A bath for Delores Umbridge

If you're not a Harry Potter fan, here's Delores Umbridge.

Proving yet again that Italian doesn't always mean tasteful, Etrusca proves that there is indeed something for everyone.

Ouch! My eyes!

Great new patterns from New Ravenna Mosaics

It is no secret that I have a thing for marble, mosaics and anything made by New Ravenna Mosaics. Well New Ravenna just released some new mosaic patterns this week and I think they're spectacular. The pattern above and below is called Ganesha and it's shown here in honed Calacatta marble.

As is the case with the rest of their patterns, you can order any New Ravenna mosaic pattern in any stone or art glass color they have available. Trust me, the size of their materials library is staggering and they love made to order work.

The next pattern is called Jacqueline Vine and it's shown here in Thassos marble.

What's unique about these patterns is that they're all water jetted of course, but where they get interesting is that the grout lines are an integral part of the design. Jacqueline Vine gets a lot of its impact from the sanded grout that surrounds the pieces of Thassos. As stunning as it would look on a wall, Jacqueline Vine on a floor would be a real knock out.

Raj is shown here in polished Calacatta and honed Thassos.

I love how the two stones add a subtle tonal variation that accents the textures in the patterns.

It's a terrific, interesting effect. It's glamorous but not fussy and that's a tough act to pull off.

Finally, here's one of my favorite patterns from their extensive catalog. This is Octopus's Garden and I saw this one with my own eyes last April at Coverings 2010.

Octopus's Garden is shown here in a white art glass but as I mentioned earlier, it can be made with any of the materials New Ravenna can get their hands on.

Just as was the case with the Jacquline Vine, Octopus's Garden pattern is utterly dependent on the grout lines to define the shapes. Here's a close up of the seahorse.

There are a number of creatures in Octopus's Garden and you can mix and match them at will. Have a thing for seahorses? Then get it in all seahorses. Starfish? Sand dollars? If you can imagine it, they can do it.

Art and commerce can co-exist and New Ravenna Mosaics is living proof of that. You can find the rest of their collection on their website, but you'll only see these great new patterns here.

I love 'em all. Which one's your favorite?

Kitchens.com just unveiled idea boards for real people

The great site Kitchens.com rolled out a big new initiative, for lack of a better term, last week and I want to give it some attention.

Not all kitchen renovations are big-budget, high-end projects. The overwhelming majority of them aren't. But for the people in the middle, there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go for any kind of professional design guidance. That's unfortunate and the fault for that lies squarely with people like me and the industry we're part of.

Well Kitchens.com set out to begin to correct for that omission. In what is the first part of an ongoing project, Kitchens.com took three, well-designed, accessible kitchens and turned them into ten completely different kitchens.

Everything been done virtually of course but where it gets interesting is that each of the designs is shown in a nearly photographic rendering and there are at least five different perspectives of each design.

Then they took and found a source for every element that's used in each design. You can use these design boards for inspiration of course, but you can also use them to generate shopping lists.

It's a really great idea that's long overdue.

The images scattered around this post are some of the stills from Kitchen.com's new idea boards of course and I urge you to go see the whole project. It's quite a compilation. So kudos to the entire Kitchens.com team. real people everywhere are singing your praises.

A Blog Off post: I am an optimist at heart

The following post is part of a biweekly blogospheric happening called a Blog Off. In a Blog Off, bloggers from all walks of life write about the same subject. The topic for this Blog Off is: Is There Reason to be Optimistic? Blog Off topics are left vague intentionally so that participants can run freely with their musings. If you's like more information on the Blog Off, check out the website. At the end of this post will appear a table with links to all of the participating blogs and that table's repeated on the main Blog Off site. So excuse me while I take a break from my niche (again) and throw it all out there.

I am an optimist. As skeptical and suspicious as I am, at the end of the day I'm thrown to see the positive way forward in any situation. That's not always been the case, I've trained myself to be an optimist. It took a number of years to get to the point where seeing the brighter side is my default mode but I got there. If I can do it, anybody can. Really. I don't see optimism in the same way a lot of people do though.

To be an optimist is to be a realist. All too often, optimism gets confused with sentiment or nostalgia or naiveté but the key to seeing the positives is to be able to assess and gauge reality as it is, not as I'd like it to be.

We live in troubled times. Though 2010's hardly a uniquely troubled time. Humanity's been watching great civilizations rise and fall for a very long time and in the big picture, that story arc never changes. Our times are no different than times have ever been. Here are some of humanity's greatest hits; Elam, Egypt, Assyria, Minoa, Persia, Greece, Phoenicia, Rome, Byzantium, The Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese Empire, The Spanish Empire and The British Empire. That's just a list of sequential empires off the top of my head. All of them have come and gone and each one followed a similar story arc. That's a simplification of course, but each of those civilizations believed itself to be special, ordained by god (s) even. Each one had a rise, a plateau, a decline and then a collapse.

I believe I live in a declining empire and I don't think that makes me a pessimist to hold that opinion. Believing that the decline of the US and by extension the rest of the West can be arrested and reversed isn't optimism, it's a delusion. It's a delusion to believe that everybody can have a bachelor's degree and a 2400 square foot house on a cul de sac. It's a delusion to believe that we can fix everything if we all speak English, or if none of us are Muslim, or if we keep hounding gays until they all jump off bridges. No one can delay the inevitable by manufacturing new enemies.

Admitting to and owning reality isn't pessimism, it pragmatism. It's only in assessing things as they are, not as they ought to be, that people can then choose to be optimistic. I don't think the current decline can be reversed, but I do think it can be slowed. The US doesn't have to collapse in an orgy of civil unrest and it doesn't have to be conquered on a field of war. Those things aren't automatic but to avoid them it's going to require a rational assessment of things as they are and the positive, optimistic, collective choice to keep the upper hand and maintain the rule of law.

So after all that, the question is Is there reason to be optimistic? I say you bet there is. There are all kinds of reasons to be optimistic. I'm alive and I'm in charge and everything flows from there. I can't fix the problems of the US but what I can do is vote for candidates who show something close to a grasp on reality. I can't fix the housing market, the banking crisis or the dreary jobs picture. What I can do though is shield myself from that stuff as best I can and keep plugging away to keep a roof over my head in a mess of an economy. You can't stay flexible, you can't change with the times, you can't assess a situation accurately until you can see it and then chose to be optimistic. The world as I've come to know may be going down the tubes but I don't have to go with it. You know, life isn't easy but it sure is fun. And if all else fails, I have tickets to go see La Bohème at the Met on December 11th.

Liberty from Trend USA proves that recycling is beautiful

At Cersaie, the international tile showcase held every year in Bologna, Trend USA launched a significant enhancement to its already impressive Liberty collection.

The glass used in the Liberty collection is 75% post-consumer recycled glass and the collection's now available in 14 color forms.

Each sheeted mosaic is hand cut, which gives it an imperfect leavening to the geometry of the pattern as a whole. The effect is subtle and hand made yet thoroughly modern at the same time.

It's patterns like Liberty that get me thinking about all the ways other than backsplashes where a dramatic mosaic can set the tone of a room. As the photos here show, this is not tile you'd want to hide.

Trend USA's products are available through showrooms worldwide. With the Liberty collection, Trend USA proves yet again that recycling and sustainable designs are beautiful.