30 September 2009

More lighting fun with Kichler's Design Pro LEDs



Last January, I wrote two posts introducing Kichler's Design Pro LED lighting. You can read them here and here. Back then, the Pro series had to two models of under cabinet lighting. What's really interesting about Kichler's Design Pro LED lighting series is that the warm, white light they produce is similar to the light produced by an incandescent bulb. The similarities stop there though. The LEDs used in Kichler's Design Pro lights uses 75% less electricity and each bulb is rated with a 40,000 hour lifespan. That's 20 years. The energy and replacement light bulb savings over the course of 20 years makes the initial cost of LED lights a bargain.

Kichler just added onto the Design Pro series in the form of these rail lights.



The first is a modern, urban four-light rail. It's available in a brushed nickel finish with a white glass shade. Each light along the rail swivels independently.



And the second is a more transitional four-light rail. It's available in the brushed nickel finish with white glass as well as in an Olde Bronze finish with a light umber glass shade. As with its more modern cousin, each light swivels independently on this fixture.



Here's the more modern rail in a bathroom, and you can see the independent swiveling in action. That these lights can be positioned independently is the key feature here. This means that you can use the rail fixtures above an island with the shades positioned for reading the newspaper, or in the kitchen, trained toward a counter for food preparation. Each shade swivels 90 degrees and rotates up to 359 degrees. Each model has the same dimensions, 42-and-a-half inches in length, four-and-a-half inches in width and nine inches in height. These are substantial fixtures that when when placed properly, will provide years of proper lighting.

These are great features and that's a huge amount of light coming out of an LED. Kichler is really onto something with this Pro series. These lights are available at independent lighting showrooms and you can learn more about them on Kichler's website.

Rachele from The Conscious Kitchen installed Kichler's Design Pro LED under cabinet lights in her recent and beautiful kitchen renovation. I wonder what it would take to get her to weigh in with an opinion about them... Rachele?

29 September 2009

More to love about New York and more art underground



I brought up New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority and their Arts for Transit program a couple of weeks ago. The MTA dedicates 1% of the money it brings in every year to fund permanent art installations throughout New York's entire transit system.

Over the course of the last 21 years, the MTA has assembled what's clearly New York's most expansive art collection. The works are all site-specific and feature media that range from mosaic to cast bronze and from faceted glass to enamel.

My smart friend Tom knows I love the Arts for Transit program and he sent me some images of some gorgeous mosaics located throughout the MTA's system and he sent me the link to the directory of these installations. I spent an hour poking around and jumping from station to station, just looking for works I already know and love and earmarking works to find the next time I'm in the City. I came across an old favorite and I hadn't thought about it in years.

This is Canal Street.



Canal Street offers what I say is the most intense example of urban life that there is to be found in the US. It's impossible to walk down Canal Street and not get caught up in the crush of humanity and traffic and noise and the thrill of being alive in the center of the universe.



Now if you duck down this hole in the sidewalk at the corner of Canal Street and 6th Avenue, you'll come face to face with Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's The Gathering from 2001.



The Gathering is a collection of 181 life-sized, bronze blackbirds, grackles and crows and they're integrated perfectly into the grates and gates of the station and platforms.



Canal Street's about as far as one can be removed from anything resembling a non-human life form and it's a pretty jarring surprise to run into 181 black birds in a subway station underneath the bedlam unfolding in the streets above. I love birds, I love New York and I love art. It's a grand slam. Thank you MTA.



The Gathering is the work of Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz and I wrote about them last August. Martin and Muñoz created a series of provocative snow globes I am still crazy about. Snow globes? Yes, snow globes. Follow the link and check check them out.

Anyhow, if you find yourself in New York and want to take an unconventional museum tour, buy a $2 Metro Card and cruise from station to station. The MTA's website makes plotting out such a tour easy.

Art is important, I'll go so far as to say that it's vital to the health of a society. Seeing the amount of time, money and attention the Metropolitan Transit Authority spends on public art should serve as an example to cities across the rest of the US. In a time of contracting economies and squeezed budgets, Art's still important. Maybe it's even more important now than ever.

