2009's greatest hits, a retrospective in two parts

I posted more than 500 times in 2009. My goal is to post once a day and I'm happy to report that there was not one day in 2009 that went post-less. I think I've earned the title prolific blogger. While it's true that a lot of work goes into this blog, not all of it's worth remembering. There are a couple of stand outs though, some posts of which I'm particularly proud. Coming up with a list like the one I'm about to launch into let's me toot my own horn and it makes for good SEO at the same time. Here goes:

In response to a reader's question about faucet finishes, I embarked on a multi-part series of posts that explained how plumbing manufacturers come up with and apply fixture finishes. The marketing team at Kohler was instrumental in pulling this one together. So thank yous go out to Kohler and to my reader Ming who got this particular ball rolling back in February.

So What The Devil's a Living Finish Anyway?


I'm not at all prone to being star struck, but in March I came pretty close when I landed an interview with Sarah Susanka. She was doing publicity for her new book and of all the high profile architects out there, she sits at the head table in my pantheon. I am not kidding when I say that Sarah Susanka's ideas are what motivated me to choose my profession. Having the chance to visit with her was a real highlight of my year.

A Conversation with Sarah Susanka

I love it when I get reader questions. I get them all the time and I answer each of them personally and usually the same day they come in. However, some of those questions end up as fodder for a post. What ends up being posted is a more fleshed out version of my original answer, but those posts always preserve the flavor of my answer. Got a question? Ask away but you just may find your question shot across the internet. Such was the case with the following. This was a blast to write and it continues to be a traffic magnet nine months after it appeared for the first time.

Reader Question: How Do I Explain a Bidet to a Four-Year-Old?

I am a generalist, a dilettante. I'll be the first to admit that. I know a little bit about a lot of things and I love to write about my varied interests. Sometimes, I get to combine some of my passions and such is the case in this series I wrote about High Renaissance Mannerism and the history of western art.

Speaking of the Renaissance

I followed it up the next day with Unbelievable, Really... a rant about the small minds who can't handle looking at a classical nude statue.

I try to keep my work life separate from what I write about on this blog. I try to. I am a publicity whore but I know that most people aren't, so I take great pains to avoid identifying my clients and potential clients in this space. A lot of times though, my work life and the things I discuss here collapse on top of each other. Sometimes a real-life situation will help me to make a point, sometimes I want to show off and sometimes I want to shock and provoke. Such was the case with this post.

Don't Call Me If Your House Looks Like This

Man, I can still smell that condominium and it sends shivers down my spine. What's funny is that post prompted some well-meaning soul to send me an e-mail where she accused me of being bitter and lonely and then offered me her contact information so that she and I could talk about how Jesus could free me from my anger. OK.

Finally, in early June a reader sent me an image of a Christopher Peacock kitchen and she asked me about the source of the light fixture hanging in the center of it. I love challenges like this, so I turned to Gina Milne and her blog Willow Decor. Gina was one of the many great blogosphere contacts I made in early 2009. Gina's a terrific researcher and she's pretty plugged into the world of shelter blogs. Gina then turned to Brooke Gianetti and her blog Velvet and Linen. Brooke posted the question within an hour and then a short time later Tammy Connor, one of Brooke's readers and a Birmingham-based interior designer, identified the light fixture. Here's the post I wrote about it.

Behold the Power of the Blogosphere

In a matter of hours, a reader from New York asked me, in Florida, a question. I then asked a blogger in Boston who in turn asked another blogger in LA. The LA blogger had a reader in Alabama who answered it. The answer followed the chain back to me and I answered my original reader. That question circled the US in a matter of hours and none of that kind of networked communication was a thought let alone a possibility a few short years ago. Pretty cool stuff.

So they are the highlights of the first half of 2009. On Friday I'll go through the second half and then I'll be ready to attack 2010 with a renewed sense of my mission here and a passion  reborn. Writing this blog has been the most rewarding endeavor I've ever embarked on and I owe each and every one of you a profound thank you.

Believe it or not, not all gorgeous European tile comes from Italy

I wrote yesterday about Petracer's from Modena in Italy. Well if you head south west and across the Mediterranean for about 1200 kilometers you'll come to Castellón de la Plana in the Castellón province of the València community in Spain. Here's a map for those of you who are geographically impaired.

Castellón de la Plana is the home of Dune ceramics.

Dune ceramics was a real stand out at the last Coverings show and what these people are doing with tile and metallics is setting a new standard. Just look at all this beauty.

Dune's motto is Pasión por Decorar and that translates into English as something like Going Further in Decoration. I'd say they're living up to their motto. What say ye? Is it beautiful or is it too much?

Petracer's makes beauty

I'm putting my travel schedule together for 2010 and one of the highlights will no doubt be attending Coverings this year. Coverings is the trade show for the tile, stone and flooring industries and it takes place in Orlando from April 27th through April 30th this year. I'm very much a tile guy, and Coverings is a feast in every sense of the word.

Coverings is an international show and the world's best and most interesting producers and manufacturers show off their wares during those three days in April. The Italians are well represented of course and for me, it's the Italian companies that push the envelop farthest.

