There Is No Cat

Modern Design

Laura and I are considering remodeling our bedroom in a modern, 1950s-style design, so I’ve been wandering through some of the web sites out there that show this kind of stuff. I’ve found that I really love the work of Charles and Ray Eames and of Alexander Girard. Maharam Textiles has reissued a lot of their work, along with that of several other designers from that era. They’ve got a neat Flash presentation showing the fabrics and some information about the designers. Because their whole site is done in Flash, I can’t point directly to it, but you’ll need to scroll over the "menu" at right, click on "Featured Textiles", and then on "Textiles of the 20th Century". I love all of the fabrics that Ray Eames designed that are shown there, but particularly "Dot Pattern", which I think would make some kick-ass curtains. Girard’s "Millerstripe", "Quatrefoil", and "Jacob’s Coat" are particularly striking as well, as are George Nelson’s "Chinashop" and "Pavement". Girard’s fabrics are also well-represented at the site of his official representation, Maximo Design. The Eames’ fabrics are available from the Eames Office site. The stuff is expensive, $80/yard on Eames Office, so we may not actually use it (we’ve got some ideas of our own to do similar things), but it’s interesting to look at everything to see what we like. But the Eames Store site is the cheapest one I found on this stuff. RetroModern charges $95/yard for this stuff.

Eames Office is consistently cheaper than RetroModern on the stuff that both carry, but RetroModern seems to have more stuff. None of this stuff is cheap, unfortunately. But we may splurge on one or two pieces. I particularly like Ferruccio’s Orbital Floor Lamp, for example. The multi-color version they show is really striking. I did see a few things that were more reasonably priced at Design Within Reach when I could get through to their site earlier today. They’ve got a few storefronts in New York City, so maybe we’ll poke our heads in their next time we’re in the city.

One site that’s nice to look at even if pretty much everything is beyond our budget is the MoMA Store. They have pillows made with some of the fabrics I mentioned above, for example; not sure I want to spend $135 on a pillow, but they’re there if we want them.

One place that seems more reasonable in their prices is House Pop Culture Artifacts. They make some interesting ottomans among the tchotchkes they list for sale.

We were out at some of the home decor stores over the long New Years’ weekend, including Home Depot’s Expo Design Center and Sears Roebucks’ The Great Indoors. It seemed like damned near everything they had was aimed at designing for 18th century Italy or 19th century France. Bored me to tears. Laura even noticed that the two stores carried the same artwork. Bleah. I think when it comes to art, we’ll make our own.

Posted at 12:31 AM