Win a George Nelson Ball Clock

I came across Lush Pad on Twitter yesterday. Lush Pad is a marketplace for Modernist furniture and furnishings. Got an original Hans Wegner chair lurking in the attic? Or maybe you'd rather buy a couple of original Bertoia stools. You can do both on Lush Pad. If you have a thing for Modernism, check out Lush Pad.

As an added incentive, in a contest sponsored by Modernism Magazine, Lush Pad is giving away a Nelson Ball Clock like the one pictured here. Though this clock's not an original, it's a licensed reproduction by Vitra and it normally sells for $355. All you have to do is tell them your favorite modern designer and you're in.

George Nelson was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1904. He's considered to be one of the founders of American Modernism and a lot of his iconic pieces, like the Ball Clock, are still in production decades after they debuted.

I came across this interesting history of the Ball Clock on Design Within Reach yesterday:

George Nelson often collaborated with other designers, and in the case of the Ball Clock (1948), Nelson was at a dinner party with Isamu Noguchi, Irving Harper and Bucky Fuller. As the story goes, they were all sketching and "we'd had a little bit too much to drink," said Nelson. In the morning, they saw a drawing of the Ball Clock on a roll of drafting paper. "I don¹t know to this day who cooked it up," said Nelson. "I know it wasn't me. It might have been Irving, but he didn¹t think so. [We] both guessed that Isamu had probably done it because [he] has a genius for doing two stupid things and making something extraordinary out of the combination. It could have been an additive thing, but we never knew."

So run on over to Lush Pad and enter for a chance to win this baby.

Sears' Blue Crew, the conference call

If you've been following the unfolding story regarding the Sears Blue Crew, here comes the last update for a while. However, just because I won't be writing Sears posts every couple of days doesn't mean this is over. Oh far from it. But before I get to that, if you need to get up to speed, click here, here and here.

Let me start out by saying that I am beyond impressed with Sears Appliances. I see them in a whole new light. I mean, how many members of the appliance industry would open themselves up to a panel discussion with a group of designers and architects who'd been hand picked by blogger who'd been done wrong? I appreciate the trust of Mike Léger from Sears particularly. I had no intention of having this be a finger pointing session but he couldn't have known that. So hats off to you Mike. Kudos to your whole team and your whole organization while I'm at it. You guys showed me a side to your company I never knew existed. Bravo.

I want to thank everybody from the designers and architects panel who agreed to participate in this conference too. So to Kristin, Susan, Kelly, Jamie, Ann, Mark, Rachele, Pam, Richard, Mike, Peter and Alex; I say thanks for your willingness to help turn a frustration into a path to a solution.

Our conference call yesterday last for an hour and it could have gone on for a few more if you ask me. This was not a sales job or an attempt to make customers out of us, rather it was an honest request for feedback. We covered a lot of bases and our allotted hour was up too soon. In moving forward from here, we're going to continue to meet and to come up with more ideas and solutions. 

We have a lot to learn from one another. We work different sides of the same industry. How few opportunities there are for these sides to interact hit me as I was calling into the conference yesterday afternoon. It was good to play a role in providing one. More please!

Happy birthday Gram

This was my Grandmother, Guellma Gevene Flowers-Smith-Stewart and today would have been her 104th birthday. Of the many people who played a significant role in my life, none loom larger than Gevene. The older I get the more I see her in me. And the older I get too, the more I see just how great a thing that is.

She loved life and embraced it, warts and all, with a passion and an energy that makes me marvel even now. In the photo above, she's playing with her first great-grand daughter. Oh how she loved that baby. I remember when that photo was taken, I was standing right there. It really doesn't feel like it was very long ago, but I suppose it was. The baby in that photo got married a year ago and she and her husband are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a baby of their own.

Somehow, somewhere, Guellma Gevene Flowers-Smith-Stewart is ecstatic.

I am shocked and appalled

By this.

This island made of Legos is making the rounds of the design blogs this week and it's being met with near-universal heaps of praise and squeals of delight.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. The trappings of childhood are best left behind in childhood if you ask me. This is not cute, this is not clever and this is not cool in any way.

