June 2012

It's finally here...

The middle-end of June...

When summer's sun has been here long enough to propel delicate white blossoms into plump, little fruits... Maine Strawberries are simply the best!

Throughout our treasured, and much anticipated, sweet season, Rural Modern will pay respect to the traditions and tastes of Fragaria Vesca, the northern hemisphere's blessed berry.

A Rural Modern sofa is there ever was one... The Borghese by Noe Duchaufour Lawrance is a tree and couch in one.

The tree reference is apparent without being overt, and like a tree, is interesting from all sides.

That this sofa is as attractive (if not more so) from the back as it is from the seated-side, is absolutely intentional. Co.Design. cites Shultz's mid century Petal Table as inspiration for this piece. The table, seen here, is most distinctive from the most forgotten facade: the underneath.

Much like Furniturea's Single, Double, and Triple Bench designs, the Borghese is a 360 piece, intended to be viewed and appreciated from all angles. In a world biased toward black/white, right/wrong, always/never thinking, the gray/it's complicated/maybe set can find comfort in an approach that values all facades, and in doing so, challenges the increasingly tunneled vision status quo.

From Nao Tamura we have what might be the best plate of 2012. Seasons, food-safe silicone leaves that serve as functional and decorative implements of dining, have arrived.

And while they're new to us in 2012, Spoon and Tamago informs us that Seasons is actually 2 years old, and that design insiders have been waiting patiently for their emergence in the consumer marketplace.

Tamura's plates really are lovely. In fact, they'd pair nicely with fivetimesone felted wool stones. Both objects accurately represent their originals in nature, but also transgress beyond reality - become abstracted even - by way of size, material, and function.

Undeniably, they're leaves - and yet, they're most certainly not. Stones of wool? That's impossible - and yet, they're for sale at 75 Market Street. Obtaining this slippery status of literal/abstract is difficult to do, but when it's done, and done well, the results are exceptional objects - the sorts of things you just want to have, hold, and live with because their cleverness never grows old.

To build a bird is not an easy task.

That is, unless, you're a bird, in which case it's your biological purpose to do just that. But if you're a person, or any other critter, the task of bird design and construction is hugely and impossibly daunting.This is why DeTomaso Pantera's British Bird series is simply (and complexly) fantastic.

Made from Legos (with the hope that Lego will adopt his designs) his favorite feathered friends have retained individual traits despite limitations inherent to the Legos themselves.

Isn't that usually the case? That greatest weaknesses and strengths are often one and the same? And that our perception of reality overwhelms actual reality (if there is such a thing)?

It's why we see perfection in DeTomaso Pantera's birds even though their chiseled inaccuracies are just real. How and why we arrive at perfect over flawed is for now, and may always be, a mystery.