January 22, 2009
Last week, the CPSC issued the first giant crib recall of the year [um, yeah?] covering over 535,000 Stork Craft cribs, basically every crib the Canadian company made between May 2000 and November 2008. Apparently, the metal brackets holding...
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4:36 PM
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January 21, 2009
I guess it's sale season all over the place. Netto Collection and Cub Kids are having a sample sale this week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with 10% off everything, 20% off sleepers and changers, and 60 whopping percent off...
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11:55 PM
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IMM, Die internationale Möbelmesse, is on this week in Cologne, and the Frankfurt furniture studio Morgen took the occasion to launch a kids line designed by the company's co-founder Sabine Mühlbauer. International economic downturn or no, I have a...
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9:15 PM
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January 16, 2009
Long-time readers of Daddy Types might remember my grand plan to make a sweet, minimalist toddler bed for the kid out of thick slabs of plywood. The design was an adaptation of a Donald Judd daybed [which is visible...
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3:40 PM
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January 15, 2009
What's that, you say you'd love to let your kid rock to sleep in Denmark's favorite cradle, the egg-shaped, minimalist masterpiece that is the Leander Bassinet, but you don't want to hassle of schlepping or shipping the thing all...
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1:52 PM
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And by dude, I mean Dutch artist Tina Pireira Filipe. And by stroller, I mean the chassis of a big old pram. And by coffee table, I mean glass-topped coffee table of death for any kid that gets near...
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1:12 PM
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January 13, 2009
It's like I was telling you, nursery trendwatchers, grey is the new orange. And graphite-colored hand-knotted Nepalese wool rugs with awesome line drawings of various modes of transportation like diggers and choppers and school buses are the new graphite-colored,...
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2:28 PM
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January 12, 2009
Just when you think you've seen all the awesome, old school nurseries the LIFE Magazine photo archive has to offer, Andy finds another one. How did he do it? I have no idea. There's no caption, no date, no...
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8:51 AM
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January 9, 2009
The Central Utah Relocation Center near Delta was later renamed Topaz Camp, after Topaz Mountain, which loomed over it to the west. When it opened on Sept. 11, 1942, several rows of tarpaper barracks had been finished and outfitted...
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12:53 PM
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January 7, 2009
From the Muniré nursery furniture company website: You can have peace of mind that all Muniré products are coated with finishes that are in compliance with Federal Regulation 16CFR1303 for lead content and have been certified as such by Intertek,...
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10:40 AM
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Comments (1)
January 2, 2009
I suppose I could write about how, now that K2 realizes we pick the food up from the floor and put it back on her tray, she's started refusing to eat in her chair, and would rather get down and...
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11:20 AM
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Comments (2)
January 1, 2009
So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
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8:36 AM
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December 31, 2008
Look what turned up in a basement in Hamilton Square, New Jersey. It's a sweet kid's chair from just up the road apiece in Princeton, the old stomping grounds of Creative Playthings. Though the design is from CP's Golden...
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2:19 PM
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Comments (0)
December 17, 2008
Hans Wegner made Peter's Chair and Table as a present for Borge Mogenson's new kid in 1944. Mogenson loved it, and he helped put it into production at FDB, the furnituremaker where he was lead designer. . This example...
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1:06 AM
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December 15, 2008
Am I missing something here, or is everyone? Or is this just the way discovering a couple million defective cribs in the market turns up the fire on a pre-existing but slow-simmering process? The CPSC Watchdog at the Chicago Tribune...
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2:36 PM
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December 11, 2008
As you may know, Google has begun scanning magazine archives, something which was apparently completely impossible until this year. Among the first batch are the venerable DIY bibles, Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. If it doesn't give you an...
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1:16 PM
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Comments (1)
December 8, 2008
Back up a minute, comrade. Can somebody explain how it is that we--the Americans--supposedly won the Cold War, and yet I'm the one who has to wrestl with a pile of catalogs as big as a bear cub and...
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11:20 PM
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December 5, 2008
I think you have to add Rouen to your French vintage children's furniture pilgrimage next summer. The kid's design store l'Atelier Charivari has a seemingly endless supply of awesome, 50's-era school chairs, desks, and tables, but so far, I've...
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7:40 PM
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Or is it the new lime green? Either way, the French and/or Euros are loving the grey baby furniture. First [on my radar, anyway] was Oeuf's lower-priced Sparrow collection, which came in other colors, but which debuted in Spring 2007...
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5:58 PM
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Comments (4)
December 4, 2008
Via the European chair blogger at chairblog.eu comes this, the latest development in Daddy Types' all-consuming mission to know the whereabouts of all of Gerrit Rietveld's many, many high chairs. It's a press release published at design.nl: The Centraal...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 PM
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Comments (3)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Artist Takashi Murakami with NYC designer Sebastian Errazuriz, originally uploaded by maayanpearl. We're not at...
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1:54 PM
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November 28, 2008
From Lladro hacker Jamie Hayon's website: The chicken, a rather unexplored shape, found its place amongst my green dreams. I wanted to portray this common bird as a sensational object by amplifying its characteristics and dimensions, turning it into...
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10:41 AM
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November 27, 2008
Thanks to everyone for your advice, experience, questions, tips, comments, support, suggestions, complaints, and generosity. I hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving....
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8:13 AM
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Comments (6)
November 25, 2008
Readers of the previous Ikea post may have the mistaken impression that I disapprove of the "shipping palette aesthetic." Pas de tout. I mean, just check out this insane kids room built by a dad somewhere in France sometime in...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (1)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Ikea play kitchen in the Elizabeth City, NJ store, originally uploaded by daddytypes. When I...
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8:53 AM
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Comments (1)
November 21, 2008
Here's a short thematic post from the archives of Life featuring some of the cribs of our parents' generation which serves as a roundabout tribute to the CPSC: I'm guessing that after Leonard Mccombe's 1957 photo of "Babysitter Judy...
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7:36 AM
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Comments (4)
November 20, 2008
Morigeau Lepine is--whoops, make that was. Morigeau Lepine was an old-line baby furniture manufacturer in Quebec, which had been in business for over sixty years. The family-owned company suddenly closed its factory doors last Friday and laid off its...
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Posted by greg at
8:20 PM
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Comments (2)
November 14, 2008
If it becomes as useless as "Eames Era," I'm sure I'll come to hate it, but for now, I count it as progress that an eBay seller tries to rope in business by calling something "Creative Playthings Era." It...
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1:57 PM
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Comments (1)
November 11, 2008
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a shopping trip Involving Euro Modernists and architects--so hip. The greatest: Charlotte Perriand, Designed Corb's furniture. Bruno Taut also sailed that way For an East Asian tour,...
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1:28 PM
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Comments (2)
November 9, 2008
Gary Panter was creative director of one of the most groundbreaking children's TV shows in a generation PeeWee's Playhouse. On the heels of that success, he also designed a children's playroom for Ian Schrager & Philippe Starck's Paramount Hotel...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 PM
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Comments (0)
November 7, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Designblok Prague 2008, originally uploaded by WallisPhotos. Rolf with 2 fake labs, originally uploaded by...
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12:40 AM
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Comments (2)
November 6, 2008
Thonet was the pioneer of bentwood furniture at the end of the 19th century. This rocking chair is a variant on the Model No. 511, which is made from molded beech. The flat edges make it feel a little...
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12:15 AM
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November 3, 2008
Uh, Campana Brothers, can I see you outside for a minute? When Ian Schrager reopened the dumpy Paramount Hotel in Times Square in 1990, it had been redesigned by Philippe Starck. The rooms were still tiny, but the lobby...
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5:50 PM
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November 2, 2008
There's milk crates, and then there's Milk Crates. The brands branded [is that where that term comes from?] on the sides of some of the crates used to make this old potty chair date to the turn of the...
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10:11 PM
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Ho. Lee. Smokes. Mister Jalopy posted the making of video for Greg Lynn's giant plastic riding toy recycling project. I previously criticized Lynn's project, but I clearly had incomplete information. Lynn is not only off the hook, he is off...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (3)
October 30, 2008
Remember last month how I mocked the Venice Biennale-winning installation, Recycled Toy Furniture by blob-loving architect Greg Lynn for being neither recycled, nor toy, nor furniture? I mean, seriously, you expect me to believe there are giant, plastic ride-on eggplants??...
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9:14 PM
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October 24, 2008
I first came to know Mary Heilmann's pop-infused minimalist paintings after collecting the work of Ruth Root, a friend who took inspiration from them for her own colorful abstractions. The retrospective of Heilmann's work which just opened at the...
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10:02 PM
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October 22, 2008
Sure, Kristian Vedel's molded plywood chair/desk is an elegant classic. But could your kid stand on it? Or ride it around the house? Gablenz is a German woodworking firm that makes traditional furniture, toys, those little whirligig things with...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (1)
October 19, 2008
So swoopy furniture designer Vladimir Kagan and pre-eminent needlework artist Erica Wilson are married? Who knew? Besides, that is, the folks who bought this Kagan Contour Rocking Chair covered in Wilson's crewel forest scene back in the day? Rago,...
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9:26 PM
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Comments (3)
October 18, 2008
It's a small New Jerseymodern design world after all. Did you know that architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, whose EVA Foam kids furniture [above] is produced by Offi, are experts in renovating and modernizing Frank Lloyd Wright's postwar buildings?...
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3:18 PM
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Comments (3)
October 13, 2008
Ahh, remember the real estate travails of young families in Manhattan? Curbed has the lowdown on a 2-3BR, 3,200 sf loft that's been customed out in true bubbly style--and which has been pricechopped from $3.5 million to $2.5 million...
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11:09 PM
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Comments (0)
October 11, 2008
It kills me to think of the vast trove of historical information that's been dumped by eBay over the last decade. If nothing else, I'd think it'd be valuable to have the price history of certain types and categories...
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4:18 PM
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Comments (1)
October 10, 2008
I was not really aware that kids had lifestyles, but that's just one of the little differences revealed by the happy existence of KidsLab, a Belgian lifestyle brand for children and their imaginations. KidsLab encourages children to be themselves...
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1:14 PM
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October 8, 2008
The one in Paris, whose mom is an antique dealer? And he had that dog lamp on the pull-out night table attachment? Yeah, well, there may be another one. One of those 1953 Antony daybeds by Jean Prouvé &...
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11:31 PM
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When the revolution comes--and at this rate, we'll all be citoyening each other by Thanksgiving--I hope the mob will go easy on Belgian designer Hans de Pelsmacker. Sure, the child-sized version of the HP01 table/bench he designed in 2000...
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11:05 AM
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October 7, 2008
Last spring, Philippe Starck said design was dead, the materialist culture he wallowed in was superficial, and he was quitting in two years. By which time he will have put SKU numbers on all the random renderings his interns have...
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8:15 AM
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October 6, 2008
When you don't know the answer to something, it's always a buzzkill when your own site comes up in the Google results. It happened to me last night when I was trying to find the manufacturer of those awesome...
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5:11 PM
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Comments (1)
No, the other one. Let's face facts: France is a nation in love with crazy bassinets, so it's no wonder that French "families who demand design" would choose a shagadelic, egg-shaped bassinet that matches their Seat Altea XL over...
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Posted by greg at
9:08 AM
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Comments (4)
October 5, 2008
Yeah, his Hitler chair is probably from Wal-Mart, made outta plastic. It ain't handcarved and handpainted by Dow Pugh. Why, he's the finest children's Hitler chairmaker in all a Cumberland County. Lot 656: Dow Pugh, Hitler Child's Chair, est....
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8:30 PM
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October 1, 2008
These molded plastic Cosco chairs from the early 1970's are kid design classics, [don't they look nice in Swiss-Miss's living room?] though I always look at them funny when I remember they were originally intended to be used as...
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Posted by greg at
10:33 PM
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Comments (1)
Looks like it's one-off, mushroom-shaped stool day around here this morning. DT readers from a few months back might remember Childsply, the 1999 children's design challenge sponsored by the London design/vintage dealer twentytwentyone. The concept was to see what children's...
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11:30 AM
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Now this next item, it's a really immaculate piece. Exquisite workmanship, pure class. A gentleman--really, he's an artist--right here in Staten Island--really, he's like a father to me, a true inspiration, what he does--he took a plain little wooden...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 AM
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Comments (0)
September 30, 2008
Sure enough, there it is, staring right up at me from the front page of Modern Child [a shop which has advertised on Daddy Types before, btw]. Kristian Vedel's 1952 plywood chair/table/desk/stool has always been a tough buy; the...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (2)
September 29, 2008
Looking at the traditional-to-slightly-boring children's furniture designs on the German wood furniture firm Zwergraum, I would never have imagined they'd come up with something as awesome as the Cubi-Q. With four boxes, two table-like pieces, cutouts, and optional wheels,...
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12:54 PM
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Comments (2)
September 27, 2008
Just got my copy of the 2001 edition of Peter Drijver and Johannes Niemeijer's How to construct Rietveld Furniture; it's pretty sweet. There are designs and plans for 38 pieces, including four kid-specific designs: two high chairs and two toys,...
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3:04 PM
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Comments (0)
September 23, 2008
In 1967 Danese debuted Enzo Mari's Il Posto dei Giochi, The Place of Games, otherwise known as "Wall." Kids could use the ten-panel corrugated cardboard play structure printed and perforated with Mari's designs to create various kid-sized spaces. The...
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Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (0)
September 22, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Starting to Build the Crib, originally uploaded by BenSpark. Prolific photographer Ben Spark would not...
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9:57 AM
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Comments (1)
September 19, 2008
First, let me apologize to all the people who love nothing more than curling up in their Rietveld chairs; they apparently only look unsittable. As little Hugo above demonstrates, they are the height of seated comfort. After mulling it...
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Posted by greg at
1:13 PM
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Comments (2)
September 18, 2008
Wow, a $3,000 Nurseryworks bedroom set, with a twin bed, nightstand [note: image not to scale] and a 6-drawer dresser are on Craiglist LA for just $600? I know there are like twenty hundred different wood finish and panel...
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Posted by greg at
3:46 PM
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Comments (0)
Wait, the Fleurville Calla by Yves Behar still exists? The Audi S8 Avant, the Bugaboo two-seater, the eight weeks paid paternity leave of high chairs is not a myth? Or even a one-off prototype that popped up at ICFF...
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12:15 PM
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Comments (0)
September 17, 2008
In fair Utrecht where we lay our scene... I'm trying to clear the deck of reproductions of painful-looking De Stijl high chairs here. In 2005, Treadway-Toomey sold this high chair for $1,200. It's by Piet Klaarhamer, a "later production of...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 PM
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Comments (2)
The world--if I may speak for the world for a moment--may have Gerrit Rietveld all backwards. The world sees Rietveld as a leading furniture designer and architect of the geometric purity-obsessed De Stijl movement who just happened to make...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (5)
September 15, 2008
In 1934, the Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld sought to combine the utopian geometric elementalism of de Stijl with an economics and authenticity of material by--look, everyone was broke, so he made furniture out of wood from...
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5:47 PM
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Comments (2)
Made in 1941 as part of Knoll's introductory collection, with Risom's trademark woven web seat? And it sold yesterday for just $275?? My only consolation is that it caught Andy off guard, too. Seriously, people, there oughta be a...
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1:30 PM
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Comments (1)
September 14, 2008
Fascinating. Arthur Espenet Carpenter was like the fifth Beatle of American woodworking. In 1972, he was in "Woodenworks," the genre-defining show at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, along with George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, Wharton Esherick, and Wendell Castle. By that...
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10:01 PM
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Comments (1)
September 13, 2008
It turns out not to be so easy to identify the maker of a random piece of play equipment using just a captionless photo from a 1968 craft magazine, and not just because I didn't know how to say...
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4:47 PM
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Comments (4)
September 12, 2008
After seeing Monte Design's new Tavo, I thought I'd research the vast, untold history of leather high chairs, and here it is: one chair. One, Masterpiece Theatre-ready, wingback leather high chair/low chair/potty chair submitted to some author's website by...
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Posted by greg at
5:02 PM
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Comments (1)
Apparently, the annoyances of blogs in the 2000's--hyperbole, lack of context, not linking back, acting like you're the first to discover everything--is merely a speeded up re-enactment of magazine stories in the 1940's. Take, for example, this March 1947...
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Posted by greg at
7:11 AM
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Comments (1)
September 11, 2008
WTF CPSC?? The Chicago Tribune's Patricia Callahan is reporting that even as it was expanding a consumer warning last week about 300,000 deadly Simplicity bassinets, the Consumer Products Safety Commission and Graco stayed quiet about 200,000 more bassinets of the...
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Posted by greg at
9:33 AM
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Comments (2)
September 10, 2008
I'm not seeing a lot of reporting or imagery coming out of the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas, but even if I did, this sweet high chair would stand out. It's called the Tavo, and it's by Monte...
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Posted by greg at
8:36 PM
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Comments (6)
Wow. A real estate staging company in Las Vegas is liquidating and just put a brand new, never been opened, $4000 Cabine crib and dresser/changing table by David Netto on eBay with no reserve. Opening bid is just $499....
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Posted by greg at
6:29 PM
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Comments (0)
Mister Jalopy guest-blogging on BoingBoing? That's a combination we can believe in. Featureless computer renderings of sleek modular furniture by Finnish architect Sami Rintala that looks like it'd make a sweet changing table and dimensions given in the ever-mysterious...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 AM
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Comments (0)
September 8, 2008
Some day, you and the kid will be sitting on the Alexander Girard La Fonda del Sol carpet, building a fort out of his Alexander Girard blocks for the reissued Alexander Girard folk dolls. Your elbow will be propped...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 PM
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Comments (0)
September 6, 2008
What else can I say? The CPSC's investigative function has been replaced by the Chicago Tribune, and now the agency's safety standard-setting responsibilities are apparently being taken over by freakin' big box retailers. The Chicago Tribune reports that Toys R...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 AM
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Comments (2)
September 2, 2008
It's probably easier to list what the German-made Timkid Mio crib doesn't convert to. The simple canvas-sided crib designed by Tim Schinkel begins its useful life as a bassinet, thanks to the popout center that turns the mattress into...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 PM
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Comments (4)
The scale of the danger posed by Simplicity's 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 bassinets is becoming clearer: over 900,000 bassinets have been sold with a dangerous design flaw that has led to at least two strangulation deaths in the last year. And...
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Posted by greg at
4:50 PM
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Comments (2)
August 31, 2008
Or should I say Duh? I can't believe it's taken me this long to connect the dots. I swear I'd written about Stephen Procter's fold-flat baby furniture and stroller when he debuted it at Milano in 2007. I mean,...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (0)
August 29, 2008
Maybe I just didn't notice Muji's kids furniture when we were in Japan because it was so plain-looking. The plain, square-legged pine table sure is plain-looking. And the most notable thing to be said about the rounded leg table...
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Posted by greg at
2:29 PM
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Comments (1)
August 28, 2008
Normally when a product is found to cause injury or death, the Consumer Product Safety Commission works with the manufacturer to issue a recall and provide either a fix or a replacement product. But when two kids in the...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 PM
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Comments (6)
Welcome to slightly lazy children's antique blogging week here at Daddy Types. But no sooner do I think that all this time, I'd had the wrong impression of all these antique dealers, than I come across a description like...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (1)
August 27, 2008
I remember when 1st Dibs was just an email blast back to the States of one designer's weekly finds at the Paris flea market. But after signing up hundreds of shops around the world, it has long since turned into...
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11:48 AM
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Comments (3)
So we're driving along one day and out of the blue, the kid goes, "Did you know dogs are hunters by nature?" It took us a while to figure out where she picked it up: Zoboomafoo, the animal TV...
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7:52 AM
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Comments (0)
August 24, 2008
You know how The Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, to show how over- or underpriced certain currencies are for the exact same thing? Well, the price estimates the Munich-based auction house Quittenbaum has placed on US vintage auction staples...
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2:20 PM
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Comments (0)
August 21, 2008
We were at the Big Blue Box last night looking for some kitchen shelves, and I stopped off to buy my in-laws the greatest high chair bargain in the world, an Ikea Antilop, to replace the horrible, plaid, ruffled...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (6)
August 14, 2008
The NY Times has a nice-but-crazy story about artist Brad Hwang and his family who live aboard the Odin, a 98-foot barge in Berlin. Hwang built out most of the spaces himself, starting with the playroom for the two...
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Posted by greg at
12:16 AM
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Comments (2)
August 8, 2008
Alright, let's clear the Luigi Colani deck around here. Last winter, while poking around on Colani's own site, I spotted this undated sketch for what looks like a futuristic, biomorphic high chair. At least it looks like a high...
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Posted by greg at
3:49 PM
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Comments (0)
Last winter, I had sort of a designcrush on the wacky futurist Luigi Colani. So when Andy posted about this awesome piece of lots-in-one kids furniture, the Rappelkistein, in January, I just assumed I'd linked to it. So since...
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Posted by greg at
2:39 PM
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Comments (0)
August 4, 2008
Because they don't have Target in the UK, the task of knocking off the innovative kids products of young start-ups falls to the local industry giant, Mamas and Papas. In this case, the Bloom Fresco high chair seems to...
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Posted by greg at
2:19 PM
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Comments (3)
August 3, 2008
To really be of use for new parents, Timothy Schreiber's Morphogenesis chaise lounge, developed in an "intensive research process of natural structural systems," needs to be a straight-up rocking chair, easier to get in and out of with a...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 PM
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Comments (2)
July 22, 2008
Because global warming isn't forcing enough polar bears to swim hundreds of miles across open ocean to Iceland, where the local redneck cops can gun them down and turn them into rugs, they are forced to make polar bear-looking...
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Posted by greg at
1:14 PM
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Comments (2)
July 16, 2008
F-Raise is a Japanese concept store, with the concept being, "All things wooden, simple, and natural." It's simultaneously more precious and more homebody than J. Peterman; a Non-Urban Outfitters, with plywood and safety glass replaced by chicken wire and...
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Posted by greg at
2:04 PM
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Comments (0)
July 15, 2008
The nursery in a fastidiously restored, mid-century modernist California tract home. It's the space that launched a thousand trips to Ikea. CA Modern magazine has a story about how kids are not actually incompatible with your Eichler house's modernist lifestyle....
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Posted by greg at
8:44 AM
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Comments (3)
July 13, 2008
When you're a dad-to-be with a nursery to outfit, the most important thing is to go with a name you can trust. That's why Ortho, a division of the Chevron Chemical Corporation, and the maker of Round-Up, America's favorite herbicide,...
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Posted by greg at
3:55 PM
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Comments (1)
July 10, 2008
[via] [other nice pics here] The love of post-war design in Japan isn't only for Eames chairs and the homegrown 60's Danish knockoffs. There's also the simple, rustic, functional furniture that had to be made locally from whatever wood...
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Posted by greg at
10:06 AM
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Comments (1)
July 8, 2008
So about this chair: I always keep my eyes out for a good base that I could use to make a kid-size Campana Brothers-style stuffed animal chair. I'd imagined using either Takashi Murakami plush dolls or Ugly Dolls, but...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
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Comments (3)
June 30, 2008
The milk crate's days are numbered. Record collectors, bodega-haunting codgers, and playroom shelf-building dads of the future will curse the name of Greg Soehnlen, the Robert Oppenheimer of milk packaging design, whose square milk jug stacks tighter and four...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (6)
June 27, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Olde Country Store, Goldsboro, NC, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Full of Wilber's barbecue and looking...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:33 AM
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Comments (4)
June 24, 2008
If your top four criteria for a changing table are [in no particular order]: minimalist/industrial-style sweet maple ply construction cheap, maybe $40 or so, and at least a mile high DT reader Ariel has found the Craigslisting for you: Very...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 PM
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Comments (6)
June 16, 2008
When he persuaded D. J. de Pree on the moral imperative of his streamlined designs, Gilbert Rohde brought modernism to the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Though he apparently didn't bring an urgency to produce modern children's furniture. Because even...
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Posted by greg at
3:22 PM
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Comments (3)
In the country of the Ikea-less, the guy reselling Ikea basics with like a five-dollar markup is king. New Zealand is such a country, and Mocka is such a king. Seriously, how weird is this? Mocka offers free shipping...
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Posted by greg at
6:35 AM
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Comments (6)
June 13, 2008
I guess I haven't followed the development of the Jean Prouvé market as closely as I'd thought; otherwise I might have known that TECTA, the German manufacturer of some early Prouvé furniture--and the contemporary re-issuer of others--also produced a...
