Regenesi recycles with grace and style

About a month ago, my good friend Saxon Henry wrote an article for her great design site, Roaming by Design. Her article was an interview with Silvia Pazzi and an overview of the products being offered by her company Regenesi.

Regenesi is a producer of designed products for the home and elsewhere and it was founded two years ago in Bologna. Regenesi has launched in the US recently and it was this lamp that hooked me.

The Lamp is part of the O-Re-Gami collection designed by Matali Crasset and it's made from regenerated leather. Like all of the raw materials used to make Regenesi's products, O-Re-Gami's regenerated leather is 100% recycled and 100% recyclable.

The O-Re-Gami collection also consists of a waste can and a cup, both made from the same material.

Regenesi's two guiding principles are that everything they make be beautiful and sustainable, and without exception, their offerings are so beautiful you'd never imagine them to be green products. Say goodbye to the hair shirts, Regenesi's rewriting the rules.

Take a look through their website, you find that everything adheres to their motto, Il bello é sostenibile. On that site, you'll find everything from the O-Re-Gami collection above to jewelry and all of it's recycled, recyclable and most importantly, sustainable. Italian grace and style have a new voice in Regenesi.

Fashion firsts from an avowed non-fashion person

I was doing a Google image search the other night. Oddly enough, I was looking for an image of a pink feather, preferably one from a roseate spoonbill. Roseate spoonbills are my favorite local wading bird you see.

In my search results, I came across this photograph of Demi Moore from a fashion spread she did for Harper's Bazaar last spring. Something looked oddly familiar.

What looked so familiar was the dress she's wearing. Why it looked familiar was made blindingly apparent when I read who the designer was. Fashionistas out there don't need the reminder but for the rest of us, that dress was designed by Jason Wu.

Well, I was there when the dress made its debut at Fashion Week in the fall of '09. Many, endless thanks to Brizo for seating me prominently enough to take this bad photo of it as it marched down a runway for the first time ever.

My head still spins when I think about it. Me? At Fashion Week? And not just once, but twice. This blog has changed my life on a very fundamental level and I stammer when I try to express my gratitude. Never in a million years could I have predicted any of this two and-a-half years ago when I didn't know what a blog was.

Thank you Charlie Kondek from Manning, Selvage and Lee and just as many thanks to Jai Massela and the rest of the gang at Brizo.

Test drive Hansgrohe's PuraVida lavatory faucet

I've written before about Hansgrohe's PuraVida shower. I gave it my Best in Show Award in the days following KBIS last April and some time after that post appeared, Hansgrohe sent me a PuraVida hand shower of my very own. It remains the highlight of my morning every day. Here's my review after having used it for a couple of weeks.

The PuraVida hand shower is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hansgrohe's PuraVida collection and is in fact not the primary fixture. That honor belongs to the PuraVida lavatory faucet.

Well, if you're an iPhone user, then Hansgrohe has an app that will let you preview how a PuraVida lavatory faucet would look in your bathroom. It's pretty slick and here's how it works.

First, follow this link and download the Hansgrohe app, Hansgrohe@home.

Then launch it.

From the home screen you can watch a short video about PuraVida, look over the whole collection, or use the graphics tool to install a PuraVida lavatory faucet in your own home.

Virtually of course.

To use the graphics function, launch the Planner. Your iPhone's camera will launch automatically. Line up the on-screen guide and take a photograph of your bathroom sink.

Then once you have the photograph, draw over your existing fixture with your finger tip.

Hit the Next button and a PuraVida lavatory faucet will appear over your photograph. Use your fingertips to scale and orient the fixture correctly. Then hit Next again.

 Et voila! Actually, make that Und da ist es! This is a German company we're talking about after all. What ever the language though, now you can see what a PuraVida lavatory faucet would look like in your own bathroom. Great use of technology Hansgrohe!

