Design Stuff

Designed with natural materials, wood bathroom vanity from Mariner can add unique touch to your bathroom.

More pics : Wood Bathroom Vanity from Mariner 

The Valley of Fear, out on 20th March, compiles illustrations by a forgotten ‘great Londoner’: Austin Osman Spare.

If you’ve never heard of him, don’t worry—most people haven’t. And yet, to a small band of collectors he’s one of the jewels in the capital’s treasure house.

This little-known hero, who in his early life was fêted by the critics and gallery owners of the West End, used the method of automatic drawing 20 years before Salvador Dali and refused a request to paint Hitler’s portrait. A ‘realist’ (although it may stretch the definition a bit), who was admired for his fine line and technical ability.

However what captured everyone’s attention, fascinated some and repelled others, was the content—a daemonic vision of weird and eldritch landscapes populated by equally bizarre figures, some human, some animal some both. His work portrayed a dark sexuality with a highly seductive primal charge.

Born in 1886, within baying distance of Smithfield’s market, and later moving to Kennington, the young Austin was employed designing stained glass windows. When only 14, one of his drawings was selected by the RA for exhibition. The critics pursued him and the machinery of the art world, which sought to force its norms upon him, triggered a deep repugnance in the fledgling artist.

He fled south of the river again, like that other visionary William Blake with whom he was to be compared, to preserve the authenticity of his deeply idiosyncratic work. Moving between Lambeth and Southwark he died in a basement tenement just off Brixton Hill in 1956.

But Austin Spare was no morbid melancholic. Those who knew him describe a down to earth compassionate man with great vitality and humour. He worked like a ‘man possessed’ turning out a huge body of work, some quite literally on the back of cigarette packets.

“It’s likely Spare borrowed the title `The Valley of Fear’ from the Sherlock Holmes short story of the same name, first published in 1914. Our artist seems to have employed it as a metaphor for personal crisis.” says Robert Ansell, Director of Fulgur.

“Remember too he was completely out of step with the art world by 1924, because after WWI public taste had shifted towards more optimistic styles and subjects. He must have felt very isolated—a faded star if you like.”

Much of Spare’s work is divorced from the world around him; unashamedly so. His interior world was an overpopulated metropolis without any apparent end, self-sufficient. As Michael Staley, a collector of many years put it

"Spare’s art has great beauty and diversity. More than that, though, it carries a powerful charge, adumbrating the perpetual transformation of form which springs from the dynamic heart of existence—what Spare termed the Besz-Mass."

In a world which extols style over content and deifies the superficial perhaps this is why Austin Osman Spare is becoming a focus of increasing interest.

“Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. You are still in great company.”

Source : londonist

Leading the architecture - especially about Lounge - maybe the right word for Architonic. The exotic touching design of Tobias Wallisser and Chris Bosse inspired by arctic slabs of ice and provided the setting for a party to celebrate architectural materials Architonic’s fifth birthday. The Lounge has been created in international cooperation with the firms of SIX INCH, Belgium, Global Membrane Designs (Australia) and Bertrandt AG, Germany. The decoration style taking of arctic glacier landscape and it’s sharp edges in a darkly gleaming sea of ice. The atmospheric project of this design is suitable for the company that want invite their customer excited

Source :  Modern and Futuristic Lounge Design by Tobias Wallisser and Chris Bosse

The WRS basin was born to minimize the water scarcity problem that will be present to us in the near future. The observation of our “daily little tasks” made me identify small mistakes that an individual does each time, every time, in a consistent basis and that can be changed, re-educated in our life, make things work right again.

The main concept of the basin is to divide the water we use daily and to reuse it. For instance, as we wait for the water to heat up, we lose many liters of fresh, clean water to the sewer. Consisting of two reservoirs, with a simple touch we can direct this water to a chosen reservoir and use it later to water the plants and so forth. Each time a different water direction is selected; a valve mechanism opens the selected pipe and closes the remaining two. When the reservoirs are full, all water is directed to the global sewer system. The reservoirs can be replaced by empty ones, but only two can be attached to the basin at a time.

Source : Water Reuse System 

These marbles were made in the mid 1990s from recycled cathedral glass brought to Champion from Wissmuch Glass, a flat glass manufacture in Paden City, WV

Pics : marbles 

ow is this for skin care advertising? French health and beauty company Ella Bache created this larger than life sculpture in Sydney, Australia’s First Fleet Park. It was made with over 24,000 peaches to look like Australian acress, Jolene Anderson.

The sculpture was created to capitalize on the brand’s tag line: Skin Good Enough to Eat. It’s been said that the peaches are not real, but either way it’s impressive.

Pics : peaches lady