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Posted by greg at
7:45 PM
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Comments (3)
June 11, 2008
Though the picture's from Elle Decor, not Interior Design, I think this is Florence Lopez's son's "lacquered Jean Prouvé bed" with "a cork bulletin board that Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand designed for two French universities" over it. I...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (3)
Mathier Mategot was the other mid-century designer, the one who wasn't Corbusier, Perriand, or Prouve. Left Bank interior designer Florence Lopez put these sweet 1950's painted iron kids chairs ["inspired by Mathieu Mategot"] in the window of Luco, her...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (0)
Here's where I'd normally suggest that buying this sweet, vintage table and stool set for just $80, and installing it in your kid's room. But they're only 1 1/2 inches high, so you'd probably store them in your kid's...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
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Comments (3)
June 7, 2008
It's not clear to me if Dripta Roy's babyC is as big as a cradle or as small as a car seat. Puur Design Studio's website describes it as both an "alcove-shaped environment" and a "light and versatile" product...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (0)
As this awesome wall-mounted shelving/desk structure demonstrates, Wouter's "palletsized research" is really paying off. I just hope he reclaims some sandpaper while he's at it. Pallet-based construction and design by Wouter, featured on The Raw Foundation [rawprojects.org, via andy]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:00 AM
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Comments (3)
June 6, 2008
If you're not going to Genius Jones' big Bugaboo Event in Miami tomorrow, you can make the one-day-only Warehouse Sale at Modernica in LA instead! Or join in online, where a Fiberglass Rocker made from Eames and Herman Miller's...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (0)
June 4, 2008
Israeli industrial designer/woodworker/far east culture researcher Itay Ohaly calls this piece, "Papa Chair/happy family." And it is, at least until Papa stands up. Itay Ohaly's portfolio site [ohaly.com via mocoloco] Previously, and in inspiring shades of green: PS Trivas...
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Posted by greg at
9:45 PM
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Comments (4)
June 3, 2008
Nuna is a new Dutch kids' product company that just debuted its first product, the Nuna High Chair. As befits a £195 high chair, it adjusts and adapts to remain useful, if not necessary, through age 6. From the...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 AM
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Comments (1)
June 1, 2008
I forgot another great find from ICFF, but then catching up with the latest from the premier milkcrate lifestyle blog, Milkcrate Digest, reminded me. Pittsburgh artist Lacey Volk had made a plywood version of a milkcrate, which was nice....
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Posted by greg at
9:38 PM
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Comments (0)
May 29, 2008
Damn, surfing around Duluth Trading's website, makes me want a job-site. They sell this awesome, portable plan station as a time-saving alternative to building your own temporary table: "Simply pound 2 nails into the wall, and slip 2, 24”...
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Posted by greg at
3:02 PM
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Comments (2)
I start wondering what's the point of pointing this stuff out. But then I think, if I can touch just one heart, change just one life, by helping someone find the $3,000 stool shaped like an Andy Warhol soup can,...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (0)
"The chair, created from beaver-gnawed wood, was made by Bruce Gundersen, a filmmaker and furniture designer, to mark the birth of Ms. Puett’s son, Grey Rabbit." Ms Puett is J. Morgan Puett, and her baby daddy is the artist...
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Posted by greg at
7:44 AM
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Comments (1)
May 27, 2008
John Pour Home is a Swedish outfit that hand-cuts 5mm felt into the eye-catching, fuzzy, customized rug of your choice. The skull rug shown here in grey or cream [and available in a dozen other colors] is just 128...
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Posted by greg at
12:49 AM
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Comments (0)
May 22, 2008
These were at ICFF, but I must have blocked them from my mind like a drunken experimental incident at college. Brent White tells the New York Times about the inspiration for his Kunigi Unu stools:I like the idea that...
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Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (1)
May 21, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DT@ICFF: Nurseryworks, originally uploaded by daddytypes. So I've been thinking about the Lawson-Fenning collection Nurseryworks...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (6)
I hate getting stuff at industry events; it feels very wasteful to me. At a gig like ICFF, most companies are just giving out tote bags anyway, tote bags designed to swallow all the folders and discs and stuff...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (3)
May 19, 2008
One of my all-time favorite crib designs [alright, huge nerd alert for having a list of favorite crib designs. whatryagonnado?] is Denmark's hometown favorite, the Leander Bed, from Stig Leander Nielsen. The molded birch beauty converts from a crib...
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Posted by greg at
10:33 AM
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Comments (4)
The ICFF was hopping on the first day, Saturday, but for all the buzz, I couldn't help wondering how it compared to the blowouts last year at CNC Router Expo '07 and Laminated PlyFair. And it wasn't just the...
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Posted by greg at
6:40 AM
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Comments (5)
May 18, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DT@ICFF, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I've gotta run out the door, but I wanted to...
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Posted by greg at
8:01 AM
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Comments (3)
So I went to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair yesterday in NYC, and there was a whole bunch of interesting kid-related designs. While my photos are loading up, though, there's an awesome design that wasn't at the Fair. At...
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Posted by greg at
6:51 AM
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Comments (1)
May 15, 2008
I was just factchecking myself on those P'kolino cubes, and I see that another DT advertiser's having a sale right now, too. Sparkability's running a 15% off spring sale, just use the code "spring08" at checkout. It ends today, so...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 PM
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Comments (1)
Even though the company was only founded a couple of years ago, I've been a fan of Via Toy Box's modular plywood storage cubes since the 1940's. They make a great version of a classic, flexible, and modern solution for...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (1)
May 14, 2008
I'll be at the ICFF this weekend. If you're there, or if you know of something I should check out, definitely let me know, either in the comments or via email. thanks and see you and/or your product or event!...
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Posted by greg at
8:38 PM
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Comments (0)
May 13, 2008
DT reader Goemon sends along this shot of a sweet, plexi hospital bassinet from Tokyo. That tubular steel is pretty nice as-is. Those dainty-colored wheel covers could use some reworking, though. Previously: Sweet plexi hospital bassinets I have loved...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 AM
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Comments (1)
May 12, 2008
In case you haven't found the right low five-figure chair for the kid's room yet, there are two possibilities from the upcoming design auction at Wright20 to consider: There's a pretty early example (1975) of Wendell Castle's Crescent Rocker done...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 AM
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Comments (0)
May 10, 2008
After debuting as an organic modernist sculptor in the 1950's, Philippe Hiquily became the Surrealist Metal Furnituremaker To The Stars [of the French aristo jet set] in the 1960's and 1970's. For example, the limited edition coffee table, "Poupouce,"...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 AM
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Comments (1)
May 9, 2008
They're pitching it as a bedside table, but I wonder if this wall-mounted Via Toy Box couldn't be paired with others to make a row of them along a wall, or maybe stick them in a checkerboard pattern or...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
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Comments (1)
May 8, 2008
DT reader Jason spotted this article in the LA Times today. Apparently, there's a mom in town who taught herself woodworking so she could make her own modernist-style furniture for her kids' rooms. So she built some prototypes for family...
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Posted by greg at
2:52 PM
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Comments (5)
If you were wondering what features of the Swedish landscape the design team at Little Red Stuga has been turning into kid-sized play furniture lately, now you know: a folding screen house with mirrors on one side; and a...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (0)
May 7, 2008
So I'm still kicking around the idea of building a dining table using a design by Enzo Mari [see some longwinded discussion of it here.] It's supposed to be made out of plain, unfinished pine lumber, which you can...
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Posted by greg at
5:22 PM
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Comments (9)
May 4, 2008
Seriously. Moore and her husband Bart Freundlich have donated a "gently used" Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair to Johnson's Celebrity Hand-Me-Down Auction. All proceeds go to some dizzying constellation of kid-related charities. [And all goodwill goes straight to Johnson's....
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Childcraft Nesting Chair Blocks, circa 1974, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I just got a fat...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 AM
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Comments (0)
April 26, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } tv set Maarten Baas, originally uploaded by ibowoman. In 2006, Dutch designer Maarten Baas debuted...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (0)
April 24, 2008
When you're filling a modernist landmark, more is not more after all. The Kips Bay Decorator Show House is an Upper East Side institution: a select handful of society decorators each get a room in some townhouse, which they inevitably...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (1)
April 23, 2008
Here's a nice report from a dad and satisfied Boon customer:We've had a Boon Flair high chair for a few months now, which we really like. A couple weeks ago one of the male clips on the harness broke. I...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 AM
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Comments (0)
Here's the deal: DwellStudio is having an overstock sale, 60-80% off on current and discontinued designs. And it sounds like they're replenishing daily, so there's less of that "line up & fight for it" sample sale frenzy. When: Apr. 24-May...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 AM
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Comments (0)
April 21, 2008
It's not nearly enough to know that "abitacolo" is where the pilot sits on a plane, or where the humans ride in a car. No, to Bruno Munari, the Abitacolo he designed in 1971 for the Italian furniture company...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (1)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Keith Haring, originally uploaded by mario.mc. So obviously, I found this photo of Keith Haring...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (0)
In the downtown New York art world of the early 1980's, Keith Haring was a rising star, but he was only one of a number of artists who took drawing more seriously than Art, and who insisted on breaking...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (1)
April 20, 2008
Ah, 1968, the Golden Age of Cardboard Children's Furniture, which was ushered in by Peter Raacke's Papp collection, the world's first cardboard furniture. And by first, I mean third, after the Those Things stool from the British designer Peter...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 PM
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Comments (1)
April 19, 2008
The images and reports from the furniture-palooza in Milan are starting to turn up. One of the first kid-related designs to show up: the children's chairs of Eiry Rock, a young designer and maker from Leicestershire, smack in the...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (0)
April 18, 2008
Last we heard of Walter Papst, the German pioneer in the design of fiberglass furniture, his Rocking Sculpture was being reissued in a limited edition by Wilkhahn. [Also, he was hunting aliens.] After the Rocking Sculpture won an award...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 PM
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Comments (2)
April 16, 2008
If sales are what interest you, here are some interesting sales I've heard about in New York, Miami, and around the whole world on the Internet: Sweet Dutch Designers Sample Sale, Apr 17 (9-6) & Apr 18 (9-3): "SPRING 2008...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 PM
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Comments (0)
Wow, David Moser's Edo Rocker looks like a Mission Style classic that came home all Art Nouveau after going on study abroad to Belgium. And in a good way. It's substantial and lyrical at the same time. Apparently, Moser,...
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Posted by greg at
7:41 AM
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Comments (2)
April 15, 2008
At EUR650, this very changing table-esque, modular shelving unit, made in Holland in the 1950's by Pilastro, is approximately 25 times the cost of the modern, lawn chair-like Ikea alternatives. Then again, Ikea has 25 million Google results; Pilastro...
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Posted by greg at
9:02 PM
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Comments (0)
I am a sucker for industrial felt. Spread last week's pad thai onto a giant sheet of inch-thick, grey felt, and I'd eat it with my hands tied behind my back. [Actually, I think that's actually a Joseph Beuys...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 AM
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Comments (3)
April 14, 2008
Why go to the trouble of hacking together a wall-mounted Ikea changing table from the office furniture section, when Ikea already offers a perfectly fine-looking wall-mounted changing table in the changing table department? The Antilop changing table is supposedly...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (1)
I know what you were thinking--or at least I know you know what I was thinking--when you saw that new Ikea PS series Laptop Workstation on minor details last week: sweet, but could you make a wall-mounted changing table...
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Posted by greg at
4:44 PM
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Comments (3)
April 6, 2008
Clive Thompson, who just wrote an article for Wired about the resurgence of DIY culture, points to an excellent essay by Matthew B. Crawford, "Shop Class As Soulcraft," which ran in 2006 in The New Atlantis, A Journal on Technology...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 PM
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Comments (3)
April 3, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Mr. Jalopy's Vintage Kid Chairs of Wonder, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I made a pilgrimage...
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Posted by greg at
10:45 PM
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Comments (0)
April 1, 2008
So we went poking around Silverlake today, the girls and I. Yolk is nice. But hey-o, Monkeyhouse Toys?? Awesome. The hyper-indie toy store has more than a few kidult-oriented toys, but first and foremost, it's a toy store for...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
I've been slowly hearing back from various designers in the Childsply Project that UK design gallery/store twentytwentyone organized in 1999. [13 designers and firms created twelve pieces of kid furniture out of a single sheet of plywood. The originals...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (0)
March 31, 2008
Cribs stuffed with suffocating amounts of pillows, animals, and blankets? Dangly canopies and ribbons posing a strangulation risk? For bravely pointing out the safety hazards in J.Lo and M.An's People Magazine-styled Twin Cribs Of Death, the editors of Parents deserve...
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Posted by greg at
7:48 AM
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Comments (4)
Whatever happened to Restoration Hardware's Baby? Patty and the trades reported it last Spring, and DT reader Mark wondered aloud about it a couple of days ago. Now according to Chris, Daddy Types' mall correspondent, Restoration Hardware is indeed...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 AM
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Comments (2)
March 28, 2008
Finland: it's the little differences. I didn't know it was going to be Finland week around here, but DT commenter hfb ties the whole thing together and brings it all home with by pointing out that cardboard box cradles...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (5)
And where six babystyles close, more than a dozen BabyGap Home stores take their place. Fourteen, actually, starting with existing BabyGap stores in CA, NY, Chicago, and Dallas. Seems The Gap is getting ready to launch BabyGap Home, a...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 AM
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Comments (3)
Another find from the kids at Turku University in Finland, one that makes me go, "Yhteydenottoihin!" This is the Jocular high chair/stool by Taina Ollikkala and Teea Jäske, which is beautifully crafted out of chromed steel and elm. [No...
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Posted by greg at
9:34 AM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Hotrod walker, originally uploaded by jyri. It took me a while to track down this...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (0)
In 2001, British designer Andrew Stafford created the Baby Box, Archive and Crib, mk.3, which I assume pertains to the third version. [James Goggin is credited with graphic design on mk3, while Paul Elliman and Alex Rich did mk1 and...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 AM
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Comments (3)
March 27, 2008
Robin Day's Rocking Bird Childpsly Chair, 1999, for twentytwentyone, via For an extremely awesome-sounding collection of affordable, sustainable, kid-related design that's not even ten years old, Childsply is pretty-near invisible on the web. Childsply was the name of a...
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Posted by greg at
12:55 PM
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Comments (5)
March 26, 2008
More sweet loft modules cribbed from magazines. I was really digging the Lego wall, so grabbed this shot of Nina Tolstrup's painted MDF kidshouse from her profile in the latest issue of Dwell. Only when I got home did...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (1)
Judging by her firm's online porfolio, Merge Architects principal Elizabeth Whittaker has never designed a plywood loft built-in she didn't like. And that apparently goes for her own kid's nursery, too. The April issue of Boston Magazine features awesome...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (0)
March 21, 2008
Let's all celebrate with mom-to-be Melissa, whose hand-painted, death-slat-equipped, fallout-optimized, mini-crib won 3rd Prize in Design*Sponge's recent DIY Project Contest. I'm sure she'll use the $300 prize money to buy some infill slats. I think we've all learned an...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:29 PM
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Comments (8)
March 20, 2008
The NY Times Home Section has a feature on Suchitra Van and Nette Gaastra, two artsy, West Villagers who decided to remodel when their son Sebbe was born rather than give up their 1BR apartment. Think of it as...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (5)
I first spotted this design yesterday on, uh, Designspotter. As you can guess from the shape, Bloom Baby's new Otto chairs slide right in under the new Otto playtable, for a nice, clean look. It's designed by Hakan Gürsu,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (1)
March 19, 2008
With a name like Studio Papas, I think I'd love whatever Koen Crommentuijn and Marjan Verboeket put out. The fact that it's House for Sale, or Speelhuis, a set of twelve, giant cold-foam blocks shaped like classic wooden blocks...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (2)
March 14, 2008
Of the over 14,000 vintage color slides donated by Charles W. Cushman to the Indiana University library, this 1960 photo of a cradle at Fontainebleau is the only one with a "children's furniture" tag. I did some searching, and...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (3)
Dutch designer Ineke Hans' Black Beauties collection, begun in 2000, was one of the first significant attempts to make cool, contemporary furniture for kids. The chairs, tables, and rocking toys are made out of heavy-duty, black, recycled plastic--which weighs...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:36 AM
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Comments (1)
March 13, 2008
If you'd given up on your groovy Halston-themed nursery and were about to return that silver metallic op art wallpaper, STOP. Your rocker just turned up on eBay. MODERN LUCITE ROCKING CHAIR 1970'S, $475 bid or $500 Buy It...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (2)
It's a molded ply world out there--in Scandinavia, anyway. Thanks to DT reader Anouschka, who ID'd that molded ply changing table as the work of Swedish designer Bo Ekstrom. The byBo Nursing Table is, in fact, molded birch laminate,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:10 AM
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Comments (1)
March 12, 2008
Wow, you know what? Celebrities are just like us. If by "celebrities," you mean Brooke Burke [1], and by "us," you mean people whose wildly unsafe-but-photogenic nursery furniture causes online comment riots. Before the whole DIY crib of death...
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Posted by greg at
8:06 PM
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Comments (3)
Killer crib, dude! Vote now, and help turn Design*Sponge's DIY contest into a potentially lifesaving learning opportunity for everyone about the safety hazards posed by crib slats that are more than the government-mandated 2 3/8 inches apart [head gets...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:32 PM
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Comments (9)
Oh, awesome, modular cube-shaped retail fixtures, where were you when I needed you? Milan-based industrial designer Marc Sadler is developing Ombelico, a [presumably] low-cost, flatpack storage and display system, with the Italian manufacturer Alu. It's made from WPC, wood...
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Posted by greg at
11:51 AM
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Comments (0)
March 7, 2008
"Aus 1 mach 4" is right! When it comes to children's furniture, the German penchant for convertibility uber alles is well known. [uh, citation needed] So let's just point out the obvious about the Phidibus 4-in-1 bassinet/rocking bench/bench/desk made...
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Posted by greg at
4:23 PM
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Comments (1)
March 6, 2008
Wal-Mart's got another set of modern-style nursery furniture. The first Modern Nursery collection they stocked from BabyMod wasn't really modern; the manufacturer, Million Dollar Baby [which also makes Da Vinci furniture], just went for a a Netto-in-a-fog look by...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (8)
March 3, 2008
Sometimes you're the whacker, and sometimes you're the weed. The last time we saw the Quebecois crib powerhouse Morigeau Lepine mentioned on Daddy Types, they were hiding a flatout David Netto knockoff crib in the walled booth at the...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (1)
Note to recent graduates of industrial design programs: When you present a concept for a co-sleeper/bassinet made from molded EVA foam and molded ply, check to see that the name is not already being used by an existing baby...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (3)
So the Dwell for Target [oops, make that DwellStudio for Target] bedding collection has been in stores for a few weeks now, and it looks fine; it has nice, Dwell-y design with get-what-you-pay-for quality. But the nursery furniture is...
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Posted by greg at
11:12 AM
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Comments (6)
February 29, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DSC08026.JPG, originally uploaded by eamesd. Andy just posted this photo from Eames Demetrios' flickr stream....
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Posted by greg at
9:51 AM
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Comments (0)
Someone emailed me recently asking if there were any cool fold-down changing tables. The Man On The Television says you should just make one yourself. [Frankly, after seeing the results, I'm not convinced. "Wasted Spaces"?? You could dock an aircraft...
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Posted by greg at
8:34 AM
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Comments (7)
February 28, 2008
Is there someone at the JPMA who gets a bonus every time crib bumpers aren't mentioned in a CPSC alert about the dangers of "soft bedding" in cribs? From the AP: Parents are putting their babies at risk when they...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 AM
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Comments (1)
February 24, 2008
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes someone losing his home office to the new baby. This time, it's a dad-to-be and hardcore DIY'er named Jason, who is filling flickr with updates on the transformation of a narrow...
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Posted by greg at
3:17 PM
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Comments (1)
February 22, 2008
In his burgeoning collection of dad-and-newborn-related Playmobil pieces, Mr. Stinkhead features this tableau: a new dad videotaping a baby in one of those sweet, plexiglass and steel bassinets from the hospital. It's like Playmobil is jacked into my head,...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (2)
February 21, 2008
Now there is a bold, trademarky move. Anyone can make a scaled-down kid's version of classic Eames designs like the molded ply DCM chair and the fiberglass shell rockers; in fact, I'd argue that it's a crime no one--*cough...
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Posted by greg at
3:00 PM
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Comments (6)
February 20, 2008
I think we can all agree that, in retrospect, a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair would have sold far more Pepsi than a life-size mannequin of Jar Jar Binks, even though Jabba wasn't even in Episode One [d'oh, I've...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (3)
February 14, 2008
So I read in the newspaper tha having both a kid and nice furniture can be a challenge. Has anyone else heard of this? For example, these new-fangled Noguchi coffee tables have glass tops, and "Barcelona chairs" are like "razor...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 AM
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Comments (11)
February 13, 2008
Thomas Pedersen's Stingray rocking chair was designed in 2004, and has been for sale for at least two years. So when I saw it described on Dwell.com as "NEW" and a winner of the Interior Innovation Award at this...
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Posted by greg at
2:21 PM
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Comments (1)
February 7, 2008
The boardbook comes down from the Hushamok tribe, In the big game I call, "Pitch it to me." The PRs, it's said, try to get in my head, And since I find the press kits quite gloomy... I was gonna...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (2)
It's my kid in a box, baby! From the 1946 advice book, Mother and Baby Care In Pictures, comes this cardboard box done up as a crib:An improvised bed made from a corrugated carton by an ingenious father. Not...
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Posted by greg at
7:06 AM
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Comments (3)
February 6, 2008
Yeah, so I bought the book the Buckminster Fuller Master Index credits Bucky's crib design to: the all-new 1946 edition of Louise Zabriskie's parenting handbook, Mother & Baby Care in Pictures. Sure enough, there's the Kiddie Koop in all...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 PM
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Comments (2)
February 4, 2008
The first thing I thought when I saw the renderings for the new bassinet and easel from Argington and ODA, the Office for Design & Architecture: a pushcart. This thing would be perfect for a family moving into one of...
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Posted by greg at
2:39 PM
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Comments (6)
What could you write about at your Lolita bed/desk? In the United Kingdom of the aliterate, the Wikipedia reader is king. Woolworth's has pulled the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a writing desk/loft bed for young girls, after a heated, if...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
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Comments (5)
January 28, 2008
Kut the krazy krap; you've got to be kidding: Buckminster Fuller, the father of the geodesic dome, was also the creator [kreator?] of the Kiddie Koop crib? The Kiddie Koop made by the Trimble Nurseryland Furniture Co. of Rochester, NY?...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 PM
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Comments (4)
January 24, 2008
So I'm looking at Dwell's new baby zebraskin rug [coming to Target next month, just $180!] and wondering "Seriously, is that somehow not supposed to be a reference to the skin of a baby zebra?" I worried if I...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (1)
The launch of Dwell Studio's new collection for Target is coming up any day now, and I've been stoked to see what the furniture looks like. [I'm sure the bedding is all nice and stylish; honestly, Quilting Frenzy Week...
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Posted by greg at
8:00 AM
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Comments (3)
January 23, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } The Crib, originally uploaded by Burton F.. I'm slow to the game, obviously, but I'm...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (3)
January 21, 2008
Watching the live auctions today has wrought havoc on the ol' browser. In the time since I started trying to post about it, this sweet, vintage Creative Playthings fire station jumped from 99 cents to $21.50, which is more...
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (0)
January 18, 2008
Yeah, I could just email Hillsborough, CA eBay seller Noodledoodle.home to see how they're offering new, high-end toys and kids furniture on eBay for seemingly crazylow, non-MSRP prices. But with the new kid-related caps on my daily typing quota,...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (5)
January 16, 2008
Seriously, do you need any starker proof that you can't let your eyes off the eBay even for one second? Even if it's Christmas?? Even if your wife just gave birth??? Check this out: eBay seller id.london had a truly...
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Posted by greg at
11:28 PM
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Comments (2)
One of the reasons we love the Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair was because it doesn't have a tray; the kid sits right at the table and eats and plays along with the family. It's a dynamic that works...
