Lee Broom at the London Design Festival

Two weeks ago while I was in London for the London Design Festival as part of Blog Tour 2011, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lee Broom. All of us on the Blog Tour were treated to a personal tour of his workshop. He'd converted his Shoreditch work space into a salon for the Festival, all to showcase his new collection, the aptly named Salon.

Here's Lee being profiled in a Polish design magazine.

Lee's a brilliant young designer with an eye that won't quit. The glamorous drama of the collection was highlighted perfectly by the lighting and walls draped in black. That the man who designed everything was describing his pieces to us was almost too much to take in. Here's how Salon looked at his studio.

From Lee's website:

As part of the London Design Festival, Broom is drawing on his interior skills and has transformed his Shoreditch-based studio/showroom into an exclusive, contemporary, design salon. Recreating the space in a dramatic, surreal and intimate setting.

It's a spectacular collection but what impressed me almost as much as the pieces themselves is Lee's commitment to producing his furniture in the UK. Talk about keeping it local! Someone so committed to his home country deserves every accolade he gets.

Downstairs from the Salon collection were more of Lee's collections and what stopped me dead in my tracks was a collection from the 20098 Festival called Heritage Boy.

Again, from Lee's website:

The Heritage Boy collection was shown at The Future Gallery (formally The Photographers Gallery), 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2, during London Design Week, 2009. Heritage Boy draws on traditional British manufacturing techniques to create a modern-day furniture collection which is divided into three distinct ranges: Carpetry, Parquetry and Tiles. Broom has applied the same philosophy, classic shapes and daring applications to each distinctly unique range. All the pieces are made in the UK and involving these industries in his design process is something that Broom feels particularly passionate about.

What I'm still reeling over is that he used carpet as a finish on furniture, actual carpet.

The tile lamps and coffee table; and the parquet tables are fantastic too. But that carpet sideboard is one of the most unique and beautiful pieces of furniture I've ever seen.

That he's a genuinely kind and generous man makes his creations all the more appealing. Earlier this week, the editor of Elle Decor asked me to respond to a feature on their website called Design Insiders' Weekly Finds. Without missing a beat I started gushing about Lee's Heritage Boy collection. This link will take you to my response on Elle Decor.

So keep your eye on this guy. Clearly, he's going places and it's great to see a good man succeed. Here's the link to Lee's website. Look over all his collections and projects, it's inspiring, innovative work.

Through the Anthropologie looking glass

What's this?

Quick! Quick! here's another one.

Seriously, what are these things?

Are they powerful statements about class struggle? Nope.

Are they proof of intelligent life on other planets? Nope.

If anything, they're proof of unintelligent life on this planet. In the world of Anthropologie, they are chairs.

They're chairs that cost four grand a pop.

Welcome to the end of empire gang.

Mixed signals as a child leads to furniture design madness

Here's a cautionary tale. As a tale, it's completely made up and bears to resemblance to the life of furniture designer Maximo Reira, whose creations illustrate this story.

Once upon a time, a young boy was born to a set of loving, if confused, parents. The child's parents decided early on that they were going to be thoroughly new school when it came to parenting style. Their son would be able to eat what he wanted and if he ended up a finicky eater who subsisted on chicken nuggets so be it. They decided that when their son had an opinion on any subject under the sun, he could voice that opinion. They decided that when their little darling committed an anti-social act they would refrain from administering the beatings he so richly deserved. No, instead they would banish him to a time out.

So that their son wouldn't feel bad during these times out, they decided that he would take his time outs on a purpose-built bench covered with friendly animals.

After all, just because he made a bad choice didn't mean he had to suffer.

Well, sure enough, their son grew up a finicky eater who interrupted adult conversations and developed an unnatural attachment to furniture shaped like a variety of animals. That he was alone in his attachment never occurred to him because he was raised to believe he was the center of the universe. So, deprived of a degree of self-knowledge and self-restraint necessary to cut it in the world, he started producing these furniture designs.

Parents: Please send your kids clear signals and set real boundaries to avoid a future where all furniture will look like this.

Would you? Could you?

This is an embossed leather sofa from Bizzotto Mobili.

I'm on the fence with this one. It's supposed to invoke the golden age of Hollywood.

Does it?

A lot of Italian furniture designs are hit or miss (it pains me to admit that). There doesn't seem to be an off switch.

What do you think? Is this a hit or a miss?

I'm not that innocent

This is the Innocenza, also by Andre de Benedetto for Desart. I have to say that innocent is about the last thing that comes to mind after looking at this thing.

Here's the gobbledygook description from the catalog:

Innocenza is a chair that with its harmonious and welcoming form, is a warm lap to curl up in, a soutane you can hide under for a while.