The last time I attended Coverings, I had the distinct pleasure of spending some time with the sales and marketing team from Petracer's Pregiate Ceramiche Italiane. In English, that means "Petracer's Precious Italian Ceramic." They are aptly named.

Petracer's is based just outside of Modena in Emilia-Romagna. Modena is renowned for it's basalmic vinegar of course, but it's also a hot bed of Italy's tile industry.

Petracer's tile has a unique aesthetic and I say they produce the most authentically Italian tile in the business. There's a distinctive look to Italian decorative art and Petracer's captures it perfectly. There's a spare and clean feel to the aesthetics I'm describing. Petracer's look whispers instead of shouting. And when it does raise its voice, it's a joyful sound indeed.

Look at some of their offerings here. What do you think?

Let's paint my living room (or yours)

I have an army man green wall in my living room and I hate it.

I didn't hate it when I painted it of course, but it is time for a change. I painted it a little more than five years ago and I remember the weekend well. It was in the autumn of 2003, and the west coast of Florida was hunkering down for a hurricane warning. This was before 2004's hurricane season from hell. Back then, I never really understood how dangerous and damaging a hurricane could be. Within a year though, Hurricanes Charlie, Jeanne, Francis and Wilma would come along and beat the crap out of us and instill in me a profound respect for  the nightmare scenes the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean can throw at us here in the sunshine state.

So anyhow, in the fall of 2004 we were hunkering down to wait out another storm's passing and I planned to paint an accent wall in my living room to pass the time. Accent walls were all the rage then and the army man green I picked was very much on trend. There was a moment back then when black-greens were the last word. That moment passed about six months after I painted that wall.

I've groaned at the sight of that wall every time I've come home for the last four-and-a-half years and it is time. So how much paint to buy?

Well, I'll tell you. There's a rule of thumb when it comes to paint coverage and like all rules of thumb, it's a guideline more than it is a hard and fast rule.

A gallon of paint will cover 400 square feet of fully prepped and smooth wall. So take the area of the walls to be painted in square feet and divide by 400 and you'll know how many gallons you'll need. So measure the height and width of each wall in inches. Multiply those two numbers the divide the result by 144 and it will give you the area in square feet.

So a perfectly square room where each wall measured 10 feet by ten feet would give you 400 square feet of wall. A gallon of paint would paint a single coat on that whole room. A second coat would mean you'd double the gallons of paint you'd need. Make sense?

So now that I know how many gallons of paint I need, where do I go to get the motivation to actually paint?

The Process

By Judd Lord, guest blogger

Supposedly, Keith Richards dreamed the guitar riff of “Satisfaction.” He woke up, recorded himself playing the notes into a bedside tape recorder, and fell back asleep. What he had the next morning was a few seconds of guitar and an hour of snoring.

I don’t want to say I’ve had experiences similar to Keith’s but, as Paul has written in this very blog, I did get the idea for Brizo’s Venuto faucet line from the hair utensils worn by Japanese women during a good night of sake at a restaurant. That was a classic napkin sketch moment for me. Woke up the next day, pulled the crumpled thing out of my pocket and thought, “Huh? What was I supposed to do with this?!”

Design has to have a personal story or history to the designer. Delta's Victorian line grew out of a trip to New Orleans; take the top portion of the Victorian handle, turn it vertical and you will see the center of a fleur de lis. Brizo's Floriano was inspired by a dying flower in a vase. The aesthetic of water folding over itself in the Brizo Vesi channel was inspired by a section of stream in Minnesota where I used to vacation.

What’s even more important than the inspiration for design, though, is the collaboration of the design team. Every designer brings their own life experiences and perspectives to the table. Multiple people on the team provide input throughout the refinement process. It’s that collaboration and melding of perspectives that really make for a stronger overall design in the end.

Consumers of a product will choose one product over another based on a wide set of variables, something in the back of your head that makes you choose this one over that one – size, feel, weight, function, experience; tactile, auditory or aesthetic qualities. As designers we strive to pull more of the users' senses into the experience, to hit upon those intangibles. Every product is a solution to a problem, and it’s better to have more designs than fewer, the widest spread of solution sets to work with.

In other words, Keith Richards may have come up with the riff, but it took the rest of the Stones to turn that into “Satisfaction.” Most designers love this process, of collaborating on problems, of taking something from inspiration to completion. No one goes into the field wanting to design packaged goods or laser printers… no offense to laser printers. You go into design school thinking you want to design cars, but soon realize it’s the design process you love, the challenge of putting all the pieces together.

And believe me, working with something as intangible as water is a challenge. But it’s one I love, too.

Judd Lord began his career at Delta Faucet Company® over sixteen years ago. In 2000 he was appointed manager of industrial design with the challenge to establish Delta Faucet as a design and innovation forward company. In 2004 he was instrumental in laying out the groundwork for the Brizo portfolio, personally designing several of the initial marquee product suites in the fashion-forward brand. In 2006 he was made director of industrial design and continues to oversee creative direction for both the Brizo and Delta brands. Lord's passion for design and his ability to make an emotional connection with the consumer through product design has lead to hundreds of design patents and numerous design awards.