Highlights form Coverings yesterday

So I did manage to get internet access this morning after all. Here are some of the images I popped up onto Twitter yesterday from the floor at Coverings. If you are a Twitterer, please follow me at @Paul_Anater and if you aren't a Twitterer you'd better start. Here are those highlights. These are iPhone shots, so excuse their lack of sharpness. I'll 'splain everything later.

This is a row of quartzite closet doors.

Thankfully, the convention center has lots of these.

I'm at Coverings

Bet you didn't know it but I was at a trade show yesterday. I'm at the same one today. The trade show is Coverings and it's an chance for the worldwide tile industry to show off its wares and celebrate their art. Sound boring? Believe me it's not. This show is a cross between an art installation and a runway show. If my posting's a little spotty today and tomorrow, that's why. I'm off taking photographs of beautiful things to write about later. I suppose I'll be practicing my Italian too. Avanti!

Elmira's Northstar series is now available in 10 colors

I've long been an admirer of Elmira Stoveworks' Northstar series of retro appliances. I've always thought they had a cool factor to them, but it's recently come to my attention that they are no mere novelty item.

Elmira's been at it since the early '70s in Elmira, Ontario. They know what they're doing and any company that can build a fully-functional, wood-burning cookstove in 2010 is OK in my book. I'll get into to their 1800s reproduction stoves in a later post. For now, I want to let you know that the Northstar series of mid-century-inspired appliances are now available in ten colors. Imagine, you can have a Candy Red, Buttercup Yellow, Robin’s Egg Blue, Flamingo Pink, Quicksilver, Mint Green, Bisque, Black or White suite. Sweet!

They're Energy Star-rated and they even have a custom color program.

So even though there's no such thing as timeless kitchen design, classics like these are always welcome. Check out Elmira Stoveworks' website for more info.

Thank you Making it Lovely and her lovely reader Lindsay

Yesterday, the design blog Making it Lovely ran a story about urban chickenkeeping. She took the opposite tack I did when I wrote the definitive blog post on the subject last month.

Anyhow, in the middle of the doe-eyed do-gooding going on in her comments section. Seriously, I don't think the word "cute" has had that kind of a workout since this nightmare debuted. Go ahead, click that link. I dare you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, in the middle of all that squealing and swooning, a reader named Lindsay linked to my definitive blogpost on urban chickenry. It did no good because the swoons and squeals continued unabated. However, what it did do was make my traffic go off the charts. I love it when that happens. I had no idea that Making it Lovely (a perfectly wonderful and worthwhile blog even if we don't see eye to eye on this chicken thing) pulled those kind of numbers. Brava! So thanks for letting me bask in your glow for a few hours and welcome everybody who's clicking through here. You'll find no cute or mindless pablum. What you will find however, are the coolest commenters on the internet. Stick around.

Oh and Lindsay is none other than Lindsay Christiansen, whose Likely Design holds one of the most attractive Wordpress themes I've ever seen. Lindsay's a designer/ blogger who does virtual design and she deserves a round of applause.

Let's talk about bad trends

Like Totally '80s

I've been talking a a lot lately about bad trends. Bad trends in interiors that is. A reporter asked me to rattle off some examples of what I consider to be bad trends last week and I rattled off about 10 things without really thinking about it.

It started me thinking. What makes a bad trend? And is there really such a thing?

Hey kids! Let's make our character-less McMansion look like
a one room schoolhouse!

Well, yes there is such a thing as a bad trend. It's usually not the trend though, it's almost always the expression of the trend.

Duck, dodge and cover.

Timelessness is a myth. It is impossible to create a room or a home today and have it be anything but right now. You can do a revival. There's a Belgian revival and an Edwardian revival going on right now, but each of those things is a 2010 interpretation of those eras. Exact replicas would be unlivable. How do you put surround sound in an authentic, old Belgian living room? Where do you put two dishwashers and a wine chiller in an Edwardian kitchen?

Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon.

Times change, people change, life changes. That's a good thing.

I feel like I'm in a palazzo right on the Grand Canal.

So what can you do to keep a room or a home from looking dated? Well, I say there's nothing you can do to keep a room from looking dated. The key is to make it look good as it ages.

It's a tabletop fountain!

I say that it's not the trend itself, it's the execution. The problem's not that turquoise has been proclaimed the It color of 2010, it's uninspired turquoise paint jobs.

It's the color of the year so it has to look good. Right?

The problem's not faux finishes, it's faux finishes devoid of logic, context or skill.

The only l'oeil being trompe-d here is the one belonging to the poor soul
who paid for this mess.

What do you think? In looking over the interwebs and the design press (what's left of it) today, what's a bad trend? Is there anything to my idea about it being a matter of execution or are there some things that are just bad trends?

Somebody knows how to use an orbital sander.

A troika of bad taste --Baltic Brown granite, commodity tumbled marble tile and honey oak cabinetry. Wait, there's a wall plaque with some pablum written on it. What's Russian for a collection of four?