after copycats for 7 years and have now decided that it's time to rectify the problem.
Have to say: Having your own creation ripped off is slightly different than selling a vintage item and seeing it reissued as someone else's design. That doesn't bug me so much. Sometimes when that happens it's kind of cool to know you helped, in a small way, rescue and resurrect a neat design.
There is a porcelain designer I know who makes unique porcelain items, she sold a set of 6 to someone at "major home design company", 6 months later the items were on all the shelves of all the stores of this company. Two changes, now the item was made of ceramic and with a spelling change in an embossed word. Perfectly legal. Perfectly shitty, but legal.
Of course she was devastated because it had been copied perfectly, her item had been used as a mold for the copy.
Since she's a small artist, she, like Hidden Eloise, couldn't afford a lawyer to go after Giant Corp.
Giant Corp. like Paperchase gave her the stock "unfortunate similarity" letter.
I don't understand how that can be karmically sound, wouldn't it be better to just pay the original artist for the copyright to the design and avoid a potential public kerfuffle? It's a win win. Beats the heck out of #Paperchase on twitter.
Since our lights are created and assembled from vintage pieces, it's possible that the same lights could be created by someone else. Working with vintage pieces makes it almost a given that your work is going to have a similarity to someone else's assemblage piece.
An item that we have newly custom designed and put into production? Yes, I'd be annoyed to see a copy somewhere.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Fresh Kills Daily
Whoo! I love a good find.
This week we've been running back and forth to the hospital getting some tiny skin cancer dots taken care of and with the new puppy-child who can't be left alone for very long, I haven't had much time to scout out the good finds.
This week we lucked out twice!
The first lucky find was a stash of early 50s Fornasetti Musica plates. Apparently they've been waved in my face for a month, but I only "saw" them yesterday. That happens sometimes.
I like the variations on a theme porcelain from Fornasetti's studio, but the earlier pieces of Fornasetti's hand colored lithography seems more artistic to me. If you ever need a bit of info on Fornasetti Studios, I recommend the book "Fornasetti - Designer of Dreams".
So those will be going to our Bond & Bowery site this week along with some gorgeous vintage industrial lighting.
Then today I found my other great find of the week. We were joking this morning that since the surgeries are right in the middle of my face, a tiny spot = a GIANT bandage, I won't be hunting and searching much this week. So after leaving the hospital before the lydocain wore off and in the middle of freezing rain, we ran by a few of my favorite spots.. that's dedication for ya!
At our very first stop we found my favorite find of the week - something that will keep me from being bummed about being stuck at home this week. A REAL KILL.
Fresh Kills it the excellent tag line for a funky Mid Century Modern shop in NYC called White Trash NYC. Fresh Kills is just an excellent tag line all around. Sourcing vintage is a bit like hunting. A fresh find is a thrill..
This fab 1950s in store display is Tee-rific! I love it! "Real-Kill is Stainless". And Guaranteed! Word.
Fab industrial rolling display cart is going to be one terrific bookshelf or storage unit in someone's fantastic vintage industrial live/work space. For the truly unique and shameless, this would make an eclectic bar cart putting most vintage airline beverage carts to SHAME.
Love the blue and orange color scheme and the hand lettering is sharp.
Real Kill is Real Cool!
Real-Kill will be cleaned and restored but not refinished. I like my vintage industrial authentic, original and with a bit of rust.
In other news, Jim created the most unusual light fixture the other day using a large freeway street light and a spun aluminum base.
Somewhat, and only very slightly in the realm of ideas, similar to the Marc Newson Super Guppy. But this fixture looks more like a streamlined pod on a spun aluminum base. This one is just under 5 feet and stands straight up. The proportions are "right" and it looks a bit like a mechanical shark balancing on it's tail. Yes, I love it.
We did an interview the other day for an online design blog and one of the questions was, 'where do you see design heading?' I'm not a visionary, and while I love what I love, I'm not about to dictate style. That said, here's what I like: I like pairings and I like combinations that are not normal. Currently we are really enjoying pairing Hollywood Regency WITH Industrial, done right, it's fantastic. Done wrong and it's the visual equivalent of using Alum instead of Sugar in your cookie dough.
I do still like some Mid Century modern, the very best pieces and examples will always be worth having. But I think that a lot of the middle of the road MCM is just not that interesting anymore.
Once it gets knocked off 50 ways from Sunday, none of it looks good. Even the original loses some of it's shine.
Think of the classic Chanel suit or an LV Grande Noe, both have been copied from high to low, now even the originals are somewhat cliche and suspect. That's how a feel about a lot of mid range original MCM.
The pieces that can't be copied or watered down though mass production, that's where my money is. Paul Evans, Wendel Castle, that's classic MCM that can't be inexpensively faked.
For those of us that are not in the habit of dropping 80K on a credenza, I'm thinking a return to Victoriana, but through a Steampunk lens. Industrial Age Factory broadsides 80s Cyberpunk and rolls into a Victorian ER. Bespoke antiquity.
