Category archive: furniture

May 21, 2012

Endless Extruded Plastic Kids Rocker By Dirk Vander Kooij

Amsterdam designer Dirk Vander Kooij developed his Endless Flow Process for his 2010 Eindhoven thesis project. Since then, he's refined it to the point where his repurposed industrial robot extruder can print a plastic chair out of recycled refrigerator...
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May 13, 2012

Um, YEAH! Mondo Cane Kid Chairs At Partners & Spade

Oh Partners & Spade, I can't stay mad at you. Let's never speak of Dan Colen again. Instead, let's just do high fives and brohugs about the awesome kids chair exhibit you are putting on in collaboration with the...
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May 11, 2012

Woohoo, Wary Meyers Kids Shop Is AMAZING

The kids vintage world has definitely changed since the day when, as an idealistic new dad, I walked into Allan & Suzi on the UWS, asked if they had or knew of any kids clothes, and was told, "There...
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May 9, 2012

Misaki Kawai World At Children's Museum Of The Arts

Alright, I know: it's hard not to stare at the Bazoombas Bench. But artist Misaki Kawai's also made all kinds of other hipster-whimsical, kid-size furniture for her current exhibition at the Children's Museum of the Arts in NYC. Like...
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May 2, 2012

Gilty! Maclaren Is Definitely Not Dumping Netto Furniture On Gilt.com

Yes, it's Netto Furniture By Maclaren for sale at around 50% off at Gilt, but the question is, which of Farzad Rastegar's Maclaren shell companies is behind it? And will these Louis cribs and changers and Cub cribs and...
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April 16, 2012

8x65: Aalto Kid Chairs & Table At LA Modern

Sure, it was designed in 1935, but these eight Alvar Aalto kids chairs, #65, could really be from almost anytime. So check with the auction house, or just accept that at around half the current retail cost, the $2-3,000...
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April 9, 2012

On Reinventing The Wheel

After 20 yrs of new dad rockers making kids records because they can't find any good kids music, you'd think they'd be able to find some.— Kevin Guilfoile (@kevinguilfoile) April 9, 2012 The more forgotten kid-related goodness I discover from...
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March 21, 2012

Kenno Cardboard Kids Chair By Heikki Ruoho

The Helsinki design duo Heikki Ruoho and Teemu Järvi have been working with a recycled cardboard laminate called Re-board since at least 2008, but they only launched actual product earlier this year. Showroom Finland has apparently put the Kenno...
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March 15, 2012

Antwerp Central Youth Hostel Bunk Beds By Vincent Van Duysen

You might think that, whether it's the kids or the dads, the Daddy Types demographic would be as far away from the subject of youth hostels as it's possible to get. I thought that, too, and no amount of...
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March 11, 2012

こどもの椅子展, Chairs For Children Exhibition

I knew it'd be hard to top the one South Willard and Reference Library already flagged, Yasufumi Nakamura's Seven Chairs, kid-size riffs on iconic modernist chair silhouettes. But I really wanted to see what kind of kid-size chairs the...
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March 3, 2012

Transformer-Style: Changing Table In Disguise

I lose track of the awesome tiny space design blog Shoebox Dwelling for a couple of months, and it fills up with interesting kid-related posts. Like this "Swiss Army-style" studio apartment in Gramercy, which has a murphy bed and...
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March 1, 2012

Brandchannel Nabs Netto For Macopalypse 2012 Story

Nice get, Abe. In his extensive report on Maclaren USA's Ch. 7 liquidation mystery, Brandchannel's Abe Sauer scored some quotes from "ex-Creative Director of Maclaren Nursery," David Netto. And it sounds like the $1.1 million owed to Netto in the...
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February 29, 2012

Just Some Good Old Boys, Never Meanin' No Harm

Do you know there's a channel that shows all old dukes of hazzard episodes? It's keeping me up very late— David Netto (@DavidNettoSays) February 29, 2012 Looks like David Netto is adjusting well to life not designing cribs for Maclaren...
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February 27, 2012

Whoa. David Netto Tweet-Resigns From Maclaren

I have resigned as creative director of maclaren nursery today and am disassociating myself from the company.— David Netto (@DavidNettoSays) February 27, 2012 Guess that answers the question of which side of the bankruptcy table David Netto is sitting...
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February 22, 2012

What Do You Make Of This?

David John just tweeted it in passing, but suddenly, I look at Alvar Aalto's classic 1937 Tea Trolley, and I want to see it in kid gear. What could you make of this molded birch strip, tray, solid wheel,...
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DTQ: Who Made These Paintings On The Cover Of Dwell Asia?