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Posted by greg at
10:15 PM
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Comments (6)
Looks like we missed CPSC Chairwoman Nancy Nord's speech last week at the National Press Club, the one where she criticized the media for its "near-hysteria" and "hoopla" over the record-setting number of product recalls in 2007. In fact, Nord...
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Posted by greg at
5:52 PM
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Comments (1)
January 14, 2008
So I was waiting at the 24-hr pharmacy last night filling a codeine prescription [interesting crowd, a lot of people with empty bottles, who apparently believe "no-refill" means "no refill without asking for a refill 600 times"], where I...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 AM
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Comments (1)
January 11, 2008
When we last saw the Donald Judd daybed-inspired plywood toddler bed I was trying to get made, it looked like this: Just out of sight to the left is the meter, ticking away as I contemplated the invisibility of various...
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Posted by greg at
4:14 PM
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Comments (4)
Who'd have thought that January would be a big sale season for baby gear? Don't we have babies and need stuff at a pretty even clip year-round? Whatever, hop to, there's sales afoot: I assume you already know about Modern...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 AM
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Comments (3)
January 10, 2008
In suburban Haarlem, The Netherlands. Still, EUR845 Euros for a really nice Eek reclaimed wood crib and changing tabletop dresser? That's a pretty good deal. Too bad Mr. intelligent reuse hasn't figured out a knockdown, flatpack model for these...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 PM
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Comments (1)
O-Zone knockoff chair, daughter The NYT Style section has a slideshow of funky kids chairs, including the Happy Cat beanbag chair [or as mfr Roommate calls it, the Fat Cat], that one shoehorn chair that's been hanging in the...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 AM
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Comments (7)
January 9, 2008
It needs a plexiglass baby bucket and maybe a bit of scrubbing, but there's one of those awesome hospital bassinet's on eBay right now. With an opening bid of $125 and to-the-Greyhound-station shipping of $50, that's definitely retail price,...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (0)
January 4, 2008
If I had a big enough truck and a suitable distraction for the guards, the stainless/plexi bassinet isn't the only piece of potential nursery furniture I'd load up and take home tomorrow. This rather sweet cart is molded from...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (1)
January 3, 2008
Traveling to Europe for the holidays sans car seat apparently frees up your hands to take sweet photos for random blogs. That's the lesson we learn from DT CARES testing correspondent Darren. Here's an awesome-looking wood-and-plexi box-on-sticks bassinet he...
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Posted by greg at
6:07 AM
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Comments (1)
January 1, 2008
Well, the ol' DT checklist is pretty much complete, or at least the kids' room is in ready-to-receive shape. [The kid, not so much, she's been kind of a stressed out, wigged out basket case the last couple of...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (4)
L: before, R: after I had decided to repaint the red doors on the kids' Via Toy Box cube tower, and though I had some glossy Ralph Lauren black paint left over after refinishing all the doors in the...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (3)
December 31, 2007
During a regular check of the website for Danish auction house Bruun-Rasmussen, I came across this old hyper-convertible bed called the Juno Bed [ends 8 Jan., est EUR405]. Ever heard of it? I hadn't, though the creators of Denmark's...
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Posted by greg at
4:20 PM
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Comments (3)
Hmm, the subtly carved chair legs in beautiful mahogany; the matching mahogany connector system on the stool corners; the seemingly interchangeable chair seat and stool top; the four bolt holes on the side that could be for attaching another...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 AM
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Comments (3)
December 30, 2007
The men of the south Ndebele tribe of South Africa are responsible for building dried mud house compounds for their families, while the women are charged with decorating it with the tribe's distinctive, bold geometric patterns. Inspired by this...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 PM
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Comments (0)
December 28, 2007
Archinect did a pretty fanboyish interview with Mark Mothersbaugh on the occasion of his rug exhibition at the Scion Gallery, and though there's no mention his Yo Gabba Gabba! appearances, Mothersbaugh shared this profound insight on the preference for subversion...
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Posted by greg at
1:11 AM
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Comments (1)
December 27, 2007
Via the blog of minor details, a newish "children's interior consulting firm" and "imagination agent" based in Brooklyn, comes word of Babyhome, a slick, euro-looking line of aluminum and tech fabric baby gear. Babyhome is the creation of Barcelona-based...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (1)
December 25, 2007
I held the door for the FedEx guy when he delivered our 200+ pounds of Via Toy Box, which, he knew, meant he couldn't get away with leaving them in our building office. The two Korean brothers who brought our...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (0)
December 22, 2007
So the Via Toy Box cubes came Thursday, about 200 pounds worth. They look great in person and went together very nicely. They're not quite slick or deluxe, which may explain the differences in price for otherwise identical-looking cube...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 PM
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Comments (5)
December 17, 2007
Note to self: add "hochstuhl" to my list of saved eBay searches. Andy sent along this rather awesome-looking vintage high chair from Germany. It's made of painted bent wood and some kind of thigh boots-and-riding crop-friendly pleather. Sehr Gut....
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (0)
December 14, 2007
Now I love me some modernist, modular, flexible kids furniture. But I also love me some info, such as when I should be putting a hold on my ducduc order and checking the Swiss franc conversion rate and when...
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Posted by greg at
4:32 PM
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Comments (0)
I guess I shoulda known by the way you propped your flower two ways that it would last. Swedes: they're not all the kinda person that believes in makin' furniture cheap, love 'em and leave 'em fast. I guess...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (0)
A Bubkin? What is it? It's a napkin with buttons that a kid can wear as a bigger bib, made by an Australian outfit named Third Drawer Down, but that's not important now. Tell me more about these plastic...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 AM
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Comments (0)
December 13, 2007
Master craftsman Scott Morrison describes his awesome Rocker Cradle this way: Here I updated a 1700's stlye Windsor Nanny Rocker using Sam Maloof's Classic Rocking Chair design as a basis. I wanted to add interest by creating different shapes...
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Posted by greg at
7:56 AM
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Comments (1)
December 12, 2007
From a photo tour of a Massachusetts family's loft, which is in a converted elementary school, Apartment Therapy, March 2005:That huge cardboard tube is going to be an access route through which the kids will crawl to reach a...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (2)
December 9, 2007
In 1963, Isaacs was contacted by a University of Chicago child psychiatrist, who wanted to provide individual work/play/living/storage spaces for handicapped and disabled children in state institutions. The resulting design was two 35 5/8" plywood cubes with storage spaces...
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Posted by greg at
7:34 PM
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Comments (0)
December 6, 2007
Susanne is reporting at Kidsmodern that Alexander Begge's awesome 1970 design for a plastic non-Panton kid's chair, the Casalino, is back in production. The Dutch manufacturer Casala is introducing it in two sizes, for kids and toddlers. Apparently, Casala...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (8)
December 4, 2007
So the other kid's crib, which was originally going to be the kid's toddler bed, is inching toward conversion, and you must admit, it is rather Juddish. Given the crib and the overall minimalist [as in art] vibe, I...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 AM
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Comments (6)
December 3, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Where are all the hippie visionaries when you need'em? In the 50's and 60's, designer...
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Posted by greg at
8:27 PM
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Comments (0)
During the Tokyo Design Week festivities, Takashi Shinozaki of Asterisk Studio debuted his Rebis Rocker, along with his 270-Degree Series of wraparound shelf and table units, at a joint exhibition called Prototypes in Minami Aoyama. The show included works...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (2)
December 2, 2007
I've had this 1969 Form Magazine photo of cardboard kid's furniture on my desktop all week, but I just noticed the dollhouse to the right. Ilse-Werke KG, the German company behind the furniture, leaves no trace that I can...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 PM
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Comments (0)
December 1, 2007
The Ellinor rocker is made in Sweden by Heirloom, and from the sound of it, it lives up to its name and its $1500-2000 price tag. The spare, Scandinavian modern styling is built to last for generations using dovetailed...
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Posted by greg at
10:48 AM
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Comments (1)
November 29, 2007
Erika Pekkari's Trofast cradle/crib/kid-sized sofa is one of those examples of Ikean plain pine brilliance which, because it went out of production before we ever set foot in the kid's department, was not available to those of us who...
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Posted by greg at
11:35 PM
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Comments (2)
November 28, 2007
I am familiar with the work of Pablo Neruda. The work of Luigi Colani, not so much. I did think I'd ferreted out most all of the kid-related design from the online archives of the incomparable German design magazine,...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 PM
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Comments (4)
I don't know what you were up to, but somehow I doubt your 1970's were as full of design revolutionizing as Luigi Colani's. If only the 1973 oil embargo hadn't thrown the polyethylene furniture business into the furnace, I'm...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 AM
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Comments (0)
November 27, 2007
A household name from Finland to Estonia, Ristomatti Ratia is one of the most cut-n-pastable designers working today. Ratia is not resting on his laurels for having created the Palaset storage cube system. His studio is keeping busy with...
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Posted by greg at
1:33 PM
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Comments (3)
While the room itself is bigger, the closet in the kids' room is much smaller than in the kid's old room. So we need to get some actual storage furniture to hold their clothes. I really like the idea...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (11)
November 26, 2007
Classic: "We don’t believe that bassinets should look like poufy 1980’s wedding dresses." When they launched last year--in part, by advertising on Daddy Types, hey-o!--Monte Design Studio hit the baby industrial complex in a real weak spot: the hideous...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 PM
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Comments (0)
November 23, 2007
Awesome. The meatballs are this way. If you eat all your dinner, you can play in the ball pit for a few minutes. Ikea Floor Arrow rug by Sophie Bouy [sophiebouy.com via canadiandesignresource]...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
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Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Eric Pfeiffer, of the Offi and Modernseed Pfeiffers, and one of the contemporary masters of molded ply, is once again trying to mold his way into our hearts with his new furniture venture, 10 Grain, which had a sneak...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (4)
November 19, 2007
When the in-laws were singing the praises of Takashima-ya's new baby boutique, they kept coming back to the crib. It has these wonderful Plexiglass portholes, said my father-in-law, are you sure you don't need it? Sure enough, it was...
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Posted by greg at
8:23 PM
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Comments (3)
November 18, 2007
Just as they once ruled the seas, the British once led the world in the development of the cardboard playspace race. The date was 1969, and while the US was fiddling around with some moon landing or another, the...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (1)
November 16, 2007
Dear SkateLab Furniture publicists, Thanks for your email. But if this is another one of those "world's leading designer of copper-and-slate fountains sells his company to raise his daughter Ava, but can't get the design bug out of his...
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Posted by greg at
9:32 AM
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Comments (3)
November 13, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } fractured fables, originally uploaded by mimulus7. It's amazing what's changed design-wise since 2000, when illustrator/designer...
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Posted by greg at
10:38 PM
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Comments (2)
Nothing's as fun for a kid's imagination as a cardboard box. Only problem is, no one's getting rich and/or famous just selling a cardboard box. [Unless you're The Container Store on a Sunday afternoon; holy crap, people, eight kinds...
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Posted by greg at
8:55 PM
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Comments (1)
Sad news, unless you're in the market right now for a sweet, soon-to-be-much-rarer, molded ply crib. It turns out that Ooba's recent sale will be Ooba's last sale. The company announced they'll stop taking orders on Nov. 30th. Or...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:05 AM
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Comments (1)
November 11, 2007
The kid's been learning to hop on one foot at pre-pre-school this year. So this sweet Hopscotch carpet by Karin Mannerstall, uh, really jumped out at me on swissmiss. It's part of the Play series Mannerstall did for the...
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Posted by greg at
7:21 AM
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Comments (0)
November 9, 2007
OK, surfing through the Hiromatsu Furniture Co. catalogue turns up some rather nice-looking pieces. Check out this sweet carved pine & wrought iron settee, for example. And also: There's something appealingly irrational, though, about getting Shaker furniture made in Japan....
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Posted by greg at
8:12 AM
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Comments (6)
November 7, 2007
Whoa. Now we what happens when you live with a big inventory of Stokke Tripp Trapp high chairs for an extended period of time: you start getting a little creative and a little wacky. Magic Beans has introduced a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:37 PM
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Comments (3)
Now that Matali Crasset has been identified as the ingenius behind the foam-block-sofa made from cheapass-immigrant-plaid-shopping bags concept, her new Permis de Construire [Construction Permit] sofa for Domeau & Peres fits even more comfortably within her oeuvre. [Though I'm...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (3)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } puzzle pillows, originally uploaded by INV/ALT. Hmm, maybe I won't try so hard to find...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:31 AM
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Comments (2)
I'm sure I'll catch hell from the Cubanistas at Miami Art Basel for mentioning this, but Miguel Garces Luis Ramirez is Cuba's foremost artist working in the medium of rocking chairs. An exhibition of his oeuvre opened last month...
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Posted by greg at
7:05 AM
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Comments (1)
November 5, 2007
One day you've never heard of Frank Reenskaug; the next, his teak rocking chairs from 1958 are everywhere. But even then, you can't find out much more than that a handful of chairs are for sale [or sold.] Good...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:48 AM
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Comments (1)
November 4, 2007
Alright, design gurus, I'm stumped. I swear I remember someone stuffing foam blocks into these dollar store plaid nylon shopping bags and making a sofa and chairs. It was a few years ago, maybe even Y2K, and I think...
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Posted by greg at
8:31 AM
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Comments (8)
November 3, 2007
Alright, so all the headlines are from the New York Times. I'm like that guy on NY1 who reads the paper for you in the morning, only I pull out the dad-related stories: Inside The Box: I admit, I fell--hard--for...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 PM
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Comments (0)
November 2, 2007
So the big designblogs are rolling out their photocoverage of Dutch Design Week, which ended like a hundred years ago [or a week ago; why does this week feel like it's gone on a hundred years?]. Core77 just posted...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 PM
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Comments (0)
Alright, I've kept quiet long enough, and Andy and his readers over at Stork Bites Man have had their chance. And though I know I'll regret not buying them myself--I kind of think they'd be kind of insanely awesome...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:25 PM
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Comments (1)
The modern, molded awesomeness that is the Ooba crib just got a little cheaper. The crib, which was like an insane $2300 when it launched, and then dropped to $1650 as production volume increased, just got showed up on...
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Posted by greg at
1:22 PM
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Comments (0)
November 1, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } 1000dollarcushion, originally uploaded by accd_STU. When we spent the summer in Tokyo a couple of...
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Posted by greg at
12:19 AM
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Comments (2)
October 31, 2007
If Ernest Hemingway really did write the short story, "For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn." I'm sure he never could have imagined it'd be quoted 10,000 times a day on eBay. Quoted, and occasionally surpassed. This line from the description...
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Posted by greg at
8:54 AM
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Comments (4)
October 28, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Toy Kitchen 2, originally uploaded by annam42. Very nice. Anna, a craftblogging mom who knows...
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Posted by greg at
8:31 PM
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Comments (5)
October 25, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } bumbo, originally uploaded by dulcesmommy. You know how Bumbo baby seats totally look like untippable...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (15)
October 24, 2007
Who is running the tour schedule Vitra's exhibition, "Kid-Size: The Material World of Childhood"? That is seriously the hardest-working, slightly self-promotingest exhibition in the museum business. As with so many other things in the baby world, it feels momentous...
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Posted by greg at
8:52 AM
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Comments (4)
October 23, 2007
We're looking for a new sofa for DC, so I've been surfing the antique and midcentury store sites in DC. One store, Modernicus, has this kind of cool kids table and chair set from the 1970's. Of course, they...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
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Comments (3)
October 22, 2007
My Modern Life is an eBay seller in Lincoln Nebraska who first crossed my radar when she posted some vintage toys in insanely great condition by Creative Playthings and Kay Bojesen. As if that wasn't awesome enough, My Modern...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (0)
On their safety blog, On Safety, Consumer Reports reports consumers are finding that fixing their deadly, recalled Simplicity cribs is not so simple [you still with me?]:The CPSC press release urges consumers who have the crib to call Simplicity for...
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Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
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Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
See, was that so hard? Kiersten at Mod Mom Furniture is making kid furniture in her garage again, furniture that's even based on her own designs. And it's not bad at all. As before, you can buy with confidence,...
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Posted by greg at
11:10 AM
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Comments (11)
October 18, 2007
So my wife tells me that while I was gone, she and the kid sat down to read the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue together. Now the kid wants bump beds. [ducduc, Argington, and Nurseryworks, we'll be in touch in 2010...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 AM
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Comments (6)
October 16, 2007
No way! Nurseryworks' signature Sleepytime Rocker and Perch Stool are now available in mini-size. It looks just like the regular Sleepytime, only smaller. See? alright, actual information: it's 19" high and runs $325 [nurseryworks.net via nurseryworks' pr]...
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Posted by greg at
4:28 PM
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Comments (2)
Suh-weet. Sparkability sure gets around. The newly redesigned Design*Sponge just launched a contest, and the prize is an Eames Rocker, courtesy of Sparkability [which is also a fine DT advertiser, btw]. To enter, just send D*S a photo [or...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (0)
October 13, 2007
image: wolfsoniana.it Antonio Rubino was a leading comic artist and illustrator in Italy from between the wars until his death in the 1960's. He drew and edited some early Disney magazines [Topolino ring any bells?] and founded the kid's...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 PM
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Comments (0)
October 12, 2007
Eames Hack is part of a DIY-focused charette by a team of industrial design students at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. They modded two iconic Eames chairs with the intent of liberating "these once iconic, elite, forms." And...
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Posted by greg at
12:31 AM
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Comments (1)
October 10, 2007
They know from furniture in Sweden, but even with the IKEAfication of the world proceeding apace, it appears they hold back some of the best furniture ideas for the home market. And by "best," I mean "freakin' craziest." Like bassinets...
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Posted by greg at
2:47 PM
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Comments (2)
October 9, 2007
Our Baby Industrial Complex at work. Here's the text of a statement released by the JPMA, with a little extra context:Statement of JPMA Concerning the Simplicity Recall Representatives of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA) have met with Simplicity, Inc....
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (3)
I guess when Genius Jones commissioned one of the old Long Island City manufacturers of Mies Van Der Rohe's Barcelona Chair to make a 2/3-scale children's version, and it got written up in The New York Times [below], and...
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Posted by greg at
7:58 AM
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Comments (2)
Interesting. Knoll recently introduced two child-sized versions of two of its iconic chairs, including the classic 1948 Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen and--I can't find the other one. [Maya Lin's Stones stools, perhaps?] Lin's around, but Saarinen's been gone...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 AM
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Comments (0)
October 7, 2007
Giles Miller and Farm make a lot of things from cardboard. As sightings trickle in from last month's London Design Festival, it appears that a child-sized version of his new Exbox Chair is--or will be--among them. It was shown...
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Posted by greg at
6:36 PM
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Comments (1)
October 6, 2007
This past summer, Design21 Social Design Network sponsored a competition called "Child's Play". The brief: Design an affordable object or a series of objects that a child can play with in which the function is more suggestive than prescriptive and...
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Posted by greg at
6:17 PM
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Comments (4)
October 5, 2007
George Nakashima made this free-edge arm walnut rocking chair for his niece, Alene. Obviously, it rocks. I wonder if you could rout out a little hole in the arm to hold the bottle... KIDDING! KIDDING! I KID BECAUSE I...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (4)
October 4, 2007
This was on BabyGadget a little while ago, the FYS Finish Your Self Junior chair made of recycled cardboard--oh wait, no, it's "100% recyclable"--by David Graas, an Amsterdam designer interested in environmentally sound products, or as he puts it...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (0)
First off, let me say that I think that the principles of designing for kids--no sharp corners, integrated safety rails--and the nature of the low-volume, cost-effective manufacturing process, especially CNC routing of sheets of material, are not insignificant. But...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (4)
According to the people who follow such things, 2,000 child-sized Chairry chairs from Pee-Wee's Playhouse were made by Herman Toys in 1988. They're about 32 inches high. Like many a child star--not to mention her show's eponymous host--Chairry seems...
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Posted by greg at
4:59 PM
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Comments (2)
Is it just me, or did London Design Week and the associated events like 100% Design generate almost no kid-related design discoveries? True, a couple of weeks ago, MoCoLoco had a seating roundup with photos of Andrew Millar's Teddy...
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Posted by greg at
2:28 PM
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Comments (3)
October 3, 2007
The kid and I went to Springville, Utah last week, in the Provo metropolitan area [sic, but less and less sic every time I go back]. La Casita #1 is still a reliable source of decent Mexican food, and...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 AM
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Comments (3)
October 1, 2007
Let's face it: 35-year-old play kitchens are going to be played with. It's usually enough to find one at all, much less one in pristine shape. A three-piece Creative Playthings kitchen--sink, oven, and fridge--just hit the eBay. The stove...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
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Comments (3)
September 30, 2007
I was wondering when the next country would turn up on Kiosk, and it has: Finland. A few times each year, the conceptual SoHo retailer scours a country for exceptionally well-designed and iconic stuff from the rare to the...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (1)
September 27, 2007
A few things I'm seeing on eBay--and not bidding on, so I don't mind telling you about them. This is how [some of] your eBay news is made, people! CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS 60'S WOOD LEARNING TOYS FARM An early set of...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 PM
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Comments (3)
What: Sample and overstock sale for Dwell and Dwellbaby When: Oct. 4 to 11, 11-7 each day Where: 76 Greene St [near Spring] How much: 60-80% off retail. Crib sets that were $352-390 will be $60-160. Wow. [via nyt] What:...
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Posted by greg at
9:30 AM
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Comments (1)
How does Joyce Wadler find these people? The NY Times Home section has the renovation fairy tale of the extremely handy drummer Mark Robohm, who gut-renovated his 400-sq ft Chelsea studio for $11,500 while living in it. Now he and...
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Posted by greg at
8:52 AM
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Comments (1)
September 26, 2007
The artist/playwright/whatever Robert Wilson is apparently moving out to the Hamptons for good, or at least he's emptying out his fabled loft, the site of many a 70's-era SoHo surrealist theater premiere and smokeout. From the look of the...
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Posted by greg at
8:44 PM
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Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
Remember the 1 million Simplicity and Graco [made by Simplicity] cribs recalled last week because the droprail can come undone and create a deadly gap between the crib and the mattress? It turns out the first child to die from...
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Posted by greg at
12:10 AM
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Comments (3)
September 22, 2007
Another nice example of artist dads making stuff for their kids: John Setzen created "The Alphabet for Jack" for his and his wife Mindy's son-on-the-way. Setzen's innocently styled drawings are familiar to his fellow Brooklynians from the band posters...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 PM
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Comments (0)
September 21, 2007
Sheesh, I sure love the way the vinyl wall decal thing has taken off. But watching this 2-hour installation of a massive Blik decalscape condensed to 1-minute, I just can't imagine not totally screwing this up somehow. [Not that...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 PM
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Comments (3)
A team of pediatrics researchers from Washington University in St Louis reviewed 20 years of CPSC data and identified at lesat 27 infant deaths caused by crib bumpers. Their findings and recommendations--GET RID OF CRIB BUMPERS, DUH, THEY'RE POINTLESS AND...
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Posted by greg at
3:50 PM
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Comments (3)
September 18, 2007
Claims of revolutionary functionality. Beautifully designed, A bit expensive but it feels worth it when you pull the trigger. And you'll be hanging your laundry off of it in six months. Yes, the Hushamok is the sleekest new entrant in...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (8)
At what point do we stop thinking it's cute, all the robots in the nurseries, and we start worrying about The Matrix and The Rise Of The Machines? Eh, not yet! Just look at how cute this giant robot...
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Posted by greg at
4:46 PM
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Comments (1)
Artist/illustrator Patrick Lau started with a painting of a robot for his kid's nursery, which began, as his wife Maya put it, "to slightly have a theme." He added giant gears to the walls, and there's a shelf full...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (5)
September 17, 2007
one of these things [L] is a freakin' lot like the other [R] Unbelievable. Peter Opsvik's 1972 design for the Stokke Tripp Trapp has definitely inspired its share of adjustable, modern-style wood high chairs, but the Hipposmile Happy Hippo...
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Posted by greg at
4:12 PM
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Comments (6)
The third question you'd have upon seeing Kotura Design's Lunetta convertible crib/toddler bed at K+J would be, "But does the side raise up?" [#2 is "Is that kid in the union? Because the Koelnmesse is a union venue." #1...