That's the vicodan talking.
This week we've been running back and forth to the hospital getting some tiny skin cancer dots taken care of and with the new puppy-child who can't be left alone for very long, I haven't had much time to scout out the good finds.
This week we lucked out twice!
The first lucky find was a stash of early 50s Fornasetti Musica plates. Apparently they've been waved in my face for a month, but I only "saw" them yesterday. That happens sometimes.
I like the variations on a theme porcelain from Fornasetti's studio, but the earlier pieces of Fornasetti's hand colored lithography seems more artistic to me. If you ever need a bit of info on Fornasetti Studios, I recommend the book "Fornasetti - Designer of Dreams".
So those will be going to our Bond & Bowery site this week along with some gorgeous vintage industrial lighting.
Then today I found my other great find of the week. We were joking this morning that since the surgeries are right in the middle of my face, a tiny spot = a GIANT bandage, I won't be hunting and searching much this week. So after leaving the hospital before the lydocain wore off and in the middle of freezing rain, we ran by a few of my favorite spots.. that's dedication for ya!
At our very first stop we found my favorite find of the week - something that will keep me from being bummed about being stuck at home this week. A REAL KILL.
Fresh Kills it the excellent tag line for a funky Mid Century Modern shop in NYC called White Trash NYC. Fresh Kills is just an excellent tag line all around. Sourcing vintage is a bit like hunting. A fresh find is a thrill..
This fab 1950s in store display is Tee-rific! I love it! "Real-Kill is Stainless". And Guaranteed! Word.
Fab industrial rolling display cart is going to be one terrific bookshelf or storage unit in someone's fantastic vintage industrial live/work space. For the truly unique and shameless, this would make an eclectic bar cart putting most vintage airline beverage carts to SHAME.
Love the blue and orange color scheme and the hand lettering is sharp.
Real Kill is Real Cool!
Real-Kill will be cleaned and restored but not refinished. I like my vintage industrial authentic, original and with a bit of rust.
In other news, Jim created the most unusual light fixture the other day using a large freeway street light and a spun aluminum base.
Somewhat, and only very slightly in the realm of ideas, similar to the Marc Newson Super Guppy. But this fixture looks more like a streamlined pod on a spun aluminum base. This one is just under 5 feet and stands straight up. The proportions are "right" and it looks a bit like a mechanical shark balancing on it's tail. Yes, I love it.
We did an interview the other day for an online design blog and one of the questions was, 'where do you see design heading?' I'm not a visionary, and while I love what I love, I'm not about to dictate style. That said, here's what I like: I like pairings and I like combinations that are not normal. Currently we are really enjoying pairing Hollywood Regency WITH Industrial, done right, it's fantastic. Done wrong and it's the visual equivalent of using Alum instead of Sugar in your cookie dough.
I do still like some Mid Century modern, the very best pieces and examples will always be worth having. But I think that a lot of the middle of the road MCM is just not that interesting anymore.
Once it gets knocked off 50 ways from Sunday, none of it looks good. Even the original loses some of it's shine.
Think of the classic Chanel suit or an LV Grande Noe, both have been copied from high to low, now even the originals are somewhat cliche and suspect. That's how a feel about a lot of mid range original MCM.
The pieces that can't be copied or watered down though mass production, that's where my money is. Paul Evans, Wendel Castle, that's classic MCM that can't be inexpensively faked.
For those of us that are not in the habit of dropping 80K on a credenza, I'm thinking a return to Victoriana, but through a Steampunk lens. Industrial Age Factory broadsides 80s Cyberpunk and rolls into a Victorian ER. Bespoke antiquity.
That's the vicodan talking.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Gah! Now what?
So Architectural Digest has contacted us. WHOO! We're in the middle of creating a new business name, a new site and a new 'brand'. But we've been picked for AD by a designer we've worked with in the past and the designer obviously remembers the shop name.
Soooo. I'm tired of the shop name because it's been co-opted by everyone and their granny, but.. I have had this name for 7 years. 7 years is a long time to market a name and get it into people's heads.
I hate to walk away from that. Also, we just skipped the local vintage guide this year since we're refocusing on a new name. We've been skipping advertising in Austin-centric publications in general.. Feh. Not sure what the right path is on this one.
Now the question is: will the new site be done by the time the AD article comes out AND... should I ditch the name that we've done so much business under simply because I'm tired of it?
Do the owners of Gumps ever just hate their name?
If it's an Austin designer, we'll move forward with the name change. If it's J-(R)Ad or Kelly, I'll have to assume they remember the name, and I'll keep it because it 'sticks'.
A bummer because we have just picked an excellent new name, bought the www site, and the taglines are looking good. Mainly looking forward to a new logo and new image.