28 September 2009

Follow up to a follow up to a post from two weeks ago: the wall tile that nearly did in my client

So by popular demand, here's an image of the kitchen that caused the ruckus I wrote about on 15 and 16 September. I think it's pretty mild, but to the eyes of my client, it was pushing so far into the realm of the avant-guard she could barely stand it.



The tile:



The cabinet color:.



The counters:



The lights are showing up really orange-y in this image. In life, they are an amber-y brown that plays against the wall tile nicely. Here they are:



The pendants are the Sasha II from Besa Lighting with an "Amber Cloud" shade.

This was by no means a bad kitchen or a bad job or anything I think is unattractive. It's a reasonably-priced job that I made look a lot more expensive through a couple of the tricks and tips I've learned over the years. Even so, it's not something that would make it into my brag file under ordinary circumstances.

Again, there's nothing wrong with it and I'm having an epiphany here. Hold on a minute. I see myself as a high-end designer and in a lot of ways I am. The work that ends up in the file I show prospects is from high five-figure (and more than a few six-figure) jobs. But now that I think about it, I haven't landed anything with a budget that high since the stock market crashed a year ago. The biggest job I have going right now has a budget of $60,000 that's going toward a major kitchen overhaul, a master bath and a significant reworking of the interior walls on the first floor of this house. Two years ago, that job would have had a budget twice what it is now and would have been a significantly more ambitious project.

But it's not two years ago and in this market at least, people are spending less money on home renovations. I'm thrilled for the work and the project I'm describing will most definitely make it into my brag file. But since the bulk of everything I've done for the last year has been more along the $28,000 renovation pictured at the beginning of this post, is my glamor job brag file spooking people? I wonder if I should show off my lower-budget jobs in these troubled times.

Seriously, what do you think? If you were a client interviewing designers, what would you want to see? Is an aspirational portfolio a turn off?

27 September 2009

Artist profile: meet Vicki Shuck


6"x8"
Oil on Board
$125 plus $10 domestic s/h

Great rooms deserve great art, great original art. Vicki Shuck is a Bend, OR artist whose work was brought to my attention by a reader and client in Oregon.


8"x6"
Oil on Board
$200 includes domestic s/h

Vicki's oil paintings are a feast, a visual feast. Her work shows an impressionist's passion for composition yet with an undeniably modern perspective. Like all great art, Vicki's work grants a viewer a glimpse into the world as she sees it. Yet, there's a generosity at work here. Even though I'm capturing a sense of Vicki's world, I'm being invited to insert my own sensibilities and experiences into the scenes she captures.


6"x8"
Oil on Board
$100 plus $10 domestic s/h

An artists' job is to record her life and in so doing, record the lives of her audience. Art's at once private and public, personal and global. Or so I say at any rate, and Vicki's work accomplishes all of that to terrific effect.


8"x8"
Oil on Board
$150 plus $10 domestic s/h

Vicki's work is available for sale through her blog, What the Day Brings and through a website called Daily Painters. Daily Painters is a juried gallery featuring the work of artists who paint every day. There are 30,000 works contributed by 140 different artists on Daily Painters, and it's a great place to get lost. Vicki's blog is another great place spend some time. As someone who doesn't paint and who hasn't dedicated his life to art, reading her descriptions of her work is as enlightening as it is entertaining. Spend some time with What the Day Brings and you'll see what I mean.


4"x3.5"
Oil on Board
$65 includes domestic s/h

I tell my clients all the time that a room's not finished until we find the right art, real art produced by a real artist. Vicki Shuck is one such artist. Buy a painting!


6"x6"
Oil on Board
$125 includes domestic s/ h



5"x7"
Oil on Gessoboard
$135 unframed includes domestic s/h

26 September 2009

O tempora o mores!