First off, Dwell Asia is apparently a thing that exists. Published, presumably, under license by a local magazine company. But what I want to know is, who made those superhero-ish, Mexican wrestler-ish painting/poster/images in the Singapore [?] house that...
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February 21, 2012

Cutlets Upcycled Toys From Brothers Dressler

Cutlets are small wooden toys handmade from unique scraps of birch ply left over from larger furniture production, which are sanded and hand-rubbed with kid-safe finish by the noted Toronto conceptual upcycling woodworking twins at the Brothers Dressler co-operative....
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February 16, 2012

Kid Ply Awesomeness By Gidon Bing

What's a sculptor with a talent for magemono, the Japanese art of wood bending supposed to do when he has a kid, and discovers nearly the entire baby gear industry is aligned against him, determined to drive him nuts...
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February 13, 2012

WTF Macrame Bassinet

Scandinavian hippies will surely swear that this macrame cradle is totally strangleproof. And that after generations of snowbound living, their babies are born with sufficient lung capacity to breathe right through afghans and pillows. Those living below the Arctic...
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February 3, 2012

Metamorphokit (1971): Build It Yourself Modular CalArts Dorm Furniture

Good googly moogly, all this work on DIY/modular/industrial/plywood/Bauhaus bedroom furniture and I'm only finding out about Metamorphokit NOW?? I am clearly doing it wrong:Dubbed Metamorphokit by the designers [CalArts faculty member Peter de Bretteville and Toby Cowan], it was...
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January 16, 2012

The RAPEX Of Europa

Alright, the unrecalled Ikea Antilop high chair is becoming an endangered species. Did DT get it wrong before, when I said that Antilops made between 2006 and 2010 were being recalled for having ridiculously flimsy safety straps? Because the Daily...
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January 12, 2012

50s Mickey Mouse Rug At Rago

At first I was trying to puzzle out a date for this decent-looking, 4x5 ft. Disney rug that's coming up this weekend--yow, the 13th? Friday morning!--at Rago Auctions in New Jersey. But then I realized that Lady and the...
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Vintage Molded Ply Kids Chairs At Mid Mod

Once you build a mold for the plywood, it's just a matter of coming up with all the different uses for the shape you can now make. That's my takeaway from this odd, 1970 chair and fish-shaped storage box...
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January 10, 2012

Unidentified Local Hack Buys PR Bullshit About NurseryWorks Lucite Crib

First of all, it's US Magazine, right? So what do you expect? Except that it gets repeated and retweeted everywhere, with nary a mention of whether it's true or not. So let's make this clear, as clear as a...
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January 6, 2012

Oops Crib: There It Is.

It's been a while since we had a good ol'-fashioned custom crib gawkin' around here. So say hello to the Oops Crib, from Savanna-based eco-craftspeople at Structured Green. Structured Green specializes in furniture and architectural fixtures made from their...
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Ikea Antilop Recall! World's Greatest High Chair Has World's Flimsiest Straps

If there's one thing Ikea's famous for, it's meatballs. If there's two things, it's cheap, stylish furniture. The third thing? Value engineering the hell out that furniture year in and year out, to squeeze every possible penny of profit...
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January 5, 2012

LAT: Schindler With Kid

I would guess that when you marry an architect's daughter, you're not going to be fazed by your father-in-law's inserting himself in your househunting and remodeling projects. In fact, you might even welcome it. Especially if you've got a...
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January 1, 2012

Future Systems For Kids: Dinghy Sofa & Josef's Bed

Until I just reorganized some shelves and went through my stash of their 1990s architecture books, I guess I'd forgotten how utterly awesome Future Systems was. The London firm comprised of Amanda Levete and Czech emigre Jan Kaplicky was...
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December 15, 2011

I Am The World's Severest Bed Stylist

First off, let me say we have a good friend who is a bed stylist--or a soft stylist, in the inustry lingo--and I wish her a rich and rewarding career for as long as she wants it. That said,...
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December 14, 2011

Golden Child: Kid Design Round-up From Skinner Auctions

There sure are some fascinating kid-related things coming up this weekend in the 20th century design sale at Boston-based auction house Skinner. But first, the stuff you might actually want to bid on: RESULTS UPDATE: Hah, or not. None of...
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December 5, 2011

OG Walter Papst Kids Table At Mid Mod

I don't know where he finds this stuff, but he sure does. And over and over again, too. Mid Mod Design has a kids table by fiberglass kids' furniture pioneer-turned alien hunter Walter Papst, for just EUR900. A price...
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November 30, 2011

