For three creative and party fuelled years, I lived in Nottingham, studying art at Trent University. I found the people of Nottingham to be warm, fun and more importantly very design conscience. So it comes as no surprise that their most famous son, the designer, Sir Paul Smith, is so highly respected there. The little shop on Byard Lane was a mecca for any self respecting Nottinghamite and on Saturday mornings the shop was packed.
Sir Paul Smith was born in Beeston in Nottinghamshire today, the 5th of July in 1946. At the tender age of 15, Paul left school with dreams of becoming a racing cyclist. Frogmarched to work at a local clothing warehouse by his father, at first, Paul was not interested in fashion at all. But when a terrible cycling accident occurred, his ambitions were thwarted and he spent six months recovering in hospital. It was then that he met a new group of friends. "Just by chance I met a lot of people from the art college and became interested in things like art and fashion," he recalled. "Back at the warehouse I started to make displays in the showroom. . .the boss was really impressed and he gave me all the buying to do for the men's wear when I was still only 17."*
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs.php?path=blogs.read&id=86
Showing posts with label Happy birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Happy birthday. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Monday, 7 March 2011
Friday, 11 February 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ARNE JACOBSEN
A big fat Happy Birthday to the most famous Dane ever, Arne Jacobsen. Although he is probably more well know for his furniture designs and arguably the pioneer for modern Danish design, Jacobsen always considered himself first and foremost an architect, despising the label ‘designer’. His career was predominantly in architecture and it was only in the 50’s did his chair designs become popular. Last November I went on a press trip with Orgreen. I had the pleasure of visiting the Fritz Hansen factory and museum. Fritz Hansen manufactured Jacobsen’s chairs for over sixty years and I was there to see the launch of Orgreen’s redesign of Jacobsen’s famous Swan chairs, the Skyline edition.
It was fascinating to learn more about how Fritz Hansen made Jacobsen’s chairs and the precision and craftsmanship that goes into each one. Click here to watch a series of short films on how Fritz Hansen makes the Egg, Swan and Series 7 Chairs.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=58
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
STYLE NV WISHES AHPPY BIRTHDAY TO RAY EAMES
HAPPY BIRHTDAY TO RAY EAMES, who was born today, December 15th 1912. Ray Eames is half the tour de force design duo Charles & Ray Eames. Together, The Eames couple designed some of the most important examples of 20th century furniture; they also applied their talents to devising ingenious children's toys, puzzles, films, exhibitions and such iconic mid-20th century Los Angeles buildings as the Eames House and Entenza House in Pacific Palisades.
From researching this feature, it is clear, that their success in design stems from their happily married home life together, and whilst the Eames furniture has usually been listed as by Charles Eames, Ray was deeply involved and should be considered an equal partner. The Eames fabrics were mostly designed by Ray, as were the Time Life Stools. But in reading the various books on Eames, and seeing the photos of furniture development, it is clear that Ray's involvement is absolute
Ray Eames was born in Sacramento, California in 1912 as Bernice Alexandra Kaiser. She came from a close, creative family. Her father, Alexander Kaiser, was a theatre manager-turned-insurance salesman and both parents encouraged her love of art, film and dance. After her father's death in 1929, Ray and her mother, moved to New York to be closer to her brother, Martin, an army cadet at West Point. Ray enrolled at the Art Students League and studied painting under Hans Hoffman.
When her mother died in 1940, Ray moved to Cranbrook. She began studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she met Charles Eames while preparing drawings and models for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition where she met and fell in love with Charles. He divorced his first wife, Catherine, in May, 1941 and married Ray in Chicago a month later. They set off for a long honeymoon drive to their new home in Los Angeles. On the journey, they picked up tumbleweed from the road which still hangs from the ceiling of the Eames House today.
Whilst Charles found work at MGM studios as a set designer, Ray created covers for California Art & Architecture magazine. Setting up a workshop studio in their spare room in their home, they began experimenting with moulding plywoods. They produced their first mass produced manufactured product which a year later, the US Navy made an order of for 5000 units.
