I can’t find anything inspiring to share with you, but all last week I was dying to revive the design drinking games. Just as you’d gulp some down whenever Brenda was a bitch on the old 90210, take a swig whenever you see this newly ubiquitous object.

For months now I’ve noticed that Pedro Friedeberg’s hand and hand chairs are popping up all over the place. Sometimes they even have a foot attached to them. Before Pedro’s chair burst on the scene, the last time I’d seen a hand-shaped chair was in Buster’s room and later Lupe’s house on Arrested Development (Buster: I’d never thought I’d miss a hand so much”):

Have you noticed? It’s been making a lot of covers lately. First Jonathan Adler & Simon Doonan’s anti-depressive Florida pied-a-terre on the cover of Met Home:

Then Kelly Wearstler’s home redesign in Vogue:

How about the sexy Nate Berkus-designed Milan home of Brian Atwood:

This Last week The New York Times Home section featured Jay Jeffers’ temporary digs (he’s waiting for his drive-in apartment. I still don’t get that. Why do you want to put your car on an elevator and drive it into your apartment? What about carbon monoxide? Stupidest thing I’ve ever heard):

Image Credits:

• Images (2) from JonathanAdler.com, also seen in Metropolitan Home (R.I.P. – We’ll miss you Met Home!)
• from here
• Image by Francois Halard via Vogue
• Image by Simon Upton via Elle Decor
• Images by Bruce Buck for the The New York Times
• Image by Roger Davies for Elle Decor
  

Is it just me, or is this peacock turning up a lot lately? This one is in the July/August Elle Decor:

While the peacock is beautiful, I’d rather have a LIVE peacock strolling the grounds of my estate than a dead stuffed one up on a ladder in my living room. Taxidermy reminds me too much of Norman Bates.

photograph by William Waldron for Elle Decor

Honestly, this mask has become my own personal Where’s Waldo of design magazines. For the third time in as many months, Peter Dunham’s African mask is in a design publication. This month, it’s House Beautiful:

By the way, there was a very interesting post and resulting conversation in the comments section over at Decorno this week, regarding “eclectic style.” Click here to check it out.

photo from House Beautiful 

Here are a few new objects for our design drinking games. “Take a swig” everytime you see one of the following:

A Globe Collection:

Not-so-casually-tossed Hermes boxes (“casually tossed” Hermes boxes count too). Do stylists just keep a bunch of these in their cars for photo shoots?:

Gaining on the Tom Ford book and The Cabinet of Natural Curiousities, it’s the Tony Duquette book! Also in this picture, another trend, putting an entire shrub into a vase.

Tortoise shells, real and faux. By the way, picture number two is chock full of extra points, so look carefully: Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the same about these two pictures?:

I had to laugh as I looked through last month’s Metropolitan Home.  Apparently the new item du jour is the Helmut Newton book on a music stand.  These two layouts were only a few pages apart in the same issue.  I think the top photo will probably win in terms of the number of trendy objects:  we have some horny legs on a stool as well as a Barcelona daybed all in one room.  Though if we could see the books in the second photo, it might win out – certainly the Tom Ford book is in those shelves somewhere! Met Home,  I generally love you anyway, this just gave me a chuckle like seeing the same flower arrangement over and over again in the same issue does!

When I think of butterflies, I think of two things:

1) The Silence of the Lambs

2) Even more terrifying than that, Mariah Carey’s apartment on MTV Cribs.

However, Alexander McQueen, who rocks, has me coming around to butterfly love just a little. Perhaps it’s because of Julian Schnabel. Whatever it is, I believe we are in the middle of a butterfly blitzkrieg in design right now:

Alexander McQueen as seen in Harper’s Bazaar:

from Domino magazine:

Read the rest of this entry »

Catching up on my glossies last week, I had to laugh – opened up this issue of Domino:

Because the page right underneath it looked like this:

The log piles were literally stacked on top of each other when the magazine was closed.  Displaying logs seems to be a timeless styling trick and not necessarily a trend that will die out.  Here’s the cover of an 1964 H&G I keep right next to my own fireplace: Read the rest of this entry »

TREND ALERTS!

I haven’t been keeping up on our ubiquitous design object drinking games/trendy object scavenger hunt (Part II is here), whatever you want to call it, but some other bloggers have had some great posts with more objects. Megan over at BeachBungalow8 has a list right here, and Style Court has some design library additions here.

The latest for me? These gorgeous Suzani prints are popping up more and more lately. Here’s one in a beautiful room from Style Court*:

Another object spreading through blog world (and apparently to a lot of bloggers walls) is this Partridge Family-esque print by GoodShapeDesign:

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello! I love getting back from vacation and getting a ton of fun mail – my Charley Harper book and my Feed Bag finally arrived from Amazon, and I had a stack of fun catalogs to look through. As I perused West Elm, which I do like, one item jumped out at me – a Foo Dog Pillow. Really? I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes the imitation is shameless – clearly someone over there is reading Jonathan Adler’s Guide to Anti-Depressive Living, and Foo Dogs have gone from drinking game fodder to over the tipping point. In fact, it looks like they have officially jumped the shark. In addition, there was a chunky foo dog figurine and a tripod lamp that looked a lot like Adler’s:

Jonathan Adler Ventana Lamp:

West Elm Adjustable Metal Floor Lamp: Read the rest of this entry »