Oh the times! Oh the customs! Or so said Cicero in 63 B.C. in his first oration against Catiline. People have been repeating damnations of their times since the dawn of human civilization. Cicero complained about his age's corruption and enmity. People today complain about corruption, enmity and a lack of privacy in a digital age. I think corruption and enmity are with us for keeps, but our pals at Google launched a campaign to do something about digital privacy a couple of weeks ago.



The Digital Liberation Front is the guerrilla-sounding name of an engineering initiative Google's implementing across all of their products. In a nutshell, it means that removing your personal data (from photographs to billing information to blog posts) should be as easy as entering it.

It may not sound like much, but ask anyone who's been foolish enough to sign up for Classmates.com how much trouble it is to close an account and delete information on a lot of online sites and services.

Here's an excerpt from The Digital Liberation Front's website:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.  We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product.  We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to liberate their products. This is our mission statement:
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier for them to move data in and out.
People usually don't look to see if they can get their data out of a product until they decide one day that they want to leave  For this reason, we always encourage people to ask these three questions before starting to use a product that will store their data:
  1. Can I get my data out at all?
  2. How much is it going to cost to get my data out?
  3. How much of my time is it going to take to get my data out?
The ideal answers to these questions are:
  1. Yes.
  2. Nothing more than I'm already paying.
  3. As little as possible.
There shouldn't be an additional charge to export your data. Beyond that, if it takes you many hours to get your data out, it's almost as bad as not being able to get your data out at all.

We don't think that our products are perfect yet, but we're continuing to work at making it easier to get your data in and out of them.  Visit our Google Moderator page to vote on and add suggestions on what you'd like to see liberated and why.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering initiative at Google, it's a refinement to Google's core values. Don't expect any great announcements, but watch data hostage taking (Facebook) start to wane. Since it's Google who's embracing this path in a very public way, expect the rest of the internet to follow suite. Make that, demand that the rest of the internet follow suite.

25 September 2009

Of spiders and silk, of silk and textiles



One of my favorite things about living in Florida is the daily parade of exotic creatures that cross my path. I live a pretty urban existence, but it's not at all an unusual thing to have a small flock of white ibises get out of my way as I walk to the car in the morning. As the white ibises feign their mute alarm (the things are unflappable I swear) the monk parrots in the date palm across the street make a racket that more than compensates the ibises' silence. I love that scene and I love the very routine-ness of these encounters. The creatures I come across less frequently are an even bigger thrill. Out of all of the curiosities I've encountered in the last (almost) 20 years, my all time favorite has to be Nephila clavipes.



Nephila clavipes is Florida's yellow silk spider, variously known as a banana spider, a calico spider, a writing spider, a giant wood spider or a golden orb spider. Whatever you call it, N. clavipes is hard to miss.



As some of their names suggest, N. clavipes spins an orb web of unusual color. It's a rich, golden yellow and it has to be the strongest spider silk I've ever come across. If you see one of these webs in the woods, you can pluck the support filaments as if they were guitar or harp strings. They don't make any noise of course, but those web filaments feel every bit as strong as the strings in an instrument.

The spiders themselves are harmless to humans, though they are a bit intimidating. Ever since I first stumbled upon one during my first summer in Florida, they have cast a spell over me I can't quite explain. There's a lot of information out there on them and this tells me I'm not the only one who's fascinated by these beauties.

There are Nephila species located all around the warmer parts of the world and the New York Times broke a story this week about some clever soul in Madagascar who took his fascination with Nephila further than anyone else ever has.



The American Museum of Natural History in New York this week unveiled the world's only brocaded textile woven from spider silk. Simon Peers is an art historian, textile expert and 20-year Madagascar resident. He joined forces with Nicholas Godley, an American fashion designer and fellow Madagascar resident, to recreate and perfect what had been tried and abandoned for as long as there have been human beings around to admire spiders. They were going to make a fabric from spider's silk. It had been tried before in Madagascar, so their idea wasn't without precedent.

