I should have known I’d come upon another wonderful Panton Chair shot at Living etc.:

image via Living etc.

P.S. The architect on this project was Steven Whiting

I’m giving flickr a rest today because frankly, I can’t seem to stop surfing Living etc. It’s been to long since my last visit over there. People keep using Panton chairs in such great ways. My new favorite is this rhapsody in blue over at Living etc. This is a modern cottage in Melbourne Australia and this space rocks. Love the crazy nest/beaver habitat of a chandelier. Love the use of the navy chairs. Love the light ceiling abutting that dark wall & matching cabinets. Love the floor, love the table, love the contrast of the modern, curvy plastic chairs with the slightly rough hewn, blocky table. What the hell is that flower arrangement? I must love it as well, as this all just works.

To pick up some Panton chairs of your own, click here. They are $260 each.

image via Living etc. Are there many magazine sites with better galleries than Living etc.? My only wish is that the images were larger, but that’s a very minor quibble. I love the quality of all of their picks, and the site architecture is great. Let’s hope the shelter mag blight does not reach them.

O.K., so these table legs from Home Depot are not all that sexy. However, ever since I admired Priscilla Locke’s studio a few weeks ago I have had them on the brain:

from The Locker

My cryptic notes on this picture source say “colombe steven via destoinsp” This means I swiped it from Desire to Inspire, but I’m not sure about the rest. Let me know if you can help me clarify!

My notes here:francesca harris sunset WS. I think I’ve decoded it – photographer name, magazine (Sunset) and WS means “Work Space”!

From Living etc.

Notes here: “cordelia de castellane ws hg” House & Garden?

from Natural Curiosities

from Living etc.

from Nate Berkus

Here are a few cuter cheap versions if you want to try the look out yourself. The yellow one is from Home Depot, and the silver ones are from Lowe’s.

I grew up in a flyover state (Ohio), and they must be on my mind this week. Yesterday I was thinking about midwestern Seed Bombs, and today I’m taking a virtual house tour in Kansas:

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah the other day, talking about how her first job was being a housekeeper at a wealthy family’s home (she recommends cleaning bathrooms with gallons of cheap vodka), and her second job was at an interior decorator who was high on cocaine a lot of the time. She talked about dreaming of owning this house in her hometown of Wichita Kansas, which was the headquarters of the historical society at the time. She decorated it herself, and there is a fun tour of it over at Oprah.com. Personally, I love the bedroom below, and I love that Kirstie is not afraid of loud, bold wallpaper. The kitchen is beautiful, but because it wasn’t all that large, Kirstie bought the house next door, transformed the entire downstairs into a kitchen, and built a bridge between the two houses. You can see a lot of nods to traditional design and a few moves that seem kinda eighties, but who cares? Kirstie is hilarious and my dad and I sat and watched the segments of her and cracked up the entire time.

all images from Oprah.com

Our pal VisuaLingual’s Seed Bombs have been getting mad press lately, and it couldn’t have happened to a more better product. Maya and Michael have designed the bombs to make random acts of gardening a cinch.  They have chosen native seeds that are bird, bee, and butterfly friendly.

The seeds were chosen because they are native to the midwest, but they will work all over the U.S.A. They include:

Queen Anne’s Lace, Upland White Aster Aster, Prairie Aster, Pot
Marigold, Cornflower, Siberian Wallflower, Shasta Daisy, Godetia,
Farewell-to-Spring, Lance-Leaf Coreopsis, Plains Coreopsis, Sulphur
Cosmos, Wild Cosmos, Chinese Forget-Me-Not, Wild Larkspur, Sweet
William, Purple Coneflower, California Poppy, Perennial Gaillardia,
Indian Blanket, Globe Gilia, Baby’s Breath, Wild Annual Sunflower,
Dwarf Sunflower, Dame’s Rocket, Rose Mallow, Baby Snapdragon,
Candytuft, Scarlet Flax, Blue Flax, Perennial Lupine, Russell Lupine,
Annual Lupine, Four O’Clock, Baby Blue Eyes, Evening Primrose, Red
Poppy, Mexican Hat, Prairie Coneflower, Black-Eyed Susan, Gloriosa
Daisy, Sweet Coneflower, None-so-Pretty

The muslin bags were made in the USA and screenprinted by hand with the Midwest Seed Bombs design. Inside each pouch is the full list of the seeds included. Each filled pouch weighs approximately 4-4.5 ounces. When you’ve used up the seed bombs, reuse the pouch or frame it!