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Posted by greg at
1:12 PM
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Comments (4)
From the folks who brought you Mountain Buggy:Hundreds of glittering Swarovski crystals bring a sparkle of light and colour to a special edition of icansit children's chairs. A supplementary silver seat base completes the classy looks of an eye-catching child's...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (5)
September 16, 2007
Photos and reports are starting to land in my inbox from the giant Kind+Jugend expo in Cologne, which ends today. Big news ahead, stay tuned. Did someone say "big" and "giant"? Last year Stokke sent the kid this exact...
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Posted by greg at
1:00 PM
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Comments (5)
September 13, 2007
I've been watching Westwood Design's new Pacific nursery collection for a long time now, and so I'm bummed to have missed its debut at this year's ABC Kids Expo. The Pacific is quite a bold design move for Westwood,...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (7)
September 10, 2007
Abandon rational concerns of outrageous, potentially dangerous protruding objects all ye who enter your kid here. This wrought iron [is there such a thing as overwrought iron?] and carved wood cradle by Sacca di Messina was included in the...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 AM
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Comments (0)
In the late 1960's, the Italian manufacturer Artemide, best known for their groovy light fixtures, produced this stackable kid's stool by Stacy Dukes. It's called the Efebino, though there was also a slightly wider, 2x taller version called the...
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Posted by greg at
7:46 AM
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Comments (0)
September 9, 2007
Daddy Types was founded out of my search for an industrial-style changing table, something to match the Bowery commercial stainless steel of our kitchen and the gorgeous enameled steel carts that filled the labs of my wife's building at NASA....
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Posted by greg at
9:13 PM
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Comments (0)
Master cabinetmaker Peter Moos was known to Swedish historians of Danish 20th century furniture techniques [pdf] for his use of exceedingly fine, even decorative, joinery. But that's about as much as I can turn up on the guy. That,...
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Posted by greg at
12:56 PM
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Comments (1)
September 8, 2007
Holy smoked salmon, I thought I'd seen everything. Now I've seen everything PLUS some joker on eBay selling a $119 Ikea Hermelin crib on eBay for $249, plus $62 flatrate shipping. That's a 260% markup on a crib that...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (10)
Kay Bojesen is probably best known in the kid design world for his teak monkeys and other toy animals for Rosendahl, designed in the early 1950's, when Danish modernism was really kicking in worldwide. But way back in the...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 AM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2007
So when I posted two days ago that there were more Mattel recalls coming down the pike, I didn't think I meant today. But there you have it, the AP is reporting Mattel is recalling 675,000 Barbie accessories for lead...
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Posted by greg at
10:02 PM
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Comments (6)
Belgian designer Linde Hermans made the Cradle Eisland in 2002. It was shown around a bit, but never went into production. "The sides are the interface with the ground, by which the cradle can waddle. When the baby grows...
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Posted by greg at
9:53 AM
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Comments (0)
September 3, 2007
The Parisian kids gallery/shop Balouga is officially launching its first collection of kid desks this weekend at Maison & Objet, the big trade expo. It includes one desk we've seen before: La Foret des Boites by Matali Crasset, a...
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Posted by greg at
12:18 PM
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Comments (0)
August 31, 2007
If you haven't heard about Sirch's Henry high chair, the German-born, molded birch ply Ode To Cheerio-Eating Joy, it's probably because you're not reading Naomi's blog enough. She picked up on it even without attending ICFF, while legions of...
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Posted by greg at
4:44 PM
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Comments (3)
August 20, 2007
The Doernbecher Crib from Hard Manufacturing provides a dramatic improvement in the pediatric ICU experience for everyone involved: doctors and nurses, little patients, and even their families. All four sides raise and drop with ergonomically designed ease and security,...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 PM
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Comments (3)
DT reader, advertiser, and mailing list drawing prize donor Mark from Sparkability took a break from his sweet kids design guru-ing to email his list of the Top Ten Most Needed Kids Products:Cribs under $400 Doll/Play furniture (crib/cradle/highchair) Cookie Jar...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (6)
The motto for the wonderful Swedish design firm Our Children's Gorilla is, "The children's imagination is our inspiration." In this case, "the children" are "the children who spent the 80's in dark video arcades, pumping every spare kroner into...
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Posted by greg at
8:08 AM
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Comments (3)
August 18, 2007
Kind of. Tina posted about finding these great-looking, fabric-lidded toy bins at Target. The bins are made by Nico Schweizer's Zurich-based Tower of Toy Awesomeness, Momoll. And Tina randomly met Schweizer's wife at Target on Long Island. Kinderhocker Maximo,...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (2)
August 16, 2007
Wow. I don't know what's more shocking: the sweet DIY goodness that resulted from this classic Ikea Gulliver crib and some specialty lumber, or the fact that an Ikea somewhere didn't have a Gulliver in stock, and the expectant...
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Posted by greg at
6:28 PM
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Comments (4)
August 15, 2007
Now one of the basic rules about car seats is that you don't buy them used because you just never know for certain that they haven't been in an accident and had their structural integrity compromised somehow. That said,...
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Posted by greg at
7:56 AM
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Comments (2)
August 12, 2007
The cheeky British architecture and design magazine Icon is calling for a recession to help out the overheated, over-indulgent design world. Can you guess what the second most noxious symptom is after "the cult of celebrity"?:Designer furniture for children As...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 PM
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Comments (0)
August 10, 2007
Colabos are nothing new for the indie and art toy world, but products for actual kids are. The plush & vinyl toy boom is a bit weird in that it ignores the traditional toy customers--children--in favor of still-a-kid-on-the-inside twentysomethings...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 PM
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Comments (5)
August 6, 2007
This cracks me up. We used to make potholders like this at my grandmother's house during summer. Not that we were ever allowed to hold any actual pots. [Though when he was two or so, my brother did dance...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 AM
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Comments (0)
August 4, 2007
Wow. "A2" condition, no scratches, no dings and almost no wear on the original runners. "Strong and supple" shockmounts, paper label and beautiful manufactured-on datestamp. Being sold by "the original owner and 'child'"? The only way this vintage Eames...
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Posted by greg at
5:47 PM
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Comments (0)
Established in the 1940's, Karimoku is the biggest wood furnituremaker in Japan. Their early specialty seemed to be a kind of formal, destyled riff on Swedish/Danish/Knollish modernism, the kind of thing Ultraman would be sitting on while he listened...
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Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (2)
Andy has great photos of the eco-friendly, flatpackin' goodness of Watanabe Riki's hexagonal Riki Stool, designed in 1965 as part of his Carton Furniture Series. Looking at more photos of the stool going together, the designer's claim that it...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 AM
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Comments (2)
August 2, 2007
For a lot of Eames Shell Chair lovers, one of the key selling points is its molded fiberglass material, with the glass threads visible like a vintage high-tech woodgrain, which was adapted from WWII-era airplane radar domes by Eames...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 AM
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Comments (5)
July 26, 2007
DT reader LC writes of the new Hermelin crib from Ikea: "Too bad it wasn't available a year ago. But then I might not have painted my son's Gulliver crib orange (which is awesome)." Don't worry, I've already asked...
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (6)
July 20, 2007
Wow, he's not just for marshmallow sofas and whimsical nursery clocks anymore. Because it's never too early to learn how to take a memo, Herman Miller produced a child-sized version of George Nelson's secretary desk. This example is in...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (1)
Andy does it again. On his dadblog, Stork Bites Man, he posted this photo he found of the prolific Ikea designer Erika Pekkari's sweet solid wood Trofast crib, which converts into a sofa. [Which I think is Swedish for...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
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Comments (3)
July 19, 2007
When did this happen? Here's a tip from an anonymous new dad reader:I don't know if you've noticed, but Offi just made some major, across-the-board, price increases. In my book they are now completely out of the "affordable" range...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (11)
No way, how much do I love MVRDV? The Rotterdam architecture firm just won the competition to build an extension to the city's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen that will house some public space, but also storerooms and archives for...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (1)
July 16, 2007
Yeah, so, when I suggested Creative Playthings Hollow Blocks were long overdue for knock-offery, I guess I assumed the hollow block sets filling up our nation's Montessori schools and daycare centers were all 30+ years old. Actually, I don't...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (2)
July 15, 2007
I gave ModMom a lot of grief for choosing to make and sell knock-off versions of prominent indie design companies like Offi, NotNeutral, and Argington. But wait, explains one ModMom Furniture Posse Member, isn't that what those companies are...
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Posted by greg at
2:54 PM
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Comments (10)
July 11, 2007
Time was when, if you wanted to make a me-too version of whatever TV show is popular right now, you needed a massive studio infrastructure staffed with hundreds of people, including a suiteful of development execs who'd pay their...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (18)
So we're driving down the freeway in Park City the other day, and I came across a top secret R&D lab where Bugaboo is testing a new line of children's furniture. Too early to tell what the designs are...
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Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
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Comments (3)
July 7, 2007
Are you still bummed about losing out on the David Netto crib on eBay last weekend? Because now you have a second chance at scoring a 96% discount on a sweet minimalist crib. There is a solid maple crib--just...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (0)
These Sparrows may cost more than a farthing, but not much more. Oeuf's new Sparrow line of nursery furniture hits a sweet spot in the market, the mid-priced [$600-800] segment for folks who like modernist design, who want more...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
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Comments (2)
July 5, 2007
Kidsmodern has a sweet-looking trio of cribs, so sweet it's hard to remember the time just a couple of years ago when it was Oeuf-way, Netto-way, or the highway, baby, for modern crib design. That said, one of the beds...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (1)
June 29, 2007
Unbelievable. DWR is having their summer sale. Among the deals on offer: three--yes, three--Eero Aarnio Puppies, originally $99 each, for just $98. WITH FREE SHIPPING. Ridiculously cheap, and yet $22 MORE than the Netto crib & changing table. I...
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Posted by greg at
6:49 PM
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Comments (3)
I'll say it again. Whoa. There is a David Netto Loft Collection crib and changing table--the high-end modern nursery furniture that started it all--with an organic cotton mattress, even, for sale on eBay right now, with no reserve, barely...
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Posted by greg at
6:03 PM
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Comments (2)
June 28, 2007
In their interview with MocoLoco, members of the Swiss design firm Big-Game explain that each object in their new Plus Is More collection is created using a simple strategy: "We never use shapes as a starting point, always ideas."...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (0)
June 27, 2007
What a great feeling it must be to take a hacksaw to a piece of Ikea furniture. Wired's Geekdad needed an efficient reconfigure for their two sons' room, so they chopped up the bunkbed and bolted it to the...
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Posted by greg at
9:51 AM
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Comments (1)
June 26, 2007
It's such an obvious question, it's like it's been staring us in the face. Right under our noses. Or our feet. In fact, I'm looking at one right now. It's the perpetually in-your-face reminder of the Baby Industrial Complex's...
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Posted by greg at
9:02 PM
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Comments (6)
June 24, 2007
Here are a few interesting-looking kid-related finds on eBay at the moment: Charles Eames Childs Arm Shell Herman Miller CHAIR, ends Jun 29, currently $10+18 s/h When we last saw our mysterious child-sized, Eames-looking fiberglass shell chairs, their mod-savvy eBay...
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Posted by greg at
4:14 PM
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Comments (0)
June 23, 2007
I spotted this greatlooking rocker at the National Building Museum today; it was on the porch of their Green House exhibit. Peter Danko designed the Gotham Rocker for J. Persing to use as little material as possible. It's made...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (2)
I don't know about you, but it can get pretty damn frustrating when a sleek, beautiful innovative product wins a high-profile children's design competition, but then they never make it to market so I can buy it. Take the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:50 AM
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Comments (0)
June 18, 2007
Thank heaven New York still has a few flatout crazy people left. And that they don't live on our block. I clicked on the NYT slideshow hoping to see more pictures of the cuh-razy fun real estate battle brewing...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 AM
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Comments (1)
June 15, 2007
You just never know. You go along for a while, thinking you've got the hang of things, got it figured out. And then from one moment to the next, you slowly realize you are in wild, uncharted territory, and you...
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10:43 AM
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June 14, 2007
The Chicago auction house Wright20 has been a major force in the modern design world since Frank Lloyd's market started picking up. When Andy sent a link to their upcoming modernism sale, I thought there are some interesting vintage pieces...
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11:02 AM
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June 13, 2007
When I see the glitzy, glamorously-produced kids' design features in the latest edition of House & Garden--and on the H&G website--I feel like a flea market shlub who has a bougainvillea-filled urban entertainment center open across the street. DT's...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (1)
June 9, 2007
Not much to say about this sweet, simple, vintage Danish rocker that the folks at Surfing Cowboys upholstered in blue, cream, and green-flecked fabric. It looks comfortable, and the absence of a big designer name means it's not outrageously...
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1:09 PM
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image: haring.com I generally like my Keith Haring on a wall, preferably loadbearing. [Did you know the Boy's Club of NY building which had that Keith Haring mural, the one in that Sesame Street segment, was just torn down?...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 AM
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June 8, 2007
I can't believe great discoveries are still turning up online from the Milan furniture fair; I mean, it's been like, what? A month? Two? But Mocoloco just posted about the Play! collection of playground- and toy-inspired furniture designs from Eindhoven,...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (1)
June 4, 2007
It's nice when a plan comes together. Paul & Pam Costa of Silicon Valley somewhere were having a boy and thought they'd name him Edison, so they cooked up an Edison theme for his nursery. Though some even bigger...
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Posted by greg at
3:32 PM
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Comments (1)
June 1, 2007
The New Chinky Workshop began when Crazy Asian Uncle Dude decided he could make a better table cheaper for his nephew's Thomas The Tank Engine set. Then his sister had twins, so CAUD whipped up a pair of pine-and-mahogany...
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1:44 PM
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Comments (2)
If you're gonna steal, steal from the best, that's my motto. And if you're gonna have a two week Father's Day sale, with 10% off Herman Miller classics, use a vintage ad from the Official Spokesdadblogger for the Eames...
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Posted by greg at
9:51 AM
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Comments (2)
May 31, 2007
So I'm searching through the forums at Design Addict for something else, when I come across a discussion about collectors' greatest finds. Way down the page, below the heated discussion about the ethics of stealing a Ronald-colored Saarinen chair from...
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4:43 PM
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Comments (0)
May 30, 2007
This turned up during my toxic car seat search for Combi Mango the other day, though the Mango color is apparently discontinued. It's a wild-looking high chair that comes apart and transforms into a play table and chair combo,...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 PM
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Comments (8)
If your summer travel plans take you to Amsterdam, you may want to schedule a trip to WonderWood, a veritable temple to plywood and wooden modernist design. The incredible, little, 1950's children's bucket chair made of molded ply with...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (1)
May 28, 2007
Gerald Summers was one of my first great modern design epiphanies, and my first big disappointment. When the groundbreaking exhibition, "Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was" came out in 1991, I discovered Summers' stunning armchair in the catalogue [which got...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (0)
Just when I thought I'd seen everything, Susanne from KidsModern surprised me with a couple of great finds at ICFF. She just posted a photo of Indiana-based Inmodern's upcoming Ecotots collection: a little slot-together table of FSC-certified, formaldehyde-free laminate. There's...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (0)
May 25, 2007
Daddy Types, Daddy Packs, Daddy Eats Popsicle At Kid's Pre-school Class Party, Daddy Drives To North Carolina. We're heading out for the weekend, and early reports from the Outer Banks reveal that none of the neighbors have their WiFi set...
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Posted by greg at
1:17 PM
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Comments (1)
May 24, 2007
I just noticed that the UK baby gear store Tiny Dodo is selling the cool but seemingly mythical Re-Serve high chair by Berlin-based design studio, e27. The powder-coated steel high chair has a removable 600d nylon seat cushion [isn't...
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Posted by greg at
5:02 PM
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Comments (0)
Wait, you mean the Stephan Gip? The guy who designed the original trapezoidal high chair that has been knocked off and sold to every sitdown restaurant in the Western Hemisphere, that Stephan Gip? Yep....
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Posted by greg at
12:01 AM
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Comments (0)
May 23, 2007
How many thousands of my designblogger subjects Were at this ICFF asleep! One and that Canadian saw this seat of yours, And they hath brought us smooth and welcome news. Why rather, Sirch, than relying on smoky cribs, Or upon...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (4)
MocoLoco has a nice roundup of kid-related design from this year's ICFF. There are nice shots of the HiLo high chair, and more shots of the YiAhn bassinet, too. Also, bunk beds. Lots of bunk beds. Nurseryworks and Argington are...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (1)
May 21, 2007
Here's how Unbeige--which, though I read it regularly, I never realized is THE EPICENTER OF THE DESIGN UNIVERSE--opens their blog roundup from ICFFOn the last day before the ICFF floor was opened to the public, bloggers rushed to cover the...
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Posted by greg at
1:01 PM
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Comments (1)
For most folks, a high-priced, high-design, purpose-built bassinet with a useful life of a few months just doesn't make sense. If you're gonna drop a few hundred dollars or more on a sleek bassinet, it had better keep earning...
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Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (1)
There are quite a few high chairs out there that are inspired by the Stokke Tripp Trapp. After all, it's been around since the early 70's; half the high chair designers in Europe probably sat in Tripp Trapps when...
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Posted by greg at
12:03 AM
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Comments (1)
May 20, 2007
The online galleries are starting to fill up with design eye candy from the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC this weekend. There are a few baby- and kid-related snaps in NotCot's first upload: At first I was distracted by...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (2)
May 18, 2007
Has it been a year already? Designer Heidi Newell showed off the prototype of her Shaker box-inspired, molded birch ply bassinet last year in Offi's booth at ICFF. Since then, though, it's been as silent as a singles bar...
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Posted by greg at
11:38 PM
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Comments (3)
May 17, 2007
So I'm clicking through NY Magazine's Home Design issue, The Next ____, and what do I find, right there near the end of the The Next Everything slideshow? "FURNITURE IS THE NEXT KNITTING Vintage copy of early-seventies DIY manual Nomadic...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (1)
May 16, 2007
I guess if it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or whatever, then where else would you put your Parisian love child, but in an injection-molded plastic cradle shaped like a tulip? It's as if the subtitle...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 PM
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Comments (1)
I had no idea Elmer even existed before the kid got a book and a stuffed animal as a newborn gift, so it's a little weird to grasp that the patchwork elephant actually came out, so to speak, in...
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Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
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Comments (0)
Let me lift the burden of uncertainty from your lives right now: you will never need to wonder, as Kerrie did in an email yesterday, "Did you see Ellen on [DAY OF WEEK OR REALLY, ANY MOMENT IN TIME BETWEEN...
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Posted by greg at
7:34 AM
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Comments (2)
May 15, 2007
I love Studio, the new furniture-like sculpture installation by Slovenian New York artist Tobias Putrih even more than the last work of his I saw, and I loved those pieces a lot. In 2005, Putrih's geologically inspired columns of...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 PM
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Comments (3)
May 14, 2007
This is what I was planning to post about when I got sidetracked with the Grand Pronouncement. One other thing that's appealing about rooting around in the so-not-musty online archives of design magazines is the sense of control and...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 AM
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Comments (2)
A couple of folks have emailed wondering about my "obsession" lately with posting random vintage stuff. I guess I'd be making more Amazon Nickels if I just posted about New! Exciting! Must-Have! baby gear all day. Obviously, we're living in...
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Posted by greg at
9:24 AM
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Comments (2)
May 13, 2007
When I first discovered Joker, the sweet, knock-together series of children's play furniture by the Swedish designers Borge Lindau and Bo Lindekrantz, in the exhibition catalogue for Vitra's kidgear show, Kid Size, I was intrigued. When I tried to...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 PM
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Comments (1)
May 10, 2007
Ausgezeichnet! Ten minutes surfing through the 50 year-archive that Form, the Swiss-German design magazine, just put online, and already I feel like Homer Simpson at the candy convention. My raincoat's stuffed full, and instead of one, there are like...
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (4)
May 7, 2007
If you're a furniture junkie--or just a design aficionado with a kid on the way, trying to figure out the best way to invest all six figures in the nursery, the auctions the next couple of weeks have a...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (4)
May 6, 2007
You know that "Made in USSR" birch kids furniture set that went for practically nothing at auction a few weeks ago? Well, one of those rockers went for about the same on eBay today. Sixty bucks, $22.50 plus a...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (0)
May 2, 2007
The timer pauses in its last silence, the interval between 1 and 0. No one can save us now. The world is doomed. Words have lost all meaning. The bodies of poets and bards already litter the Cliffs of...
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Posted by greg at
7:12 PM
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Comments (1)
April 26, 2007
Artist/woodworker Tor Clausen turned a slaphappy, musical lunch at a picnic table into a couple of patents, and then he turned a couple of patents and the family woodworking tradition into a business making solid hardwood musical furniture. Tor...
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Posted by greg at
8:44 AM
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Comments (0)
You remember that limited edition Eames plywood elephant that Vitra's selling this summer for 1,000 euros? According to The New York Times, it will be $1,900 US. Even at current, woeful exchange rates of $1.30/euro, that's an almost $800...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (1)
Sparkability always seems to have the inside track on Nurseryworks furniture in discontinued colors and styles. Now they're letting Daddy Types readers pass on the inside, with an early tip off about a new, limited number of pieces marked...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 AM
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Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
Are you looking for a cradle which "will return stylish shine to motherhood"? An "outraged piece of equipment in a market that is ruled by lack of imagination"? A "gift for women that are so choosy about picking the...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (1)
April 23, 2007
Holy smokes. Grace at Design*Sponge persuaded Dutch and Wood and Juniper to take pictures of their Detroit townhouse, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe. Though the photos say otherwise, Dutch claims, "We are not designers or artists....
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (3)
This week in Elephants In The Kid Design News: German furniture manufacturer Elmar Flototto [seriously] released Fluffizoo, a series of giant animal toy/furniture made out of safety-coated foam. [Mocoloco says it's been toddler bite-tested.] There's aslo a mouse, a...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (0)
Wow, nice. This molded birch baby bed converts from a cradle to a crib to a toddler bed. It's by Sirch, the German wooden toy company which also makes those cool molded ply ride-in carts. [On the other end...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 PM
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Comments (0)
What you're gonna need is some Masonite or some tongue-and-groove pine panels, a couple of 40w bulbs, a thermostat from a chick brooder, some brownie pans, some plexi, some mesh for the mattress... Marty at Gearability was raised in...
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Posted by greg at
7:12 AM
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Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
Susanne Fritz, the designscout behind Kidsmodern.com, is in Milan for the International Furniture Fair. She posted the first of what I hope will be a large series of kid-focused reports from the ground. First up: a cool kid table...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
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Comments (2)
April 17, 2007
Hello, five kinds of awesome. Chalkboard Skateboard, $80 shipped, by Brooklyn design duo Mary & Matt [maryandmatt.net via notcot]...
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Posted by greg at
6:40 PM
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Comments (0)
April 16, 2007
Hard to believe, I know, but apparently, not everything labeled "Vintage L@@K!!" on eBay is actually vintage. Take this "Vintage Modern Era Highchair on Wheels" which "has a great modern danish Eames era look." This description is technically accurate, I...
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Posted by greg at
7:51 PM
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bObles is Danish children's gear company founded by two sisters with an interest in spurring children's motor skills development and, judging by the picture below, at least, in teasing US product liability lawyers with their model's demonstrations of actual...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (0)
April 15, 2007
So Rago auctions off a trio of vintage Russian modern kid furniture last October without telling me? What gives? The set, a table, rocking chair, and side char in birch plywood, had "Made in USSR" labels, and was estimated...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (1)
April 14, 2007
with PINK coming in a close second. The website Normal Room is a growing collection of photos of how people around the world live in their rooms. It's the same kind of voyeuristic pleasure that's driving you to visit open...
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Posted by greg at
1:53 PM
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Comments (0)
April 11, 2007
Does it explain a lot to know that Baby Boomers were apparently raised on a steady diet of lead paint, motor oil, and My Three Sons? According to Popular Mechanics [45 years, or in product safety testing and liability...
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Posted by greg at
4:06 PM
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Comments (0)
April 9, 2007
Nauvoo, Illinois was the Mormon Mecca before Salt Lake City. Now, it's the Mormon Colonial Williamsburg. [Does that make sense?] Anyway, during one visit a while back, my mom was antique shopping in the big city just across the...
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Posted by greg at
12:53 PM
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Comments (0)
April 8, 2007
Every time I go to Salt Lake, I come back thinking of carved wood handchairs. My stepfather collected a lot of art by Pedro Friedeberg, the guy who made those hand-shaped chairs, see, [Here's one in Mexican mahogany that's coming...
