House Industries Designs Hand-Printed Eames Tables For Herman Miller Asia-Pacific

The very hip type foundry House Industries has teamed up with Herman Miller to produce a limited edition series of 80 Eames wire-base tables.



The Eames wire based low tables (LTR) include letters, numbers and ornaments from their Eames Century Modern font collection.



Each tabletop is hand-printed by House’s own David Dodde in their Grand Rapids, Michigan factory, returned to Herman Miller for assembly then packaged in a special House Industries-designed wooden crate.



Andy Cruz originally showed sketches of a printed LTR table to Yoko Sasaki, Marketing director of Herman Miller Japan, during his trip to Tokyo in 2010. Soon after House Industries got busy with the Eames Office and Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan to bring the sketches to life. As with most House Industries projects, they tried their best to make the packaging for this limited edition something you wouldn’t throw away once the table was removed. I believe they succeeded.


Photography by Carlos Alejandro

Forty tables will be available in Hong Kong at the Herman Miller Reach event on September 16, 2011 and 40 will be available at the House Industries exhibition at the Herman Miller Tokyo Showroom on October 27, 2011.

Reach Hong Kong
September 16, 2011
Hong Kong Design Institute
3 King Ling Road,
Tseung Kwan O,
N.T., Hong Kong
http://reach.hermanmillerasia.com/

House at Herman Miller Japan
Opening Reception: October 27, 2011
Herman Miller Japan Showroom
Marunouchi MY PLAZA
2-1-1, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 100-0005, Japan
http://www.hermanmiller.co.jp/

information courtesy of House Industries

Age 103 And Still Designing. The Life & Work Of Legend Eva Zeisel.

above: Eva Zeisel, 2009, photos courtesy of Talisman Photo

103 year old Eva Zeisel continues to amaze. The Hungarian born designer just doesn't stop. In addition to being an enormous talent, she has a life story as interesting as her work.

She was born Eva Amalia Stricker on November 13th to Alexander and Laura Polanyi Stricker. At the age of 17 she enrolled in the Royal Academy Of Fine Arts, intent on becoming a painter, but was convinced by her mother to try a trade at which she could earn money. She then began apprenticing as a potter. In 1925, she started her own pottery on her family estate. In 1927 she moved to Hamburg Germany, where she worked at Hansa Kunstkeramic for 6 months.

In 1932, she visited Russia for the first time. She worked at the Lomonosov Manufactory designing dinnerware and at the Artistic Laboratory of the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory (the former Imperial Porcelain Factory) in Leningrad.



By 1935 she was the artistic director of the Glass and China Industries in Moscow, Russia. It was soon after, in 1936, that the talented Stricker was falsely accused of being part of a conspiracy to kill Josef Stalin and imprisoned in Russia for 16 months, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Upon her 1937 release from prison (without explanation), she was put on a train to Vienna where she was met by relatives. In 1938 she married her second husband, Hans Zeisel in England (her first marriage was to physicist Alexander Weissberg and was dissolved). Soon after marrying Zeisel, they both moved to new York.

In 1939, she created the first department of ceramic arts industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she taught until 1952.


above: Eva Zeisel in 1940 with student work at Pratt. Image courtesy of Pratt.
above image courtesy of Eva Zeisel Archives

She then went on to design iconic pieces for Chantal, Sears, Red Wing Pottery, Hall China Company, Watt Pottery, H. Heisey and more. You can still find many of her vintage pieces at the Orange Chicken Gallery.

At the impressive age of 103, she is still actively designing. She has current collections of ceramics and silk-screened prints for Klein Reid, Classic Century ceramics and One O One earthenware for Royal Stafford, the re-issued Granit collection for Design Within Reach, pens, pen holder and card holder designs for Acme, hand blown glassware collections for Gumps , glassware, aluminum and more for Nambé, exclusive China pieces for various galleries, and a furniture line, and most recently a collection of three Tibetan wool rugs for The Rug Company.



above photos courtesy of Talisman photo

Eve Zeisel Glassware for Gumps:


Exclusives for the Neue gallerie:
Fine bone china Baby feeder:

Porcelain painted Icebox pitchers:


Eva Zeisel for Royal Stafford


One O One:


Eva Zeisel for Klein Reid:



Eva Zeisel for Nambé:




Eva Zeisel Originals (furniture and more):





Eva Zeisel for Design Within Reach:

Granit tableware:


Eve Zeisel For The Rug Company:

Fish and Lacy X:



Her work is included in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including MoMA, the Met and the V&A. In 2005, she was awarded the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice little interview with Eva Zeisel here.

Special thanks to the Eva Zeisel forum for additional information and links.

Lovegrove & Repucci's Sense of Humor Matches Their Products

I've long been a fan of the tongue-in-cheek creative design duo, Nicholas Lovegrove & Demian Repucci. Having posted their Concerto Table, their deliciously delightful New York Delft Collection plates and their fun and funky Fido bag on several social shopping sites as well as on my own lists at thisnext.com over the past 2 years, I was tickled to see their latest "ad" for their New York Delft Dinnerware.



