design-phan

Collab, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s modern design group, has announced 2011′s Design Excellence Award winner will be Zaha Hadid, she of the grand/muscular/organic lines and the first female recipient in 2004 of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. (Incidentally Collab’s award is more egalitarian—Florence Knoll-Bassett, Maya Lin, and Denise Scott Brown are past recipients.)

This means Hadid will come to Philadelphia next November to accept the award and will work with the Museum’s curators to design an exhibition for the Perelman Building’s modern design gallery. Choosing a few of Hadid’s pieces to feature is tough as she works in so many areas, but here are two favorites:

The Eco-Pavilion she designed for Chicago’s Burnham Plan Centennial in 2009 is made of fabric stretched over an aluminum frame and looks like a human cocoon. James and the Giant Peach, anyone? I love a good juxtaposition and this pod against a backdrop of skyscrapers is especially pleasing.

A door handle isn’t the sexiest choice, but look at this beauty. It’s positively vibratory. Hadid designed the Series ZH Door Handles in 2007 for the rooms on her floor at the Puerta American Hotel in Madrid.

Here’s what Donna Karan has to say about Hadid in Time’s 100 Influential Thinkers issue and some photos from the architect/designer’s recent exhibitions:

“Zaha Hadid and Suprematism,” Zurich’s Gallerie Gmurzynska, July 2010.

“Zaha Hadid: Fluidity and Design,” Shaikh Ebrahim Center, Bin Matar House; Bahrain, March 2010.

“Zaha Hadid: Bienalle di Architettura Barbara Cappochin,” Padua, Italy, 2009.

Can’t wait to see how this develops!

‘Tis the season to publish and peruse gift guides. I picked five home and design gifts for the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s guide, which ran on Thanksgiving Day. Here’s how it looked:

My favorite in that assortment is Good Little Piggy by Materious, a design duo in Chicago. One half of the duo (Bruce Tharp) grew up in Exton and attended Downingtown High School. (Hip hip hooray for local ties!) Here’s a closer look at Good Little Piggy, a sweet mama and baby bank combo that teaches kids philanthropy.

Some more gift ideas from today’s LifeStyle column on host(ess) gifts:

Olive Oil Dipping Dishes by Mary Judge ($20 each), inspired by the terraced olive groves of Italy — these are sold at Judge’s alma mater, the Art Shop at Moore.

And yet another Safran-Turney venture, the We Heart Philly line of locally inspired merch includes this nifty wine tote for $18 that can be found at both Verde and Open House.

And this weekend, find beautiful gifts made locally and pay homage to paper at:
Book Paper Scissors
Paper-based Art and Craft (handmade paper and books, paper sculpture, jewelry, prints, etc.)
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine Street
10 AM – 4 PM

Some might call Beth Beverly, proprietress of Diamond Tooth Taxidermy, a strange bird for creating a hat so lifelike it looks like a squirrel is attacking the wearer’s head. Others might say her work makes total sense in this time and place, when the craze for Victoriana/the cabinet of curiosities/natural history is as strong as ever. Taxidermy has had a presence in the art world for some time, and the art and design worlds influence each other …. but blah, blah, blah, as much as I love attempting to put a design object in context, my first reaction to Beverly’s work was visceral, not intellectual.

[Photos by chriskendig.com]

I couldn’t look away. That’s partly because she made a hat that looks like a squirrel’s attacking the wearer’s head, but I think it’s also because she’s clearly a master of her craft and an unlikely one at that. Though I’ve never (that I know of) met a taxidermist, I’m guessing Beverly, 32, doesn’t fit the taxidermist mold. Check out this video of her modeling the squirrel hat in the Ladies Hat Contest at the recent Devon Dressage Show. (The ladies who lunch ate it up.)

Beverly was kind enough to answer some questions about herself and her line of custom headwear:

DP: What first sparked your interest in taxidermy?
BB: Honestly, I kept finding all these birds on the street that had flown into buildings and died. I thought they were so beautiful and I wanted to preserve that instead of letting them just decay on the sidewalk, so that’s how it all started. [Note: Beverly is an animal lover, and all of her specimens are sourced humanely and ethically.]