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Posted by greg at
4:18 PM
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Comments (2)
So I'm surfing through eBay a bit and hey-o! here's a huge set of Palaset storage cubes for sale. This system was designed in the early 70's by Ristomatti Ratia, whose parents founded Marimekko. Victor Papanek and James Hennessey...
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Posted by greg at
3:57 PM
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Comments (10)
April 5, 2007
See, every once in a while some things like this come along, and it makes me reluctant to unsubscribe from the email lists of random auction houses I once registered to bid at some point. On April 21st, Sollo Rago...
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Posted by greg at
10:54 PM
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Comments (0)
April 4, 2007
So in the backseat of my mom's car yesterday is some Utah Design magazine from 2001 [Yeah, I don't know, either], and so I'm flipping through it while waiting forever at a railroad crossing, and see an actual Stickley crib....
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Posted by greg at
11:41 PM
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Comments (1)
April 2, 2007
To commemorate the birth of his newest son last month, Copenhagen art dealer Nicolai Wallner invited the artists he represents "to do an exhibition celebrating the spirit of life." Pretty open-ended, and the results are on the gallery's website....
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Posted by greg at
12:12 AM
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Comments (0)
March 30, 2007
One of the absolutely most unabashedly beautiful, minimalist-but-not-too baby clothes designers around is Album di Famiglia. We found their newborn stuff just as the kid was growing out of the tiny available selection at Estelle, a store on 6th...
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Posted by greg at
4:52 PM
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Comments (11)
Fred & Friends are the design fiends behind the awesome little chopstick-trainer Chopstick Kids. Once again, inspiration has struck at the Fredtable, as witnessed by Boost, a firm-yet-soft foam booster cushion shaped like the Yellow Pages [but with butt-width...
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Posted by greg at
4:25 PM
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Comments (4)
March 29, 2007
Yow, it's like the sweet bamboo crib market is growing by a foot a day. Kalon Studios is Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen, a mom-dad team based in Los Angeles and Berlin [and I thought our NY-DC commute was...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (0)
Time was when all a man could do was lament the shortage of sweet, modernist bamboo crib options. Then when his years-long wish is finally fulfilled, what's he do? I feel like that guy in the Shawshank Redemption, the...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 AM
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Comments (0)
Yeah, sorry about that. Gmail just kills me sometimes. Netto Collection is having a sample sale starting today--Thursday, March 29 and Friday, March 30--where floor samples of furniture and accessories will be up to 60% off. From what I...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 AM
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Comments (0)
March 27, 2007
Over at GearAbility, Marty has the first in a series of posts and photos about being raised in--and then raising her own daughter in--an Air Crib. Marty's family was friends with B.F. Skinner, the famous Harvard psychologist who invented the...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (5)
March 22, 2007
As we learned with giant Ugly Dolls, the line between plush toy and plush furniture is somewhere around six feet. And as this giant squid shows us, the line between plush furniture and total plush domination is about 15...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 PM
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Comments (0)
Which of these stories is more headscratching? I think we need a baffle-off: 1] Is Yoya at risk of losing its core target market?? A gay uncle in the fashion industry [punchline writes self] shops Yoya, the West Village temple...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (0)
March 21, 2007
Awesome. Foldschool is a series of free, downloadable patterns for making kids furniture out of cardboard. It's the work of Bern designer Nicola Stäubli, who seems be channelling the best aspects of the light-footprint DIY vibe of Papanek &...
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Posted by greg at
2:35 PM
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Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
Even if they wished it were wabbit season around the web last week, it was definitely ducduc season yesterday when I stopped by the DWR Annex in Secaucus, The Meadowlands, New Jersey. Right there in the window, they had a...
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Posted by greg at
10:05 PM
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Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
You know how hilarious mid-century modern design aficionados get when they party. Lounging on the flokati rug, passing the hookah across that Eames surfboard table, getting silly with the puns... And then they wake up the next morning going,...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (2)
March 15, 2007
I love that the description of this pristine, vintage, molded ply chair starts out, "you are bidding on a child's chair designed by charles eames in 1946." Because with the bid currently at $1,525 and the reserve price still...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 AM
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Comments (1)
March 13, 2007
Beyond just the excellent selection of indie exhibitors--most of the trade show is European and US kid/baby fashion--Bubble NY has a really excellent vibe. It's in a bright, sunny loft space on the Hudson, with spaces throughout for seating...
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Posted by greg at
8:21 PM
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Comments (0)
A couple of weeks ago, I got a familiar-sounding email from a reader I'll call John [because it's his real name], who was worried that his kid might be off to college before his ducduc dresser arrived:We were expecting...
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Posted by greg at
1:46 PM
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Comments (14)
March 12, 2007
Instead of dumping their busted, old entertainment center, a fine Craftserwoman and her hubby [...] transformed it into a play kitchen for about $40, not counting the cottage cheese:...We measured just below the rim of the bowl, cut a...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (3)
March 8, 2007
How do I know it's way past time to get the search functionality here on Daddy Types fixed? When people are forced to send questions like this to the New York Times:Q. I once saw a crib that converted...
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Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
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Comments (0)
March 7, 2007
Bloom Baby, the Hong Kong-based gear company whose reclining, rotating, pneumatically raising, podaliciously curving Fresco high chair scooped up an award at last year's Kind + Jugend expo, is finally hitting the US this spring. Bloom is debuting at...
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Posted by greg at
4:47 PM
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Comments (1)
March 1, 2007
I just bought a couple of musty 1962 issues of Popular Mechanics from 1962. They have huge spreads of photos and plans for building nine great-looking pieces of play furniture by Swedish designers: toy bins and play tables, little...
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Posted by greg at
2:21 PM
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Comments (2)
February 27, 2007
Here are a few finds that have piled up in my to-link folder: First, two from The Nursery at Apartment Therapy, a blog that's very advanced for its age: You can get Muji's awesome Suburbia In A Bag in the...
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Posted by greg at
9:49 PM
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Comments (0)
February 22, 2007
Things like get you full credit in the New York Times [!] for someone else's products which have been online and available for at least a year, some for two! AWESOME! Congratulations! Babesta Loves The 80's! [nyt] ...aaaand so...
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Posted by greg at
1:42 PM
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Comments (3)
More Toys From The Glorious Future. This time, it's Felt Rocks:In their raw form, they are lumps of felt formed as a by-product in the industrial process of making felt polishing wheels for optical lenses...In the felting process, with...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 AM
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Comments (6)
February 21, 2007
I've been thinking a couple of things about restaurant high chairs recently [yes, forecast calls for a high dad-dork alert in the area. whatryagonnado?]. 1) We went to the cafeteria at MoMA last week for lunch. [A pannini, ravioli,...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 PM
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Comments (10)
February 19, 2007
I've seen these in convention booths and even at store, but I just assumed they were display/fixtures, kind of like the 8' Stokke Tripp Trapp we saw in Iceland. But no, you can buy six-foot tall Ugly Dolls of...
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Posted by greg at
9:55 AM
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Comments (3)
February 15, 2007
Rugs by artists are not new, but there are a couple of outfits now commissioning contemporary artists to design rugs and carpets. This Gerhard Richter carpet, though, I gotta say, I wouldn't have thought it. But sure enough, there...
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Posted by greg at
6:21 PM
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Comments (3)
February 14, 2007
Tell me if I'm reading this right: One of the educational consulting offerings of Pesce Colorato is to develop children's creativity and deepen their understanding and mastery of the creative process through collaborative design and manufacture? Because from here,...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 PM
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Comments (0)
First off, that Play+Soft series of Reggio Emilia-inspired playroom furniture posted here a couple of weeks ago? Tip of the iceberg. Their catalogue is full of incredible, fun-looking, and well-thought-out designs. [It's for sale here for $22.] Play+Soft was...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 AM
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Comments (3)
In the early 1990's, the German artists Beata and Gerhard Bär and Hartmut Knell began developing techniques to reuse consumer plastics, not as ground up, grey park benches, but in a way that underscored their past lives. It was...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 AM
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Comments (0)
February 13, 2007
When the definitive history of wicker rocking chair/cradle combos is written, it looks like the incep date'll need to be pushed back a decade or so. Artist/designers [1] Elisabetta Gonzo and Alessandro Vicari created Rosemary's Berceuse, a combination rocking...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 PM
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Comments (0)
This might just be cool enough to make up for the high chair. Swedish architect Stephan Gip is credited with the 1962 design for the all-wood, no-tray, trapezoidal stacking high chair that we wipe off a little every day...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 AM
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Comments (0)
That desk Matali Crasset did for Balouga turns out to be the tip of her kid-friendly design iceberg. At the Stedelijk in Amsterdam Hertogenbosch [?] there's a whole museumful of playful, sherbet-colored furniture and architecture in an exhibition called...
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Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
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Comments (1)
February 12, 2007
Designer/MocoLoco contributor/Canadian Greg Ball has one more '/' to add to his resume: dad-to-be. You could also say he's not yet satisfied with all the crib options out there [shoulda been here three years ago, Mac], so he designed...
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Posted by greg at
6:13 PM
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Comments (2)
I swear, it feels like I've written about the Re-Babe before, but I can't find it in the archives anywhere. Berlin-based design group e27 has created a series of inventive rocking solutions, beginning with Re-Tire, a simple, stackable rocking...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (2)
February 10, 2007
Cynthia & Chris are husband & wife designers who salvaged a store of vintage Eames shells from an auditorium fire and set to refinish them by hand. Rather than just return them to an impractical and ultimately inauthentic "vintage"...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 PM
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Comments (2)
February 9, 2007
Flush with celebration of its near-total domination of the $2,300 segment of the awesome modernist crib market, Ooba is now boldly pursuing the highly competitive $1,500-give-or-take market by dropping the price of their Nest Crib to $1,650. I imagine...
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Posted by greg at
4:01 PM
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Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
Apartment Therapy, the site for people with neurotic apartments whose apartments just have a few issues just like what they like, you gotta problem with that? The door's right over there, the chartreuse one--I know, but we thought it might...
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Posted by greg at
8:04 AM
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Comments (1)
February 6, 2007
Don't talk to me about Philippe Starck right now. I don't know why, but I just don't have the patience for him. I'm happy with the kid's toilet, though, so I'll leave it at that. Matali Crasset, on the...
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Posted by greg at
6:51 AM
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Comments (1)
February 5, 2007
Add the awesomely named Ib Kofod-Larsen to my list of Danish Designers I Should Have But Never Have Heard Of. [I know who Ub Iwerks is, though; do I get half credit?] Alls I know is, design guru Grace...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
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Comments (0)
February 4, 2007
Wow, the Swiss kid design blog Kidsmodern is gone, replaced by a Swiss kids design site of awesomeness, Kidsmodern. They're adding shopping functionality any day now, taking it beyond just the traditional surf-n-drool. Meanwhile, Kidsmodernist Suzanne spotted this chair at...
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Posted by greg at
12:58 PM
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Comments (0)
February 2, 2007
Well this is five kinds of cool right here. Designer Richard Hutten gave Dutch TV station KRO a tour of his house in Rotterdam, where he lives with his two sons. The creator of such kid-friendly classics as the...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (0)
February 1, 2007
It's what the blogosphere was built for, people. A few years back, the industrial detritus-loving architecture firm LO/TEK remodelled a typical loft apartment in the West Village, replacing the sleeping mezzanine with a factory-style catwalk--and king-sized sleeping pods set into...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (4)
Slot-together, modern, minimalist design: check Marine-grade plywood: check Came from Portland: check Lots of orange: check The only thing wrong with this awesome work table made from reclaimed road signs is that it's not a crib. Does anyone know of...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (2)
Seriously. Haven't seen it for a while, even though it was one of the first things I ever found for Daddy Types [alas, a few months too late for our own crib-buying]. But the more I think about it,...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (0)
January 31, 2007
Wow. I've never felt too bad for not giving the kid her own 2,000 square feet to run and play in. Until now. StudioUK has launched Play+Soft [you pronounce the '+'], a 200+piece series of early childhood learning objects...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (0)
January 29, 2007
It's funny the things that get lodged in our brains. In 1997, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija [Don't worry, the art world has one-name brand stars, too. Did you know Iman's last name is Abdulmajid? True. Our waiter showed us...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 AM
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Comments (1)
I used to live down the street from the Ligne Roset store [which, like everything else, is now an American Apparel], and I generally approve. Still, I've never been a big fan of the Togo Sofa. It always reminded...
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Posted by greg at
8:29 AM
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Comments (0)
January 28, 2007
Look, I just came back from the International Gift Fair at the Javits Center, so I think I know a thing or two about utterly useless crap for sale. Right now, the idea behind Cuusoo Seikatsu ["Imagination Life"] sounds pretty...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (1)
For the edgier, industrial-finish nursery, what better diaper pail could there be than an authentic biohazard disposal bin? And shouldn't it come from an authentic family practice exam room, where it was used "mostly for gloves and tongue dipressors...
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Posted by greg at
3:30 PM
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Comments (3)
January 25, 2007
I'd seen Rotterdam artist Daan Roosegaarde's Variants series of space-creating bookcases a few months ago, and then I lost my reference for it until just now. They're several kinds of awesome all at once. Variants are functional sculptures that...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (2)
January 24, 2007
OK, so I don't talk about the kid's school on the blog, but this is about furniture. I'm supposed to oversee the class project, which'll be auctioned off to raise money for tuition assistance. We're making a play table and...
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Posted by greg at
3:04 PM
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Comments (9)
Productporn from the International Furniture Fair in Cologne is starting to hit the web, and Zanotta's reissue of the Liisi Mogenson Beckmann's 1966 Karelia chair is one of the first kid-friendly designs to turn up so far. Which is...
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Posted by greg at
1:07 PM
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Comments (0)
January 23, 2007
clockwise, from top left: VINTAGE ART DECO SERVER BUFFET CABINET deskey rhode era Reserve not met. Located in Providence, RI. NYC delivery for $125. Perfectly sized for a standard changing pad (18" deep). Has a nice, little rail on...
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Posted by dt-andy at
10:39 AM
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Comments (4)
January 22, 2007
Someone at Architonic must have just had a baby, because they've blown out a whole product category of furniture for kids ["Almost every designer has designed something for children, but few of these designs become known to the wider...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (1)
January 21, 2007
The idea of chalk dust all over the house wasn't enough to deter me from getting the kid some chalkboardy furniture. Time was when Offi was about the only chalkboard table in the game. But in the last little while,...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (6)
January 20, 2007
Stumbled across this on the Surfing Cowboys' site the other day, and I've been trying to research it a bit, with no real success. Apparently, these folding rocking chairs made of saddle leather and plantation-harvested mahogany are a crafty,...
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Posted by greg at
8:55 PM
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Comments (4)
January 17, 2007
Marcel Wanders, Paco Rabanne, Kate Winslet, Buzz Aldrin, Miss Piggy, Loïck Peyron... I would have loved to be in the room when Habitat finalized the list of celebrity designers who would be invited to create their new VIP For Kids...
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Posted by greg at
6:33 PM
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Comments (3)
January 14, 2007
We've seen master furniture maker and heirloom rocking chair guru Hal Taylor on DT before; a dad-to-be used Taylor's Rocking Chair University system to make his own rocker. Well, the Story Time Rocker is Taylor's solution for reading to...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (1)
Whether it's the island nation thing, the imperial past thing, or the driving on the wrong side of the road thing, the UK sure has more than its fair share of slot-together cribs. OK, so it has two. [This...
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Posted by greg at
4:52 PM
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Comments (2)
January 13, 2007
You want a slightly slick, modern-style crib but you don't want to spend a freakin' fortune? You hear that Wal-Mart's starting to offer slightly modern-style cribs and stuff, but your grandpa ended up spending his retirement as a Wal-Mart...
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Posted by greg at
6:36 PM
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Comments (11)
"Modernist" may be a stretch, but it looks like "Modern" is officially becoming a mainstream, mass-market selling feature for nursery furniture. Wal-Mart has introduced a Modern Nursery set: a crib, changing station, and dresser in a blink-and-it-looks-like-Netto Collection combination...
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Posted by greg at
12:51 AM
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Comments (5)
January 10, 2007
I met Sarah and Bruce, the ModernTots.com folks, in Las Vegas last year at the ABC Kids expo. They were super-cool and surprisingly nice to me, considering the hassle Daddy Types' "Sure, it's custom-tinted, super-dense, has sweet bamboo veneer,...
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Posted by greg at
2:49 PM
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Comments (0)
Doesn't it kinda feel like this classic Verner Panton chair has already been around in kid-size for, like, ever? Well, probably not if you've actually tried to buy one. As Vitra puts it, "Soon after its introduction, Verner Panton...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 AM
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Comments (2)
If you're in the market for some Nurseryworks furniture, frequent DT advertiser Sparkability has given readers here the first heads up about a sale: They have a handful of pieces in stock in discontinued colors they're selling for half...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (0)
Literally, the first phrase I wanted imprinted in my kid's brain from birth was "plastic bags not a toy." I don't think this is a result of my own traumatic childhood memories, since my parents did not--to my knowledge--install Creative...
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Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
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Comments (0)
January 9, 2007
Like I said, I'm glad I don't have to compete with Ikea for anything. But I wonder if artist Marcel Dzama said the same thing back in 2003-2004 when CerealArt released his Sad Ghost Lamp. Made of ABS and...
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Posted by greg at
8:29 AM
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Comments (0)
January 3, 2007
20 hours. That's how long a piece of Ikea furniture, somewhat impulsively acquired, can sit in your foyer without being assembled. 3 hours. That's how long it takes to assemble it [and, let's be fair, to disassemble the furniture...
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Posted by greg at
6:48 PM
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Comments (9)
December 21, 2006
Another Jason, Nakashima* Studio–woodworker Jason Banks, is hard at work on a crib for his son, due in a few months [congratulations!]. After putting in long hours at work, and making dinner for his pregnant wife, Jason has been tweaking...
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Posted by dt-andy at
2:42 PM
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Comments (3)
December 19, 2006
Hmm. Seems like everyone but me has managed to finish his kid's bed. Wisconsin furnituremaker Jason Holtz emailed with an offer too sweet not to post: a beautiful, award-winning hardwood crib--solid cherry and maple, with curly cherry end panels--he...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (2)
December 18, 2006
The Children's Factory is a grandparent-run company in Missouri that's been making brightly colored vinyl-covered foam furniture for the kids institutional market [i.e. daycare centers, schools, libraries] since 1982, back when gas was like 75 cents/gallon. Putting one of...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 AM
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Comments (1)
December 17, 2006
I know what you're saying. You like the Campana Brothers' awesome sofa made by lashing plush toys to a steel frame, but for $15,000 [up from $11,000 just a year ago!], you don't want some generic stuffed animals from...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 PM
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Comments (1)
December 12, 2006
If only I'd done a little more research, I might have known that Donald Judd did, in fact, make a smaller version of his daybed. This almost-twin-sized version [111x116x204cm] dated from 1993, while the artist was still alive, was...
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Posted by greg at
9:08 AM
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Comments (1)
December 10, 2006
The venerable Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong just got a freshening up, I'm told. The fact that it looks the same to me as it did 12 years ago must mean it worked. One thing it didn't even...
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Posted by greg at
8:55 AM
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Comments (3)
December 8, 2006
Yesterday/Friday, we shipped out of Kyoto and headed to Hong Kong for the weekend to visit some of the grandparents, who are here doing the expat banking thing. They live at The Four Seasons, which is known in Chinese as...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 PM
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Comments (0)
December 4, 2006
The caption on this photo from the LA Public Library's online photo archive reads:Unmarried teenage mother-to-be tries to reach a decision about her future. She wanders up to the nursery at St. Anne's Maternity Hospital on December 17, 1958,...
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Posted by greg at
1:15 AM
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Comments (0)
December 1, 2006
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Germany, a happy couple prepares for the arrival of their baby by decorating the nursery, or kinderzimmer, as it's known over there, with a delicately rendered scene from The Little Prince. And an equally masterful, silvered...
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Posted by greg at
2:56 PM
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Comments (0)
I think we've safely dispelled the inherited notion of Bauhaus-era modernism as a purely black & white affair. The turtlenecks of the Weimar children who were allowed to play on these tables and chairs in Walter Gropius's 1923 Haus...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (0)
November 28, 2006
Thanks to an email last week, I had the opportunity to reflect on something I'm thankful for: not being in competition with Ikea for anything. DT reader Geoff [aka The Boston Twin Wrangler], who has been shopping for a...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
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Comments (6)
November 23, 2006
I'm happy to outsource today's installment of Molded Plywood Week to the NY Times, since their slideshow of kid's gifts conveniently includes designs on my list as well. Eric Pfeiffer's been on a molded ply streak this year, and...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 AM
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Comments (0)
November 22, 2006
By the next year, 1967, Creative Playthings had changed the copy on their molded plywood crib and stroller to be more gender neutral. But a cradle this awesomely minimalist would rock [umm] for either a boy or a girl,...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (0)
The out-of-print children's books by New Yorker/PBS Kids illustrator and sampled rap pioneer Richard McGuire got here the other day, and the kid just loves them. Stay tuned for a more complete review. While Googling around for more McGuire info,...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 PM
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Comments (0)
November 21, 2006
Molded Plywood Week continues here at Daddy Types, but I should probably just call it Orelandy Week after the mid-century design afficionado, eBay shark, and daddy type who's forgotten more about modern kids design than I've ever known. For...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (1)
Whether you have a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills or a cabin in Deer Valley on the way to Stein Eriksen Lodge, you don't have to hide your kid away in the sleeping wing...
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Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
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Comments (6)
November 16, 2006
Congratulations to Maxwell the Apartment Therapy guy and his wife Sara Kate, for scoring a big NY Times article [!] on how they successfully completed the renovation [!!] on their 265 sf apartment [!!!] before the baby [!!!!] came. The...
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Posted by greg at
11:10 AM
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Comments (9)
November 15, 2006
Last month the Belgian foam furniture maker [?] Feek threw some of its coming-soon Animools into the kids' holding room at Interieur06, a big design trade show. They're abstract animal shapes made out of laminated foam that's suitable and...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (0)
November 14, 2006
This Creative Playthings Townhouse is in amazing, apparently unplayed-with condition, and it comes complete with seven molded plastic rooms of furniture. [Huh? Great way to get around the "124-piece set of choking hazards," but how creative can your play...
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Posted by greg at
9:04 AM
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Comments (0)
November 13, 2006
Sure, you're sick of Elmo now, but maybe the problem's not Elmo, but you? Maybe if you had a better attitude... Maybe fighting the Elmo juggernaut is the wrong approach, a needless waste of parental energy. Maybe we need...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (3)
November 8, 2006
You say you want a revolution? Well, yeah, if it means deporting the bunnies and the ducks to the gulag and decking the kid out in adorable prints of the Motherland's glorious steamrollers and tractors, well, paint me read and...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 AM
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Comments (1)
November 7, 2006
There's a rule about overdoing it somewhere that says when you get dressed to go out, you put everything on, and then you take one thing off. Too bad the Ikea designers who made this little bed don't know...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (7)
November 2, 2006
The Italian kids design house Nume says their projects "seek out pure forms, without added decorations. In their essential nature, such forms stimulate the imagination of children and develop their expressive freedom." [And in Italy, of course, a soccer...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 PM
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Comments (0)
October 27, 2006
yeah, 40-50% off retail, at the store, 62 Greene St [Spring & Broome]. Apparently it started yesterday and runs through Sunday, 11AM-7:30PM. Wha?? It's 11AM RIGHT NOW. RUN! Dwell Baby [dwellshop.com via design*sponge]...
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Posted by greg at
11:00 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
Some of the earliest exhibited work of Hiroki Takada, a designer based outside Nagoya, is kid's furniture. Dubbed System 1, 2, and 3, Takada created clean, simple wood furniture based on square shapes. Yes, it looks like slats or...
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Posted by greg at
9:42 AM
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Comments (1)
October 20, 2006
What to do with all the kids who might descend on Kortrijk for Interieur06, Belgian's national contemporary furniture and design expo? Easy. Just grab some plywood and some kid-sized product from the exhibitors, add a thin cushion somewhere, scatter...
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Posted by greg at
8:41 AM
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Comments (1)
October 19, 2006
It's apparently Fall Sale Madness on Daddy Types today. The MoMA Design Store usually offers museum members a 10% discount on all their purchases. But when the holidays draw near [even a little near], they have Member Shopping Days, both...