Its lines are similar to the Luigi Filippo furniture of the late 1800s, but the iconographic reference that immediately comes to mind is without a doubt the bohemian atmosphere of a joyous Moulin Rouge.

Innocenza, in fact, is immediately female. A joyous and liberal ballerina in her pirouettes, who does not hide a resolutely intriguing soul.

The lace is provocative. A sensual guêpière beautifies it, so that it’s almost as though you can see a slender bust below the neck that flows down to the concave and fluid back.

Here's the "fluid" back it references.

Look, I'm no prude but really?

Ummmm. A sea urchin? Really?

This chair by Andrea de Benedetto for Desart is supposed to be inspired by a sea urchin.

Maybe it's just me but it looks more like a gunshot wound. Several gunshot wounds.

Can a sofa cause cavities?

In looking over the Mon Amour collection from Italian manufacturer Desart, I would say the answer is yes.

I know, I know, there's room for everybody. But really?

A lot of effort went into these pieces, and they're very well made. But still.

They're fully customizable too.

Is it me or does this combination of stain and upholstery look like the queen bee alien from Alien?

Argh. What do you think?

One more reason to avoid Anthropologie. Make that three.

A while back, an intrepid member of the K&RD Community (it was Sharon) sent me an alert to another offense being perpetrated by the craven minds at Anthropologie. Tell me, in what universe is this an attractive and desirable sofa?

What would possess someone to produce a sofa like this and then have the gall to charge $6000 for it? Look at these charming details.

This one's even worse than the green one.

I suppose it's some kind of Haunted House chic.

Even worse than the sofas is this chaise.

Let's zoom in on the quality construction. Remember, this thing sells for nearly four grand.

These pieces were designed by Clarke and Reilly, a London-based husband and wife design team. Apparently, Clarke and Reilly bring their moth-eaten sensibilities to everything they touch. The copy traveling through the internet alongside these pieces is full of the usual, meaningless buzzwords. "Organic," "vintage," "natural," they're all here and they're harnessed craftily to disguise the fact that these are some ugly pieces of furniture.

Look, I get it that there's room for everybody's sensibilities in the world and I understand being provocative. However, when I see something like this, I think what's really going on is a cynical worldview at work. It's almost as if people design things that are purposely ugly and expensive just to see how gullible people really are. I get it too that I may be completely out to lunch here but you tell me. Would you allow any of these pieces near your home?

Furniture recap from IMM

Here's the furniture trend report I wrote for Houzz.com. It went live on Houzz this morning and I have a kitchen design trend report coming later today or tomorrow.

Special Report: Interior Design News From Cologne

Houzz- Kitchen Design, Bathroom Design and More»

Browse by Space and Style- For Example:

Modern Kitchen · Modern Bathroom · Modern Living Room · Eclectic Bedroom · Traditional Dining Room · Mediterranean Homes · Contemporary Patio · Modern Landscaping ·

Late-summer rerun: A chat about sofas

It's the second weekend in September already and I'm going to try something new. It's still summer where I live and in keeping with the summery weather and in a vain attempt to reclaim something resembling my life, I'm going to start running archive posts on weekends for the next couple of week. I just want to see how it goes.

I've been blogging daily for more than two years now and I have the feeling that somehow the sun won't come up if I don't have a blog post written every day. I know that's BS and I need to prove it to myself. So bear with me.

I have some pretty deep archives and a lot of those old posts never see the light of day anymore. The following post ran under the headline "Sofas, Sofas Everywhere and not a Place to Sit" on 20 February 2008. Wa-a-a-a-y back then I didn't have an audience and I didn't know what I was doing so it's just as well that a lot of that old stuff never gets read these days. But some of it wasn't so bad. My buyers' guide to sofas is a post that still has something to say.

I have been on a quest for the right sofa for my living room for the last couple of years, and I'm proving myself to be my own worst client. I can't pick furnishings for myself to save my life. In the course of all of that back and forth I've learned a lot about sofas and even though it hasn't helped me decide between a Mitchell Gold and a Barbara Barry it helps me find better stuff for my clients. So if it's sofa time for you, pay close heed to some tips about what makes a good sofa good in the first place and why good sofas are so bloody expensive.

A sofa starts with a frame. In better furniture, that frame is made from kiln-dried hardwood. These hardwoods are kiln-dried to remove any residual moisture and to prevent later warping or cracking. In less-expensive furniture, that hardwood frame is replaced with furniture-grade plywood. A hardwood or furniture-grade plywood frame is the first thing to look at if this is a piece of furniture that will get a lot of use and that you expect to hold onto for a long time. A good sofa is screwed and glued at its joints and its corners are reinforced with blocks. These are things you cannot see, so ask your salesperson about a sofa's frame construction and you should hear something like what I just wrote. If he stares at you blankly, leave the store immediately and go somewhere else.