DP: Which came first — your desire to design headwear or your desire to practice taxidermy? And when did the two interests meet?
BB: I’ve always loved headwear — hats, combs, clips, anything. As a child I fashioned my own hair extensions by gluing brightly colored yarn to barrettes. Along with that, I was making things as soon as I had the motor skills to do so and I’ve always wanted art to be functional, which is where the hats come in. Wearing art on the head seemed to be the path of least resistance, fashion-wise. It can be rather cumbersome to carry on at a party with a pheasant or squirrel on one’s hip, shoulder or chest…the head seems to be the only sensible location for complex pieces like the ones I’ve created and aspire to create. My obsession with headwear is far from unique, however: The human race has been using crowns, tiaras, etc, to distinguish themselves since as early as 300 B.C. when the Egyptian Pharaohs were donning horns and feathers on their heads. I can’t explain it, but I know I’m far from alone.

[Photos by chriskendig.com]

DP: What inspires you?
BB: I tend to be most inspired by images. I save any page from a magazine that strikes my fancy, or watch certain movies over and over to wrap my head around something that may move me. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Grey Gardens, and Funny Face are three films that have heavily inspired my aesthetic. As for what actually comes to fruition, I’ve amassed such a large collection of trinkets and treasures that it becomes a matter of fitting one part with another. If the piece is a commission for a client, I do have some guidelines. I try to imagine that person — how she moves her head, the way she carries herself, and just where on the spectrum her sense of humor/style falls.

DP: What did you find most challenging about attending The Pocono Institute of Taxidermy?
BB: While I was in school, my life as I knew it was essentially on hold. I spent entire days interacting with no one but my instructor and the one other student. I lived alone in a cottage house with no TV and no Internet access, seeing my husband and friends only on the weekends. There was one very lonely birthday spent drinking White Russians by myself and writing in my journal. I didn’t know it at the time, but all those hours spent in silence, completely alone with my thoughts or a book and no distractions, accelerated my personal growth in ways I would never have imagined. At the time though, I was just kind of homesick and sad.

DP: What are the pros/cons to being a designer/artist/small business owner in Philadelphia?
BB: Philadelphia is a great city for someone in the creative industry as it’s easy to sustain yourself, your work, and have some quality of life. There’s also a vast network of creative people here who start their own businesses, and the feeling I get is that the general public really supports it. The con would be all the taxes!

Custom headpieces range from $200 to $400 and can be ordered through Diamond Tooth Taxidermy.

My Hannukah Hero — no, not Hannukah Harry but rather he of the happiest, most chic menorahs, vases, salt and pepper shakers, and needlepoint pillows…. you got it, Mr. Jonathan Adler is opening up shop in the old Foster’s space at 33 N. 3rd Street in mid-December. That’s, like, two weeks!!!

My heart. It bursts.

Hannukah starts at sundown on Wednesday. Is your menorah ready? Have you dug out all eight nights’ worth of wax from last year’s holiday? If you don’t have one that you love or if you need a second or third lamp, consider former Philadelphian Josh Owen’s new Menorah for Areaware ($150). There’s tension between its spare silhouette and its material, cast iron, which brings to my mind the warmth of the kitchen. It’s for sale at the gift shop at the new National Museum of Jewish American History on Independence Mall.

I’ve juxtaposed Owen’s modern menorah with a sterling silver replica of an early 18th century lamp, one of the earliest examples of a menorah meant for home use. The master silversmith who created it topped it with Judith and decorated the branches with various animals. This menorah is for use with oil only and can be yours for $6,950.

Collab’s Student Design Competition is an annual opportunity for Philadelphia’s industrious industrial design students. (See my post about last year’s winner.) This year’s competition was tied to the exhibit, Alessi: Ethical and Radical, and to Alberto Alessi, the winner of Collab’s 2010 Design Excellence Award. Students were charged to come up with a tabletop accessory set targeted to the American market that contains at least 4 pieces and is mass reproducible.

They were also asked to consider what Alessi believes: that “…design is a new form of art and poetry but with the strange destiny of bringing a little bit of joy to people.” (These two recent Q&A’s with Alessi, from Fast Company and the New York Times, shed more light on his point of view.)

For this year’s competition, the judges included Harry Allen; Carla Diana; and Richard Kratchman, an owner of Kitchen Kapers.

Winners were announced last week. Here are my favorites:

Segno by Candace Foster, Drexel University (1st Honorable Mention) — a serving dish set that stores beautifully.

Rose Breakfast Coffee Set by Jae S. Rhee, Pratt Institute (recognized by the judges but did not receive an award) — a beautiful little set, curly and somewhat girly. Each piece is a petal in the flower.