Jim thinks we can split the business and leave the B&B site under Austin Modern, and ramp up the new site under the new name and use all of the contacts we've made over the years to promote that site as something entirely new. The new site will have 90% vintage and 10% bespoke with a movement toward a 70/30 split by December 2010. We've been designing our own items influenced by vintage pieces (ala Anthropologie etc), currently shopping a chair prototype around for production quotes. I want to make something that is mine. My design, my look, my colors.
Today I found a clutch of Fornasetti plates and a gorgeous nickle and brass x base bench. The bench is a little Regency and little hard edged Empire.. thinking of having the bench seat reupholstered in white Tibetan lamb fur. Making it soft and fluffy at the edges.
In other news-
Currently I have two black eyes. Always knew that growing up the whitest kid in Palm Beach would some how come to mean something. It does. Skin cancer. Whoo. Color me lucky! Of course being the over achiever that I am, I'm the youngest my doctor has seen and I also managed to get not one but TWO spots on my nose.
If you have a little bump on your face that won't go away, get it checked while you're young and healing relatively fast. It still sucks. They basically take a melon baller and scoop it out. Effin gross. And people wonder why I like to keep my eyes closed the entire time I'm in a doctors office.
My reconstructive surgeon is a surgical otaku. He's really into it and didn't think for a minute that showing me a photo of a woman missing an entire nose wouldn't freak me out.
It did. All the blood drained from my face and I started laughing hysterically. WTF?? Who shows that kind of thing to people? Who keeps that on their laptop??
Of course I heard nothing of worst case scenarios after that, it was a struggle to keep the giggles at bay. I think I may have actually verbalized the 'wtf is wrong with you?!?' question out loud. Hope not. I sat up the rest of the night thinking about it. Eeeeeww.
So now I have itchy stitches on the bridge of my nose and next monday I get to have some more on the side of my nose. The swelling is spectacular. Husband says I have 'baby lion face'. He's too kind. lol
We were supposed to take a long cruise with S&R this spring, but I think my cruisin to the BVIs days are over.
Screw it. I wanted to go to Venice anyways.
Soooo. I'm tired of the shop name because it's been co-opted by everyone and their granny, but.. I have had this name for 7 years. 7 years is a long time to market a name and get it into people's heads.
I hate to walk away from that. Also, we just skipped the local vintage guide this year since we're refocusing on a new name. We've been skipping advertising in Austin-centric publications in general.. Feh. Not sure what the right path is on this one.
Now the question is: will the new site be done by the time the AD article comes out AND... should I ditch the name that we've done so much business under simply because I'm tired of it?
Do the owners of Gumps ever just hate their name?
If it's an Austin designer, we'll move forward with the name change. If it's J-(R)Ad or Kelly, I'll have to assume they remember the name, and I'll keep it because it 'sticks'.
A bummer because we have just picked an excellent new name, bought the www site, and the taglines are looking good. Mainly looking forward to a new logo and new image.
Jim thinks we can split the business and leave the B&B site under Austin Modern, and ramp up the new site under the new name and use all of the contacts we've made over the years to promote that site as something entirely new. The new site will have 90% vintage and 10% bespoke with a movement toward a 70/30 split by December 2010. We've been designing our own items influenced by vintage pieces (ala Anthropologie etc), currently shopping a chair prototype around for production quotes. I want to make something that is mine. My design, my look, my colors.
Today I found a clutch of Fornasetti plates and a gorgeous nickle and brass x base bench. The bench is a little Regency and little hard edged Empire.. thinking of having the bench seat reupholstered in white Tibetan lamb fur. Making it soft and fluffy at the edges.
In other news-
Currently I have two black eyes. Always knew that growing up the whitest kid in Palm Beach would some how come to mean something. It does. Skin cancer. Whoo. Color me lucky! Of course being the over achiever that I am, I'm the youngest my doctor has seen and I also managed to get not one but TWO spots on my nose.
If you have a little bump on your face that won't go away, get it checked while you're young and healing relatively fast. It still sucks. They basically take a melon baller and scoop it out. Effin gross. And people wonder why I like to keep my eyes closed the entire time I'm in a doctors office.
My reconstructive surgeon is a surgical otaku. He's really into it and didn't think for a minute that showing me a photo of a woman missing an entire nose wouldn't freak me out.
It did. All the blood drained from my face and I started laughing hysterically. WTF?? Who shows that kind of thing to people? Who keeps that on their laptop??
Of course I heard nothing of worst case scenarios after that, it was a struggle to keep the giggles at bay. I think I may have actually verbalized the 'wtf is wrong with you?!?' question out loud. Hope not. I sat up the rest of the night thinking about it. Eeeeeww.
So now I have itchy stitches on the bridge of my nose and next monday I get to have some more on the side of my nose. The swelling is spectacular. Husband says I have 'baby lion face'. He's too kind. lol
We were supposed to take a long cruise with S&R this spring, but I think my cruisin to the BVIs days are over.
Screw it. I wanted to go to Venice anyways.
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