KLiP is a tea brewer with a few revisions. Designer Joel Bebo realized that using traditional brewers to steep his loose tea always meant he had to dirty a saucer when his drink was done steeping. As a remedy to the problem, he built a brewer that comes equipped with a built-in saucer to catch any extra water and hangs on the wall of his mug to allow for easy taste-testing during brewing. The KLiP brewer reached its Kickstarter funding goal incredibly early, but if you like the idea, you can order one from his campaign until the beginning of April.
The Los Angeles gem known as Otherwild has a new location. The hybrid retail space and graphic design studio run by Rachel Berks and Marisa Suárez-Orozco opened last year in the thick of tourist mania on Hollywood and Highland. The first incarnation was a brave move for such an earthy outfit. But the new Echo Park location with neon sign suits it much better. On a block that's both tranquil and a bit rough around the edges, the new Otherwild is stocked like a cool kids clubhouse.
Inside, Otherwild has a laid-back witchy vibe balanced with a healthy dose of modern neons and iridescent plastics. The curated selections ride the line between art and craft. There is much to see here. From cast porcelain containers that feel like a nod to Rachel Whiteread, to swirly enamel rings gripping enormous chunks of pyrite, to that white neon Shangri-LA sign, these girls have an eye for simple beauty and West Coast style. The main criteria for what is sold here seems to be a solid belief in the pieces on the shelves and a desire to support the artisans that make the work. Otherwild feels like the kind of place that actually inspires real gift-giving, because everything here is so intimate and genuine.
The space itself serves as a great backdrop for the work in the store, with a hand-stripped wall and textured floor that give the whole place a warm and lived-in feeling. Dazzling smiles and the prettiest dog on the block welcomed us in; we were offered tea and were left to happily touch every single thing in the store with the most casual of chatter. It shouldn't be a surprise, therefore, that social events are a big part of Otherwild as well. Meanwhile, the graphic design studio operates at full steam, offering services that range from wedding invitations to web design. One gets the feeling that with a simple ask these ladies would be available to dive into whatever project presents itself.
Otherwild's new shop is open at 1932 Echo Park Ave, Los Angeles, CA.
Studio photos by Cullen Stephenson
Paper engineer Matthew Shlian designs fancy packaging for big name brands, works on origami projects for the National Science Foundation, and, lucky for us, creates limited-edition compositions for the Ghostly Store.
He's just issued Apophenia Formations in a limited edition of 25 pieces to each of the four compositions for a total of 100 pieces. It's available now in the Ghostly Store.
What's Apophenia all about? It means "the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data" according to Shlian, who we will take at his word as he's a professor.
Repurposing skateboard decks as electric guitars seems so obvious and natural that we can't believe we haven't seen it before, perhaps in an old Bones Brigade video. These days, it is Buenos Aires artist Ezequiel Galasso's company Skate Guitar which turns torn-up seven-ply wooden skateboard decks into the bodies of new guitars. They look super to our eyes and sound pretty nice from what we can hear in the videos. We hope to see them soon on the JFA reunion tour.
Juniper Ridge wants to help hikers smell better while they're out on the trail. Actually, it wants to help them when they're at home too. The company's mission is to create fragrances that transport the wearer to different regions: the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, or the Desert Southwest, by using ingredients sustainably collected in each area and processed minimally using pre-industrial technology such as juicers, retired whiskey stills, and steam. The Juniper Ridge range of products is considerably offbeat too: solid perfume, a line of room sprays, incense for your campfire, and a trail soap that comes in both castille and bar form.
If we told you there was a mammoth underground bunker in Pennsylvania's Iron Mountain built to withstand a nuclear attack, you might believe us. If we told you the former limestone mine also happen to hold 1.7 million square feet of archives, including master tapes for Sinatra, Elvis, and Glen Miller as well as original prints of E.T., that might not even bother you. If we told that heavily armed guards kept watch over it all, including the massive, photographic, physical Corbis archive, you should actually believe that, too. We were skeptical at first, but it's true. And it seems Sonic Editions and Impossible Cool author Sean Sullivan teamed up to visit the mythic archive and pull some of the greatest and not-often-seen images for another installment in The Impossible Cool Collection. So today, you don't need security clearance to see The Greatest driving a bus, you can buy the photo and hang it on your wall.
It takes a certain panache to decorate a tiny urban pad. We live in New York City and store our shoes in the stove—we get it. And Parisian designer Philippine Lemaire gets it, too. Her convertible Itisy Table for Ligne Roset is nothing short of well-polished functionalism. Flexible segments cut out of three of four table tops join and rotate around each other to create a variety of configurations from a circular clustered dining table to a linear form suited to display. Available in American walnut or sawn oak, each top is stabilized by two solid oak legs that extend from a grey lacquer-coated stem at the joint. Those of us stateside will have to wait until June to get our mitts on the Itisy. By then, we hope to have cleared some extra space from our 500-square-foot glorified closet.
The Jónófón gramophone is a new project from Icelandic designer Jón Helgi Hólmgeirsson that recreates the phonograph, an early means of playing recorded music at home. For Hólmgeirsson, the design isn't just about the quality of the final product. He wanted to ship the Jónófón in a flat-pack, so the user learns about how the player actually works as they assemble it themselves. Therefore, he's made his gramophone out of paper. Hear what the Jónófón sounds like in the video below. [via TFIB]
English illustrator Brian Sanders, the veteran illustrator behind the new "Mad Men" promo that circulated earlier this week, took an interesting assignment in the late 1960s. After submitting some concept collages, Sanders was chosen to be the on-set illustrator during the filming of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Apparently Kubrick didn't want any cameras around that weren't his own during the production, so he compromised with the studio by allowing Sanders to paint and draw what he observed for two days a week.
See more of Sanders' work from the shoot on Today's Inspiration.
Read up on Sanders' "Mad Men" promo.
Constructed from a simple metal tube, bent just three times (for the handle and the spout) and soldered to a metal can, the x3 watering can is a stunner that still gets the job done. Its handle positions allow for carrying and pouring, which is basically what you want in a watering can. We tend to think, however, some x3s may never visit the garden, but rather take a place of prominence on the art object shelf.
x3 is $50 from kontextur.com