MOSTE

Behold the chicness that is this chair by MOSTE, a new line of furniture and accessories designed by my friend (and fellow Domino darling) Michael Bargo and Billy Cotton. The collection is carried exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman and is making all my Donald Judd/Gerrit Rietveld/Memphis Group dreams come true! From what I've seen the palette consists of black and white with bits of yellow, lacquer for weeks ... divine. If Michael weren't such an insanely talented and charming southern gentleman I might have to hate him LIKE WHOA. But he told me working on the line has made private clients seem like a cake walk so I felt better for half a second. Bravo, dahlink!

Nanooked

"How can another designer have the exact same idea?"



It's too cold outside to think so I'd prefer to stay indoors and pretend to live inside this movie. Take note, ballet scrims bring out the natural exhibitionist in France's future first lady. Also: Mayomi McCampbell.

Sigh.

Hephaestus of Greenwich Village

One of best parts of my job is getting to see how stuff gets made. Fancy stuff. I must have a bit of my father's tinkering nature because while he was taking carburetors apart and putting them back together I was doing the same with, oh, peasant blouses. These days I love trekking out to Queens (ahem) to visit the upholsterer or Brooklyn to the plaster guru's workshop. So imagine my delight when Dara Caponigro, editor-in-chief of Veranda, invited to me to tour P.E. Guerin, Manhattan's only foundry and purveyor of heavy metal fantasies for over 150 years!

It's nothing short of a miracle that this place still exists in a neighborhood of $12 million town houses and hipper-than-thou restaurants. Our insanely knowledgable guide, Martin Grubman, started in the showroom


then the catalog room (where labels bear words like "serpents")


and quickly whisked us up three flights to see where the magic happens:


That's molten brass, folks. Heated to about 2000 degrees and poured into molds made of sand. I still don't exactly get how that works, but it makes the most finely detailed lever handles out there:


But they don't pop out so perfect -- a team of finishers brushes away the sand, chisels away the excess, polishes each piece to a sheen or hand-tints them to minimize that Versace Home Collection look. Guerin (still a family-owned business, btw) also plates in any metal except chrome. Fine because I don't particularly care for chrome! He's turning a knob you most certainly won't find at Home Depot:


These folks have worked on everything from Packard Motor Cars to La Leopolda but will also turn your porcelain vase into a gorgeous lamp or replicate a favorite belt buckle. No pretense whatsoever. As Martin put it, "People ask all the time if we have a minimum. I say you have to order one." Love that.

I'm easily distracted by beautiful, shiny things and am not sure how much work I'd get done with such a bounty casually strewn about:


But they seem to manage. Reality struck when Room & Board called to say they arrived two hours early for a delivery, forcing me to miss the festive lunch afterward. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Alas, what an inspiring morning -- artisanal craftsmanship is alive and well in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Thanks so much to Dara and Veranda and please check out this groovy little online tour (courtesy of Anthropologie, though they don't come out and tell you). Vive le Guerin!

2 - 0 - 1 - 1

Is going to be a good year, right? I know I went on a little hiatus (do only professors get to take 'sabbaticals'? I guess they're longer and doesn't the word sound a bit religious and/or medical?), but I missed each and every one of you. Except for the ones who didn't buy me any presents -- you're DTM.

Kidding! I got swamped with a bunch of projects and then had a lovely family Christmas at Aunt Pat's in serene, suburban Pennsylvania, where I averaged six cookies per hour and successfully navigated the byzantine channels necessary to buy booze in that state. (Poor travelers who've ever looked for the beer section at Wawa know what I mean). Puritan founders, go figure. I did not however catch fire whilst setting foot inside the Lutheran church on Christmas Eve, nor did I confuse show tune lyrics for hymns. (Two years ago: "What's the carol that goes, 'Make of our hands one haaaand'?" My sister: "That's from the end of West Side Story, you idiot.") Anyway look what Santa Pat hath brought:

I'm obsessed! She and Sisterbelle both added to my coffee table book addiction collection with this and this and much more and I tried to shower them back with a similar bounty. Dad got a shirt.

But back to 2011. Aaliyah, what's the word up there in heaven?



Exactly what I was thinking. What do we like in terms of resolutions? So far I've kept to one coffee per day and have cut out diet soda completely. The moratorium on fried food is another [tragic] story. I also want to be more organized, write more letters and postcards, and keep in better touch with family and friends. What about design-y ones? My new mantra is "If you have to squint to like it, don't buy it." Also, new concept: Solids. Almost every pattern in the universe makes my eyes hurt lately!

What are yours?