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Posted by greg at
4:21 PM
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Comments (0)
While I'm on the subject of deals and sales, Modern Child is running a sale through October, where the discount is based on the total order size. For example, a couple of pieces of minimalist clothing awesomeness from Tuss [say,...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (3)
October 17, 2006
Harry's got Ooba co-founder and designer Scott Wilson on the line, and Wilson waxes eloquent about his process and his inspiration [for Ooba, unsurprisingly, it's his own daughter. One money quote: "My goal was to create objects that bring the...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 AM
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Comments (0)
October 14, 2006
Sure, you could rearrange these cool-looking Tangram shelves. But I bet you a dollar you won't. You actually think with a kid rolling around on the floor, you'll have enough free time to precision-rehang seven oddly shaped shelves purely...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 PM
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Comments (1)
October 11, 2006
Regular readers of Daddy Types know I love me some Donald Judd furniture. I've even wished so hard for Judd-like kid's furniture, I've gone and had some knocked together myself. What I haven't done, though, is scour antique malls...
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Posted by greg at
6:29 PM
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Comments (0)
Modernseed actually "leaked" their great-looking Chalker, a curvy, molded wood play table with a chalkboard surface, a few months back when they ran it in an ad in Dwell. Turned out that production wasn't quite ready yet, though, and...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 AM
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Comments (6)
October 10, 2006
A few weeks back, pioneering kids design purveyor [and DT advertiser] Sparkability took on a shipment of Nurseryworks furniture in discontinued color/finish combinations, and started selling the lot for 30% off. Well, now, with [by my count] six cribs, three...
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Posted by greg at
8:02 PM
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Comments (0)
October 3, 2006
While trying to track down that Roller Buggy, I came across photos from the rocking chair zone at 100% East at the London Design Festival. They may only be marginally practical for rocking a colicky baby to sleep--and then...
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Posted by greg at
1:43 PM
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Comments (0)
September 29, 2006
And the winner of the damn finest looking crib in town award goes to...Ooba. Holy smokes, but the new Ooba Nest Crib, which just became available for pre-order today [with delivery starting in mid-November], is sweet. A single, molded...
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Posted by greg at
8:51 PM
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Comments (1)
September 28, 2006
Balouga is a new, sweet-looking gallery of children's design, from the small to the major, which just got added to my shortlist for our next visit to Paris. I mean, just look at that wall of chairs hanging there,...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (3)
September 25, 2006
Here's a find from the Kind+Jugend expo: Did someone mention high-design high chairs? A new company called Bloom introduced some rather sleek-looking designs at K+J last week, including the Fresco--a European take on hot-in-Asia baby chairs from the likes...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (0)
I still have posts from the ABC Kids Expo and there's already big news stacking up from Kind + Jugend in Cologne, the sehrgrossekidgearfair so big it makes Las Vegas look like Cactus Pete's. I think I'm just gonna push...
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Posted by greg at
8:48 AM
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Comments (6)
September 24, 2006
Indulge me a bit of MBA geekdom, but ever since that high chair turned up, I was kind of intrigued why Brio, which has been known for over 100 years primarily as a wooden toy company--and especially as a...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (1)
A few weeks back, we got the first hints of the Swedish toymaker BRIO's foray into modern children's furniture. Their molded wood-and-foam Grow High Chair has a bit of the Eames and a bit of the Verner Panton going...
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Posted by greg at
1:50 PM
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Comments (8)
September 21, 2006
While all the other kids' noses are buried in their New Yorkers, for the last week, my kid's favorite book has been a piece of swag from Las Vegas: the new Argington catalogue. Near as I can tell, the...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 AM
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Comments (8)
September 18, 2006
I've still got tons of stuff to post from the ABC Kids Expo, including this stunning, new crib/changing table combo from Argington. These Brooklynites have been on a roll lately, cranking out some really great designs, with solid quality,...
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Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (4)
September 14, 2006
The folks at Nurseryworks have been busy, and at ABC Kids Expo, they introduced two new cribs to bracket their existing offering: one's cheap reasonable, and one's really expensive yeah, it's expensive, but it's also a modular miracle. Both cribs...
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Posted by greg at
9:50 PM
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Comments (0)
More news from the Stuff I Won't Be Buying Dept.: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's house in Los Gatos, CA, was bought by some developers who did some extensive remodelling. But they left most of Woz's additions for his kids intact....
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Posted by greg at
9:22 PM
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Comments (2)
September 13, 2006
At ABC Kid's Expo, the center of the convention hall is full of smaller booths, while the walled fortresses of the Baby Industrial Complex giants ring the perimeter. And if a design proves itself by selling for several years...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (1)
September 12, 2006
If you're teetering on the edge of a swingin' 60's mod nursery--and really, these days, who isn't?--you may want to pre-register for some live auctioning, clear your calendar Saturday, and cash in that IRA. eBay's the one-stop shop for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:31 PM
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Comments (1)
September 9, 2006
This line of nursery furniture from the Swiss company Zewi & Bebe Jou is called Denver, but it's so reminiscent of the sculptures and furniture pieces of minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, they might as well name it Marfa. [See,...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 PM
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Comments (6)
September 7, 2006
Airlines weren't always teh suck. To hear about it now, Braniff seems like a groovalicious disco paradise in the air. But then again, those geezers from Studio 54 act like it was the greatest thing before or since, too...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 PM
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Comments (3)
September 6, 2006
These cool, molded ply, children's chairs and play table are unmarked, but they're described by a mid-century collector/seller on eBay as "vintage Scandinavian." They definitely look similar to the pieces Kristian Vedel did for Orskov in the 1950's. Similar,...
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Posted by greg at
12:55 PM
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Comments (0)
September 5, 2006
"Chez nous, faire le lit des enfants est une tradition. Mon grand pere a fait celui de mon pere qui a fait le mien...J'ai donc dessine celui de ma fille." "In our family, making a child's bed is a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:58 PM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2006
Every once in a while, by my count--or every time we're on the Turnpike, by my wife's--I express an interest in building a vacation home in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Not the sports complex, of course, the swamps, the...
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Posted by greg at
2:03 PM
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Comments (1)
August 31, 2006
Seriously, my kid's so balloon-crazy, if I told her that with just a single LED, a coin-sized battery, a tiny plastic case, and a balloon, she could have a balloon lamp in her room, her little head would explode...
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Posted by greg at
8:47 PM
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Comments (1)
August 22, 2006
You may want to hold off on determining the nursery color scheme, at least until you take a look through the Nurseryworks cribs, changing table, and storage furniture that Sparkability's selling for 35% off the normal retail prices. [Example: a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
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Comments (2)
August 17, 2006
Used to be, the beauty of eBay was that hard-to-price stuff like vintage furniture would end up selling for wholesale. Remember a few weeks back, when I posted some black 1970 Hans Wegner rocker from eBay with a very retail-sounding...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:44 AM
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Comments (2)
August 16, 2006
I confess, if you're one of those people who thrill to the sight of fine crib linens, Daddy Types has been letting you down. I could promise you I'll change, that I'll be better, but then I'd only break...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (3)
August 14, 2006
Meanwhile, crossing that bridge from Malmo to Denmark... Way back in the day, when you couldn't find Nanna Ditzel's classic Trissen toadstool tables and chairs in America with a truffle-hunting pig, I heard rumors some amazing store in the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:43 AM
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Comments (0)
Some posts around here are the "click and buy now!" kind, and some are the "stare and drool, and put off your purchase decision a little while in hopes of more information" kind. This is the latter. Brio, the...
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Posted by greg at
7:43 AM
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Comments (1)
August 11, 2006
The Bubble New York show popped a couple of days ago, but I still have some spotlights left to shine on some of the standout exhibitors. One definitely goes on Zid Zid, a two-year-old or so label based in the...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (0)
One of the most important decisions you'll ever make in your kid's life is what kind of knobs, drawer pulls, and curtain rod finials you'll put in his room. At least that was the sense I got walking through...
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Posted by greg at
8:37 AM
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Comments (1)
August 7, 2006
I'd seen the slot-together chair by Swedish indie designers Our Children's Gorilla a few months back at Yoya but it didn't have any labels on it, and when I went back, it was gone. And Googling around for "Swedish Gorilla"...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (2)
August 4, 2006
"Any photos of sweet Bauhaus children's furniture?" I ask with dopey innocence at the end of the previous post. To which modernist design shark Andy replies, "Crafts of the Weimar Bauhaus, 1919-1924. An Early Experiment in Industrial Design has...
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Posted by greg at
10:50 PM
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Comments (2)
I, for one, welcome our Blik overlords, who seem to be in a constant state of revolution in the contemporary wall decal market they revolutionized. A couple of months ago, they threw a competition with Threadless, the hotornot.com of...
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Posted by greg at
8:58 AM
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Comments (0)
July 28, 2006
Stopped by Ikea yesterday with the kid. It looks like this rug, the Blanka, has been designated to replace that similarly colored, striped rug [the Strib] as the default floor solution for mod nurseries. I kind of prefer the...
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Posted by greg at
12:22 AM
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Comments (1)
July 26, 2006
More gearhead-y goodness from Ann Hulbert's Raising America, this time from the 1930's and early 40's, when Dr. Arnold Gesell was at his zenith, dispensing systematic, scientifical-sounding childcare advice from his Clinic of Child Development at Yale. Gesell's greatest contribution...
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Posted by greg at
7:19 PM
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Comments (2)
July 25, 2006
During the last few train and plane trips, I've been trying to finish up Ann Hulbert's history of modern childrearing experts, Raising America; turns out all the great gear is in the second half. Like Harvard behaviorist psychologist BF Skinner's...
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Posted by greg at
2:57 PM
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Comments (2)
July 20, 2006
Really, what else can I say, but Thank You? Thank you, WithCharacter.com, for bringing exciting and popular licensed merchandise from so many hard-to-find brands and character portfolios--Dora, Blues Clues, Looney Tunes, Jeep, My Little Pony, Thomas, and so many...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 AM
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Comments (2)
July 16, 2006
Yeah, I know, barely back from church for an hour, and I'm already coveting again. Does it matter that I coveted all the way through church, too? And most of yesterday, ever since I saw this rocking chair? We'd...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (0)
July 15, 2006
Even though Dutch designer/mom Maartje Steenkamp created a high chair I love--which is now on sale in the US, btw, who knew?--I kind of boycotted writing anything about her other cool children's furniture design just because the name bugged:...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 PM
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Comments (2)
July 14, 2006
As you book your summer vacation, be sure to ask the hotel reservations agent if they have a complete supply of outdated or misassembled cribs for your child to sleep in. Also, check to see if they outfit their cribs...
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Posted by greg at
3:13 PM
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Comments (4)
July 13, 2006
They have ways of making children talk in Denmark, and Zygote Daddy's mother has just bought one of them. That kid better eat every bite of herring on its [d'oh, I mean his] plate... sort of a late mother's...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (1)
Do you have some awesome Community Playthings gear or furniture that's been going strong for over 30 years? Does your kid's day care center or pre-school? How about your parents or grandparents? Maybe it's something like this 70's-era Variplay...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
Alright, I am officially lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy. My copies of Mario Dal Fabbro's 1968 How to Make Children's Furniture and Play Equipment and Hennessey & Papanek's 1973 Nomadic Furniture arrived, and suddenly I feel like we...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 AM
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Comments (2)
July 9, 2006
ThisisLarry from Rice Daddies just emailed me [what a way to spend a Saturday night, right?] with a tip: Design Public's running an online sample and returned sale. Most everything offered is new-in-package or returned new stuff. So if you...
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Posted by greg at
12:39 AM
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Comments (1)
July 6, 2006
That's right, Bob, as design director at Herman Miller, Alexander Girard practically defined the color palette of mid-century modernist American design. His bold use of color and his sensitivity to the way folk art and indigenous design resonated with...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (1)
July 5, 2006
I was still buzzing from my eBay discovery of Mario dal Fabbro's How to Make Children's Furniture... a couple of weeks back when I came across James Hennessy and Victor Papanek's 1973-4 Nomadic Furniture books. They were part of...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 PM
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Comments (3)
July 1, 2006
design*sponge posted some photos of the latest furniture pieces from hivemindesign. These side tables and chairs look like variations on HMD's chair-4, which is made of folded powder-coated steel with either walnut or upholstery. But the bonus--and the reason, obviously,...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (0)
June 29, 2006
I'm not sure how Lama Concept and Sinus work as brand names in Dutch, but I don't think you'll be mixing these tables and chairs up with any other Sinus kids furniture any time soon. Not a lot of...
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Posted by greg at
8:08 AM
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Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Jacques Tati's classic 1958 film, Mon Oncle, was a Keaton/Chaplin-esque comedy about the sterile perils of technology, modernity and consumerism and the decline of simpler, dirtier, slightly stupider, but ultimately happier good old days. Tati plays Monsieur Hulot, a...
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Posted by greg at
7:48 AM
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Comments (1)
June 26, 2006
Will and Laura Wear wanted to create design for kids that was both modern and whimsical, cool and environmentally sustainable, and that can be easily recycled [although they'd just as soon you keep the stuff through college.] For their...
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Posted by greg at
5:24 PM
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Comments (1)
June 25, 2006
Whether vintage, hard-to-find, or just a good deal, interesting eBay auctions show up here at daddytypes from time to time. And when they don't, I try to find them myself for your shoppertainment: First off, the Creative Playthings hobby...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (2)
June 24, 2006
Yumiko Tanaka is a graduate student at the Royal College of Art in London. There, as part of a project to explore the way adults and children play and interact together, she developed the Plable. It's a concept for...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (1)
Unlike loft conversions and sweet stainless steel restaurant kitchens with giant Viking stoves, as a trend, commercial and institutional baby furniture hasn't quite taken off yet. Or has it? I'm not sure if anyone has ever bought a chrome and...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 PM
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Comments (1)
June 21, 2006
I remember when I was a kid, my grandma used to have one of those plexiglass photocubes, and it always mystified me how to open it. Then I grew up and found myself in the CD generation, and while...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 AM
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Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
Besides being the land of sun-filled nights and $25 Whopper meals [seriously], Iceland was the land of Stokke surprises. First (and second) were the Super-sized and Happy Meal-sized Tripp Trapp high chairs. But then at the same Fifa baby store...
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Posted by greg at
10:54 PM
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Comments (0)
On Friday as we searched Reykjavik baby stores for a summer cover for the Maxi Cosi, we wondered--OK, my wife wondered-- if this is what it was going to be from now on, that every vacation was going to consist...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 AM
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Comments (1)
June 14, 2006
So you really like the nursery gear, kids' furniture and toys at DWR Jax, but you only want to pay about 50-60% of retail? Do the math, folks, that's why they're pulling the plug on the whole venture. But your...
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Posted by greg at
11:51 PM
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Comments (3)
Collect Furniture debuted a sweet range of modernist-inspired kids furniture at the Copenhagen International Furniture Fair last month, including stackable chairs and stools--that stool has wheels on the seat, and it turns upside-down into a little scooter--a chalkboard-surfaced frame...
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Posted by greg at
9:14 AM
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Comments (1)
June 12, 2006
Maybe one of the things that's so rare about those Cosco chairs is that Cosco actually made something decent-looking at one point. Judging from this vintage ad for sale on eBay, they made a lot of cheap-looking junk in...
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Posted by greg at
11:35 AM
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Comments (5)
June 11, 2006
I've been doing a bit more eBay perusing than usual lately, and I thought I'd pass along a few interesting-looking auctions [that I'm not bidding on, otherwise I wouldn't be blabbing about it until after I won]. If you see...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 PM
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Comments (0)
Offi designer Heidi Newell was at ICFF showing off the prototype of a new bassinet [due in six months, knock on molded plywood], which I saw and loved, but which I didn't get pictures of. People are so cagey...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 PM
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Comments (0)
June 9, 2006
As a recovering Disney employee, I've been trying to keep The Mouse's giant, overbranded mitts off my kid for as long as possible. [Actually, the real threat is the Disney Princess Hegemony, but you get my point.] Still, I'm not...
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Posted by greg at
12:45 PM
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Comments (5)
June 7, 2006
A few months back, we converted the kid's book collection to self-service by moving them all to shelves at her level, and it's been awesome. She pulls books out all the time to have us read to her, she...
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Posted by greg at
7:04 PM
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Comments (2)
June 6, 2006
I found this cool children's chair, made from standard bookshelf brackets and wood by Rotterdam-based artist Helmut Smits. He doesn't know it, but Smits' latest sculpture is an eerie almost-portrait of me: it's a system for turning Diet Coke...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 PM
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Comments (2)
Kristian Vedel was one of the first great discoveries [for me] from the Kid Size exhibition catalogue published by Vitra. In the mid-50's in Denmark, he created some awesome kid's furniture, simple curved ply seats and desks that had a...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (0)
June 2, 2006
Last weekend before getting laid out by the flu, the kid and I stopped by my grandmother's house in smalltown, Utah. It was the first time the kid had actually spent more than a few minutes there [we were...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 AM
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Comments (5)
June 1, 2006
Thanks to our trusty Bugaboo bassinet, we missed the whole bassinet-as-furniture boat, but I can appreciate me a Cariboo Bassinet all the same. [Even if it does remind me a bit of the hotel luggage racks that were my...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 PM
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Comments (0)
Daniel Michalik is a Rhode Island-based designer who focuses on creating furniture using overlooked materials in an environmentally sustainable way. Which sounds a helluva lot sexier than saying he made a children's chair out of crushed up bottle stoppers. But...
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Posted by greg at
1:20 AM
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Comments (1)
The Rex is a line of folding chairs designed in the early 1950's by Niko Kralj [remember, the beauty of buying it online: you don't have to pronounce his name] as the Slovenian Yugoslavian [Tito lives!] counterpart to the Eameses...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (1)
May 28, 2006
Last summer the LA Times called a trend: "Black is a hot color for cribs," they said. So hot it burned up before it made it to Las Vegas, I guess, because I never heard jack about black. But I...
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Posted by greg at
3:00 PM
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Comments (7)
The NY Times has the story of Ed Tachibana and Ha Lim Lee, architects who, through a combination of DIY muscle and Ed's obsessive ebaying, craigslisting, transformed their 3BR dump into a slick, loftlike dream home, complete with a home...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 AM
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Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
ducduc's added their new products to their website, including images of their new The Table. Some additional information on it: it's made of walnut, not just walnut stain, which is nice. I forgot to mention the storage under each sliding...
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Posted by greg at
4:40 PM
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Comments (7)
There was talk about this at JPMA a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't make it over to see with my own eyes. But then DT readers Nina, Andy, and Piam have all mentioned it to me, so I...
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Posted by greg at
2:31 PM
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Comments (12)
May 25, 2006
If Boom USA make a mistake with its knocked off versions of well-known kid's furniture designs, maybe it was ripping off people who're alive and selling the originals only 50 yards away. If you just stick to copying dead designers,...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
So where was I? Right, ICFF. ducduc appears to be expanding the brand from just "baby furniture" to "family furniture." They debuted some big kid beds, including a trundle/platform bed [the Fillmore] with a kind of cool snowboard-looking headboard, and...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 PM
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Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
The kid and I made an all-too-brief visit to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC yesterday. Gotta say, she was a rockstar, putting up with all my schmoozing while only slightly terrorizing the folks in their booths. Her M.O....
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (3)
May 20, 2006
No official word confirmation yet, but two several independent ICFF-attending sources is enough for me to pass it along believe it's true: I hear that DWR is pulling the plug on DWRjax, their kids furnishings business/collection/catalogue. After barely seven months....
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Posted by greg at
3:25 PM
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Comments (5)
May 18, 2006
Don't worry, you can custom-order the hardwood version of Tetris shelves in walnut and ash. They're still gorgeous, with a bevelled face edge, and have open backs and an 11" shelf depth. And they're still nice and expensive [if...
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Posted by greg at
8:08 AM
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Comments (0)
May 17, 2006
What the baby boom? What pre-school crunch? If all you had to go by was them decorator showhouses that constitute the official sport on the Upper East Side, you wouldn't know a baby'd been born in NYC in a hundred...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 PM
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Comments (2)
May 16, 2006
I can still remember the sticker shock I got when I saw my first Netto Collection crib. You have to appreciate a bit that at the time we started crib shopping--late 2003, whoa, they grow up so fast-- there...
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Posted by greg at
8:11 AM
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Comments (4)
May 15, 2006
Clearly, I'm not on the right email lists, because I just found out about last Saturday's auction of Von Dutch art and memorabilia in LA about 15 minutes ago. Not that it would've done me any good. Forget for...
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Posted by greg at
9:47 PM
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Comments (2)
Ah, Denmark, the land of beautiful modern design, AIDS charity auctions--and no product liability lawsuits. The result of this all-too-rare confluence of factors: a collection of one-of-a-kind ruminations on Arne Jacobsen's classic Series Seven Chair silhouette by designers from across...
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Posted by greg at
11:58 AM
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Comments (0)
May 12, 2006
"All I need is a high chair..." The Greg looked around. But, sleek high chairs are scarce, there was none to be found. "It's JPMA! I know just what they'll do!" "Their mouths will stay quiet a minute or...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (4)
Here's how I see it: EUR1,000 is totally the wrong price for this bassinet. If it's really carved from a giant tree trunk, I'd pay at least another 500 to have all that cartoony paint stripped off and have...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (0)
In 1960, Professor Yrj Kukkapuro, the Finnish designer and academic, introduced what would become one of his most famous works: the Moderno rocker. It was the centerpiece of a clean, unassuming, ergonomic, and classically Scandinavian line of chairs that were...
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Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (5)
May 11, 2006
The little frog has grown into a great big prince of a baby gear company. the parent-company Boon showed up at JPMA last year with a single product, the Frog Pod, which scooped up the Innovation Award. This year,...
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Posted by greg at
3:58 PM
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Comments (7)
Looks like Netto Collection's having a sample sale. I have no idea what is there, but I do know that it's already been going for four hours. Furniture and accessories are discounted 40 to 75% off. Off of one MILLION...
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Posted by greg at
3:08 PM
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Comments (0)
In 1970, Joe Colombo introduced the plastastic trolley called the Boby. It's perfect for your Ice Storm-themed nursery, and not just because it doesn't conduct electricity. [if you don't know what that means, see the movie or read the...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
From the posting so far, all I did at JPMA was go around and mooch stuff off of people who might prefer that I write favorable things about their company and their product. The only way I can prove...
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Posted by greg at
4:39 PM
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Comments (2)
May 4, 2006
If your kid is born pretty much by the book, and you're in a hospital in the US, chances are he's going to spend most of his time in one of these: a sweet, sweet molded plexiglass bassinet that rides...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (9)
April 29, 2006
Your idea to revolutionise the world of distribution is undoubtedly to be admired. It is an idea shared by a wide section of the public sensitive to the question and not only those who, like me, fight for existence along...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (2)
April 27, 2006
From pushing Mutsys in Mallorca to making their kids furniture, Norwegian dads are leaving the rest of us in the dirt on the hands-on parenting front. Parenthacks points to handy Norwegian commoner Eirik, who gives a step-by-step howto for...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 AM
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Comments (1)
April 24, 2006
The price of liberty from primary colored tyranny is eternal vigilance. The battle over pink or blue pastels was nothing; that ends at the layette. The assault of bright red/yellow/blue plastic toys and gear and furniture goes on forever, usually...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 AM
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Comments (3)
The Cencio Intellicot solves all the problems of previous generations of cots, or as we call them here, cribs: Because rocking puts the kid to sleep, the whole bed rocks. Because you'll be lifting your kid in and out of...
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Posted by greg at
12:14 AM
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Comments (3)
April 23, 2006
We were on the way to a dinner with some relatives in from out west, and so we stopped in the Harris Teeter in Reston to pick up some groceries. And while standing in line there--actually, I was on Diet...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (1)
April 21, 2006
Really, I got nothing that can beat that headline. Stuff looks pretty fresh. W146th st in NYC Mazel Tov! I'm not the father! Buy this crib :) - $200 [craigslist, via dt reader helena]...