100 years ago, a French priest, inventor and educator known as Father Comboué figured out a way to spin spider silk harvested directly from the business end of a Nephila inaurata into a thread. He was said to have made enough of this spider's silk fabric to outfit a bed canopy. Reports differ about how true that story is, and whatever fabric he did create no longer exists. So from the attempts of Father Comboué until Peers and Godley waded back into the spider silk business five years ago, no one had successfully made anything from spider silk.



Peers and Godley perfected earlier attempts through their persistence and tenacity as much as anything. The fabric unveiled this week required the output of a million spiders. With the help of the Malagasy people, Peers and Godley collected upwards of three thousand N. inaurata a day. They would place each spider in a harness  and then connect it to the harnesses of 23 other spiders. The 24 spiders would spin a single filament each and the filaments would be wound into a thread and then onto a spool. Each spider could produce a single filament 400 feet long before it could produce no more. Once spent, the spider would be re-released to the wild where it would regain its strength in a day or two and could be recaptured and "milked" again or go about its life.



Once they had enough thread, they could in turn spin that into a yarn and start weaving. Madagascar was once known for its intricately woven textiles. Peers and Godley wanted to revive the dying art of Malagasy textiles and to teach a new generation about the weaving traditions of their ancestors. They chose a traditional brocaded pattern once reserved for kings for their project and commenced weaving.



The men estimate that it cost a half a million dollars to produce an eleven foot long shawl, which they regard as a work of art more than an economically viable textile. Whatever it is, what they produced is the first example of a brocaded fabric hand woven from spider silk ever recorded. It's an quite an achievement. The color is the natural, yellow gold of the Nephila species and it's said to be as strong as if it were woven from Kevlar.



Needless to say, I'm captivated by this story and it has me looking at my beloved yellow silk spiders in a whole new light. I found this video yesterday that was shot at the unveiling and it features Peers and Godley describing their work.




If you're in New York, head up to the museum at 79th and Central Park West and let me know how it looks in real life. This is just cool.

24 September 2009

SketchUp's got a new groove



Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, SketchUp went out and made it better. Google SketchUp released an update yesterday and it's amazing. My expectations are kind of off the charts when it comes to SketchUp updates and this one has left me as satisfied as the updates that proceeded it. Some of its new features are really stunning in a gee-whiz-who-thinks-of-this kind of way. Watch this video:





Pretty slick, huh? Applying actual textures to the exterior of a building that you can put in context on a map. Wow.




If you design for a living, and I mean design anything, download SketchUp now. If you don't design anything but you want to see what's available to help you turn a thought in your head into a real object, download SketchUp too. It's the ultimate visualization tool and it keeps getting better.



You can download SketchUp here. There are two versions, a hugely functional free version called SketchUp Free and a Professional version you'll need to generate measured plans. Appropriately enough, it's called SketchUp Pro. So learn how to use it int he free version and when you upgrade to Pro, the first eight hours of use are free. It's amazing stuff and the gang in Boulder done good. They done good again.



23 September 2009

Have you seen this pendant light?



This is a Panton Moon Pendant. It was designed by Verner Panton and introduced in 1960. The Panton Moon became an overnight sensation and a classic was born.


I received an e-mail from a reader yesterday. She found an original Moon Pendant at a store near her home and picked it up for the unimaginable price of $150. Original Moon Pendants typically sell for ten times that. Somebody got a bargain to end all bargains. She wrote to me and asked if I know of a source where she can buy a licensed reproduction of her Panton Moon Pendant.

The answer is that no, I don't. All of my usual sources for that sort of thing come up blank when I look for that lamp. So I'm writing a post to ask if anybody out there knows where to look for a reproduction. A licensed reproduction will match her original exactly as opposed to a knock off that won't. Her plan is to hang the original alongside a reproduction over her kitchen island. It sounds idyllic frankly, and I'd like to help her out if I can.


Verner Panton (1926 - 1998) was a Danish furniture and interior designer. He's most remembered for his wild use of color and his radical thinking about how form and function interact. Some of his edgier creations, like this environment called Phantasy (1970), preserve his time in the spotlight perfectly.