The US Navy order enabled the Eames to rent an office on Santa Monica Boulevard in 1942 and to gather a group of collaborators including Harry Bertoia and Gregory Ain. Continuing their experiments, they produced sculpture, chairs, screens, tables and even toy animals in plywood. The US furniture group, Herman Miller, was persuaded to put some of these pieces into production by George Nelson, its head of design. All the Eames' plywood combined an elegant organic aesthetic with a love of materials and technical ingenuity.
These qualities were also apparent in the showroom they designed for Herman Miller in 1949 and the Case Study Houses, a low cost housing project sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine which included the Eames House, a steel structure with sliding walls and windows. Designed for cheap, speedy construction, it took five men 16 hours to raise the steel shell and one man three days to build the roof deck. Spacious, light and versatile, the vividly coloured Eames House was described by the design historian Pat Kirkham as looking like "a Mondrian-style composition in a Los Angeles meadow".
Unsurprisingly, the house and its contents epitomised Charles and Ray's approach to design and their "good life" concept of celebrating the beauty of everyday objects as well as precious ones. The dried-out tumbleweed from their honeymoon hung alongside a Robert Motherwell painting. Toys, masks and other folkloric souvenirs collected from their travels were laid out on tables next to stones, buttons, pieces of bark and favourite books. The British architects, Peter and Alison Smithson, described the house as "a cultural gift parcel". Its fusion of the mass-manufactured and folkloric appeared in the Eames' films and graphic projects, like their 1952 interlocking House of Cards game, for which Eliel Saarinen coined the term "spiritual function".
Charles and Ray sustained this spirit in the way they dressed: he in open-necked shirts and loose pants, she in a bohemian version of a conventionally feminine wardrobe of short-sleeved blouses and full skirts. The film director Billy Wilder and his wife Audrey, who befriended the Eames after commissioning a sadly unbuilt house from them, remarked that Ray's idea of formal dress was to put on a clean blouse and Charles' take on black tie was literally to wear a black tie. Ray's self-consciously feminine guise underscored the role she adopted within their relationship of Charles' younger, adoring protege and underplaying her contribution to their work, which contrasts with the picture of painted by Charles himself of a gifted, energetic woman.
After plywood, the Eames focused on equally zealous experiments with other materials by creating furniture in fibreglass, plastic, aluminium and, for the 1956 Lounge Chair, leather and very opulent plywood. The Lounge became an icon of the 1960s and 1970s - no ambitious executive had made it until there was one in his (or very occasionally) her office - but Charles always expressed a preference for his earlier, less expensive plywood designs.
Their collaboration with Herman Miller continued and extended to Vitra, its European partner. The Eames also began a long-lasting relationship with IBM for which they made films and designed exhibitions. Like all important designers, the Eames was blessed with good timing. There were no shortage of empathetic corporate partners in the expanding US post-war economy at a time of rapid advances in materials and production processes and their democratic view of design struck a chord in an era of growing affluence. Throughout the 1950s, their furniture was exhibited in the Good Design shows with which MoMA, New York sought to raise the public's awareness of design.
The Eames' furniture, especially elegant office chairs such as the Lounge and Aluminium Series now seem synonymous with mid-20th century Corporate America, but Charles and Ray equally influential at making respectable the then-neglected folk crafts not only in the US but in India, for which they produced the 1950s Eames Report on raising standards of design training. These concerns dominated their later work in the 1970s when, able to live comfortably on their Herman Miller and Vitra royalties, they concentrated their creative energy on propagating their ideas in exhibitions, books and films.
Work remained the centre of their lives - with working days running from 9am to 10pm and a full-time cook on hand so they needn't leave the studio to eat - until Charles' death in 1978. Ray then worked hard to complete any unfinished projects but, having done so, did not seek new ones. She devoted the rest of her life to communicating their ideas through talks and writing. Ray Eames died of cancer on 21 August 1988, ten years to the day after Charles.
With such a vast back catalogue of designs, it is hard to pick out STYLE NV’s favourites.
