back after a short delay...

i've been a little slack in my postings of late, but i had an excuse, i travelled back home to brisbane for a week to hang out with the family.
it's inspiration time again, and here's a little broach entitled "untitled" from 2006, made of bog oak and silver by dutch jeweller francis willemstijn.
looking at her website, a lot of the work's of this series appear reminiscent of another great dutch artist, de stijl co-founder piet mondrian.
i attempted to build my own little piece of jewellery inspired by this work, but i have yet to work out a method for attaching timber to silver other than by cheating and using glue. be patient while i work on my crafting skills!
check out more of her stuff at http://www.willemstijn.com/

upmarket dollhouse furniture.

for the budget conscious design-lover, and those of you with space constraints who have a love for the iconic pieces of the 20th century, i have stumbled upon the perfect thing for you. miniature designer chairs. corbusier, eames, reitveldt, van der rohe, panton, barcelona chair - they are all available. i don't know exactly what scale they are at, but they are friggin' tiny and barely big enough to sit a lego man in, but are a hell of a lot cheaper than the real thing, or even the ridiculosouly overpriced vitra miniatures that are on the market.
i'm still searching around for suppliers, but kinokuniya bookshop in sydney sells them as complete sets of 8 for about $150 bucks, (i think there are 6 series in total) which isn't bad, but there are a few chairs in each series that aren't really all that desirable to have in a collection. i've also found another little shop that sells them individually for a rather expensive $50 each, but i won't name and shame him because he's a mate and stocks some truly amazing stuff. and modcons in brisbane sells them from memory, but i can't remember if they are sold in a set or individually.
am going to try some sort of mail-order thing that will let me pick and choose the exact ones i want, will let you know if i succeed. check out the company that manufactures them, http://www.reacjapan.com/ (although their website is in japanese!)

here is my handle, here is my spout

... and now to one of the defining moments of my object-collecting obsession. (and also time to brag just a wee bit)
during my stint working at the british museum, i actually managed to persuade the curator of the 20th century artefacts collection to let me don the white gloves and handle one of their prized little pieces of object design, this iconic silver teapot by one of the original bauhaus artist, german marianne brandt. although i had always had a love affair with the bauhaus movement and object design, this was the first time that i had seen a genuine piece of bauhaus object physically in the flesh (let alone being allowed to handle it!). i rubbed it vigurously, but sadly, no magic genie to grant me my wish of letting me keep the teapot.
while other museums specialise in objects of this nature, the british museum, more reknowned for its egyptian,greek and roman artecfacts, actually has some amazing little pieces of 20th century design left to the museum in collector's bequests. just to name drop a bit, i also got to handle a frank lloyd wright designed dinner plate, and a charles rennie macintosh candlestick.

turning the place over

more images of inspiration, this one by british artist richard wilson entitled "turning the place over" from 2000.

following on in the footsteps of gordon matta-clark (the original architerrorist), wilson's irreversible structural "intervention" involved cutting a ten metre diameter section out of the facade of an abandoned building, then mounting it onto a set of giant motors to power it through the full 360degrees, only being flush with the building at one moment through its' rotation. it also spun at enough speed to strike some fear into the hearts of spectators beneath, as the huge segment of concrete hung twisted and turned, at times appearing to hang perilously out over the footpath below.

hot

back in about 1995 there was somewhat of a swing revival, where some of the ska bands around at the time adopted more of a 1930's gangster approach, dressing in pinstripe suits and bowler hats and singing songs about tommy guns and the swingin' jazz clubs of yesteryear - bands like royal crown revue, cherry poppin' daddies, big bad voodoo daddy and the squirrel nut zippers. i remember when i first bought "hot" by the squirrel nut zippers back in such a time, and listened to it repeatedly, i was the subject of ridicule for being stuck in a time warp.
all those years on, and this album still rates as one of the top purchases in my collection. "hot" is an eclectic fusion of gypsy jazz, swing, jewish klezmer, calypso, delta blues, big band swing + a million other genres - you can see definite influences from artists such as cab calloway, fats waller, tom waits, django reinhardt et al. songs alternate between the male vocals of guitarist/frontman james mathus, female vocals of banjo player katherine whallen, and pure instrumental tracks. particular standouts for me are "got my own thing now", "bad businessman" and instrumental track "the interlocutor" (sensational little guitar solo on that one), but also check what was probably their biggest single, "hell", which tends to appeal to all.
the band members have since split to take up solo persuings, (the only solo album i've been able to track down is the delta blues offering from "jimbo" mathus') but word on the street is that they are reforming...

fabrizio tridenti

let me introduce you to the work of italian jeweller fabrizio tridenti, whose work consists of haphazard assemblages of found
object and handcrafted metal. i've always seemed to lean more towards more geometric and symmetrical works, but there's something about these that really appeal to me. i particularly like some of the varied surface treatments he uses - the way they are scratched, oxidised and enamelled, which help to emphasize the multifaceted nature of his work.
http://www.fabriziotridenti.it/home.html and http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/index.php?item_id=8307