Klinki Modular Furniture/Toy Construction System

Once again, the incomparably awesome, mildly impenetrable archive of Form Magazine yields a small treasure. This time, it's the Klinki building and play system, from Form 88, published in 1979. Klinki was made of wood, and came in three...
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November 28, 2011

Scrapwood Playground At Tule Lake Internment Camp

In WWII, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the west coast, stripped of basically everything they couldn't carry, and imprisoned in inland internment camps, rows of tarpaper barracks in the desert surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers....
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November 26, 2011

Kid's Corner By Martino Gamper

Speaking of Martino Gamper, he has a thing for corners. And so in 2002, he made Kid's Corner, an awesome, little reading & play space, which was included in a larger exhibit, The Book Corner. The shots here are...
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Dorm Find: Gio Ponti Hotel Parco Dei Principi Headboards

Poor Gio Ponti's Hotel Parco dei Principi furniture! It gets no respect! I mean, in 2007 Martino Gamper hacked it apart and used it for lumber for a performance at Art Basel. And now, somewhere outside Firenze, a couple...
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November 25, 2011

Auchan, Les Enfants! Mini Vintage Parisian Pop-Up Mall

For whatever reason, Paris seems to have some pretty solid sources for vintage kids' design. So it's tres interessant that a group of antique dealers and design shops in Paris have banded together for Mini Vintage, "le premier salon dédié...
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November 23, 2011

Three Of These Folky Things Belong Together

People in New Jersey collected the darnedest things sometimes. Though this bedroom set is apparently from Southampton, so go figure. Here are a couple of standout [sic] lots from Rago Arts' upcoming Estates auction: Lot: 566: a whimsical bedroom furniture...
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November 18, 2011

The Peregrine White Cradle

While searching for historical photos of feather beds [long story, another time], I stumbled across this, the Peregrine White Cradle, a woven willow cradle brought from Holland by Susanna and William White, who were expecting their first child when...
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November 12, 2011

Star Wars Nursery Mayhem

Frankly, if your kid is actually named Rocky III, I don't see how you could not give him a Mr. T-themed nursery, but Star Wars is an evergreen alternative. Ohdeedoh has a nice tour of Rocky's Rebel Alliance setup,...
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October 26, 2011

Please Send Your Baby Bentwood To Wary Meyers

If you have some of these kid-sized bentwood chairs from c.1968 Design Research, please send them to Wary Meyers. It'll save him he trouble of inventing a time machine. Bentwood Baby Chair at Design Research, 1968 [warymeyers]...
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October 17, 2011

Workman Twins Ikea Hack

Twins, whatryagonnado, right? Well, if you're Jared and Krystal Workman of somewhere DC area, the answer's simple: you jigsaw out a couple of holes in the free Ikea tabletop and drop in some plastic seats from a daycare activity...
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October 8, 2011

DTQ: Supergraphic Play Cubes In A Modernist Maine Cabin?

Alright, let's figure this one out. Here's a LIFE magazine picture of an otherwise unidentified "Modern Home" in Maine, circa 1969, shot by longtime staff photographer Mark Kauffman. There are a few other images in the set, but no...
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Eames Planking

It's the little metadata differences. Somehow, Andrew from an ambitious project collapsing found this sweet 1948 photo from Google's LIFE Magazine photo archive and sent it along. Maybe if, instead of Rocky Stensrud, Jr., using children's chairs in a...
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September 19, 2011

Is It Any Wonda I've Got Too Much Gear On My Hands?

Wow, a whole stroller/kid furniture world of the past just opened up to me, like seeing color photos of World War II after a lifetime of black & white. Seriously, the Wonda Chair? Who's been keeping this a secret...
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September 8, 2011

$26,283 Worth Of Rocking Chairs

You know what's been missing around here lately? four- and five-figure rocking chairs. Not so the New York Times, where ducduc's Brady Wilcox curates a fine array of chairs to rock the hedgies and scare the cats. Does that even...
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September 1, 2011

DTQ: What Makes A Horrible Restaurant High Chair?

Thanks to the SEO spammer who responded to the 4-year-old question about what makes a nice restaurant high chair with the highly unbelievable answer: more polypropylene, horrible design, krazy spelling, and pretending your kids love the colors! In other words,...
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August 22, 2011

Depressing Caption, Meet Awesome Chairs

The photo blog on The Atlantic has been running extended looks back at images from World War II. Today's theme: Japanese-Americans forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and shipped to internment camps in the middle of the freakin'...
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August 20, 2011

Eames Adjacent! Can You ID This Kid-Size, Mid-Century Mystery Chair?