In 1970, everything was up for grabs, or so it seemed. Who says that there needs to be a clear delineation between walls, floors and ceiling? Who says that furniture can't be structural and that structures can be furniture? Who says indeed? Panton and his contemporaries blazed a trail and carried the whole of our culture with them. Despite the initial negative reaction on Main Street to Phantasy, within a few years the men on Main Street were wearing four-inch-wide paisley ties. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Not all of Panton's work has been left behind in the era when he created it. A lot of his furniture is still in production.



This is his S Chair, also from 1960. The S Chair was the world's first injection-molded, mass produced object and it's been in continuous production ever since. The S Chair proved that injection molding was possible and viable and the world has never been the same.


Panton and the designers of his generation left behind a legacy that lingers, even if his aesthetic is not longer popular. I'm excited that somebody wants to use some of his pieces in her home and the question remains: has anybody seen this light?

22 September 2009

Notes from the field: Monogram takes Manhattan

I spent three days in early July in this cooking theater in the Monogram Experience Center at GE Appliances' US headquarters in Louisville, KY. On 7 July, 2009 I wrote a post that detailed my eye-opening experience with a GE Monogram 48" Pro Range.


GE Monogram's Experience Center, Louisville, KY


I went into that seminar with some hard-edged and what I thought were hard-set opinions about what makes a good pro range. Monogram's 48" Pro Range challenged all of that. Aside from the amazing job GE did in developing that range, they put on one amazing three-day seminar, let me tell you. Monogram's Experience Center, where they hold training for design professionals, is a beautiful facility. The interior spaces are a symphony of muted colors and interesting textures. The furnishings and finishes read like a who's who of  20th and 21st century design. Ann Sacks, Harry Bertoia, Mies van der Rohe --the gang's all here. Having seen their Experience Center with my own eyes, I can say without hesitation that GE is serious about having Monogram be a major player in the world of luxury appliances. All of this effort is not just for appearances though. After having met and spoken with the team behind the brand, it's also really clear that they are serious and they know what they're doing. I was struck by the candor and honesty of the product development and education teams at Monogram. This was not just just a marketing spiel, these people were onto something.

While I was in Louisville, I learned that Monogram had opened a design center in the Architects and Designers Building in Manhattan. It's one thing to build a top notch showcase in Louisville, but it's another thing entirely to open a showroom in the holy of holies. The A&D Building has 40 showrooms on 12 floors for a combined 200,000 square feet and it exists to make designers salivate. This is a facility geared specifically to architects and designers, though all of it's open to the public now too. The A&D Building showcases the best of what's available in the worlds of finish and furnishings. Perched high on the 10th floor is the Monogram Design Center.




Monogram opened it a year-and-a-half ago and it is stunning. I was struck immediately by how large it is --it's one of the bigger showrooms in the building. It's decked out with the latest and greatest appliances from Monogram of course, but they are arranged in a series of functioning kitchen vignettes. The kitchens on display a gorgeous and beautifully designed. Yet there's a knowing restraint to everything, and it's in that restraint that Monogram whispers "we've arrived."


Looking across the Design Center lobby toward the demo kitchen



Chef Chef Tageré Southwell holds court in the Monogram Design Center


Monogram has a resident chef who presides over this test kitchen, Chef Tageré Southwell. That primary kitchen is wired for sound and video though it's not at all obvious at first glance. The video monitors, video cameras, mics and speakers have been thoroughly designed around and hidden. As with everything else in their Design Center, somebody spent a lot of time thinking this through.



I'd made arrangements ahead of time, and I was met in the Design Center by Paula Cecere, the Design Center manager. I spent about an hour with Paula and she gave me a thorough tour. Paula had been present for the entire construction and she knew the story of every refrigerator panel and piece of tile. Through Paula, Monogram managed to capture some of the candor and hospitality I experienced in Kentucky. It's funny, I expect people in Kentucky to be friendly and welcoming. I don't expect it in Manhattan and it was refreshing to see. That hospitality makes the Monogram Design Center a surprising island of neighborly calm.



