THE MENDOTA COLLECTION @ ICFF2013

MENDOTA

This post is begging to be brief. The introduction of a new line of furniture is exhausting if nothing else. Rick and I have survived day one of the fair too tired to make the Saturday night party, overjoyed to be sinking out heads into 1200 count Egyptian cotton pillowcases, and looking forward to dreams devoid of anxiety.

So keeping to my promise of brevity here's a series of pics taking our booth from nothing to magnificent.

Almost done

THE GALLERY

Woman as a Lamp

Rodney Smith, photographer

Represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC

ITALY AND ICFF

GRADITUDE

 There's always a breeze slipping up the hill rippling over the vineyard and zigzagging through the cypress trees that stand like sentries along the dirt road leading up to the farm in Armena.  For many years we've been blessed to find a low enough gear on our rental car to chug us up the hill to Fattoria Armena, high up in the Tuscan hills where we've taken our holidays on over a half dozen trips. A week here isn't enough. We always take two. Each year we've arrived cementing the bond  with the place and the people we share our vacation with. We've now sent groups of friends and brought relatives to Stefania and Alessandro Saraceni's beautiful villa and each visit I've recorded in a scrapbook. It's the gratitude for this opportunity that I'm sharing as we make our reservations for a trip six years in the making. It's been a long time, we've all grown, and aged and moved on, but the pull of this Tuscan haven will always tug at our hearts.

 SCRAPBOOKS

 I'm not sure if scrapbooking is too Martha Stewart or too the women who think they are Martha Stewart. This whole scrapbooking thing has become a cottage industry if one can call an entire area in your local hobby shop devoted to decals, borders, and bedazzling paraphernalia for putting together memory books a cottage industry. I hope I 've taken a different tact.

I've always collected things on every vacation we've taken: a book of matches here, a brochure there, a napkin from a restaurant where we had a spectacular meal. I'd come home with a bundle of ephemera wrapped in a rubber band and then not knowing what to do with it. I don't know if the idea came to me first or I stole the idea from seeing Martha do it but the scrapbooking idea seemed the perfect means for finding a home for all the things I'd collected from places I never thought I'd actually get to see.
Here are a few of my tips for putting together a scrapbook:

1. Don't buy a themed book with some designer's idea of what your vacation should look like. It may seem the easier way. You might tell yourself you're not talented enough to do it on your own, but no matter how rough around the edges it might be, it'll be truly your own. Buy a beautiful blank book and your set. Buy one with a marbleized cover and everyone will think you're a pro.

2. Don't be afraid to take a picture of a beautiful meal. Food is one of the biggest memories of a trip to somewhere you've never been before. There are so many entrees in our adventures whose presentation has been worthy of a photograph. It makes it so much easier to explain the appeal to everyone at home when you can show them a photo of what you ate before you ate it. A pizza lunch may not have been the most elegant of meals but when your sister's bad Italian ended up with ordering a pizza for everyone at the table a photo of the gluttony was an absolute necessity

3. I've been known to soak off the label of a great bottle of wine whose name I wouldn't have had a chance of remembering without the aid of a slightly tattered label.

4. Never rely on the first photo you take when you're doing pictures of little Ricky and all your friends at the local gelateria. It's always that second or third shot when they drop their frozen smiles and relax into a more candid and animated pose.

5. Bring a set of colored pencils and little sketchpad along with you. I'm hearing everyone out there saying, "but I can't even draw a straight line." First, no one needs to draw a straight line, in fact the more crooked and varied the line the more interesting the line will be. Then don't draw what intimidates you. Draw a beautiful door, a bowl of figs, the best slice of pizza you've ever had. Don't judge what you've done. Appreciate that it's yours.









ICFF

If you're in New York between May 18-21 please stop by the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Center and see our newest furniture line, The Mendota Collection, for Black Wolf Design. Designed by Rick Shaver and Lee Melahn for the Wisconsin firm, Black Wolf Design

THE GALLERY

Nel bulo di un temporale - Assisi, 1967
Elio Ciol, photographer
Contact: elio@eliociol.it

THE MOST EXPENSIVE RETAIL STREET IN NEW YORK CITY

BLEEKER STREET

Who knew there was so much money in a cupcake. The stretch of Bleeker Street between Christopher Street and Eighth Avenue has out stripped Bond Street in London and The Champs-Elysees in Paris as one of the most expensive retail streets in the world.

Only some locations on Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue have been able to command a higher price tag than the $6,700 per square foot tag that now hangs on the merchant doors that line Bleeker Street.

The street has become home to big names in the fashion industry, names like Michael Kors, Cynthia Rowley, Marc Jacob

and Ralph Lauren all have shingles facing the street with their names subtly displayed.

Ostentation never appears where real money exists. Let this be a lesson to you Donald Trump.

On this toney stretch of real estate you'll see fashion displayed at its most provocative.

You'll see coach bags displayed with price tags larger than a descent used car

and even the shops for kids exceed the price of a three-course meal with beverages for a birthday party for your seven year-old and thirty of her best friends at your local Applebees.

The draw at the end of the street is still the Magnolia Bakery where the tour buses line up and the Japanese get out with their cameras to take a picture under the awning at 410 Bleeker.

If you go to this swank little area you should also tour the side streets for some of the quaintest architecture New York has to offer.

When I first moved to the city the West Village was still filled with reasonable real estate and an abundance of hippie culture to go along with it.

The  village still retains its quirkiness but the price tag is way more silk and cashmere than cotton and denim. 

THE JEFFERSON MARKET GARDENS

It's one of the most famous corners in New York City, the intersection of Greenwich, Christopher and Sixth. Shooting Gothic towers to the sky, Jefferson Market, designed by Calvert Vaux and Clarke Withers in 1877

provides the shade and a romantic red brick background for one of Manhattan's most beautiful gardens.

The Jefferson Market Garden now blooms on the site of the former New York Women's House of Detention, a building built adjacent to the market and fittingly torn down so that flowers could grow where previously women had been incarcerated in inhuman facilities.

No longer do you hear the sounds of wailing women screaming from the windows of the jail to people walking below or waiting to hear messages from the loved ones shouting words of longing from the street.

Now beauty prevails where the crumbling house of detention stood.

Glamourous people now sit on benches ringed in tulips reading novels of mystery and squirrels have taken over from the rats take once ruled the street.

THE GALLERY

Ruggiero's Fish Market, 235 Bleeker, 1965

Robert Otter, photographer

Contact at: info@robertotter.com

TRANQUILITY

SERENITY

Two things happened this past week to inspire this week's post: one was client inspired and the other was media driven. 

Hokkaido, Japan, 2002

Michael Kenna, Photographer

Represented by  Robert Mann Gallery, NYC

CLIENT

Having a client who is all about serenity is a pleasure as long as the client is serene as well. This client has fulfilled that blend of having a soothing design aesthetic stretching our awareness of element and detail and at the same time allowing us the opportunity to begin designing a space that has energy and interest within that soothing envelope. For this we needed to combine both eastern Zen and western sophistication into one cohesive mix. We're at the beginning of the design phase so I thought I'd share some of our inspiration

MEDIA

Once again our friends at House Beautiful have decided to include us as contributors to their color tip section. This month the issue centered around tranquility, They let us be the lead quote along with a picture of one of our designs, a design wrapped around the word: tranquil. 

THE GALLERY

Untitled #147, 2003

Masatomo Kuriya , photographer

Represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, NYC