Amusing British night light

This is the Martyr, designed by The Play Coalition.

It makes me laugh. It fits those enormous British wall sockets perfectly. I wonder if there's a North American version in the works.

Did Madonna ever get this kind of treatment?

Iowa State University at 12pm on the 27th of August:

Having fun with stereotypes

The great Erin Loechner had something on her blog, Design for Mankind, the other day that I thought was hilarious.

She'd picked up a map created by Russian turned British illustrator Yanko Tsvetkov and featured on his blog Alphadesigner. The map Erin ran was one of series Tsvetkov made that illustrate the stereotypes Europeans have of each other and that Americans have of Europeans and I thought they were hilarious. Here are some highlights.

This is Europe according to France:

This is Europe according to Britain.

This is Europe according to Germany

Here's Europe as Italy sees it.

This is Italy as seen by posh Italians.

This is Europe as the US sees it.

And in a turn around provided by a link from one of Erin's readers, Here's the US as Europeans see it. This map came from the Swedish graphic designer Attila Toth and his website Attila.

Thanks for the laugh one and all.

Handpresso for when you just need a fix

I am gearing myself up for another trip to the Out Islands of The Bahamas next month. Ahhh, I can't wait to get back to my beach. I've written about my favorite retreat spot on Cat Island numerous times, so much so that The Bahamas is its own key word on this site.

When I'm out there on that isolated patch in the Atlantic, creature comforts are few and far between and such creature comforts there are have to be brought in. It's my usual routine to wake up with the sun and take a French press with me up onto the rocks to watch the sun come up. I took this photo two summers ago.

As enjoyable as a cup of coffee from French press is, I think I found a better solution.

It's the Handpresso, a hand-operated espresso machine from France. A Handpresso, a thermos of hot water and some ground espresso are all I need to make my personal sunrise service complete.

Here's a video that explains how they work.





Now all they need is a US distributor...

The Handpresso comes in a version that uses loose espresso and a version that uses E.S.E standard coffee pods if you're rather stale espresso. Regardless of the version, Handpresso machines are ushering in a new era of what the company calls "nomadic espresso." Anything that involves moving around and espresso has to be good.

Check out  the rest of Handpresso's website for more products and more videos of the Handpresso at work.

You can't get a man with a gun

With apologies to the great Irving Berlin and his lyrics from Annie Get your Gun.

A man's love is mighty
It'll leave him buy a nightie
For a gal who he thinks is fun.
But they don't by pajamas
For Pistol packin' mamas,
And you can't get a hug
From a mug with a slug,
Oh you can't get a man with a gun.

Berlin Artist Yvonne Lee Schulz is putting Annie Oakley's words to the test with a series of hand-painted, porcelain pistols. While it's true they are tableware accessories, there's a lot going on here and what she has to say about gun violence isn't meant to comfort.

The Porcelain Pistols are replicas of James Bond’s Walther PPK and its contemporary sister, the P99,with friendly permission of Carl Walther Inc.The fragile weapon, hand-painted in the style of classic tableware motifs, liesnext to your coffee and cake, asking to be picked up. Its coolness andcomfortable grip increase the qualms of the user, leaving him in a quandary between the pleasure of luxury and violence.

Just as was the case with the graffiti china and china beer cans I've written about before, the heads up about these pistols came from the great David Nolan and his razor eye.

I love the idea of statement art being disguised as an everyday object and I would kill to see a tablescape blogger get her hands one a couple of these babies. What do you think? Too confrontational or not confrontational enough?