To order, click here.

P.S. If you’d like a house tour of Maya and Michael’s former beer hall home and studio, click here.

I picked this book up at one of the best used bookstores I’ve ever visited, ABCD in Camden Maine (though my Great Uncle Frank Piskor, a huge bibliophile, used to say they had “New York prices.”). It’s a MoMA book from 1961, and Uncle Frank was right; it was $6.50 new, and $75 used forty years later. I’m going to let the jacket sum up Futurism for you because I would use up all of my blogging hours for the month trying to do it myself and I would not do half as good a job:

The Futurist artists…set out to create an art as exhilarating as Marinetti’s promise. They translated the kinetic rhythms and the confused, intense sensations of modern life into potent visual form, creating works of art of extraordinary emotional impact. The Futurists’ approach to art, their manifestos and demonstrations set a pattern for many art movements which followed, such as Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism…and the sympathy between certain Futurist procedures and current endeavors is largely responsible for the growing interest in Futurism.”

-Joshua C. Taylor

The Futurists looked to the past to rebel against it than to be inspired by it, and they had a tinge of anarchy running through their movement. Alright, enough art history, think about what was going on in the 19-teens and you’ll get it. Onto the inspiration of color, shape, movement, and composed confusion:

Severini: The Boulevard 1910

Boccioni: The Street Pavers 1911

Balla: Mercury Passing Before the Sun as Seen Through a Telescope 1914

Balla: Iridescent Interpretation 1912

Balla: Girl Running on a Balcony 1912

Boccioni: Iron Man. Just Kidding! Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913

Carra: “Free-Word” Painting (Patriotic Celebration) 1914

Boccioni: The Calvary Charge 1914

Hmmm, O.K., so the late fifties/early sixties are the time of the “current endeavors” Taylor alludes to. That makes total sense when you think about the art scene in the sixties and beyond. I’m seeing a lot of inspiration here for Jim Dine and Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol. Think of whatever Cooper is hanging in his office on Mad Men, think of how the space race would have effected art the way the industrial revolution and speeding cars and airplanes did decades earlier.

It makes me wonder what kind of art will come out of this tumultuous time in history. We’ve seen the architecture, we’re seeing how the fear of a crashing plane affects design, how security concerns keep campuses from planting shrubs, how we memorialize heroes and events. How are tumultuous times and technology and all of the new ways of presenting media and communicating affecting art today? Please tell me what you think as it’s kind of blowing my mind just thinking about it at them moment.

Here are some more beautiful shelves from flickr member hnxing. Check out the way she had the stamps framed. I’ve been meaning to do this with my Eames stamps before I use them all up on bills!

photo from flickr member hnxing

It’s so fun to see a new batch of photos added to our Fresh New Spaces Group! I know I just featured her a few weeks back (here), but I had to share Ivy style 33’s lovely shelf arrangement with you today. I hope it inspires some weekend organizing and decorating for you!

photos by flickr member Ivy Style 33

Decorators should never insist on throwing out everything the client has. Even when they are far from perfect, loved possessions add personality.

-Billy Baldwin

What are your loved possessions? Please share them with us! I’ll start: Two of mine are these Staffordshire dogs that were my grandmother’s. They always sat on her mantle on Cape Cod and they always remind me of her. She was the ultimate animal lover – every bird and stray cat in her neighborhood was fed by her, and her dog Guinness had gourmet meals prepared for him every night.

Now they have separated, one of them has a place of pride on my Parson’s desk:

Blu Dot always catches my attention by doing something creative. Starting on Wednesday, they will begin The Real Good Chair Experiment, tracking Real Good Chairs on a journey through N.Y.C. You will be able to follow the chairs in real time here.