If you're looking for something that won't get used a lot, or that you expect to get rid of in a couple of years; a frame made of particle board is for you. The particle board frame won't keep its shape over time and its joints will eventually break. The $7,000 Henredon sofa and the $900 knock off of it at Ikea may look similar on the outside, but it's the insides that count here.

If you spend any time in furniture showrooms, you hear the term "hand tied" bandied about but no one really gets into what it means. What the term refers to is the sofa's suspension system. The suspension is the second element that separates better furniture from cheaper furniture. "Hand Tied" is shorthand for eight-way hand-tied steel-coil system --called this because each steel coil is attached at eight different points to other coils and then the whole system is attached to the frame. This allows for the coils to operate independently, but not too much. The result is called the sofa's "ride," or how it feels when you sit on it. The hand tied method of using coils is regarded by the industry as the best marker of quality and you can be sure that the $7,000 Henredon has hand-tied coils. Down from that is a drop-in coil system where the individual coils are clipped to one another and then clipped to the frame. This system won't last as long and will give a more uneven ride. Finally, our $900 example will likely have what's known as sinuous construction and it will be the shortest-lived of the three methods here. Sinuous, or zig zag, construction uses S-shaped steel wires that run from side to side of the frame. Sinuous suspensions are stiffer and are omnipresent to the point that most people expect a sofa to feel the way it does with one of these suspension systems.

But more than the other two categories, the largest driver of a sofa's price is the fabric it's upholstered in. There is a staggering range of fabric qualities out there. And as is the case with a lot of things, if you don't know what quality is, don't learn or you'll spend fortunes chasing it. An upholstery fabric should be attractive, obviously; but it needs to be resilient and easy to clean as well. The tag on a sofa will tell you how it can be spot cleaned through a series of codes. Guard your sanity and avoid anything labeled "Brush Clean" only.

Always ask how long the lead time is for the delivery if it's a custom piece. Typical turn arounds range anywhere from one month to nine months. Know going in that the minute you customize a piece of furniture is the same minute that it stops being returnable. Think about this for a while and look at the fabric swatch in your own home before you buy anything. Do your homework, pick something and get on with it.

Meritalia strikes again

The name of this chair is Origine du Monde, Maybe!

It's upholstered in memory foam and promises to provide a "near uterine sensuality." The Origine du Monde, Maybe! was designed by Italo Rota for Meritalia. I think it's safe to say that theirs is the first time such a promise was made by a piece of furniture. Maybe I'm not in the target market, but near uterine sensuality doesn't land real well over here. Whattya think?

Trendir strikes out

At some point last week, Trendir ran a typically breathless story about this furniture series by Toan Nguyen for Walter Knoll.

Maybe it's just me, but this stuff looks like shriveled genitalia. Expensive, shriveled genitalia. Whither goest thou Trendir?

Help me help my new house

Hi, I'm Julie Warner, author of Kitchen and Home Appliance Blog for my family's appliance company, Warners' Stellian.

This is my second post as a guest blogger for Paul (here's my previous post).

Paul suggested I use this opportunity to solicit help from you all in decorating my first house, which I will be moving into in June.

My friend took this picture of me during the home inspection (notice the legs in the pantry in the background). I'm sitting between the living room and kitchen, probably giggling nervously at the prospect of making so many design decisions.



The homeowners' current colors of blue and yellow don't particularly suit my taste. And actually, they're the exact colors of both my high school and college (Go Marquette!). So, these feel more like my past than my future.

I'm thinking gray -- darker in the living room, lighter in the kitchen. The living room has a lot of light, as does the kitchen, to a lesser degree. We're ripping up the carpet to reveal the hardwood floors of this 1953 house.

My friend (and future roommate) that took this photo is inheriting the furniture for our living room (pictured in its current home):



Not pictured is an oversized chair that matches the couch. The biggest hurdle?



Blue laminate countertops. Right now they pretty much match the living room wall (the bright color starts to make sense right about now).

What I'd love your help on:

Wall colors
Are grays a good choice?

Ceiling fan
You can kind of see the blue ceiling fan in the above picture. I'd like to replace it with something less....blue. I'd be open to creative ideas.

Accent colors
I'd love to do a gold or mustard in the living room, but I'm lost for the kitchen because of the challenge of the blue countertops. For instance, I'm afraid to set out my red Viking food processor.

Furniture
The couch is a bit drab, but I'll gladly take it because I'm saving my pennies for a European dishwasher, Electrolux steam washer, Miele vacuum and Vermont Castings grill (I'm such a product of my environment).

I'm also not sure if I should paint the wood furniture black. We could probably fit another chair or loveseat, if I can come up with a good idea for what I should have.

I also need to devise a plan for the small eating area (behind the breakfast bar in the picture), for which we have a blond wood table and four chairs. We can paint those too, if we want.

Help?