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
  

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

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 

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:

Zebra rugs. Because these are so ubiquitous, to be fair, let’s say the magazine or blog post has to have at least three of them in order to count (I really love both of these rooms by the way, especially the first one):

Photographs in order from top to bottom:

• Southern Accents

• Metropolitan Home

• Metropolitan Home

• Elle Decor

• Domino

• House Beautiful

• Southern Accents

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!

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:

from Absolutely Beautiful Things:

Catherine Swan’s paper butterflies (made from vintage magazine paper and found via Anna at Absolutely Beautiful Things):

Love this wallpaper in H&G via thepeakofchic:

Kerry Pitt-Hart’s work, via decor8:

butterfly stuff like this fun mobile you can buy right here:

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:

In an Elle Decor from Jan/Feb 2007, Vicente Wolf uses the logs as an important part of the room’s composition.  The irregular shapes  and colors contrast with the crisp white rectilinear nook that houses them (much like in the photo above):

I have to say I find the Ralph Lauren ad a bit gross.  First of all, the logs will no doubt ruin the ridiculously expensive Ralph Lauren paint job, though I guess scuffs kind of go with the whole faux old money casual WASPy English Cottage in the Woods RL look. Down here in Georgia where every house has to have a termite bond at closing, all I can think about is termites and other creepy crawlies that you’d find in an OUTDOOR log pile that size.  For heaven’s sake, we once had a 6′ snake in our log pile in Cincinnati, and I guess I’ve been terrified of  log piles ever since.  This blogger is not all that wild about this idea, no matter how good designers make it look.

photos, in order:

Domino magazine Nov. 2007

Ralph Lauren Paint advertisement from Domino Nov 2007 issue

House and Garden magazine from October 1964

Elle Decor magazine from Jan/Feb 2007

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:

Greek Key Fabric:

from Domino

Jonathan Adler pillow

As for trends I eat up, I had to check out Flair magazine for myself.  It’s quite fabulous:

after months of hunting on eBay, I finally scored my yellow donut phone. eBay is so slow in summertime that you can win a lot more this time of year – hence, I wound up with a backup black donut phone that arrived the same day. Oops! I guess you can never have too many donut phones:

I decided I wanted one ever since I saw Ione Skye’s groovy L.A. abode in Domino awhile back. I noticed Trina Turk had one in Elle Decor this summer as well:

Ione’s place:

from Domino

Trina’s place, where a Donut phone and a small Saarinen pedastal table are a great combo! (for a slideshow of her fabulous L.A. home, click here):

P.S. Drinking game bonus: Trina has freaky hands too:

Elle Decor via PointClickHome – Elle Decor

Jonathan Adler Ventana Lamp:

West Elm Adjustable Metal Floor Lamp:

An Adler-designed Room (note the Foo Dogs):

Check out the new West Elm “Groovy Foo Dog” – the Foo Dog is an Adler favorite, and the shape attempts to emulate his menagerie pottery. They even swiped Adler’s vocabulary with the “groovy”:

The Adler Bull Bank:

The West Elm Groovy Foo Dog (he has the same puffed up chest and an Adler-esque shape):

Finally, an Adler re-released C. Jere sculpture (Adler was advocating these in design long before he scored the rights to re-release them):

West Elm’s C. Jere-ish wall sculptures:

I know there is a big difference between and out and out copy and an inspired knockoff of a style, but wow! What do you think about it? As I said, I like West Elm, I buy from them a lot, and I feel like I find a lot of great products there at a reasonable price, but this kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For you, where is the line between imitation and totally swiping? Obviously there is a legal line, but where is the line between being psyched about finding a great inspired piece and finding yourself completely turned off by imitation?

By the way, this isn’t meant to attack a fellow furniture retailer with malice, in fact, if there are any issues that bug you about Design Public, we would sincerely like to hear them – customers are a very important source of opinion and inspiration and the reason we started this blog in the first place was as a forum to share opinions.

all images linked to original sources at west elm and jonathan adler.