MY NEW ASHRAM

Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram

"KONSTANTIN GRCIC: DECISIVE DESIGN" - AT THE ART INSTITUT OF CHICAGO

From the Magis site:

Konstantin Grcic, here, : Decisive Design is the title of the first U.S. exhibition on Konstantin Grcic's design, which was opened on November, 18th (and will last to January, 24th 2010) at the Art Institute of Chicago, here, and precisely in the Abbott Galleries of the Modern Wing, which is devoted also to contemporary design.

The exhibition includes about 100 works designed by Konstantin Grcic from the beginnings of his career (furniture, office accessories, lamps and tableware), among them some products for Magis, here, such as the famous Chair_One (on view in its various versions), which has become by now an icon and the more recent 360° Chair, Stool and Container (shown at the last Salone of Milan and already available), which rethink and revolutionize the concept of office furniture.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue (with the same title of the exhibition) by Zoë Ryan, the curator of the design Department of the Art Institute of Chicago and of the exhibition itself. This monograph is the first publication looking at Grcic's work over the past five years, a period when he increased his interest in new technologies and materials that allowed him to produce furniture and objects, which are transforming the landscape of contemporary design.

MY NEW CRUSH: THE 360º CHAIR

PROTOTYPE

photos Tom Vack

From Konstantin Grcic site:

"Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design", on view in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago is the first comprehensive showcase of my work in a U.S. museum.

Curated by Zoë Ryan (Neville Bryan Curator of Design at the Art Institute of Chicago), the exhibition is conceived as a studio-like environment.

Extending over the full wall space of the gallery, the display processes content in a very didactical way, illuminating the objects through a variety of drawings, models, prototypes, photos, film, text etc. In addition there is an open stage in the center of the exhibition, which puts some objects out into use; visitors are invited to sit on furniture, touch material, experience the spatiality of the products, their geometry and scale.

Photos from the installation and of the exhibition

MORE MARIA JOSÉ SALAVISA

THE HOCKEY CAFFÉ

Near Palácio da Vila, in Sintra, a beautiful town near Lisbon, with very fine antique arquitecture.

photos Rui Morais de Sousa

PORTUGUESE DECORATOR. MARIA JOSÉ SALAVISA

KAIS site

Maria José Salavisa called herself interior designer or architect. She was one of the most chic women in Lisbon. She moves everywhere always in the company of her chauffeur and her assistant. She was big bold and talented. Of course she studied! First in Lisbon to have her walls painted black. The entrance of her duplex was majestic with only a huge spiral stairway, not to heaven but almost, drawn in black walls. Terrible.

What we have in these photos are a whole concept by MJ Salavisa to the Kais restaurant, really a Lisbon icon. It is beautiful and lovely to be in drinking and waisting time or dine.

She said her design here was inspired in Frank Lloyd Wright and one can understand perfectly why.

Maria José Salavisa

1925-2006

Lovely and outstanding.

One of her schools, here: Fundação Ricardo Espírito Santo

À LA TABLE TOUT LE MONDE

This is my Man, Konstantin Grcic

these will be my dining chairs

and this

these

and also these beauties -

all from 2004 - yes, because i love antiques

My ever and forever designer. Konstantin Grcic: Absolute must of 2009

CUT IT SHARP

Good taste is never half taste

Constable

collage with photographic negatives, self adhesive architectural papers, acetates, parchment and templet

Homeless

Helpless

Antonio Erre, 2009

prints and originals avaiable

OUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

all together hoping
boys

and girls

will

blossom

lovelly

in the world

 YASTIK means Cushion in turkish.

YASTIK by Rifat Özbek

FOR THOSE WITH A SPARK FOR ROMANCE

EARRINGS

silk and cut glass ball

chévre, leather and silver

BROOCH

silk ribbon and lace and paillettes

paillettes and silk ribbon

NECKLACES

silk and pailletes

silk

Countess does it à la main for fun and as Christma´s gifts for the romantics

Contact, please, if interested

INTERIORS WITH A SOUL. 6

MERZBAU - THE CATHEDRAL OF EROTIC MISERY

"Unlike Mondrian (and unlike many contemporary abstract artists who reflect Mondrian's attitude), Kurt Schwitters was never fanatic about purity. He was a very "impure" artist. And, when I speak of Schwitters' absence, I also mean to say that the very idea of impurity (or the idea of compromise and aesthetic contamination as a source of inspiration) is largely absent from Modernist artistic consciousness. Modernism's insistence on abstraction and on the way to arrive at it, by stripping the medium of its unnecessary or impure elements, had to result in a very rarified idea of an artwork as a thing of extreme clarity, physical elegance, balance, intelligence and perfection...a juggler like Schwitters is seen as a renegade...there was little single-mindedness in his career; there were too many things he wanted to do at the same time. That easily raises the suspicions of amateurism. He had no great interest in the finely chiseled ultimate artwork. He was the practical and poetic magician."