From researching this feature, it is clear, that their success in design stems from their happily married home life together, and whilst the Eames furniture has usually been listed as by Charles Eames, Ray was deeply involved and should be considered an equal partner. The Eames fabrics were mostly designed by Ray, as were the Time Life Stools. But in reading the various books on Eames, and seeing the photos of furniture development, it is clear that Ray's involvement is absolute
Ray Eames was born in Sacramento, California in 1912 as Bernice Alexandra Kaiser. She came from a close, creative family. Her father, Alexander Kaiser, was a theatre manager-turned-insurance salesman and both parents encouraged her love of art, film and dance. After her father's death in 1929, Ray and her mother, moved to New York to be closer to her brother, Martin, an army cadet at West Point. Ray enrolled at the Art Students League and studied painting under Hans Hoffman.
When her mother died in 1940, Ray moved to Cranbrook. She began studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she met Charles Eames while preparing drawings and models for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition where she met and fell in love with Charles. He divorced his first wife, Catherine, in May, 1941 and married Ray in Chicago a month later. They set off for a long honeymoon drive to their new home in Los Angeles. On the journey, they picked up tumbleweed from the road which still hangs from the ceiling of the Eames House today.
Whilst Charles found work at MGM studios as a set designer, Ray created covers for California Art & Architecture magazine. Setting up a workshop studio in their spare room in their home, they began experimenting with moulding plywoods. They produced their first mass produced manufactured product which a year later, the US Navy made an order of for 5000 units.
The US Navy order enabled the Eames to rent an office on Santa Monica Boulevard in 1942 and to gather a group of collaborators including Harry Bertoia and Gregory Ain. Continuing their experiments, they produced sculpture, chairs, screens, tables and even toy animals in plywood. The US furniture group, Herman Miller, was persuaded to put some of these pieces into production by George Nelson, its head of design. All the Eames' plywood combined an elegant organic aesthetic with a love of materials and technical ingenuity.
These qualities were also apparent in the showroom they designed for Herman Miller in 1949 and the Case Study Houses, a low cost housing project sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine which included the Eames House, a steel structure with sliding walls and windows. Designed for cheap, speedy construction, it took five men 16 hours to raise the steel shell and one man three days to build the roof deck. Spacious, light and versatile, the vividly coloured Eames House was described by the design historian Pat Kirkham as looking like "a Mondrian-style composition in a Los Angeles meadow".
Unsurprisingly, the house and its contents epitomised Charles and Ray's approach to design and their "good life" concept of celebrating the beauty of everyday objects as well as precious ones. The dried-out tumbleweed from their honeymoon hung alongside a Robert Motherwell painting. Toys, masks and other folkloric souvenirs collected from their travels were laid out on tables next to stones, buttons, pieces of bark and favourite books. The British architects, Peter and Alison Smithson, described the house as "a cultural gift parcel". Its fusion of the mass-manufactured and folkloric appeared in the Eames' films and graphic projects, like their 1952 interlocking House of Cards game, for which Eliel Saarinen coined the term "spiritual function".
Charles and Ray sustained this spirit in the way they dressed: he in open-necked shirts and loose pants, she in a bohemian version of a conventionally feminine wardrobe of short-sleeved blouses and full skirts. The film director Billy Wilder and his wife Audrey, who befriended the Eames after commissioning a sadly unbuilt house from them, remarked that Ray's idea of formal dress was to put on a clean blouse and Charles' take on black tie was literally to wear a black tie. Ray's self-consciously feminine guise underscored the role she adopted within their relationship of Charles' younger, adoring protege and underplaying her contribution to their work, which contrasts with the picture of painted by Charles himself of a gifted, energetic woman.
After plywood, the Eames focused on equally zealous experiments with other materials by creating furniture in fibreglass, plastic, aluminium and, for the 1956 Lounge Chair, leather and very opulent plywood. The Lounge became an icon of the 1960s and 1970s - no ambitious executive had made it until there was one in his (or very occasionally) her office - but Charles always expressed a preference for his earlier, less expensive plywood designs.
