the life of plants.

this is a beautiful idea: www.vintageplant.net

"Here you can buy and sell plants with a history; second-hand plants that need a new home or third-generation cuttings with an old family-tree. Instead of throwing an old and tired plant in the bin you can come to us and we will try to find it a new home. This website is about the stories plants can tell us, how they have followed us through our lives and experienced good and bad times. We usually don´t see them as valuable but some have been in families for generations and have been passed on like family treasures. This project aims to give the plants some deserved recognition. Our plant´s journeys will be traced and written down for you to view on this website. By doing this we aim to create a library of plant stories. "

this is great prank, i think. the older man especially, fantastic. he doesn't even look back.

quartz rings

Quartz, Leroy De Barde

Detail of Minerals in Crystallization, watercolor and gouache (1813).
Collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris.

jewellery based on sea creatures and the natural growth of crystals.

by phillipe cramer. via designboom.

leroy de barde's crystals via all the mountains.

carbon and gold quartz rings

fluorite rings

gold quartz ring

squid earrings

Blue Fluorite, Leroy De Barde

Detail of Minerals in Crystallization, watercolor and gouache (1813).
Collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris.

In Praise of Shadows, by Junichiro Tanizaki, 1933
A beautiful description of Tanizaki's book by lewism.org:

"He writes with the touch of the great writer he was and with the air of a mourner.
Even when he wrote this book back in 1933 his delicate world was being hidden by the electric light bulb."

ON LACQUERWARE

In this excerpt, Tanizaki is writing of a famous restaurant in Kyoto,
where the rooms had previously been lit by candlelight.
Upon his most recent visit electric lamps had replaced the candles.
He requested his lamp to be removed and a candle placed in its stead:

"The rooms at the Waranjiya are about nine feet square, the size of a comfortable little tearoom, and the alcove pillars and ceiling glow with a faint smoky lustre, dark even in the light of the lamp. But in the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of the lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty I had not before seen. It had not been mere chance, I realized, that our ancestors, having discovered lacquer, had conceived such a fondness for objects finished in it...Lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in at a single glance, is should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partly suggested. The sheen of the lacquer, set out in the night, reflects the wavering candlelight, announcing the drafts that find their way from time to time into the quiet room, luring one into a state of reverie."

eileen gray

eileen gray is superb.
above and below is her e-1027 house.
and there are also some images of her interior and furniture designs.
ouno design has the most comprehensive posts on this house.
and this golden smith post on the Le Corbusier obsession with it is really great.
edit: and mary's post on Le Corbusier's cabanon (situated just above e-1027) is really interesting.

i first started this post a while ago after seeing a wonderful documentary on her.
i was really interested to see her lacquer work, using japanese techniques
and working with a japanese artist called sugiwara:

"Allured by the antique Chinese and Japanese lacquer screens in the shop, Eileen asked if she could learn the rudiments of lacquer working. By the time she returned to Paris in 1906, she was obsessed by the art of lacquer and, thanks to Mr Charles’ contacts, had an introduction to a young lacquer craftsman, Sugiwara. He came from Jahoji, a village in northern Japan famous for its lacquer work and agreed to teach her. In 1907, Gray found a spacious first floor apartment at 21 rue Bonaparte where she could live and work and persuaded her mother to increase her allowance so that she could afford the rent. Three years later, Gray bought the apartment outright and thereafter it became her main home. Gray studied with Sugiwara for four years. Lacquer work was not only painstaking, but perilous. Like many people who come into close contact with it, she contracted a painful ‘lacquer disease’ on her hands. Slowly she refined her technique to create stark forms with simple geometric decorations. This simplicity was, however, as much a product of the complexity of the process as of Gray's aesthetic preferences. "

text source: design museum

sugiwara desu.

eileen gray's lacquered screens