Rudi Fuchs, Conflicts with Modernism or the Absence of Kurt Schwitters (orig. published as Konflikte mit dem Modernismus oder die Abwesenheit von Kurt Schwitters), (Bern: Verlag Gachnang und Springer, 1991), pp. 19-21. .

Kurt Schwitters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters

http://www.stunned.org/kdeE.htm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/schwitters_kurt.html

WALL PAINTING

No matter the way you want your walls painted. Arty, fashionable, personalised, foolish, we paint them. We'll paint them better than everyone else. If you need contact us.

DRAWINGS AND FRAMES

They will hang in my private room flanking a black colonial drawer cum counter crammed in blue and white Ming and Qing and XVIII Malabar brass.

VICHY PATTERN REVISITED

this is the way to gray

creme de la creme of hardware shops. In Santarém, Portugal

Vichy stools by Casa de Neiva

INTERIORS WITH A SOUL. 5

photos of Mapplethorpe's Apartment in New York

(from House & Garden series), 1988

Self Portrait, 1988

in Mapplethorpe Perfection in Form, teNeus, 2009

The Exhibition La Perfezione nella forma will run March 20-June 13, 2010 at Villa Malpensata in Lugano.

Website http://www.mda.lugano.ch/

LOVE HIM

Last days I have noticed in the herb garden, his effort to be born. At last, early this morning, this beauty standing proud in his crispy purple suit greeted me. My heart full of joy went up the sky.

George Maw named this small plant C. biliotti after Sir Alfred Biliotti, HM Consul at Trabzon, "through whose instrumentality it was discovered" in May 1880. Unfortunately, Herbert had already named it C. aërius in 1847, from specimens collected in the same area.

The Genus Crocus "magnum opus" by George Maw contains an informative text, often with detailed notes of where the plant was collected, and by whom, an appendix on the etimology of the words crocus and saffron by CC Lacaita, a fellow member of the Linnean society, sixty-seven beautifully coloured plates, and a number of vignettes engraved from sketches by Maw's friend Mr Danford, to whom, with his wife, the book is dedicated.

At the beginning of the book are introductory chapters on the history and cultivation of crocuses, in wich Maw writes:

"It is probable that there are yet many undescribed species to be discovered and introduced. asia Minor is the metropolis of the genus; and I would especially point out to travellers, the souther part of Asia Minor, between Syria and Lycia, as being likely to afford new species. The northeastern extremity of Cyprus, the Taurus, Kurdistan, north west Persia, and the district east of the Caspian have been little explored, and are likely to afford new species. Should travellers meet with any Crocuses in these districts, I shall be grateful if they will transmit them to me"

IT'S ALL ABOUT GEOMETRY, FRUIT OF THE SEASON, BOLD COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS AND NEUTRALS

summertime cool red light and The Field

yeah!! a Panton chair from the 70's

plain and complex geometry

season fruits

nice country chair with home made red velvet cushion and forgotten witche´s broom!!

the straw is beautifull

beloved tree flowers

shirts drying in the shade

old leather cases and vintage Dior on pakistan rug

old 18th carved chair covered in stripped Rubelli hand made skirt

vintage wicker basket with straw and dried poppy seeds

vintage silhouette Colefax and Fowler shade mounted on plated silver

THE SAINTS AND THE ROSES

spanish saint from a pair - early XIX th - above my gorgeous old roses

the pair

the praying women are out of scale

up up in the skies

old china for old roses

PORTUGUESE AZULEJOS (TILES)

NINETIES' AZULEJO WITH A NAUTICAL INSPIRED CROSS. BY UNKOWN DESIGNER

FOURTIES' AZULEJO COMIC INSPIRED

FIFTIES' AZULEJO FROM THE AZULEJO WORKSHOP OF CASTELO DE S JORGE

ANOTHER ONE FROM THE WORKSHOP WITH RELIGIOUS INSPIRATION

NINETIES' AZULEJO "PORTUGAL" AMÁLIA RODRIGUES AS AN ICON, BY LEONEL MOURA

THE GREAT SUMMER IS HERE TO STAY

Some things

Bottled Yamamoto, Lutens, Beene, Lagerfeld

Some pieces catch by the sea

A remind of the death


Black gorgeous pencils to write

A table to sit by

A book to read