B

A small scale prototype floor design (of the letter "B") for a restaurant interior, 2002.
The miniature version was made to see that it would look good in the large scale. It did, but unfortunately there was a flood a week after we finished and it had to all be pulled up and replaced with carpeting. However the little version got some walls and a mantle and lived on as a room for Linda's doll.

Below, the design in the restaurant's hall, before polyurethaning (when the wood became richer looking, like above)

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

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.

Fletcher's room

Like many things in our place, our one-year old son Fletcher's room is furnished with from yard sales, thrift shops, flea markets, and hand-me-downs.
The dressers and cabinets are old George Nelson for Herman Miller- the long glass case originally meant for record albums. The Mickey Myers crayon prints and signed ("For Amanda") Bil Baird Marionette Theatre prints were bought years ago at the Carousel thrift shop in Southport, Ct., which funnily enough is located in the church where I went to nursery school. We found the Stokke crib on Craigslist, from the local window-washer who washes the windows of the local Scandinavian Shop. The mobile has since moved away since I took this photo a few months ago.
Linda's old Eames rocking chair was from the 26th St. flea market and is now home to a Freudian-looking Keith Kustard. The teak monkeys are hanging around a teak floor lamp by Laurel, from a garage sale.

The Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera was a store display from the 60's. The flash cube is actually an electric light.
The wooden sail lamp was made by our friend Fidi.  Over to the left is a giant Marimekko beanbag, and an unphotogenic mass of stuffed animals and books.

The hi-fi system with fun-for-Daddy records including Harry Nilsson's The Point! and my brother's and my old Jim Copp and Ed Brown records, inscribed by them when we were kids and our mother took us to see them perform at Bloomingdale's in Stamford, Ct., in the shadow of the giant Bjorn Wiinblad ceramic fountain.

For more on his room and our inspirations click over to the super nice and extremely patient Jenny Dalton's site: LittleBig Magazine



Below is his room in its previous state as our guestroom:




related:



Julie Merz's room, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, January 1978. From the incredible, fascinating Nooney Brooklyn Photographs, 1978-1979. From the NYPL Digital archive.

The Adventures of the Three Colors

Neat!
Day Glo printed acetate pages make magic in the 1971 kids' book The Adventures of the Three Colors, by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor (of Barbapapa fame). It tells the tale of a boy named Herbie and his dog Angelo, who are out one day and see a rainbow, which inspires Herbie to want to paint some pictures, but the only colors he has are red, yellow, and blue. And he soon finds out those are all he needs, as he has a penchant for painting his animals much too close to each other- actually always overlapping.



Like too many other things, we have two of these- the original edition and the clunkily revised, definite article-free 1980 edition.

Happy First Birthday Fletcher!!

You've come a long way, baby!

Meet Ze Monsta

Happy Halloween!

Birthday, 1975

September 4th, 1975. Green Arrow, Superfriends, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Snoopy. Breakfast was probably Quangaroos or Freakies and in all hopefulness dinner was a Libbyland and a Friendly Fribble.

Richard Scarry's Best Vacation House Ever

At St. Jean Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.

From the book "The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry"

...and the Google Street View is, as expected, incroyable:

also I do believe I can see either Olympia or Fiona getting into her BMW.

Old School Pre School

Prefontaine School.

Not to be left out of the shoe department, our son Fletcher has these tiny vintage Nike sneakers waiting for him as soon as he can run around, or walk- or really- fit schmit- I guess we could put them on him now. The red pair (marked 1982) is from a yard sale in Maine a few years ago (forward-thinking), and the blue pair (1983) was found by our friends on top of a garbage can in Brooklyn.

Laptop for scale/son reference.

Keith Kustard and Macaron

Introducing Keith Kustard and his little friend Macaron,

via the pencils of John and the needles of Linda.

The two plush compadres are destined to make starring appearances in some future Wary Meyers projects, and have a permanent gig hanging out in Fletcher's room, but for right now they're lounging on the second floor gallery of Corduroy Surf Boutique in Portland, who also have prints (below) and a couple of original watercolors for sale.

Keith & Macaron in the Florida Keys: 20x16"(15x12"image) archival print $35

Keith Kustard and Donavan Frankenreiter.

Kei Bohji-san

A monkey pile of Japanese teak chimpanzees, slightly altered from Kay Bojesen's Danish original. The little one in the middle was on a shelf in my dad's closet growing up and the rest are from yard sales over the years. In the last few months we've used them in our son's room as a mobile (with vine-green yarn)(too dangerous), coat hanger (upside-down off the back of the door-too fragile), and semaphore (Beatles "HELP"-style for "FAOM", which didn't look that good- actually neither did HELP, as they changed it to the more design-friendly NUJV.) The new project is to make a little Ofuro hot tub barrel to keep them in, Macaque-style. If that doesn't work they're going up on a shelf.

Related: the back cover of "This Week: Guide to Wonderful Copenhagen, May 5-May 11, 1973", brought back and stuck in a drawer by my grandparents.

E.H. Shepard at ther V&A

From last Saturday's pre-yard sale yard saling, an old V&A poster by Her Majesty's Stationery Office for the exhibition of Ernest H. Shepard's original drawings for the books by A.A. Milne.

Brought back to Maine after a holiday in London, Christmas 1969.

$5

Related: "That Sort of Bear", the Sotheby's auction of some great E.H. Shepard drawings, etc., from 2008 *here*

...and more insight into that auction at the ever encyclopediac *Daddytypes*.

The weekend's bags

Unneeded, as usual, but...

From 3 different yard sales: above, an Invicta-striped Regent Belt Co. bag, an old Swiss leather and canvas creel, and yet another old L.L. Bean duffle, this time with the old cursive label and a nice patina to the webbing (that was how I tried to explain the purchase to Linda). Top, a vintage Jansport internal frame pack with its lower outside rack sawn off. This makes it a Kanken-like super sturdy backpack. Below that is a pair of vintage Bean hunting boots in children's size, which they don't make anymore, and never too soon to shop for back-to-school 2016.

Total for everything was 7 dollars, which is hard to resist.

Found pieces

Saturday's yard saling stuff:

From the top: The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein, with his wonderful inscription to a girl named Sarah. Now in our son Fletcher's growing collection of things inscribed, but not to him. :(

Vintage toddler's SnoPeak arctic bomber jacket, with boiled wool hood trim and slight lining-of-an-old-backpack patina. My hope is that he'll wear it this winter, but with our novice size forecasting, it'll probably fit him next July. (much to his grandmothers' relief).

A little Puppenhaus-size Rya rug. More likely made to be a pillow by a 70's crafter, but our first thought was that it definitely could be a Finnish salesman's sample.

Two large enameled industrial factory lamps in perfect condition- the stuff that looks like a chip is actually old plaster which just chips off, but we'll leave it there. These will be hung on cable and retracticle cord above a kitchen island in the guest apartment we're working on this summer.

Lastly there's a stylized brass hippopotamus box.

Total, $13.00- the lamps were 5 each.