Tuning Fork Table Top Set by Jae Ho Seo, Rochester Institute of Technology (2nd Honorable Mention) — no choice but to play with your food, or at least with your utensils.

And the judges’ top three included two cruet sets and an olive oil and vinegar dipping dish:

mOrf by Abigail WIlkinson, Pratt (3rd Prize) — Each vessel’s form and functionality (how it pours, shakes and is refilled) is defined by what it holds.

Saladwerks by Kevin Greenland, University of the Arts (2nd Prize) — tabletop architecture that tips its hat to the industrial past.

Flow by James Read Hughes, University of the Arts (1st Prize) — The relief pattern at the base of each dish reveals itself once the liquid is poured.

Congrats to these talented students for creating pieces that ranged, as Drexel prof Roberta Gruber, the organizer of the competition, says, “from the minimal to the magical, whimsical to poetic, and colorful to occasionally musical … yet always functional! And all wonderfully creative.”

Alessi: Ethical and Radical opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday. Alberto Alessi, in town over the weekend to receive the Design Excellence Award from Collab, walked a posse of press, collectors, and FoD’s (friends of the designer) through the exhibit on Friday. He started by explaining the name, which signifies the company’s intentions to pursue two poles: trying to be more ethical with their new simplicity and more radical by being free toward the expressiveness of the designers.

The Perelman’s modern design gallery has been segmented into a long, narrow entryway and a main, boxy space. The former features a towering, cartoon-like exhibit map by Alessandro Mendini much like the one below. Opposite the map, the Alessi family history is illustrated with foto famiglia.

Around the corner, Alessi objects from 1945 to today bob in a sea of white. The kitchen and tabletop icons—Phillippe Stark’s Juicy Salif citrus squeezer and Michael Graves’ and Richard Sapper’s tea kettles—are always fun to see, especially within a historical context. A highlight of Alessi’s tour was when he picked up Sapper’s kettle and played its E-B whistle like a harmonica. Another was his heartfelt thanks to Robert Venturi for being there.

But the exhibit’s main draw is the two vitrines that run down the gallery’s center. One showcases the Tea and Coffee Piazza of 1983 and the other, the Tea and Coffee Towers of 2003. In the well-known “experiment” of 1983, Alessi asked 11 architects, including Venturi, to design services. He repeated the experiment in 2003 with 22 architects.

The juxtaposition of designs from 1983 and 2003 speaks to the evolution in methods and materials that occurred over two decades. The 1983 sets are silver. The 2003 sets are made from, among other materials, titanium and thermoplastic resin. Greg Lynn’s, pictured above, looks like the tea service interpretation of a Georgia O’Keefe flower painting. (The clarity of function—which is the creamer and which is the sugar in Lynn’s design?—clearly became less important.)

Gladly the exhibit is up until April 10th—that’s plenty of time to revisit the exhibit, to continue to compare ’83 and ’03 and to daydream about the possibilities for ’23.

What better time for this blog to groan back to life than on the eve of Alessi: Ethical and Radical, opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this Sunday (press preview tonight, woohoo!) and with news of a favorite designer’s launch?

I wrote about e bond and her roughdrAft books when she debuted her website in 2009. As of earlier this month, shoppers nationwide can find her series, 1000 Books, on sale at actual brick-and-mortar (!) Anthropologie locations. E, who worked at Anthropologie until recently and is behind the handhewn look of that retailer’s website, populated her new series with four different looks from her “exposed” line. She painted and printed directly onto the cover of each, and each is numbered, much like a series of prints.

E encourages buyers to email her (roughdraftshares@gmail.com) to let her know which number they bought and what they think. Bond has already received an email from a fan in Miami and one from a David in York, England, who bought #623. The books cost $24.

A final word, not so much Philly-related, but I just received a fabulous Balloon Necklace from NYC-based design duo Design Glut. I bought the necklace as part of a pledge toward financing their new jewelry line via Kickstarter. I’m sure I’m behind the times and you all know about Kickstarter already but I didn’t (I blame it on the baby. Blame everything on the baby.) and it seems like a genius idea for small businesses trying to finance a new project. Design Glut’s campaign is over but you can still check out the details here. So, Philly small design businesses, consider getting kickstarted. Happy weekend!

I’m taking a break to hang out with this little one. Thanks for your patience — I plan to start posting again in the fall!

{photo by Julia Lehman-McTigue/Vision 13}