If you're intrigued, go download Hansgrohe's new app and take the PuraVida lavatory faucet for a test drive.

here's a video that showcases the entire collection:

Follow up to yesterday's question about switch plates

That switch plate and outlet cover post really struck a nerve yesterday. Everybody has an idea about how to deal with them and that's terrific. I love being a clearing house for this kind of information and it adds heft to my belief that there are no right answers. At least no blanket right answers anyway. As the day played out I received  four referrals that are worthy of particular note.

First up is a new offering from a company called Trufig. Trufig makes a variety of minimized-to-disappearing switch plates and outlet covers. Check this out.

Somewhere on this wall of granite is a double light switch next to a double outlet. See it?

I didn't think so. How about now?

Amazing, isn't it? Here's another shot of the same wall from a different perspective.

Look through the rest of Trufig's offerings, you should see how they hide a speaker.

The great Mike Hines from Home Path Products knows a thing or two about home wiring. He recommended that I check out Pass and Larson. I did check out their 1400 flavors and found these beauties.

If you want to be playful and bright against a playful and bright back splash this may just be the solution. Pass and Larson has seemingly endless variations on the theme of switch plates and it's not hard to kill an hour on their site.

The great and powerful Kelly Morisseau recommended that people explore the offerings of Lutron. Lutron sells entire switching systems and their Diva line comes in a mind boggling array of colors.

And finally, my favorite Portland mother of two (how's that for playing it safe?) and kitchen designer to the stars Rachele Harless-Gorsegner, reminded me of a post I wrote in December '08 on plate-less outlets and switches from the Canadian company Bocci.

I don't think that Bocci works with anything other than drywall, but man oh man is it distinctive. Thanks for the reminder Rachele, I'd nearly forgotten about those things. Check out Bocci's website.

So there's my follow up to yesterday's switch plate post. What am I missing? Anybody have anything else to add?

Reader question: How do I handle switch plate and outlet covers on glass tile?

Help! What are your thoughts for how to treat switch plates and electrical outlets in a back splash covered in glass tile?  I've been browsing galleries online, and I find that outlets always seem to be an eyesore unless the surface is white subway tile.  We are still shopping tile, and haven't landed on a specific shade, texture or size, but we are thinking translucent green in some brick shape.  Is there some way to let the outlets appear more like a part of the back splash and less interruptive?

Thanks for your question and it's a good one; something I run into all the time.

The answer of course is that there's no answer, everything depends on the tile you end up selecting and how you want the final project to appear. Probably the only constant I can think of on this topic is not to use white switch plates from a home center.

In June, I wrote a post about new light switch plates and outlet covers made by Forbes and Lomax. They are as close to invisible as any I've ever seen but I don't know enough about them to know how they behave over tile. They're sure pretty to look at though.

So that's the first idea, pretend they're not there.

The second plan of attack is to go in the opposite direction and draw attention to them. Find a decorative plate in metal, stone, glass, enamel, porcelain or anything else you can think of and use that.

The trick when taking that path is to tread a fine line between enhancing your tile and overwhelming it. That decision is best made after you've selected your tile. The switch plate covers above are from Switch Hits, a website that boasts that it has 160,000 plates in stock. After having looked over their website, I believe them. It's an exhaustive collection (with varying taste levels), but it's a terrific place to spend some time to get you thinking about the unexpected.

Any good houseware or cabinet hardware store will have a selection of decorative plates. A good glass cutter can make you any switch plates you'll need too.

So that's what I say at any rate. Anybody else out there have a suggestion for my reader here? Anybody handle this dilemma in a way they're particularly proud of? Anybody handle it poorly, learn a lesson, and care to share some hard-won wisdom? No judgement  I promise. If anybody's so motivated to lend a hand that he or she wants to send in some photos, e-mail them to me and I'll add them to this post.

And that, dear reader, is how I'd approach handling switch plate and outlet covers on a glass tile back splash.

However, be glad you're in Indianapolis and thinking about this. If you were in London, you'd have to try to minimize this.

Side note to to British readers, how on earth do you deal with these things?