New York Delft Tableware:

The classic tradition of Dutch Delft craftsmanship hits the streets of New York City. Presenting the ‘New York Delft’ Porcelain dinnerware collection. Each place setting is made of fine porcelain and has five pieces; a dinner plate, side plate, soup bowl, cup and saucer.
$100 five piece place setting

cup and saucer is also sold separately for $20.

The Concerto Table (combo ipod docking station, desk and dinnertable)


specs:
Dimensions: 70”x58”x29”
Electronics: Apple AV Connection Kit with remote control, compatible with all iPods
Speakers: 2 x 50watt two-way speakers, 6.5’ x 1”
Amplification: 130watt
Materials: Finish plywood, poplar, stainless steel
Finishes: Bright white or black high gloss enamel
Price: $14000usd + shipping


The Fido Bag:


Vinyl bag with nylon inner lining. Detachable 'head' bag for carrying keys, cards, phone or other valuables. Also in brown or black. And on sale right now.

They describe their work as follows: Lovegrove & Repucci’s work focuses on the emotional response and experiential relationships created through contact with the designed environment. Encompassing product and furniture design, brand design,interior and graphic design and fashion, we continue to produce provocative design solutions for our clients as well as for the Lovegrove & Repucci collection.

You can purchase the above items here.

More of Lovegrove & Repucci’s work can be found at:
www.lifeobject.com
www.demianrepucci.com
www.neurothetic.com
www.restaurantism.com

All Aalto, All the Time: Finds Inspired By Alvar Aalto

Above: Alvar Aalto's "Savoy Vase"designed in 1936 and is still inspiring products today.

I've always been a fan of Alvar Aalto's classic web furniture and wonderful vases. Since his death, many things have been inspired by the famous "Savoy" vase shape of his design.

And here are just a few.

Just click on any of the items below and you'll be directed to their place of purchase

See more of my It's All About Aalto! list at ThisNext.

About Alvar Aalto:

Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland. He studied architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology from 1916 to 1921. He returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened his first architectural office in 1923. The following year he married architect Aino Marsio. Their honeymoon journey to Italy sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the Mediterranean region that was to remain important to Aalto for the rest of his life. Aalto moved his office to Turku in 1927, and started collaborating with architect Erik Bryggman. The office moved again in 1933, to Helsinki. The Aaltos designed and built a joint house-office (1935-36) for themselves in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, but later (1954-55) had a purpose-built office built in the same neighbourhood. Aino Aalto died in 1949 and in 1952 he married architect Elissa Mäkiniemi (died 1994). In 1957 they designed and had built a summer cottage, the so-called Experimental House, for themselves in Muuratsalo, where they spent their summers. Alvar Aalto died in May 11, 1976, in Helsinki.


Above: Early portrait of Alvar Aalto

Although sometimes regarded as the first and the most influential architects of Nordic modernism, a closer examination of the historical facts reveals how Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius. But what they and many others of that generation in the Nordic countries had in common was that they started off from a classical education and were first designing in the so-called Nordic Classicism style before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism.

In Aalto's case this is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (1927-35), which went through a transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-modernist building. His humanistic approach is in full evidence there: the interior displays natural materials, warm colours, and undulating lines. The Viipuri Library project lasted eight years, and during that same time he also designed the Turun Sanomat Building (1929-30) and Paimio Sanatorium (1929-33): thus the Turun Sanomat Building first heralded Aalto's move towards modernism, and this was then carried forward both in the Paimio Sanatorium and in the on-going design for the library. But though the Turun Sanomat Building and Paimio Sanatorium are comparatively pure modernist works, even they carried the seeds of his questioning of such an approach and a move to a more daring, synthetic attitude.

above: Alvar and his wife, Aino

Aalto was a member of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne; attending the second congress in Frankfurt in 1929, and the fourth congress in Athens in 1933. It was not until the completion of the Paimio Sanatorium (1929) and Viipuri Library (1935) that he first achieved world attention in architecture. His reputation grew in the USA following the critical reception of his design for the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, described by Frank Lloyd Wright as a "work of genius".

It could be said that Aalto's reputation was sealed with his inclusion in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion's influential book on Modernist architecture, Space, Time and Architecture. The growth of a new tradition (1949), in which Aalto received more attention than any other Modernist architect, including Le Corbusier. In his analysis of Aalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functionality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even 'national characteristics', declaring that "Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes".

Aalto's awards included the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects (1957) and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects

For More About Alvar Aalto or Aalto products and design, see the links below:
Wikipedia
Buy Aalto vases and products
The Alvar Aalto Museum
Aalto's Architecture
More info and products from Scandanavian Design
Design Museum info