I get it, the designers are attempting to be smart and stand out from the crowd. Maybe they're trying to teach some kind of a saccharine lesson about the virtues of simple mindedness. Again I say. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

But on a happier note, I found this story on a host of sites but in following the links back through a bunch of them I came across one of the best finds I've found in ages.

A commenter who goes by the name of Clarity left a comment a couple of weeks ago and her Google profile was a dead end. I'd resigned myself to not knowing who she is. Well, in digging around about this absurd island, I came across Kitchen Clarity, commenter Clarity's blog. And oh what a blog it is. Seriously, check it out. She has fantastic taste, isn't afraid to say what's on her mind and unlike me, can express herself completely in one or two paragraphs. Astounding! Check out Kitchen Clarity and tell her I said hello.

In the meantime, what do you think about this island? Is it as mortifying as I think it is, or does it have some hidden redeeming qualities I just can't see?

*All images by Goluza Photo for Maison Francaise.

How many CFMs do you need for your cubic feet?

Many thanks to the gang at Faber Hoods for this very helpful guide on the technical side of kitchen ventilation.  True kitchen ventilation (rather than the cheap and usually ineffective method of hanging a vented microwave over your cooking surface) is an idea that's catching on again. All ventilation uses a measure called Cubic Feet per Minute to indicate how effective the blower motor in a ventilation system is at circulating air. Few topics can confuse people as quickly as CFM ratings. There is a mistaken belief, that like most everything else in appliances, bigger is better. Not necessarily.

Using a hood with higher CFM (above what you need for your cooking surface) means more air is being pulled out of your kitchen and your home than needed. Therefore a lot of cooled or heated air is being pulled out your home, which would lead to higher heating and cooling bills.

Also, a situation of negative pressure can also occur when too much air is being pulled out of the home and isn't being replaced by air from the outside. Homes built today are increasingly air tight and when too much air is pulled out of a home, you need to sometimes make up for that lost air by pumping outside air into the home. There are all kinds of rules of thumb regarding make up air and it's best to consult with an HVAC specialist before you install a high-powered ventilation system in a newer home.

When you're choosing a hood for your cooking surface, one that has too many CFMs won't be energy efficient and too few CFMs won't provide adequate ventilation. The more CFMs, the more energy they use and the more noise they make. The key is to buy the right hood for the job at hand. Somewhere there's an ideal CFM count to match your needs.

So buy a hood that can remove the heat, steam, odor, smoke and grease produced by your cooking properly while at the same time not overdoing it. This diagram below shows a good way to estimate how many CFMs you need for your kitchen. In this kitchen, the ceilings are ten feet tall (Z). The walls are 10 feet (X) by ten feet (Y). So Z x X x Y = 1,000 cubic feet. If you have a 500 CFM rangehood in this kitchen, in 2 minutes you will have completely exchanged all the air out of the kitchen (or 30 exchanges in an hour). The National Kitchen and Bath Association recommends 8 to 15 air exchanges in an hour for proper ventilation, so in this example, we're at double the recommended level. Rules of thumb like this can get you started but the amount of heat generated by some cooking appliances throws a wrench into the works. Heat is measured in British Thermal Units, or BTUs. There are additional calculations that need to be worked out when it comes to using professional-style ranges so be sure to consult with a professional kitchen designer before you commit to buying anything.

So even though the example above has us at twice the recommended CFM, using a four-burner gas cooktop will put you 100 CFMs under the required 600 CFMs for use over gas. If you're upgrading to something more substantial, a 48" range top for example, you're going to need at least 1,000 CFM. In the opposite direction, because induction cooktops generate so little radiant heat, a 300 CFM ventilation hood over it would work out perfectly. Confused? Don't be.

Calculating the volume of your room is helpful and knowing the heat output of your cooking surface is helpful too. Combining the two and coming up with a satisfactory CFM takes a bit of judgement and experience, but that's why I'm here. Me and a whole bunch of compatriots who like nothing better than to figure stuff like this out.