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Posted by greg at
2:22 PM
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Comments (6)
April 18, 2006
I swear, that headline will make sense in just a minute. Graham Hill, the green design guru behind Treehugger.com has just launched a product. It's a wall-mounted, soft item storage unit made of 100% wool felt and recycled cardboard. The...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 PM
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Comments (0)
April 10, 2006
Dreaming of our own childhoods, timeless children's furniture is born. with a loving feeling for natural materials that radiate an environment of warmth and freedomI guess it just goes to show you, it's like a whole different country over there...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 PM
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Comments (1)
April 9, 2006
A roundup of highlights from dadblogs that, while admittedly incomplete, serves to demonstrate my own utter slackitude on the useful and entertaining information front lately: First things first. I felt proud, even a little groundbreaking, when I did the DT...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 PM
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Comments (0)
April 2, 2006
The glowing green binary spells "BLANKET," but then, if you're seriously considering buying this 60x80" poly/acrylic fleece blanket or the matching throw pillows, you already knew that. I don't think it'll match the ASCII rug, though, so you may...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (1)
March 27, 2006
Magis is best known for its futuristic pop plastic furniture. [Futuristic in a retro sense, obviously, because all that polypropylene or whatever is made from the oil that'll bring on the apocalypse. Buy now while supplies last!] Their Me Too!...
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Posted by greg at
9:35 AM
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Comments (0)
March 23, 2006
I can see it now, the day you knew would come: young Smirnoff asks you how you chose his name, You shift uncomfortably in your seat. "Well, son, you see, the doctor told us we were having a girl, and...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (0)
If you worry that having a kid's going to totally cramp your pristine minimalist loft style, you're right, and he will. But then, it even happened to the greatest minimalist of them all, so deal with it. The Donald...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
Here's how I understand the process: When you visit the website, it triggers a Google search of some kind. The results are scrubbed and formatted and output as pure ASCII text, complete with a timestamp of your visit. You...
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Posted by greg at
1:57 PM
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Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
It's days like this I'm really glad I don't have to compete with Ikea for anything. We were commuting, and timed our trip to DC so that we hit the NJ Ikea for lunch--the kid barely eats meat, but...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (3)
March 18, 2006
If you ever wondered what the impact of the US's liability insurance regime might be on innovation and kids' furniture design, look no further than the German design studio who made an aftermarket slide attachment for the Stokke Kinderzeat...
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Posted by greg at
8:21 AM
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Comments (0)
March 17, 2006
It is now clear that the parent-designers at Boon have a plan for world domination, and that it starts by taking over your kid's bathroom. Their Frog Pod bathtub toy scoop/storage/water dumping invention garnered a lot of praise when it...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:50 AM
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Comments (5)
March 16, 2006
At-home dad of two Sky Cosby publishes Pirate Papa, "a journal of green (and red) parenting." It's an excellent firsthand account of involved, anarchist parenting, and in just a couple of months, Sky's collected a pretty meaty rich authoritative great...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
Some DT readers emailed about the Community Playthings maple crib, but their question is applicable to any compact-sized [i.e., 24x38-inch mattress] crib. Basically, how's it working out, and how long does it last?I love this crib, but we're not psyched...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 PM
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Comments (10)
Jellio is living up to its name by putting out these GummiLights, soft, rubbery, 7-inch high, Gummi-shaped lights with battery-powered LED's in their butts. No cords, and they give off up to 20 hours of light/use. Hint: get rechargeables...
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Posted by greg at
8:40 PM
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Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
Michael and Sophie are really doing a great job with Oeuf, I think; it was right after the kid was born that they showed up in quick succession with a sweet-looking bouncy chair, some cool duds, and then the Oeuf...
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Posted by greg at
5:43 PM
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Comments (1)
March 8, 2006
One factor that might contribute to the in-car puking: snot. [sorry, should I have set this topic up a little better?] When the kid sits back in her car seat with a runny nose, and that runs down her throat,...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (3)
March 7, 2006
Even with the new kid's Eames rocker, the tiny Eames Chair, Eames-themed Blik decals, Eames Storage Unit, Eames Lounge Onesie and the Eames Toy, you feel that your mid-century lifestyle's still got some Eames gaps in it, maybe you need...
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Posted by greg at
2:06 PM
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Comments (3)
March 5, 2006
A list of highlights from other blogging dads out there that's as comprehensive as my knowledge of parenting [*cough cough*]: You can't pick your kids, but you can pick their noses. And you can brush their teeth. Adventuredad has a...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (4)
March 3, 2006
Just flipping through the catalogue for next week's contemporary art auction at Phillips de Pury. I'm not gonna bid on anything...I think...but quite a few pieces caught my eye: These two Andy Warhol paintings--of an apple and a puppy-- are...
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Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (0)
In a blog post about ""Whimsical Works," the Eames-does-kidstuff show last year at UPenn, the show's installer, architect Donna Sink, mentioned a children's plywood chair: One very rare object we were able to get for the show is an early...
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Posted by greg at
1:12 PM
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Comments (6)
February 28, 2006
When he first designed it in 2004, Thomas Pedersen originally named this rocker for the animal whose shape inspired it, the stingray, which is called the "Rokke" in Danish. Which is pronounced "rock." Get it? Rokke chair? Rocking chair? Anyway,...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 AM
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Comments (0)
February 24, 2006
Maybe it's not just for Lubbock Texans anymore. I've been a huge fan of Donald Judd's work for a long time, particularly his furniture, which, though it uses the vocabulary of his minimalist sculpture, he considered to be a...
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Posted by greg at
12:34 PM
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Comments (0)
The list of Blik wall decal patterns I haven't mentioned is growing. Eames? Helena Christensen? There's a Space Invaders [Space? Can I say Space? Or might it be better to just call them Invaders? On the apparent advice of Blik's...
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Posted by greg at
7:20 AM
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Comments (2)
February 23, 2006
I think Charlotte Friis' design for a Children's Paper Chair is more a conceptual exercise than an actual product. The idea is that the paper lasts for five years, and as it dwindles, the seat gets lower at about the...
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Posted by greg at
1:01 PM
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Comments (1)
A small boy, 3, lives with his artsy parents, three vintage Eames rockers [with refurbished Modernica bases], and an unidentified modernist Ikea rocking horse in a corrugated steel house of his father's design in Lubbock, TX. The father's book, seven...
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Posted by greg at
8:59 AM
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Comments (1)
February 22, 2006
How much would a beautifully designed modernist space, complete with optional custom-finished panelling, a ring of clerestory windows, and a thoroughly usable deck cost in Manhattan? Depending on the neighborhood (and the block, and the building amenities, of course) you...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
A reading from the 2006 Community Playthings catalogue, in which Cameron's words of praise for the Community Crib warm the hearts of CP marketers and value-minded crib buyers alike: "'This crib is so beyond cool as to be icy.'...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (3)
February 13, 2006
Don't know why, but I am a sucker for a good piece of felt. For a long time, I tried to source some really thick felt slabs to use as cushions, then I wanted some hard felt floors. But it...
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Posted by greg at
4:56 PM
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Comments (4)
February 12, 2006
A reader writes in: "Saw a vintage Trissen toadstool table and chair set (3 chairs) for sale at Lost City Arts in NoHo, $1,400. It's unfinished wood; is that right?" True enough. I've seen new unfinished beech Trissen table &...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 PM
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Comments (0)
February 11, 2006
Eclectic Sims is a design shop that produces items for the younger characters in The Sims2. The selection includes baby clothes, too, but most of the products are for decorating Sims nurseries. Some items are created from scratch, while...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (2)
The kid's aunt got her the Bilibo, which is a cute, little plastic dome which uses static electricity to pick up hair from the carpet. It works great, but there's no handle, so after a few hours bent over, dragging...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli is not a fan of most kid-related design, but she is a fan of the ever-affordable Ikea [which she pronounces, ee-KAY-ah, as we all should.] When we spoke about design for kids and babies recently,...
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Posted by greg at
4:58 PM
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Comments (9)
I'd been stuck on a comment I read last fall by MoMA Architecture & Design curator Paola Antonelli before her exhibition, "Safe," opened about children's product design, and so I decided to get her take on the Baby Industrial Complex....
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Posted by greg at
3:36 PM
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Comments (2)
February 8, 2006
Judging by the comments and my email, I have not been the only one with alphabet floor mats on the brain. They seem to embody the love it/hate it march of primary colored kidstuff across new parents' once-sophisticated lives. There...
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Posted by greg at
5:21 PM
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Comments (2)
Apartment Therapy calls it a "design lecture," DWR calls it "brunch." I call it, "a tasteful orange cribload of bagels on my stoop." But whatever it is, Brady Wilcox, David Harris, and Philip Erdoes, the co-founders of ducduc will be...
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Posted by greg at
2:30 PM
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Comments (3)
February 7, 2006
It's not just for Americans anymore. Apparently Europe has fallen head over heels in love with IKEA. Even the US edition of People Magazine has taken notice of the trend. CBB's Danielle reports that an IKEA Antilop high chair...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (11)
February 5, 2006
If you saw the hangdog photo of me in the NY Times today, then you also saw the Alphamat foam floor tiles that we put in the hallway outside the kid's room. Yes, it's a bit of primary color-creep, something...
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Posted by greg at
6:28 PM
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Comments (15)
January 26, 2006
Did I mention he was an eBay shark? DT reader Andy clearly has the right "save to my favorite searches" settings. Witness these two auctions for kid-sized Eames shell chairs, including an RAR rocker, which are on right now...
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Posted by greg at
1:16 PM
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Comments (0)
January 21, 2006
Considering their useful lifespan and wear, when Bugaboos turn up on ebay, they hold a pretty remarkable percentage of their original value. Bassinets, meanwhile, get almost no wear, and they only get used at all for a few months,...
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Posted by greg at
1:17 AM
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Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
So far, I haven't seen any of the JD bras or burial urns that John Deere megadealer Run Green mentioned on their site. But they DO have a plain white one-piece with the Deere logo on it, And they...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 AM
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Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
From the headline, I thought it'd be about renovating a Brooklyn brownstone with your in-laws, but the article in the NYT today mostly talks about a scrappy, anti-materialist, upstart magazine for parents called Cookie. ]Has anyone heard of it? Apparently...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 AM
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Comments (0)
January 7, 2006
When I first saw the ooba bassinet in the newest issue of Dwell [where it's one of the few surprises in their modernist kids furniture roundup], the website was still just one big "coming soon!" page. Well, a few...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (6)
January 6, 2006
Matt, child-free, but child-friendly friend, just sent this to me, it was in the Nov. 16, 1957 issue of the New Yorker. It's an ad for a kind of awesome-looking form=function bassinet called the Cherub Crib, which is basically a...
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Posted by greg at
1:54 PM
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Comments (4)
January 3, 2006
One thing's for sure: this is not a crib for the six autistic foster children you took in in order to get the $4,800/mo checks from Social Services. If it were, it'd have chicken wife on the front, not slats....
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Posted by greg at
11:48 AM
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Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
At first, I tried to convince myself that "Ben af Schulten" was just Finnish for "Chair for Baby," and that this chair produced by Artek was a late design by Artek's most famous co-founder, Alvar Aalto. [Not that I'm a...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (2)
December 26, 2005
For Christmas, her granddad got the kid this chair, made by his brother Alvin. Quite the craftsman, Uncle Alvin makes and sells a fair amount of children's furniture here in southern Utah, but this is the first of his...
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Posted by greg at
3:48 PM
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Comments (3)
December 23, 2005
I don't know how well these'll match the giant model car wall hanging in your nursery, but I'll throw them out there anyway. The group of London-based street artists who run Toy Culture have transformed some of their tags and...
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Posted by greg at
10:28 AM
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Comments (2)
December 21, 2005
I remember a tobacco executive use the words "surprise and delight" while describing her company's marketing strategy. Sounds better than "turn into junkies and bleed till they die," I suppose. I mention this only because the fine folks at Jellio...
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Posted by greg at
12:50 PM
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Comments (3)
December 19, 2005
I was doing a last-minute Christmas gift run at Barnes & Noble, and so I stopped to read me some free magazines, including I.D. [Now, I like I.D., but most major designers--and hence, design media--aggressively ignore baby-related products, so I've...
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Posted by greg at
11:54 PM
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Comments (1)
December 18, 2005
Insitutional cribs have a no-nonsense design and construction that I find very refreshing. No tole painting, no decorative finials, no frills. Of course, part of the appeal comes from the fact that I don't see the inside of a...
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Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (0)
December 14, 2005
First shown at the 1929 Salon d'Automne in Paris, the LC-6 dining table by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, instantly became a design classic. It has been produced by Cassina under exclusive license from the Le Corbusier...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 PM
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Comments (10)
December 9, 2005
Because I can't resist, here's a pic of me (and yes, that red blob is the kid in her Widgeon coat) at the woodworking shop. The bed is designed to use a minimum of materials (two beds use just...
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Posted by greg at
3:18 PM
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Comments (4)
Whether you're practicing medititation for hours at a time [yeah, that'll happen] or sitting on the floor with a kid all day [now we're talking], the Salubrion Chair was designed to help your back, your posture, and your blood circulation...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 AM
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Comments (0)
December 6, 2005
Not only a Kid-o bib, of course, will do, but I'm just saying. That all-too-familiar frustration with the horrible design of most baby gear probably intensifies when you open an awesome baby store, because Kid-o has introduced quite a...
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Posted by greg at
8:34 AM
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Comments (4)
November 29, 2005
Holy Moley. Maxalot has worked with a bunch of leading graphic designers from around the world to develop Exposif, a collection of limited-edition art wallpaper. It's custom-sized and custom-printed to fit your wall dimensions. And while more than a...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 AM
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Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
DT reader Andy gave a heads up on a batch of sweet, sweet mid-century childrens' design and toy items he just put up for sale on ebay. The lots include two sets of kid-size Bertoia chairs and a vintage...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 PM
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Comments (1)
November 21, 2005
I have approximately zero interest in most nursery knobs; frankly, I don't understand why they exist, other than to keep the nursery whimsical knob & pull industrial complex operating at full capacity. [And yes, circular reasoning is my point.] But...
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Posted by greg at
4:23 PM
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Comments (5)
November 20, 2005
I'm typing this in a beat up Martin Margiela t-shirt, so I definitely love me some Belgian designers, even when they name their company after one of the tackiest, most embarassing TV shows to ever be exported from the...
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Posted by greg at
7:13 PM
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Comments (0)
November 9, 2005
Nick, aka idoru45, paints great little dystopian Hello Kitty portraits: Hello Kitty in a gas mask, Hello Kitty with a radiation bomb, and my favorite, Hello Kitty as a Stormtrooper. There's also a portrait of Miffy with an RPG launcher....
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (2)
November 8, 2005
Blik, the wall decal people, have introduced a collection of iconic Keith Haring decals, including barking dogs, those dancers, some angels, and the Radiant Baby [available in two sizes]. You can order custom colors by calling, or get mostly...
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Posted by greg at
12:46 AM
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Comments (0)
November 4, 2005
If you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you'll like: Dwell Baby is introducing new bedding patterns for delivery in January '06: carousel, garden, animals, and alphabet [above]. Preview and preorder them at Velocity...
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Posted by greg at
11:36 AM
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Comments (1)
If it's orange, would you still call it an Egg? It looks more like a Gobstopper. Mozzee unveiled the orange Nest chair at Cologne's Kind + Jugend expo a few weeks back, and now it's available for pre-order at...
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Posted by greg at
7:31 AM
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Comments (3)
October 26, 2005
"The boy has now slept through the night two nights in a row!" It's the kind of news a new parent wants to post on his blog, which is what Chad did at The Little Man. One thing that might've...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (9)
October 25, 2005
Because, what with the crocheted Yoda hats and hand-knit robots and such, it's apparently handicrafts week on Daddy Types [is it too much to ask to be cc'ed on these memos, people?], here is a contemporary Swedish rocking chair...
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Posted by greg at
2:26 PM
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Comments (0)
It's true that no other gorilla lamp company donates 5% of their sales to wild gorilla conservation organizations, so I don't want to sound like a whiner. But if gorilla-saving is really your priority and not just a feel-good sales/publicity...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
Regular readers of this weblog will know of my love for the Stokke Kinderzeat. And if you're new here, I'll tell you now: we have it, and we love it. Except that we've never been able to figure out how...
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Posted by greg at
7:51 PM
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Comments (7)
So what did you do this weekend, you ask? Oh, the usual, a visit with Grandma, the gym, church, wading through a steaming swamp of emails about one dad's "dissatisfaction" with a defective tray for his space age-y Nest high...
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Posted by greg at
2:27 PM
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Comments (1)
October 23, 2005
Unlike some blogs who type on and on and on about some cool design or other [umm...], CribCandy knows when a picture is enough. Or when a picture and a link are enough. There's a continuous stream of sweet...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (2)
October 22, 2005
Minimalist architect Alex Michaelis first made news when he bought a 4,000-sf vacant lot in London for 750,000. (Apparently, several centuries of concentrated building tends to deplete a city's supply of vacant lots.) Then, because local zoning boards restricted him...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 PM
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Comments (2)
October 21, 2005
Sorry if Myke's R2D2 Onesie iron-on show up a bit late for you; he and his wife and their crew were just too busy freehanding an awesome Dr. Seuss nursery for the kid-to-come. You know how it is. And...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (2)
October 16, 2005
When they ecided to settle down in 2002, Wellington Fan and Jennifer Dalton were determined to prove their love of Williamsburg was stronger than--pick your poison--insufferable hipsters, encroaching bankers, or toxic sludge. So they bought an 1,100-sf post-war rowhouse...
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Posted by greg at
3:54 PM
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Comments (1)
October 14, 2005
The current issue of Dwell has a photo of French designer Matali Crasset's studio/home. Front and center is this red plastic and tubular steel high chair. I think I recognize that buckle from our Antilop chair. I still like...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (12)
October 13, 2005
New dad (as of Sept., congrats!) Gregg Homstad took the rocking chair thing seriously, very seriously: he handmade a museum-quality rocker himself using the instructions and plans from Rocking Chair University [no kidding]. See, master woodworker and rocking chair guru...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 PM
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Comments (3)
October 10, 2005
Remember that architect's dream home, the West Village penthouse with the subway doors in the kitchen and the glass-and-steel flying staircase? The one where the architect and his wife had twins soon after completing their 7-year-or-whatever renovation? Well, not only...
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Posted by greg at
4:06 PM
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Comments (0)
October 9, 2005
Huh. Until five minutes ago, I didn't know I even wanted a limited-edition, Ferrari Red birdhouse/music box with an embedded MP3 player containing 10 hours of Dutch bird songs, and now I can't get one. Tweety by Henk Stallinga,...
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Posted by greg at
3:11 PM
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Comments (0)
October 5, 2005
Last weekend, I checked in at Yoyamart, the sweet, sweet kid-centric store in EMePa (East of Meatpacking District). The highlights, some of which are available on Yoyamart's online store, too, are below: - the smurftastic Bugaboo By limited edition stroller...
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Posted by greg at
11:54 AM
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Comments (1)
October 3, 2005
Having a kid in a 400-square foot apartment? That's nothing. In Japan, they've been designing houses for kids plural to fit on 320-sf lots since 1952--and loving it. A Japanese firm Commdesign has commissioned several architect/designers to create variations on...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (4)
September 29, 2005
When I saw the classic Nanna Ditzel Toadstool set with a Playsam car on it in the New York Times' "This Season's Greatest Tables & Chairs For Kids!" I said to myself, "Kudos to Kid-o for getting that sweet placement."...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (2)
September 28, 2005
DT reader Sarah points to this classic fifties steel high chair from Cosco, which just went up for sale on ebay. You'd want to check the leg straps to make sure 1) they're there and 2) they work, but...
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Posted by greg at
2:19 PM
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Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
John's a dad-to-be who's right on the brink of buying a bunch of nursery furniture. His wife's been taking him to babies r us like every night, apparently, and he just wants to know, "Is Storkcraft any good?" Storkcraft, as...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (6)
September 25, 2005
From the baby gear gospel according to DT reader Daniel, who emailed this to me:What is it? I don't get it! Am I crazy for admiring simplicity? Am I the different one for shunning ruffles? Does the majority of this...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (4)
September 23, 2005
I thought the Stokke Kinderzeats at MoMA's restaurant were at The Modern, the Danny Meyer spot on the groundfloor. And they may be, who knows, but there were eight Kinderzeats lined up at the entrance to the second floor...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (1)
September 22, 2005
Before Philippe Starck started designing baby gear, strollers, and stuff for Maclaren, he started--and stopped--designing a bunch of baby-related products for First Years Co. which were sold at Target. They didn't do so well; the design equivalent of missing the...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 PM
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Comments (1)
September 19, 2005
Seimi is a Finnish company which started a line of baby furniture last year after--all together now--a couple of designers had a kid and were disappointed with the modern options for new parents. The line continues to evolve and expand...
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Posted by greg at
6:04 PM
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Comments (6)
I'm not a big furniture suite guy; always struck me as a little too Showcase Showdown, if you know what I mean. Which is probably why this kid-sized armoire with chalkboard paint on the front from ducduc; although it's part...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (4)
ducduc is no longer just a potentiality, hovering on the horizon of your crib and nursery purchases like a distant cloud. It's here. And it's for sale. And it looks good. And most of it's $1,000-$1,500, the same range as...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
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Comments (1)
September 11, 2005
The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), which includes a lot of crib bumper manufacturers said last March that, WOW, the Consumer Products Safety Commission's new research proved that crib bumpers were not only safe, they were darn cute, too. Which...
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Posted by greg at
10:48 PM
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Comments (0)
September 9, 2005
Sure, there's Blik, and Modernseed's new Freckles are cool. But if you're so hip, the mere mention of Baby Gap makes you wince, here's what you need to do: lighten up. Just roll with it once in a while. You...
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Posted by greg at
5:39 PM
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Comments (1)
Bamboo's the new hotness, materials-wise. It's ecologically friendly, wears like iron, and new laminating and bending technologies make it increasingly cost-competitive with hardwoods when it comes to flooring, etc. Successful designs like the MoxBox prove it can be used in...
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Posted by greg at
1:02 PM
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Comments (3)
September 6, 2005
I saw this high chair on the website of a cool Barcelona design store, Vincon, and now that I did, I remembered someone writing me about it a couple of months ago, but there's hardly any other information available for...
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Posted by greg at
6:52 PM
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Comments (2)
September 5, 2005
What, with all these posts about plastic furniture now, you'd think I spent the weekend reading Oilbarrelhugger.com. This time, it's the Pebbles stool by Marcel Wanders, which were available in clear polystyrene (red, blue, grey, or yellow) for a...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2005
Eero Aarnio is credited with many shagpad-worthy designs from the 70's, including the abstracted pony-shaped seating unit (it's too unusual to be called a chair) that retails for around $2,100. If you want a bid or swingin' style for your...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (0)
Worried that feng shui'ing your kid's nursery would involve too much esoteric equipment from China? Or at least Chinatown? No sweat. In a remarkable coincidence of thousand-year-old energy flow management and fresh-from-b-school-style mass market consumerism, the key ingredients to a...
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Posted by greg at
4:22 PM
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Comments (1)
August 31, 2005
DT readers should recognize this kind of article. Knight Ridder reported last month that a lot of the modernist designs appearing in the kid's furniture market these days are being driven by designer/parents who are fed up with the same...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 PM
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Comments (2)
Wha' happen? Did you blow the kid's college money on that ModBox? No problem. Now you can finish the nursery for like thirty bucks, tops. Belgian designer Robin Delaere just won the ID Annual Design Review for Furniture for...
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Posted by greg at
4:47 PM
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Comments (1)
August 30, 2005
Use some of the fortune you saved on the Donald Judd changing table to outfit the rest of your kid's nursery--and your whole house, actually--at ModernTots, a new Brooklyn-based online store and design studio that features some familiar Argington and...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 PM
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Comments (10)
At Christie's auction house a couple of years ago, a desk designed by the late minimalist sculptor Donald Judd sold for $300,000. While he never designed a changing table (that I know of), if he did, it would've turned out...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 AM
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Comments (7)
August 29, 2005
A while back someone [who missed some good stores on his trip to NYC, I believer[ had the suggestion to get people to put together a list of favorite stores in their home towns. So let's see what we can...
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Posted by greg at
12:37 PM
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Comments (48)
August 28, 2005
If you were under the impression that Danish design's best days were behind it, well, you're high. Just check out these two complementary beds for kids by Stig Leander Nielsen and his company, LEANDERFORM. The Leander Cradle was introduced in...
