the Wire

...is not just an HBO cop show, it’s also a very funky material when it comes to interior design, especially metal wire with a plastic or rubber coating. One of the best examples is the String shelving system, designed by Nisse Strinning in 1949, and just as cool and versatile today as it was back then. The metal wire side panels form ‘ladders’ on which the shelves are hung with little brackets.

This trendy piece of interior design comes from humble beginnings, it actually started out as a draining board back in the 1940’s, which Mr Strinning designed for Swedish company Elfa, (still producing super practical storage solutions from wire) which became something of a household staple. It was cheap and practical, and you can probably still pick one up in Ikea today (the copyright has long expired).
More than half century later metal wire is still being put to good use by Swedish designers. One of them is Louise Hederström, and she has produced several very clever designs for MAZE Int. like the Tree shelf and Crown hanger.

It you’re a wire enthusiast, you can even go for the entire Wire Tree, which covers a full wall.

Another interesting take on the wire to come out of Sweden is the Emperor’s New Lamp by Design Dessert (aka Malin Palm and Åsa Ohlsson) which looks a bit like one of my grandma’s lampshades that’s had the fabric stolen (or the emperor without his clothes!)
This lamp is distributed by Launch Design Partner, whose MD Per Berglund says the lamp made people either chuckle or wince when it first came out ten years ago, but today this unusual design has filtered through to become a best seller. (Vicki)

joseph beuys was a surfer

This entry is a bit indulgent and detours from my usual design ramblings into the world of art. If you’re in the UK this summer and planning a trip to the Eden Project you’ll be able to see the highly publicised work of an old schoolmate, the freewheeling and wave-riding artist, Ben Cook. His new installation and exhibition, partly inspired by the sustainable surfboard project, examines the landscape of the south west through the eyes of surfer and artist.

For the California section of the Mediterranean biome, Ben is remaking Joseph Beuys’s seminal artwork, The Pack 1969. Beuys’s installation (seen above with Ben looking on) explored the concept of human survival in the face of technological failure- an apt theme for both Eden and the sustainable surfboard project. The piece refers to an episode in his life (whether real or fictional) when he was shot down over the Crimea during the Second World War. He described being rescued by a band of nomadic Tartars who coated his body with animal fat and rolled him in felt.

By utilizing the format and aesthetic of Beuys’s work, Ben is referencing the contemporary issues faced by the surfing community, and the failure of their particular technologies, with regard to the toxicity of plastic surfboards in the marine environment. The latest installation will use a renovated VW Camper Van (not a toy one) with old surfboards replacing the sleds, abandoned wetsuits instead of the rolls of felt, the torch with Cornwall Tide times books (to lead the way) and tablets of surfwax in place of animal fat.

Ben worked with Homeblown Surfboards and Sustainable Composites to develop a series of wall based works made from the new eco-surfboard foams, resins, hemp cloths and balsa wood, for exhibition in the Eden Core education room. The current consumer-led fashion for, and insistence on, a pure white surfboard blank will be questioned by Cook’s works which will exploit the natural qualities of the new materials. Although abstract, the works will reference the aesthetics of classic modernist landscape art, which is, and has been, so prevalent in the south west. (JH)

the death of the make-up table

When I was a little girl, the make up table was one piece of furniture that every grown up woman seemed to posses. My own mother would spend time if front of hers, at least once a day, rolling her hair on those big hot rolls called ‘karmenkörlers’ (it was only much later I ralised the name was Carmen Curlers) and carefully applying lipstick, mascara and other magical substances to her face. When I turned sixteen, I inherited my mums old make-up table from the 1960s, and it was painted white and given a new fabric curtain front made from a frothy baby blue fabric, to match the pink and pastel blue colour scheme of my room. Of course this treatment ruined any value that table would have as a piece of vintage furniture, but I loved it.

It was only much later, when I moved from my tiny student bed-sit to a proper apartment, with enough room for proper grown up furniture, that I realised just how rare those precious make up tables were. I searched at IKEA (yes it really is the first place all young Swedes go for cheap furniture), and at all the other reasonably priced furniture shops in town for a new table that would suit the style of my apartment, but to no avail. I came across only one make-up table, I’m not sure what you would call the style in which it was designed, maybe mock-baroque, it had curls and swirls and a glass top, and unless you were Dame Edna, it would definitely cramp the style of your bedroom. So for years I made do with an old folding table, designed for card games. Whatever happened to make-up tables? Why do so few furniture producers manufacture this useful, wonderful piece of furniture?


When we started Funktionalley, and met designer Martin Joseph, I finally saw my chance to get a make up table that would be modern and functional, and that would match the rest of our bedroom furniture.
Martin designed this simple and handsome table for me, and used some contacts at a factory that produces kitchen cabinets to manufacture it. One of the brilliant things about it is that the drawers are big enough to fit a proper salon-style hair dryer, and that there is a hole on the back wall of the drawer and of the table that you can fit a power cable trough.
So you can keep the whole unsightly mess of hairdryer, straightener, curler and cables out of sight, in one of the drawers, without having to unplug them.

Unfortunatley this great piece of furniture is impossible to mass manufacture at a reasonable price. But I’m always on the lookout for makeup tables, and as soon as I’ve found one for FunktionAlley I’ll let you know! (Vicki)

cool wallpaper crap tip

I always thought the reason it was called wallpaper was because you pasted it to the wall. Well not any more apparently. On a recent Tyra Banks show some interiors expert was demonstrating how to make a rather plain coffee table into an “amazing room feature” by covering it with a coated Ferm-Living wallpaper design, Feather.

Bet that looks cool after you’ve spilled a few cups of coffee on it. Anyway, here’s the YouTube clip of the fantastic transformation. If you listen closely at the beginning you’ll hear a near standing ovation given by the audience of Stepford Wives when the lucky beneficiary of this top tip mentions she’s getting married. Well done that girl! (JH)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGPcWHebRM8