Wary Meyers Baxter Library Installations

Our first round of installations for the Old Baxter Library/Via Advertising Agency is finally all together in one spot on our website. Including this fountain pen & ink seating group, which would look equally cool with oil wells, pastry bags, or shampoo bottles- whatever your company's reception area needs, we can do it.

Click!

Children's Spaces

All kinds of awesomeness from Molly and Norman McGrath's incredible 1978 book on interiors for kids, Children's Spaces- 50 Architects and Designers Create Environments for the Young.

Without a doubt the best book ever published about children's design.

Just looking at it makes me want to have another one.

related: Kids' Stuff, Fletcher's room

Bitter CD

1970's Bitter CD, from Erich Bitter's car company, (Bitter).
Plus girl posing, in vain.

High School

Taped to a pole in my high school cafeteria, 1976.

(via my older brother)

Alexander Calder constellations

Some constellation wall sculptures by Alexander Calder. I scanned these from the book Calder's Universe, meaning to relate them to the Zolo toys, but amongst the Ettore Sottsass buzz I completely forgot. Anyway, aren't these awesome? My thought was, how fun would it be to do this with the Zolos? They already have holes drilled in them, so all you'd need is wire (or a thin dowel), and velcro (to keep it in place on a wall), and you'd end up with something like a "Memphis splat". And a way of actually utilizing the Zolos instead of keeping them sequestered away until the age of non-choking-hazard/non-banging-them-on-the-table comes around.
For that matter you could do this with any wooden toy- the Calder above the fireplace somewhat resembles one of those wooden Pinnochio figures, or a Kay Bojesen soldier. Although if you'd do this on a child's wall you'd most likely want to remain in the abstract.



Also, the Breuer's Constellation (middle photo) makes me want to put these into an orrery, or even make a completely strange Sci-Fi one, like a Star Wars orrery, with two suns, Alderaan, Endor, Death Star....

Sottseuss

Speaking of Ettore Sottsass, and kid's stuff, there's no kid thing more Memphissed-out than these wooden Zolo toys from 1985. We found them all ( there are about 50 pieces) in their original wooden case at a church sale. Chipped, splintered, and enticingly dangerous, they're probably not so safe to give to our son, so we'll happily use them as surreal Sottsossian objets until ...
actually these may be just a grown-up toy after all.

Happy Valentine's Day!

... and be sure to click over to You Have Been Here Sometime and read our short guest post about Ettore Sottsass, his Superbox, and all things boxy and striped.

From the flea market today

Vintage La Mondiale goat fur apres-ski boots, vintage Obermeyer during-ski sweater, an awesome set of Japanese Jepcor enamelware, an English wooden wine rack kit with Milton Glaseresque typography, and a litte wooden pig with bright pink eyes.

Kids' Stuff

Pages from the 1979 book "Kids' Stuff" by Linda Foa and Geri Brin. Besides "Children's Spaces" by Molly McGrath (later) this is our favorite book about kids' design. If you judged Kids' Stuff by its crazy cover you'd probably never open it, but inside it's like a kid's version of High Tech, the 70's industrial-style home design sourcebook, with hundreds brilliantly designed things, like chairs, tables, lamps, storage, drawer pulls, tents, ropes... all photographed either on seamless, on a Superstudio-esque grid, or in the cool NYC apartments of the authors and their friends. One of my favorites is the table from Scandinavian Design (above), used as a changing table, and "actually billed as a writing desk by the manufacturer".  The book's acknowledgements mention a heavy thanks to designer Joe D'Urso and design author Barbara Plumb, and it shows. Also it's a sourcebook itself, so it tells you what everything is, how much it cost, and where it was available. Everything that is except the incidental decor in the kids' rooms, notably this girl's ball-bearing based, plastic sphere-encased, self-levelling desk lamp (below). 

Master of Puppets

Vintage Bil Baird Marionette Theatre posters from a church thrift shop in Southport Ct.
I love how Baird drew his posters, and the old New York phone exchange.
Added to Fletcher's walls, and his growing collection of things inscribed, but not to him :(





Much more on the great Bil Baird here, here, and here.