Preparing for his solo exhibition "Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design" clearly helped Marcel Wanders tackle, and defeat, his inner demons. We can find no other explanation for the transformation from the darkness of Moooi's 2013 Milan show to the lighter, happier, untroubled, feel of 2014's. The formats were and are essentially the same, both based around room contexts backdropped by large format photos of heavily stylised spaces, but whereas last year's presentation was a
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By way of an addendum to our "5 New Design Exhibitions for February 2014" post.... The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently showing "Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design", the first major retrospective of the work of Dutch designer Marcel Wanders. Presenting over 400 objects the exhibition promises to cover Marcel Wanders' complete career since the release of the Set Up Shades lamp in 1989 and in doing so present a chance to better understand the man, his thinking and his works.
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In the wake of our "warehouse" post we have received numerous emails along a similar vein: "It's OK for yous and your highly trained Eames Elephants; but how do we get our USM Haller furniture into our flat?" The simple answer - assuming you live in Germany - is "PREMIUM delivery" Under normal conditions the Schenker delivery crews are only allowed to deliver to the door of your building. It's a legal thing. With "PREMIUM delivery", however, for a small additional fee not only will the
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The last couple of days have seen an endless stream of emails into the (smow)blog bunker asking if we are OK. And if we're OK, why aren't we posting anything? Can't we be bothered? Are we bored? Have we finally be rumbled by the (smow)boss? Far from it, the sad truth is we've been forced into doing some real work for change. We know, we can't believe it either! (smow) ... in stock and ready to go.. The combination of Christmas holidays and heavy snow throughout Europe has meant that
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G'day! What with all the excitement about the new iSlate, we missed Australia Day yesterday. And so wanted to use today to write a post involving words like "Sheila", "Sheila", "I can see the pub from here!" and "Sheila" Then we discovered that we'd also missed the announcement of the shortlist for the 2010 Australian International Design Awards. And that seemed a much better subject than lazy international stereotypes. The "Architectural and Interior" products section of the 2010 Awards
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As traditional as roasted chestnuts and corked sherry, gift recommendations are what make Christmas for us. This year, however, we start with a friendly warning. The lead times for many of our suppliers are creeping upwards - and although we have a well stocked and bountiful warehouse; should you want to order something extra special as a gift for a loved one, and we have to order it - it's getting tight. The "traffic light system" in the (smow)shop provides an instant guide to availability;
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It's not all hard work you know. Just read a nice little article on dutch design portal design.nl in which Marie-Luce Bree, deputy director of the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam, talks about their photo project “New Greetings From”; which basically follows the tried and tested method of getting members of the public to submit photos and then using the best to create an exhibition. In detail, “New Greetings From” requests contributors to submit photos showing their interpretation of
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It's Dumfries Show on Saturday. That won't mean much to the most people, but for us it is a sure sign. Winter is coming. We know, we know. Barely have we got use to remembering to take our sunglasses to work, buying ice-creams for lunch or waking up at 5 am because we forgot to shut the curtains - again - than the Dumfries Agricultural Society hold their annual show. And after the Dumfries show the evenings get shorter with increasing rapidity and before you know it the ground will be brown
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The Top 5 Lamps from the smow design spring. In no particular order. Kete by David Turnbridge. One of the first lamps we saw in Milan, and probably that which left the greatest impression on us. And not merely on account of its size. For us the principle beauty of Kete is the atmosphere it can create in a room with it 7W LED element. And despite their overproprtionality Kete doesn't domiante the room. Honest. Kete. Anything but dull. moooi. Beach Ball Lamps by TOBYhouse. When we first
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Our (smow)twitter recently brought our attention to an article at worldchanging.com about what the author termed "Heirloom Design" In the article Adele Peters discusses sustainability, durability and for all "What makes something worthy of passing down through generations?" Peters decides that the future monetary value, the usefulness and sentimentality play a role; somewhat bizarrely in respect of sentimentality , she states: "...designers can aim to create products that inspire emotional
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It must be a summer thing. Not only are our newspapers and magazines full of authors recommending their chums books, but first design observer portrayed their reading tips and then design sojourn brought out their "30 Essential Books for Industrial Designers" Obviously the design world is planning downing tools and spending the long hot summer that awaits us reading. Which is fine by us. For, in addition to supplying designer furniture, we at smow also stock a wide range of books on and
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In local parlance Greene Street, NYC is known as "West smow", on account of the prevalence of high-quality designer furniture producers who have their flagship stores there. The Artemide store, for example, is a couple of doors down from USM Haller, across the road from USM Haller is Kartell - it really is uncannily like the navigation bar at smow.com Indeed as we strolled down West smow on Friday morning we couldn't help thinking that only Moormann failed. Then we spotted number 75.
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Whereas the main Salone exhibition opened today, Wednesday; a lot of those producers and designers who are exhibiting "off-Salone" opened their doors on Tuesday evening. Among them dutch producer Moooi who launched their forthcoming selection in the Superstudio Pia on the Supertrendy Via Tortona And we must admit to being more than little impressed by many - though not all - of the designs. In particular the Eurolantern, Raimond and Tree Lamp ranges caught our imagintion. We'll let the
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