À la table

Vintage Gucci napkins-and-tablecloth, old Gio Ponti silverware, and an early set of Julia Child, from yard sales.

And from the flotsam-filled dock undersides of Portland came the wood to make the chevronned Jean Prouve esque Tropicale (Nauticale?) Farm Table, called "Picnic Table" in Tossed & Found, only because we were watching "Manon of the Spring" when we had to come up with a name.

You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW.

and painted it too. That's my name.

ABC

Alexander

Bitchin'

Calder

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.

early birds

Morning doves

B&W

Aalto, Rya

Yard sale finds from the weekend: above, a giant, beautiful, and slightly sea-air musty 8'x10' Danish Rya rug from the 60's, a pop lightbulb lamp and an Alvar Aalto shelf.

Below, the shelf and a pair of heavy steel Alessio Tasca bookends, from another yard sale.

Greek

This awesome painting was bought by my in-laws at an estate sale in Florida and arrived via giant tube in our mail last week. Painted by Alex Tavoularis (brother of Dean Tavoularis), who's got an IMDB page so cool you'd expect nothing less than a cute nude blonde crawling around his floor: locations for Coppola's 1974 "The Conversation", art department on The Godfather 2 and 3, production illustrator of Apocalypse Now and half a dozen other Coppola films, designer of the "Taarna" segment of Heavy Metal, the early Star Wars storyboards, etc...

I'm not sure what the story is with the painting, but she could conceivably be anyone: a Playboy Bunny from Apocalypse Now, a girlfriend from Laurel Canyon, a waitress from Marathon, a scuba diver from Key Largo modeling a Taarna look, Teri Garr... but unless informed otherwise I'm going to assume she's most likely an early concept for Princess Leia.

Look Blue Go Purple

Butterfly wings arranged under glass, from a yard sale.

Super Sweet Diamonds

Motified bottle

from the basement of an estate sale.

Rec room

To the Max

Three Peter Max things in our apartment. Above is an old screenprint exhibition poster which was hanging in my brother's room throughout the 70's, then stored away in my grandmother's attic after 1984. For "safe keeping", since my brother has a penchant to sell things, I gave it to Linda and myself as a wedding present from him.

Peter Max-design Wrangler corduroys from probably the same year. Linda found these for a couple dollars in a now-defunct Brooklyn thrift shop. They're made for probably a 10 or 11 year-old, so we'll see what happens when our son gets to be that age. I know when I was ten I would have loved them, but they may be relegated to a Halloween as Greg Brady.

Thirdly is 1969's Peter Max designed "Teen Cuisine, a Beginner's Guide to French Cooking", from a sidewalk vendor in Park Slope. I'm sure the recipes are fine but what's really awesome are Max's saturated, full-bleed gradient silk screened pages. They're not all printed this way, but when they're not, and it's a white page, the type is silkscreened in gradient. Wow.

The Secret Policeman

Sting, resplendent in sublimeness at The Secret Policeman's Other Ball benefit for Amnesty International, 1981.

Also, Message in a Bottle

Happy Earth Day

Make it every day.

Meow mix

From our catalog of cat books

From Cat People (1978): Shelly Smith

Jane Pauley

Seymour Chwast

From The Photographed Cat (1980): Edward Gorey

From Catwise (1979) and Cats are like that (1984):

From the Penguin Handbook Cats (1957):

Mackworth Island

Closer than the grocery store.

Our summer plan is to hang out here at least once a week.

Tensor's Floating Disc? Check.

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.

One Buffalo Boy gone 'round the outside

R.I.P. Malcolm McLaren. Sex Pistols manager, Bow Wow Wow creator, shop owner, genius, and the inspiration behind our boombox.

:nytimes

Le Man

Steve McQueen in Le Mans (1971)

How awesome is the Porsche 917?
If I weren't going to paint our front door in the Push Pin graphic style of 1984, I would definitely use these great old Porsche colors, and put our number inside the white circle. And how do we turn that headlamp design into a pendant lamp that would turn on as fantastically as McQueen's do during the dusky hours of Le Mans.?
Sometimes I think I find more design inspiration in cars than anywhere else.

Spring cleaning

Orange-oiling day.