Seeing Monogram's products on display in a showroom such as this one in New York demonstrates the confidence GE has in Monogram, and it's a well-founded confidence. Monogram's most definitely a brand to watch. I don't hesitate to specify them and I owe that to Mongram's outreach efforts of the last few months entirely. Good job Monogram, you made a believer out of me.



If you're in New York and you'd like to experience the Monogram Design Center yourself, it's on East 58th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenues. Go in there and tell Paula I sent you.

21 September 2009

Got a toilet story?


The terrific Joyce Wadler had a short piece in last Wednesday's The New York Times about a literary contest of a sort. American Standard is giving away a toilet to the best toilet story submitted between now and October 9th, 2009 on American Standard's Facebook fan page.

Wadler kills me and she cages this story in the terms of a great literary contest and refers to Facebook as that modern Algonquin Round Table. The former English majors who read her work find this hilarious and I can vouch for that personally. Not content to invoke Dorothy Parker, Wadler goes on to pay homage to Herman Melville in her example of a literary toilet story.

And so on one damp, drizzly November of the soul, I set sail upon a noble whaling craft, the Pequod, although the bathrooms, truth be told, were strictly 16th century.
“Ahab,” I said, “have ye never heard of the control-flush mechanism that enables a user to select complete or partial flush of a toilet tank and is thus more environmentally responsible?”
“Out of my way, Ishmael,” he said. “I’m looking for a fish.”
Haughty humor aside, American Standard is looking for humorous (and true) stories about the humble commode. This is a legitimate contest and American Standard will award five new toilets to the top five entries. All you have to do is go to Facebook, become a fan of American Standard and then write on their wall. The Times piece must have been read by quite a few people because that fan page is already filling up with stories. Some of them are laugh out loud funny, so poke around and read a few.

Some of the best and most disturbing toilet stories I've ever heard have come from plumbers, especially those in bigger cities. Amid the routine plumbing repairs and installations, I can only imagine the calamity a plumber in Los Angeles might go through on a daily basis. Most plumbers live under a professional omerta but when you can get one going, hilarity ensues. Go ahead, buy a plumber a beer some time and you'll begin to understand why the services of a good plumber cost so much. I'm going to forward this to every plumber I know. I haven't heard a good black water story in ages.

20 September 2009

Who makes what?




It's no real secret that the brand name on an appliance doesn't tell you very much about who the manufacturer was. Just as with every other industry the last 20 years of the appliance world has been marked by a host of mergers and acquisitions. For the most part, who made your appliance doesn't really matter very much, but I think charts like this from Appliance 411 are helpful to have on hand when you're reading Consumer Reports or any other review source. When Consumer Reports praises a Kenmore range and then slams a hauntingly similar one from GE Profile it always makes me laugh. More often than not, such slams are directed at the brand and not the actual appliance. How could it be otherwise as the only difference a Kenmore and a GE Profile is the styling? Keep this chart handy of you're in the market for appliances. Note too that there's a link in the Sears category that jumps to Appliance 411's guide to the various manufacturers who actually make every Kenmore model on the market. Like I said, it's interesting.


Manufacturer
Brand Name
Amana
(recently owned by Maytag,
now owned by Whirlpool)
Amana
Caloric
Danby 5 )
Econowash
Glenwood
Imperial ( microwave, refrigerator )
Litton
Maytag ( washers with models starting SAV, NAV... )
Menu Master
Modern Maid
Speed Queen (older domestic models)
Sunray
Viking (US fridges except built-in models)

Fedders
Airtemp
Climette ( current models )
Comfort-Aire ( window a/c's )
Comfortaire ( window a/c's )
Crosley ( some window a/c's )
Emerson Quiet Kool ( a/c's )
Fedders
Hamptom Bay ( some a/c's )
Maytag ( window a/c's and dehumidifiers )
Microsonic