Their collaboration with Herman Miller continued and extended to Vitra, its European partner. The Eames also began a long-lasting relationship with IBM for which they made films and designed exhibitions. Like all important designers, the Eames was blessed with good timing. There were no shortage of empathetic corporate partners in the expanding US post-war economy at a time of rapid advances in materials and production processes and their democratic view of design struck a chord in an era of growing affluence. Throughout the 1950s, their furniture was exhibited in the Good Design shows with which MoMA, New York sought to raise the public's awareness of design.
The Eames' furniture, especially elegant office chairs such as the Lounge and Aluminium Series now seem synonymous with mid-20th century Corporate America, but Charles and Ray equally influential at making respectable the then-neglected folk crafts not only in the US but in India, for which they produced the 1950s Eames Report on raising standards of design training. These concerns dominated their later work in the 1970s when, able to live comfortably on their Herman Miller and Vitra royalties, they concentrated their creative energy on propagating their ideas in exhibitions, books and films.
Work remained the centre of their lives - with working days running from 9am to 10pm and a full-time cook on hand so they needn't leave the studio to eat - until Charles' death in 1978. Ray then worked hard to complete any unfinished projects but, having done so, did not seek new ones. She devoted the rest of her life to communicating their ideas through talks and writing. Ray Eames died of cancer on 21 August 1988, ten years to the day after Charles.
With such a vast back catalogue of designs, it is hard to pick out STYLE NV’s favourites.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
STYLE NV Wishes Happy Birthday to CONSTANCE SPRY
My mother had a Constance Spry’s Cookery Book – a giant tombe of a book, bound in bright pink cotton; it was hilariously old fashioned and my sisters and I used to love mocking its contents. It was not until recently that I have read about Constance Spry’ work and life in more detail, did I realise just what a front running, STYLE NV woman Constance Spry really was.
Few people have had such a powerful influence over the way we decorate our homes as Constance Spry. First as a teacher and social reformer, then as a society florist and best-selling author, Spry taught mid-20th century Britons how to beautify their homes with such unassuming materials as berries, vegetable leaves, twigs, ferns and weeds displayed in a motley assortment of containers from gravy boats and bird cages, to tureen lids and baking trays.
In an era when millions of people were decorating their homes to their own taste for the first time, Constance Spry helped them to do so with flair and for very little money. Believing that everyone had the right to beautify their home and that the means of doing so could be found in woods, hedgerows, vegetable patches or scraps of wasteland, Spry popularised her democratising and essentially bohemian style of home-making by dispensing no-nonsense advise in books, articles and radio broadcasts all over the world. “I do feel strongly,” she once wrote, “that flowers should be a means of self-expression for everyone.”
Few people have had such a powerful influence over the way we decorate our homes as Constance Spry. First as a teacher and social reformer, then as a society florist and best-selling author, Spry taught mid-20th century Britons how to beautify their homes with such unassuming materials as berries, vegetable leaves, twigs, ferns and weeds displayed in a motley assortment of containers from gravy boats and bird cages, to tureen lids and baking trays.
In an era when millions of people were decorating their homes to their own taste for the first time, Constance Spry helped them to do so with flair and for very little money. Believing that everyone had the right to beautify their home and that the means of doing so could be found in woods, hedgerows, vegetable patches or scraps of wasteland, Spry popularised her democratising and essentially bohemian style of home-making by dispensing no-nonsense advise in books, articles and radio broadcasts all over the world. “I do feel strongly,” she once wrote, “that flowers should be a means of self-expression for everyone.”
Thursday, 18 November 2010
STYLE NV Wishes Happy Birthday to Gio Ponti
Our Happy Birthday today goes to Gio Ponti, who was born today 18th November in 1891.
Ponti. was an architect, furniture designer and founding editor of Domus magazine. Through his designs and his work at Domus, he was the godfather of Italy's post-war design renaissance . . .http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=43
Ponti. was an architect, furniture designer and founding editor of Domus magazine. Through his designs and his work at Domus, he was the godfather of Italy's post-war design renaissance . . .http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=43
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
STYLE NV Wishes Happy Birthday to Isamu Noguchi
A Big Happy Birthday to Isamu Noguchi (pronounced sämoo nogooch) who was born today, 17th November 1904 and would have been 106 years old!
Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese, American sculptor and designer whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward . He sought to make sculpture useful in everyday life. Amoung his furniture work, his collaboration with the Herman Miller company in 1948 where he joined forces with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames is considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=42
Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese, American sculptor and designer whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward . He sought to make sculpture useful in everyday life. Amoung his furniture work, his collaboration with the Herman Miller company in 1948 where he joined forces with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames is considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=42
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
STYLE NV - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PIERRO FORNASETTI
A big fat HAPPY BIRTHDAY to PIERO FORNASETTI, who would have been 97 years old today.
In terms of variety of decoration, Fornasetti’s production of objects and furniture is one of the largest of the 20th century. Fornasetti is celebrated as being among the most original creative talents of the twentieth century. During his career he cdesigned a magical world, filled with wit, that is instantly recognisable and unceasingly engaging.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=41
In terms of variety of decoration, Fornasetti’s production of objects and furniture is one of the largest of the 20th century. Fornasetti is celebrated as being among the most original creative talents of the twentieth century. During his career he cdesigned a magical world, filled with wit, that is instantly recognisable and unceasingly engaging.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=41
Saturday, 30 October 2010
STYLE NV Wishes Happy Birthday to David Weeks
Happy Birthday to American desginer, David Weeks! David is known for his lighting and furniture products.
He was born today, October 30th 1968, in Athens, Georgia. He studied painting and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned a BFA. Weeks went on to work in the Manhattan studio of Ted Muehling before founding the David Weeks Studio in 1996. The Studio produces lighting and furniture for commercial and residential uses. The Studio’s recent product lines include Sculpt, an upholstered collection, and Sarus, a lighting collection for Ralph Pucci; updated Semana chairs for Habitat UK; and new consumer products for Areaware and Kikkerland.The Studio also creates custom lighting, furniture, sculpture, and interiors. Commissioned projects include Barneys New York, Kate Spade, Saks Fifth Avenue, MGM Grand Las Vegas, Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas, and Bliss Spa. Weeks has also been an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, and was a visiting critic in 2002 at Yale.
David won Editor Awards at the 1999 and 2001 International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Butter's debut collection earned accolades including an award from Blueprint at 100% Design Show, and featured his best-selling Lunette lampshade. David lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Georgianna Stout, partner of design studio 2x4, and their children.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=35
He was born today, October 30th 1968, in Athens, Georgia. He studied painting and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned a BFA. Weeks went on to work in the Manhattan studio of Ted Muehling before founding the David Weeks Studio in 1996. The Studio produces lighting and furniture for commercial and residential uses. The Studio’s recent product lines include Sculpt, an upholstered collection, and Sarus, a lighting collection for Ralph Pucci; updated Semana chairs for Habitat UK; and new consumer products for Areaware and Kikkerland.The Studio also creates custom lighting, furniture, sculpture, and interiors. Commissioned projects include Barneys New York, Kate Spade, Saks Fifth Avenue, MGM Grand Las Vegas, Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas, and Bliss Spa. Weeks has also been an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, and was a visiting critic in 2002 at Yale.
David won Editor Awards at the 1999 and 2001 International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Butter's debut collection earned accolades including an award from Blueprint at 100% Design Show, and featured his best-selling Lunette lampshade. David lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Georgianna Stout, partner of design studio 2x4, and their children.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=35
Monday, 4 October 2010
STYLE NV Wishes Happy Birthday to Sir Terrence Conran!
STYLE NV Would like to wish a Happy Birthday to Sir Terrence Conran!
It would be almost impossible to work in design and not know who Sir Terrance Conran is. His influence over the design and catering industries in Britian for the past 50 years has been extensive.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=15
It would be almost impossible to work in design and not know who Sir Terrance Conran is. His influence over the design and catering industries in Britian for the past 50 years has been extensive.
http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=15
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