Wary Meyers x Alice Cooper x Alvar Aalto

Aalto knock-off stools carved up with the desktop graffiti from Alice Cooper's 1972 album School's Out.

Basically this started out as an exercise in aging wood to a nice honeyed patina- making the originally brand new, very pale wood stools look like we've had them for years and years- but taken to a whimsical extreme. We sanded them down, nicked them up, cut slices off, carved in the markings, initials, and tattoo, stained them, tinted them, and polyurethaned them. All done by hand with no electric anything.

The stool is featured in our book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found and now two are available in our shop. So if you're a fan of Alvar Aalto, Alice Cooper, and us, this is the stool for you!

related:
a typography spread from our book


School's Out lp

Alice photo via Mrs. Gorman

Pin It

aalot of stools

Towers of old Alvar Aalto stools at designdealers.fi

Pin It

Barn

Pin It

Wood Play

From the book "Modern Finnish Sculpture" (1970) by Goran Schildt:

"During the period between 1927 and 1954, especially in the 1930's, Aalto engaged in a series of what might be described as artistic laboratory experiments, making many of the abstract reliefs and free sculptures in which he studied the variations in pliancy of wood fibres."...

" Alvar Aalto himself explains his early experiments in sculpture by referring to Yrjö Hirn. In spite of an age difference of nearly thirty years there was a warm friendship between Hirn, the distinguished and influential Professor of Aesthetics, and Aalto, who was deeply influenced by Hirn's comments on the significance of play in aesthetic creation. It is only by forgetting practical purposes in order to subordinate himself to the inner logic of his material that the artist can raise himself from the established pattern to free creation, inspired by spontaneous joy and delight in play. Aalto's "motiveless" experiments with laminated wood, aimed solely at facing problems of form and of aesthetic effect, in which the wood was bent, split, and fixed in different positions according to its grain, were acclaimed as the first wholly abstract Finnish sculpture."


Above: Alvar Aalto, various wood reliefs/experiments, 1929- 1966
Top: A fountain of Aalto chair legs from Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found. (no presumptions or pretense- our project was only about how to make the white plinth below it...)

related:

Pin It

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

Pin It

À la table

Vintage Gucci napkins-and-tablecloth, old Gio Ponti silverware, and an early set of Julia Child, from yard sales.

And from the flotsam-filled dock undersides of Portland came the wood to make the chevronned Jean Prouve esque Tropicale (Nauticale?) Farm Table, called "Picnic Table" in Tossed & Found, only because we were watching "Manon of the Spring" when we had to come up with a name.

Pin It

Liberty Studios

The great facade of Anthony Lover's Liberty Studios, NYC, with its perfect mix of industrial age iron work, Gill Sans Extra Bold (a typeface) and supergraphic American Typewriter (this blog's typeface) number. And the beautifully poetic and patina'd window.

Sometime crashpad of our errant carpenter, the studio is more noted for creating the amazingly detailed HBO Starship intro back in 1982. (link)

Pin It

Distressed Finnish

Aalice Cooper Alvar Aalto Maash Üpp, from the pages of 

Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found

Pin It

Textiles

Click to enlarge each of these.

top: From a yard sale last weekend, 6'x5' wool patchwork blanket, backed in wool. The woman told us "a girl made it for my husband back in the 70's". It's in perfect condition- probably taken from the back seat of the Volvo wagon directly into storage. She said she'd take the 4 dollars and buy herself a martini.

Middle: Fantastic 8' Turkish runner from an estate sale. The edges are frayed but they can be trimmed and fringe added back on.

Bottom: From the 30's, an awesome crazy-quilting patchwork of denim and twills, with a few odd-shaped pieces within each square. 

Pin It

Volleyball

Spider webs and a mooring buoy.

(click to enlarge)

Pin It

Crumblin'

patina

Pin It

Farm Fresh

Mysterious Eastern origins, thin, ragged edges, great patinas, and the aroma of 50 years of chickens and goats laying on them. Luckily we planned on keeping them outside on the porch anyway, in a kind of Moorish hangout we're making.  But, word to the wise- if you don't have a high-powered hose or access to a DIY carwash I would not buy anything that's been around a barnyard for any period of time, especially Persian rugs. Pin It

book patina

Nicely aging whites in our living room bookshelf, due in part to 

virtually none of them having been printed more recently than 1980.

Pin It

Beautility

1970's Sweet-Orr jeans from an estate sale in Connecticut a few years ago. Lovingly and Bohemianly embroidered with flowers, a rainbow, "Catherine" (Cat) and the Yes and Chicago logos, all boro-ed on for jean-life-extension. A near perfect object, with personalization, signs of use, and the golden hat trick of  hippie handicraft, typography, and utility. 

Pin It

Unfinished idea

One of my favorite objects, from an estate sale, deep in the abandoned basement workshop. To me, everything about this is perfect. The design, the scale/math, the craftsmanship, the mistakes, the patina, and the magic marker "unfinished drill index box". It opens perfectly in half on hinges that stay open at any degree. There's a chunk of pine which looks as if it was poured into the box it's so seamless. The patina and little dings and abrasions make you wonder how many years this was going to be left unfinished-- or did whoever made it realize that it actually was finished, since really in the time it took to write "unfinished drill index box" they could have just drilled the holes.

Taking some inspiration from it, I think it would make a really great chair (/loveseat/sofa), the basis of which is the closed box. Enlarged,  it would have the feeling of a brutalist Tony Smith sculpture, and opened, like a Tony Smith sculpture opened up by Josef Albers into a canopy chair. Not to be presumptuous, but I think if Donald Judd had been in this basement he would have had the same idea. 

conceivable in-situ view:

This would have been the perfect jumping-off point for this project, and conceivably what it could look like at the landing. Unfortunately it was too unaerodynamic too put on top of the car for the drive back from Florida a couple of months ago. The price was right though (free).

Pin It

International School

This worn old Le Corbusier Basculant chair was at a middle school's sale on Saturday amidst piles of shin guards and Harry Potter books. 

Sometimes the greatest things show up in the most unlikely places.

Pin It

vintage fish pillow

with convenient built-in handle

Pin It

Locd of the Rings

Keep on Tolkien!

I can't even explain why I have so many of these.

Pin It

Penn

We drove down to New York and on the way detoured over to my parents' house in Connecticut to preview their yard sale. Among the things we bought (back) was this old copy of  Irving Penn's Moments Preserved, for $1. Penn is the master of composition and still life, and his portable studio with the canvas backdrop is eternally inspiring. If you're in Los Angeles this September, The Getty Museum is having a massive retrospective. 

also at the tag sale: 

Pin It