Wary Meyers Supersoaps

Wary Meyers Soap prototyping! 
One pound slicable supersoap columns encased in AMAC lucite boxes.

Coming very soon!

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Wary Meyers Candles on Sight Unseen

The brilliant design journal Sight Unseen has a write-up about our candle-making adventures. See it here and apologies in advance for having you read the word "like" so often. :)

Above, Linda's (the genius behind the candles) three-tiered lucite rotating carousel of fragrances, which she mixes, heats, blends and pours into the hot wax.





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Happy Valentine's Day

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Monstrous Post Modern building

From a world's longest truck video (here). 

Seen only because there's a two year old boy next to me. But, how awesome is the Mammoet?

Now, how to replicate this craziness in Lego, for transport on the Island of Sodor...

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Spillows

Soft Spills! Our newest creations, combining our love of soft sculpture, fake food, the 60's, the 70's, Monster Vitamins, Freakies, and our son, with a little hat tip to the stripes of Ettore Sottsass and the scale of Claes Oldenburg. We've been wanting to make something like this for a while, ever since the Golden Drip from our book, where the spill was used more as furnishing. But going forward, we thought this is more of what we really love- object design. And when you put a face on it, work becomes much more fun. 

Click here!

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Striped cubism

New old lamp! 

Made of stacked anodized aluminum colored blocks.
Like the Superboxes of Ettore Sottsass and the sleeves of The Ritva Man.

related: here

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Checks please! Milton Glaser's Big Kitchen

In 1977 food service mastermind Joe Baum opened The Big Kitchen in the underground concourse of The World Trade Center. Baum was a visionary, and knew how important aesthetics were to the dining experience. So, like he did with Alexander Girard at La Fonda del Sol and Warren Platner at Windows on the World (opened the year before, 107 stories up), he gave Milton Glaser creative reign (or at least graphic design reign) at The Big Kitchen.

There's nothing about this that isn't awesome- the giant letter stations (I had to sit through an hour of a New School panel discussion about Joe Baum to learn they were called stations), the Memphis-y looking "fountain" station, the "Kitchen" typeface, the track lighting, the Market Bar and Dining Rooms type, the Food Market and Raw Bar menu, the aprons, etc... 

This was a really great place brought to life by two major talents. I love that Joe Baum was this fantastic restaurant guy who loved design and Milton Glaser was (is) the preeminent Graphic Designer who loves all things food. The perfect pairing.

Possible inspirations? or random coincidences:

The checked storage containers in Glaser's own kitchen, below, 

and Ettore Sottsass' Superbox.

Photos of The Big Kitchen are scanned from The Interiors Book of Shops & Restaurants, 1981.

Photos of Milton Glaser's kitchen and dining room are from Terence Conran's The Kitchen Book, 1977

Kitchen typeface page courtesy of Zachary at http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/

Ettore Sottsass from here

A related guest post on YHBHS here

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Alexander Calder constellations

Some constellation wall sculptures by Alexander Calder. I scanned these from the book Calder's Universe, meaning to relate them to the Zolo toys, but amongst the Ettore Sottsass buzz I completely forgot. Anyway, aren't these awesome? My thought was how fun would it be to do this with the Zolos? They already have holes drilled in them, so all you'd need is wire (or a thin dowel), and velcro (to keep it in place on a wall), and you'd end up with something like a "Memphis splat". And a way of actually utilizing the Zolos instead of keeping them sequestered away until the age of non-choking-hazard/non-banging-them-on-the-table comes around.
For that matter you could do this with any wooden toy- the Calder above the fireplace somewhat resembles one of those wooden Pinnochio figures, or a Kay Bojesen soldier. Although if you'd do this on a child's wall I guess it should remain in the abstract.



Also, the Breuer's Constellation (middle photo) makes me want to build an orrery, even a strange Sci-Fi one, like a Star Wars orrery, with two suns, Alderaan, Endor, Death Star....




and below, from Portfolio Magazine, 1950:

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Sottseuss

Speaking of Ettore Sottsass, and kid's stuff, there's no kid thing more Memphissed-out than these wooden Zolo toys from 1985. We found them all ( there are about 50 pieces) in their original wooden case at a church sale. Chipped, splintered, and enticingly dangerous, they're probably not so safe to give to our son, so we'll happily use them as surreal Sottsossian objets until ...
actually these may be just a grown-up toy after all.

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Happy Valentine's Day!

... and be sure to click over to You Have Been Here Sometime and read our short guest post about Ettore Sottsass, his Superbox, and all things boxy and striped.

But If you're too lazy, here's our guest post:

"I'm fairly sure if Sottsass hadn't designed it, still to this day, no one would have."

I've asked some interior designers, writers, & artists to guest post on YHBHS this week. I simply could not be more excited that Wary Meyers are writing today's post!!!

Their perspective on interiors is like no other. Their gorgeous coffee table book  "Tossed & Found" explains what to do with all your pool noodles and pastry bags, who knew?

And their  blog has given me so much joy, that it's just ridiculous to talk further about. (take a look at their current installation if you don't believe me...) Thanks Wary Meyers, and Happy Valentine's day to all!

Sottsass's boxes from Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. MoMA's fantastic 1972 book of the exhibition which unleashed the juggernaut of the Italian radicals.

WARY MEYERS' guest post.......

"Probably the first Ettore Sottsass' work I ever saw was something Memphis, which is all so mind-blowingly crazy that it's almost too difficult to process, at first. Of course after looking at it for a bit (or longer) eventually you wonder, "what mad genius thought of this??"

What I like about Sottsass is exactly that madcappery- designing with carefree optimism. A few years before the introduction of Memphis, he designed the SUPERBOX which is a wardrobe, and my favorite Sottsass. Hard-edged, candy-striped, and on a pedestal , it seems like a simple enough modern reworking of a free-standing wardrobe, but it's monolithic and fun, like a Donald Judd at the circus. Straightforward enough, but I'm fairly sure if Sottsass hadn't designed it, still to this day no one would have.

I've always been a fan of boxes as a design element, which probably stems from a youth of blocks, Lego, and D&D graph paper. The Superbox, in all its wardrobe forms, is the ultimate box - a beautiful graphic element made three-dimensional and useful.

Sottsass on top of his Superbox,

from a 1974 Oui magazine article on the new domestic landscape.

Possibly (probably) related: Milton Glaser's giant type "stations" at The Big Kitchen, in the World Trade Center concourse, 1977.

A mixture of Sottsass and Glaser for a more customized wardrobe idea, but actually sketched for a typography project we're working on right now.

photo and drawing via Wary Meyers

A random photo of a garage in Europe, the striped tool chest looking very Sottsassed, which I'm sure is unintentional and probably based more on kilometer blocks or European traffic graphics (if anything); but a testament to Sottsass's design that I look at this and think how awesome the tool chest is. But to put this all in an Italian design perspective I think the same way with Superstudio furniture and anything with grids.

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Domestic Landscape Bliss

Designer Fantastica Ettore Sottsass, from a 1974 Oui magazine article on the new domestic landscape, photographed by Giuseppe Pino. 

And relatedly, really enjoying all the fascinating posts

lately about Poltronova at the excellent blog RoLu.

Sottsass' luminous mirror, a photograph of which doesn't seem to exist without a half naked or enraptured woman in front of it.

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