A New Domestic Landscape: "Model Couple", 1977

With a killer domestic soundtrack.
Enjoying William Klein's Model Couple and Mr. Freedom on Hulu Plus, which if you didn't know has the entire Criterion Collection. 

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European kids' rooms, circa 1978

 

 (Of course they're European). From the pages of some old Abitare magazines. 

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Ferragosto

August 15th- The day when all Italians take off for the coast for il Camping e Caravanning. 

Buon divertimento!

Images from Europa Camping + Caravanning guide, 1971

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The Metropolitan Museum's Jolly door prize, 1960

1960 Fiat 500 Jolly.

Arrived in Maine in a cardboard box aboard the freight train to Portland from New York City where it had been a door prize at the Metropolitan Museum. 

How great is that? I would've been psyched to win a just a wicker chair.

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Misty Mountain Hop

Beautiful and intense Images De L'Himalaya by legendary Italian photographer and mountaineer Vittorio Sella (1859-1943).

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The Umbrellas of Tuscany

The classic green umbrella used by all the farmers in Tuscany. Made of heavy duty bright green canvas with a thick wooden shaft and red painted handle (carved from one piece of wood). I bought one when I lived there in 1988 and gave it to my parents, who have to walk a quarter mile every day to get their mail, which seems a very Tuscan-farmer thing to do.  

Below: The only other one I've ever seen outside of Tuscany (even though it's actually in Tuscany): from a Sarah Moon fashion spread in Realities magazine, 1968. 

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Hurricane Lamps

Camping Gaz Instalux. 1970's Battery-powered Italian camping lights:

 One of the only things to look forward to when the power goes out.

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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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Fiorucci Fioruscha

Late 70's Fiorucci shopping bag. Above, from The Official Preppy Handbook; and top, on our kitchen wall by way of Ebay, years ago (this is the actual auction photo- 17 dollars,framed under glass!)

Fiorucci put out some amazing graphics during their heyday but this is my favorite. Equal parts Ed Ruscha and the actual gas station down the road from where I used to live in Italy, which I'd either ride my bike by or hitchhike by just about every day.

Standard Station, Ed Ruscha 1966

Total Station, S.S. 222 from Greti to Greve in Chianti

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Progettazione 1x2

Gustav Eiffel/ Enzo Mari- inspired 1x2 plank mantel ("Eiffel Mantel") just after completion in the summer of 2008. Highly mathematical instructions on how to build it are in our book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found.

Below that is from the following spring, when a winter outside oxidized the nails and they leached into the wood grain, but I like it even better that way. It shows more of "the hand".

Above, a pig working on a Mari-esque progettazione (interlocking end table/s) in the illustration for the book's last page (the end).

also:

Enzo Mari at DesignMuseum.org

Enzo Mari at Reference Library

Enzo Mari at Daddytypes, and Greg.Org

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Fiam glass nesting tables

Three thick glass nesting tables made by Fiam Italia, makers of Cini Boeri's Ghost Chair. Linda found these browsing Craigslist one day but the listing was over a month old. We called anyway and the guy said he still had them, that no one had responded. They were his boss's, who had a yard sale after he got divorced, but nobody bought them there either so the guy took them. Crazy. they were $40.

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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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2 for Tuesday

From Massimo Vignelli, designer fantastico Italiano:

Stacking plastic tableware, 1967-72

New York City subway map, 1970

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Giorgetto Giugiaro Logica

A find from last year is this Necchi Logica sewing machine. It's not often great designers take on sewing machines, but when they do the results usually go straight to museums' permanent collections. The Logica was designed for Necchi by Giorgetto Giugiaro, the great Italian automobile designer and leading proponent of the awesome "folded paper" school of design. Besides Linda's sewing machine, his most angular and notable designs are the Volkswagen Rabbit, the Nikon F4, the Delorean, a slew of Italian Supercars, but most fun- and most like the Logica- is his Lotus Esprit, a car I used to build out of Lego tirelessly after seeing James Bond submarining around in his.

one of Linda's Logica-assisted coats


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