Frigidaire/Electrolux
~ non-USA brands below ~
Affinity™
Airdryer ( dehumidifiers )
Capehart ( freezers & dehumidifiers )
Citation ( freezers )
Dometic (microwaves - serial number prefix "HG")
Design Manufacturing ( D&M )
Electrolux
Euroflair 1 )
Frigidaire
Gallery
General
General Freezer
Gibson
Harvard Logic ( dehumidifiers & microwaves )
Kelvinator
Kenmore see Sears below )
Icon
Leonard
O'keefe & Merritt
Polaris ( freezers & dehumidifiers )
Roy
Tappan
Vesta
White Westinghouse ( major appliances only )

commercial products by
Frigidaire/Electrolux

Arctic Air ( fridges and freezers ) 9 )
Edina ( refrigerators )
Edina Technical (freezers converted to pop machines)
Fedpak (freezers converted to soft ice cream freezers)
Imperial ( freezers ) 9,10 )
Venex (freezers converted to vending machines)

General Electric *
Amana (older dishwashers)
Americana
Beau*Mark ( most )
BeefEater
Camco
Concept II
Eterna
General Electric
Hotpoint
Kenmore see Sears below )
McClary
Moffat
Monogram 1 )
Profile
RCA

In-Sink-Erator
Ace Hardware 6 )
Badger
Crosley 6 )
Dayton 6 )
Emerson 6 )
Franke 6 )
Frigidaire 6,7 )
ISE (In-Sink-Erator)
Kenmore 6 ) ( most )
KitchenAid 6,7 )
Master Plumber 6 )
Maytag 6 )
True Value 6 )
Whirlpool 6 )
Wolverine Brass 6 )

Maytag Corp.
(now owned by Whirlpool)
Admiral (USA)
Atlantis
Crosley (except a/c's, also see Whirlpool)
Dynasty
Gaffers and Sattler
Gemini 1 )
Hardwick
Jade
Jade Range
Jenn Air 3 )
Magic Chef (major appliances only)
Maytag 2 )
Neptune 1 )
Norge

Sears *
Capri
Coldspot
Galaxy
Kenmore
OasisSears does not manufacture any of their products, instead they are all made by the other leading manufacturers, often with added features. They are then rebranded with the Kenmore (or other) brand name.
Notably are: most laundry products and dishwashers made by Whirlpool, lower end front load washer and matching dryer by Frigidaire and many range models by GE.
new See model number reference
Whirlpool *
Admiral (Canada)
Chambers
Coovert (ac's)
Crosley (newer fridges, a/c's and all portable washers)
Danby 8 )
Estate
Inglis
Ikea
Kenmore see Sears )
KitchenAid 4 )
Kirkland
Maytag Epic®
Roper
Speed Queen (Canada)
Sub Zero (undercounter ice makers)
Whirlpool

WC Wood
Amana ( older freezers )
ArticAire
Country Squire
Crosley ( freezers )
Danby ( freezers, some dehumidifiers )
Edison
Electrohome (range hoods, humidifiers, dehumidifiers)
Estate ( freezers )
Frost Queen
KitchenAid ( freezers )
Maytag ( freezers )
Miami Carey (range hoods)
Quickfreeze
Quickfrez
Roper ( freezers )
Sahara
Whirlpool ( freezers )

Electrolux
(non-North American)

ACEC
AEG
Alfatec
Arthur Martin
Arctis
Atlas
Bendix
Buderus
Castor
Elektro Helios
Elektra
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19 September 2009

A couple more illusions for Kelly

The delightful Kelly James from Design Ties is recuperating from knee surgery this weekend. She loved the illusions from Richard Wiseman I ran the other day and asked for more. Kelly's favorite color is purple and she needs some distraction right now, so these are for Kelly specifically. However, anybody can join in on the vertigo-inducing fun.

First up, a "moving" static image.



Stare at this for a sec and then try to get it to stop moving.

Second up is another twist on fooling your brain.



The warped lines in this illustration are pretty plain to see. Or are they? Hold a straight edge up to your monitor and you'll see that there's not a bend to be had. Pretty cool!

Thanks again to the great and powerful Richard Wiseman and good wishes to Kelly.