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Posted by greg at
5:57 PM
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Comments (15)
August 25, 2005
The LA Times has a good "modern design: now for kids!" story. Nice quotes from Charley Wheelock, the designer from Kapow [hope it means his Peep stuff is back on track for production.] Also: Orange is the new yellow (i.e.,...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (9)
August 22, 2005
More spawning in that great, hipster breeding ground known at Williamsburg. This time, it's sweet modern destination Two Jakes who are celebrating their offspring, Minijake, a shop specializing in gear for converting the far corner of your loft from a...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 PM
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Comments (3)
A DT reader emails in with this query: "I saw online months ago a crib that has a plexiglass front, converts to a toddler bed and is kind of tree fort-esque. It's in the $2K range. It seemed like a...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 PM
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Comments (2)
August 15, 2005
These well-cushioned half-egg-shaped stools have little ball-bearing skatewheels on the bottom. And they're completely covered in genuine cowhide, just in case you're wondering why your vegan friends stopped coming over for playgroup. La Vaca is the bigger one, and La...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 AM
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Comments (1)
This was on my to-post list since before last February, when we saw them at Frozen Fountain, the sweet sweet modern design store in Amsterdam. They turned up again in the public playroom at Roppongi Hills--what, your neighborhood entertainment/retail mega-real...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (1)
August 11, 2005
I've had two emails the last couple of weeks from readers who have been in focus groups for Design Within Reach (DWR) testing an upcoming line of children's furniture and gear. As one mole put it, it includes "a full...
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Posted by greg at
2:37 AM
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Comments (5)
August 5, 2005
Design Public, the online source for a lot of great modern design, launched a kids and baby section this week, with cool nursery stuff from DT favorites like Oeuf NYC and Argington, as well as some new (to me, aynway)...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 AM
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Comments (0)
July 28, 2005
Now your kid can have the same sweater as everyone else and the same sheets as everyone else. And it's not particularly cheap, either. I'll stick with our cotton jersey sheets from Buy Buy Baby's BBB Basics. babyGap Bedding Collections...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (2)
July 20, 2005
The organic, fair-trade-loving British hippies at Smile Child offer baby clothes and other products with such a boatload of crunchy goodwill, they had to find a boat to put it in. Thus, the boat crib. The crescent-shaped boat crib is...
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Posted by greg at
6:46 AM
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Comments (6)
July 17, 2005
This cool reinforced cardboard rocking cradle was invented by R. Kenan, who founded a company, Green Lullaby, to produce and distribute it. It knocks together in three minutes, is as flame retardant as any furniture, and meets all the EU's...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 PM
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Comments (7)
One of my favorite pieces of architecture anywhere is the 1922 bare-bones house Rudolph Schindler built for himself and another couple on Kings Road in West Hollywood. It's made from the raw-est of materials--concrete slab floors and walls (which were...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (1)
June 5, 2005
Herman Miller recently reissued the classic Eames Rocker (RAR) with a high-impact molded plastic shell instead of the original fiberglass. It retails for $525, and RetroModern.com usually discounts it to $379, but from June 4-18, they're offering another 10% off...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 PM
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Comments (5)
May 19, 2005
Until now, getting a Nest high chair in the US was no easy feat. These sweet, shagpad-ready pods by Bug Design were published all over the place when they came out last year, but they were only available for purchase...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 AM
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Comments (12)
May 18, 2005
Listen here, Sonny. You don't know how easy you got it, with your International Contemporary Furniture Fair sporting as many as "seven or eight" new choices for high quality, modern design baby furniture. Ducduc? Miguel? Galeano-Poggi? Why, when I was...
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Posted by greg at
10:33 PM
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Comments (1)
May 17, 2005
The International Contemporary Furniture Fair is at the Javitz Center week. What that meant over the weekend: nothing, just that 11th Ave was swarming with pedestrians, furniture designers decked out for an afterparty--in the middle of the day. What...
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Posted by greg at
4:27 PM
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Comments (2)
May 5, 2005
In the Washington Post today, staff writer and dad-to-be Jeff Turrentine writes about the paralyzing horror of outfitting buying everything you need for the nursery. He first writes about conspicuous consumption as a factor, but since he's really only shopping...
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Posted by greg at
3:45 PM
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Comments (4)
April 22, 2005
Talk about taking your rocker seriously. Master craftsman Gary Weeks spent the whole decade of the 80's researching and designing the perfect, most comfortable, most beautiful rocking chair a parent could ever want, and since 1991 he's been carving and...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 AM
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Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
OK, first off, let me say thank you to everyone who clicks through and buys stuff at Amazon, Babies R Us, babystyle, and the other places where Daddy Types gets a little cut of the business. If you didn't know,...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 PM
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Comments (33)
April 8, 2005
Call it the Tripp Trapp Effect. To me, a lot of European high chairs look like reactions, responses to, or riffs on Stokke's classic (30+year old) design. They're all wood, with a low base, and have adjustable height seat/footrests. Generations...
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Posted by greg at
6:47 PM
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Comments (8)
April 7, 2005
If you don't hear that phrase as much as you'd like, maybe you need to check out this Basket, a rocking chair designed by Vico Magistretti for the Italian furniture company De Padova. Introduced last year, the Basket is available...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 AM
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Comments (0)
April 4, 2005
Adam Kushner and his wife spent four years renovating--and living in--their West Village duplex, including six months without a roof. It has a glass-bottom tub (right over the kitchen, in case you ever wondered what a copy machine's bad dream...
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Posted by greg at
6:19 PM
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Comments (4)
April 3, 2005
In 2003, Maartje Steenkamp's graduation show design for an adjustable wooden highchair was included in "Your Choice," an exhibition by Droog Design at the Milan Furniture Fair. The design and the adjusting mechanism are both very simple. As the kid...
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Posted by greg at
9:22 PM
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Comments (1)
April 2, 2005
Harry Bertoia's welded wire chair for Knoll is a 1950's modernist classic. It's still in production, and when spring finally decides to stay, I'm guessing they'll be back in the Sculpture Garden at MoMA, just like the good old days....
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Posted by greg at
9:57 PM
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Comments (0)
March 31, 2005
The New York Times reports on how the baby market's best design and innovation is coming from parent companies. There are a few brands--Oeuf and Argington, for example--that have been on DT already. One surprise (to me, anyway): Baby Gear...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 AM
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Comments (2)
March 30, 2005
There's a lot here I plan to write about soon, plus some stuff I've been meaning to write about for a while. Thought I'd get the links out there in the mean time: cool kid design Modern Child [that's www.modernchild.net,...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (2)
March 24, 2005
Does this story sound familiar? "There's so much product out there that they want to get the right things for their child, and they want all of it. "Increasingly, new parents have the money, the confidence and the inclination to...
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Posted by greg at
3:42 PM
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Comments (1)
March 21, 2005
On December 30, 2000, Hilary Nelson ordered the cherry wood to build a co-sleeper crib with a little futon mattress. They wanted a handmade crib to match their arts & crafts bedroom furniture, and so he designed his own. In...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 AM
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Comments (1)
March 15, 2005
As you'd expect from a product targeting the Babycare Industrial Complex (i.e., hospitals, day care centers, nurseries, etc.), this sweet commercial-grade stainless steel crib with plexiglass ends from Kaplan is kind of standardized. At a glance, it's remarkably similar to...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 PM
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Comments (10)
March 8, 2005
Peep is a collection of solidly made modernist kids furniture "for hip toddlers and their cool parents" from Kapow Design, an Oregon-based fine woodworking concern. Although it looks like it could pack flat and knock together pretty easily, Kapow...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (6)
March 6, 2005
After nearly twenty years of meeting for drinks in his hotel lobbies, I'm growing a little weary of Philippe Starck's schtick. That said, the Heritage Rocker he made for Emeco, the awesome aluminum chair manufacturer is very tempting. The Hudson...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 AM
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Comments (11)
Right before we went to Holland, a couple of people sent in the Babylon High Chair, which is a very nice find. It's got a solid, very spare design which allows the kid to eat at the table, not in...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
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Comments (2)
March 3, 2005
Pre-birth, we gambled a little (very little, since it only cost $50, plus an incredible $5 shipping) that a red enameled rolling tool cart--which just happens to fit a standard changing pad perfectly--would make a nice industrial-looking changing table. So...
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Posted by greg at
9:11 AM
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Comments (10)
February 28, 2005
I'm sure it's pronounced Prey-nah-TALL. Prnatal is actually a chain of moderately sized Dutch baby stores, more Right Start, than Buy Buy Baby. They have clothes (just as generic as US mall clothes), strollers, car seats and small stuff, but...
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Posted by greg at
7:29 AM
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Comments (2)
February 11, 2005
"Dummies seem to be always lost, so heres a solution to keep them in one place!" While you scare yourself imagining how the Dutch might solve this this problem, let me tell you that in Finnish (i.e., British) English, a...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (2)
The Seimi Baby Collection is the creation of Puu Studio, a Finnish woodworking and furniture maker, and it rocks. Not literally, I mean it's cool. I don't mean Helsinki-in-February cool, I mean-- Anyway... Peti, the Seimi crib [in grand Scandinavian...
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Posted by greg at
2:29 PM
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Comments (1)
Those Dutch. While Bugaboo's over there revolutionizing the stroller children's mobility market, the rest of the country's designers are apparently focused on the children's immobility market. This chair, ominously (or realistically, take your pick) called The Babysitter, was created by...
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Posted by greg at
1:36 PM
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Comments (0)
February 10, 2005
Besides the Eames RAR Rocker, of course, there were remarkably few rocking chair designs to come out of the mid-century golden age of American modernism. One rare example, the Rapid Rocker, was created for Knoll in 1945 by Ralph Rapson,...
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Posted by greg at
4:46 PM
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Comments (1)
We have a stack of Oh! Chairs, designed by Karim Rashid for Umbra, in our place in DC. When we needed some stacking chairs, I had the image of it in my mind--left over from an old NYT article about...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 AM
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Comments (1)
February 3, 2005
While I've been happy to talk up the no-nonsense Jenny Lind crib we got, it was still something we settled for. We really wanted a crib like you'd see in the dictionary: an old-school, industrial or institutional model that was...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 PM
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Comments (9)
January 20, 2005
The NY Times has a roundup of modernist crib options, running the gamut from the Netto Collection to, um, IKEA. The big emphasis is on convertability; designers figure that you're not gonna part with $800-1,500 for their crib unless it...
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Posted by greg at
12:19 AM
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Comments (20)
January 19, 2005
Because it seems pretty much unnecessary, yet it now represents about 30% of the baby industry. Entire villages in Africa are kept working to hand-embroider $700 crib bedding sets that you'll have to remove as soon as the kid's old...
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Posted by greg at
4:25 PM
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Comments (0)
December 28, 2004
Now! From the artists who brought you the 'Bad Furniture' cage/crib comes The Womb House. Atelier van Lieshout is a Rotterdam-based workshop/studio founded by Joep van Lieshout, which makes art that functions as furniture, architecture, or whatever, and that...
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Posted by greg at
3:44 PM
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Comments (0)
December 20, 2004
Poking around on ebay Germany, I found not only enough slightly used and vintage Stokke Kinderzeats (they're called Tripp Trapp outside the US; thanks to DT reader JJ for the ebay.de tip), but this very cool-looking tray that slips right...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 PM
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Comments (0)
December 12, 2004
Outfitting a nursery's expensive, especially if you're gonna do it right Some people like to get friends and family to chip in a little somethin', which is great, unless those people are civil servants and their friends get their money...
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Posted by greg at
5:32 PM
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Comments (2)
November 28, 2004
Regular readers of Daddy Types can feel a little satisfaction, followed by a little implication, as they read "The Modernernist Nursery," Elizabeth Weil's NY Times Magazine article about, well, modernist design-loving parents grappling with the hideous crap the childrens' mass...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 AM
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Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
With a nearly perfect combination of substance and style, Kid O is the most thoughtful children's store in the city. It opened just over a month ago, and it raises the bar by offering an uncompromising and often exclusive selection...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:29 PM
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Comments (5)
October 17, 2004
His seating is nothing if not innovative. Eero Aarnio is the guy who designed the Mentos-with-a-seat-scooped-out plastic chairs that filled my elementary school library (the ones I now wish I'd snagged at a school surplus sale, had I only known...)...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (2)
[I forgot where I first saw this; if you recognize the reference, please pass it along.] Among UrbanPeel's tightly edited selection of contemporary furniture is this beautiful minimalist solid oak-and-chromed steel high chair from Niels. Who or what is Niels?...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:11 PM
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Comments (0)
October 15, 2004
It looks like it'd work best in a full-on mid-century modern house, but at least it doesn't look like you just pulled it out of the Winnebago. If you're not going to get an Eames, check out the Nurseryworks Rocker,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (0)
October 14, 2004
Even from the earliest days of the De Stijl movement [that's gotta be annoying to Dutch readers; I might as well say "the De Stijl style."] , architect Gerritt Rietveld was designing childrens' versions of his modernist, geometric chairs....
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Posted by greg at
7:27 AM
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Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Of course, while I praise their high chairs in one post, I have to point out the dark or crappy side of IKEA, too: 1) According to Apartment Therapy, the stores--especially the NYC-area locations--run out of stock way too frequently....
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Posted by greg at
4:14 PM
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Comments (3)
For someone who doesn't live within the gravitational pull of an IKEA, visiting the store can be an epiphany. Sometimes, it can even break through your own IKEA fatigue and cause you to take a fresh look at the stuff...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (7)
October 5, 2004
If only there were a way to share the glory of your college years with your kid while getting rid of that shelf-ful of Greek Week T-shirts. Look no further. Stitch'T will turn your beloved old T-shirts into a fleecy...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:52 PM
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Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
I remember feeling both ingenious and ironic when I installed The Clapper for a string of lights we were using as a lamp in our NYC apartment. Sure enough, it went on and off when I clapped. Unfortunately, it also...
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Posted by greg at
1:29 PM
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Comments (0)
September 22, 2004
Most of LumiLuxe's glow-in-the-dark bath rugs have matching toilet surrounds and lid covers, which are also made out of glow-in-the-dark carpet. There are abstract and floral patterns, a basketball court design for the kids, and the fish/aerial bombs pictured above....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:22 PM
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Comments (1)
September 20, 2004
We had been debating getting a shag rug--a flokati, the thick, sheepskin-looking kind from Greece--for the living room. [In this case, 'debate' consisted mostly of one 'find one you think is OK and buy it' request from my wife and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:26 PM
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Comments (2)
September 14, 2004
With well-designed furniture--an Eames lounge chair, for example--while you could get a new one ($529 via eamesoffice.com), the older ones, with a bit of wear and a nice patina, are better. They're something worth keeping. Most kid furniture, on the...
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Posted by greg at
7:56 AM
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Comments (3)
August 22, 2004
Construction Playthings sells educational and childcare equipment to schools, daycare centers, and other institutions as well as to parents. Now, with this awesome--and awesomely tough--stainless steel and plexiglass crib, they're targeting you, if you run a primate testing lab, or...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (0)
August 21, 2004
While my nose has been buried in Japanese diapers, the UK has apparently been overrun by springloaded travel beds that fold up "as small as a dinner plate." Baby Chic 101 (a new blog with enough baby designer links to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:24 AM
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Comments (1)
August 19, 2004
From the land of Godzilla vs. Mothra, during the week of Alien vs. Predator, here comes another pairing. Japan loves to individually wrap things: $5 peaches, marshmallows, and babies. A while back, I posted about some ruffly infant dentist chair,...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 AM
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Comments (3)
A couple living in a SoHo loft decided to put their daughter in a tent instead of in an actual room. The NY Times reports that it is "portable, unbreakable, and won't fall down," all good criteria for a room....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:06 AM
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Comments (1)
August 8, 2004
This is the hardwood crib the hotel gave us. It folds up to about 1/3 of the depth, but what I like most about it is the basic, no-frills shape: square rails and spindles, no tole painting (although the...
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Posted by greg at
4:19 AM
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Comments (3)
July 22, 2004
Although you wouldn't know it from reading some websites [*cough, cough*], parenting is much more than buying gear and strollers. It's also decorating. And if you're adopting a kid from a foreign country, it means sprinkling token kitsch objects from...
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Posted by greg at
7:10 PM
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Comments (2)
July 21, 2004
We're visiting Grammy right now in Salt Lake City, and it turns out she's got this awesome cradle--for my sister. After I got over my petty sibling jealousy, I heard the story: she bought it in a small town in...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (1)
July 17, 2004
Whoa. Meanwhile, on the other end of the technological spectrum from the Xplory and the Bugaboo: strollers and prams made out of bamboo, which are still widely used, it seems, in 2nd tier-and-below Chinese cities. The thumbnail at left is...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:28 AM
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Comments (1)
July 14, 2004
One of the original members of Droog Design, which revolutionized Dutch design in the mid-90's, Piet Hein Eek takes an offbeat approach to design problems; he regularly uses--or re-uses, actually-- scrap wood to realize his stripped down archetypal forms. The...
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Posted by greg at
6:47 PM
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Comments (1)
July 5, 2004
Wow, modernseed is in the zone these days. This solid maple arts & crafts-style crib looks really nice. Simple, clean lines, solid-looking construction. Now just get rid of all the bows and the bumper. Seriously, crib bumpers are designed for...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (2)
Modernseed is selling this paper clip-looking bouncing chair for kids up to 18lbs. It comes in--surprise--pink or blue. It's very goodlooking, if a little more design-y than the solid navy blue Bjorn Babysitter. It's not adjustable. Brooklyn-based French designer Sophie...
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Posted by greg at
9:30 PM
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Comments (2)
At first glance, it looks like a newborn bassinet, but it's designed for kids "up to age 4 (18kg)." It's the Hi-Low Bed & Chair with thermo-sensitive memory foam and a "bio-medical swing" by Aprica. I probably should write about...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:39 PM
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Comments (1)
June 29, 2004
Looking for a crib we could stand was a hassle. It's such a big purchase, you don't want to screw it up, yet almost every crib out there is over-designed, over-done, or overwhelming, like some giant Price Is Right showcase....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:00 AM
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Comments (4)
June 22, 2004
Happiness is not reaching your goal. Happiness is being on the way. It is our wonderful fate to be just at the beginning ... The word impossible has been and must remain deleted from our dictionary. -- From The Testament...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (0)
June 17, 2004
LA-based designer Pazit Kagel introduced a line of cleanly designed modular furniture for toddlers and children at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair. The ply and laminate units can be used for storage and as a platform bed that grows...
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Posted by greg at
1:17 PM
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Comments (0)
The Share Chair is a 2-seat see-saw-like rocking chair by the Dutch furniture and design firm Interior Tools. It's similar to traditional Chinese designs, where such face-to-face seats were common on strollers and wagons. Some came with tables like little...
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Posted by greg at
12:22 AM
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Comments (0)
June 16, 2004
Joop Van Lieshout is a controversial Dutch artist whose work explores the zone between 'art' and 'practical' objects. His Atelier Van Lieshout in Rotterdam makes functional object/sculptures and installations. The Atelier describes its new 'Bad Furniture Series' like this: "Paradoxical...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:28 AM
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Comments (1)
June 5, 2004
For a (currently) child-free guy Josh Rubin has cultivated some very good sources for cool high chairs. (Sorry, fellas--and ladies--he's taken.) As promised, Josh posted details on Nest 2, the upgraded version of Sally Dominguez's modern-friendly high chair. New features:...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:48 PM
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Comments (0)
May 31, 2004
The URL sounds like it's the guy's 10th choice, and the website looks like it was designed in 1996, but the Canadian site hotelfun4kids.com is a changing table heaven. HF4K consults the travel industry on making destinations more kid-friendly, and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:38 PM
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Comments (1)
Instead of a traditional changing table, we got a heavy-duty enameled tool cart from an industrial supply dealer. We love it, but admittedly, not everyone has the power to persuade their Pregnant Person to trick out the nursery like an...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (3)
You may have noticed how rare cleanly designed baby furniture is. Architect and craftman Christopher Ross noticed, and did something about it. His firm, Hiccup, makes great-looking cribs, dresser/changing tables, and more for the Tall Grass Collection. The Tall...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (0)
May 30, 2004
Few things turn a design-conscious parent-to-be's stomach more than the idea of having to get some fugly rocking chair. You've probably heard it before, but let me say it again from this side of parenthood: you
want a rocking chair. One classic modern solution is the Eames shell rocker. Here's a quick primer on the options for buying one.
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:53 PM
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Comments (12)
May 29, 2004
TRUCK Product Architecture is a smart, furniture-making offshoot of NY architects Rogers Marvel, whose designs include Kate Spade stores and The Studio Museum of Harlem. The Rock-it Chair is from TRUCK's collection of "Built-By-Me" kids furniture, which also includes a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:20 PM
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Comments (0)
May 22, 2004
Nowadays, "Vintage Ikea" means the stained foam sofa your old roommate was too lazy to haul to the street. But Ikea's actually been singing their "good design, but affordable" song for over fifty years. In 1969, when this Dino...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (1)
May 19, 2004
So sue me. It turns out I did not invent fatherhood, and Daddy Types is not the first search for gear for kids. Kid Size: The Material World of Childhood is an exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum that explores three...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (0)
May 13, 2004
More from Dwell magazine's June issue [just subscribe, already!], this time its a Dutch modern furniture company executive who got all into his house developer's business to improve the layout of their 2,000 sf house (and to make sure windows...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (3)
May 11, 2004
Many Japanese families sit on the floor and eat at coffee table-height tables. [They have little heaters underneath, and in the winter, they break out thick blankets, which you huddle under as you eat and work. Off topic.] Anyway, think...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (1)
May 7, 2004
Since his involvement in the earliest days of the influential Droog Design, Dutch furniture guru Marcel Wanders has put materials to uncommon, practical use: one chair is made of macrame'd kevlar rope, hardened in an epoxy bath. Wanders designed this...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 PM
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Comments (0)
May 6, 2004
Dude. This is phenomenal. A one-of-a-kind cradle designed by Jean Prouvé, the Ray and Charles Eames of France (and then some). It was initially designed in 1936 for the daughter of a friend and collaborator, the architect Marcel Lods....
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Posted by greg at
11:16 PM
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Comments (0)
April 29, 2004
I saw this in Dwell Magazine a while back, but resisted posting it, partly because I couldn't find it for sale anywhere. Then I saw it at Cool Hunting, a site by Josh Rubin, who puts the cool in colleague...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (0)
April 2, 2004
A couple of friends swear by this lightweight bouncing chair from Baby Bjorn. The springlike shape means a kid can bounce himself silly with every little squirm. It's definitely the best-looking seat I've seen; it'll let you hold off...
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Posted by greg at
5:02 PM
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Comments (1)
March 24, 2004
The NYT has a slideshow of sheets and stuff for cribs that are "not boring." That'd be fine if boring were the problem. More often, the problem is sickening cuteness or schlock. I point to them here only for use...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (0)
March 16, 2004
Ignore for a moment that PlanetOut's Jeff Bennett calls his husband "Hubby," or that he coos over the weekly, treacly Babycenter.com emails written in the voice of his surrogate fetus(es). His "Who's your daddy?" column archive gives a real-time report...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (0)
Although you'd never know it from most baby/kid stores, kids and good design don't have to be mutually exclusive. And Modern Seed is an online-only shop that proves it. There are classic design toys like House of Cards by Ray...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:39 PM
Is Stokke Tripp Trapp Norwegian for "surprisingly innovative high chair"? A lot of ergonomic consideration went into this thing, which has been filling the eat-in kitchens of Europe since 1972. The chair is adjustable to fit kids from 6 months...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:08 PM
March 10, 2004
A reader asked Dwell Magazine the tough question, one that haunted us, too, as we awaited our first kid: Whey all de cool, normal baby furniture at? Dwell's answer: cribs, changing tables, and dressers from New York interior designer...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
February 21, 2004
Any color as long as it's black. If that's your buying strategy for baby gear you have to live/work with, check out the Jeep Sahara Limited XT portable crib by Kolcraft. Why did Jeep license a portable crib? Who...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:25 AM
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Comments (1)
February 13, 2004
We hated almost all the nursery furniture we saw. Why isn't there a cool industrial-style, crib or changing table or dresser, we thought? Even the bassinet-on-wheels they showed us on the hospital tour would be cooler than the tole-painted schlock....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:15 PM
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Comments (6)