From awaiting the future to decoding the past: Soon after super-collector Jim Linderman moved to the Zeeland metropolitan area, he snapped up this rather sweet, sculptural, handmade, kid-size mystery chair at a local vintage store. And then he sent pictures...
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The Future Will Be Kickstarted

Someday in The Future, an idealistic English teacher in Beijing with some furniture sketches and a translator friend will commission a giant furniture manufacturer like Beijing Jiangshan Country Home Decoration Company, Ltd., to make desks for the classroom in...
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August 15, 2011

A Baby Pallet Chair By Studiomama In Every Playroom!

Nina Tolstrup and her design practice Studiomama have been on DT before, for the awesome Kids' House she created in 2008, the one with the Lego and chalkboard walls. Now pieces her breakout Pallet Project [2006] are available at...
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August 10, 2011

What, Because FugBath™ Was Taken? FunBath™

You know, I always thought the point of spending several thousand dollars on a bathtub was that you only did it once a generation. Or once a housing bubble, or once a refi. Whatever it was, you weren't supposed...
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August 2, 2011

Piet Hein Eek Bunk Bed

Have we talked about this? This awesome Piet Hein Eek bunk bed? Done on commission for [I assume] some lucky little Dutch moppets? I don't think we have. Because we're in a semi-perpetual discussion of bunk beds around DTHQ,...
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July 15, 2011

Luxembourg Kid Chairs By Fermob

The original garden chairs in the Jardin du Luxembourg were designed in 1923 and made of enameled steel. In 2000, 2002, or 2004, by the invitation? authorization? laissez-faire attitude? of the French Senat, which owns the Jardin, Fermob began...
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July 11, 2011

The Ornament As Crime Nursery

Austro-hungarian modernist architect Adolf Loos is probably most famous for his manifesto, "Ornament as Crime." Unfortunately, Loos had trouble finding a publisher for his sequel, "Non-ornament is Loony Bin." As we can see in the two children's rooms--a nursery...
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June 30, 2011

Hyperchouette Bambou Bassinet de Mort

There really are never enough bamboo cribs and bassinets out there. Maybe because until lamination technology progressed it was so hard to make bamboo crib that didn't look like it escaped from a tiki bar, or was left over...
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June 27, 2011

Sweet Ado Play Table & Chairs

It's one of the perks of being just a few kilometers up the road from the old sanatorium at Apeldoorn: you get probably the highest concentration of vintage Ado toys and furniture in the world. There may be some...
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June 25, 2011

This Vintage Prop Crib Of Death Is Fantastic

What better way to advertise a beautifully crafted, obsolete, and probably unsafe product like quilted crib bumpers, than with an awesome, vintage crib with exactly the kind of deadly-wide gaps that crib bumpers were invented to protect from? It's...
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June 1, 2011

The BabyBjorn High Chair Trilogy

When it came to launching their new high chair the marketing folks at BabyBjorn knew two things: they wanted the chair's designer, Jakob Wikner, a new dad himself, to be involved, perhaps as a way to enhance the brand's association...
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May 26, 2011

Fem* One2Stay? Really? Why Not 'Dutch Folding High Chair'?

The Dutch designers of the Fem* [Fem-Star] One2Stay portable, indoor/outdoor, tent-like, aluminum, folding high chair expended so much brain power on the product, they didnt have any left for the name. One2Stay? What does that even mean? How about...
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May 18, 2011

Home Court D-Bag Kids Furniture By Lebron James

As you can imagine, the only reason getting Lebron James to design kids furniture makes any sense is if you're a furniture licensing guy who really loves Lebron James. So I guess it follows that the promo site for...
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Kodomo Bako By Miha Design

In the gut renovation of an older [1977] 71 sq-m condo for a Tokyo family, Naoto Mitsumoto and Naoko Hamana of Miha Design created two sleeping boxes with loft tops for the kids to study and play. While it...
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Sweet Kalon Echo Toddler Crib, Sweetest Nymph!

Now that everyone's quiet and in the frame of mind to discuss high-design, thousand-dollar children's beds... HOLY SMOKES, PEOPLE, THE KALON ECHO TODDLER BED! Every penny you were thinking of dropping on an Aino Aalto should now go into...
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May 17, 2011

Mrs. Aalto's Crib

Do not adjust your monitors, this is not a rendering. It is an honest-to-goodness crib, designed in the 1940s by Aino Aalto, the Finnish architect and designer, who you may know from such roles as the first Mrs. Alvar...
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May 16, 2011

Youpla-do 2000 Lit Parapluie, How You Say Umbrella Crib?

Tres interessant, look what DT reader Gilles found at French vintage design shop the Hiving Room: it's a folding crib from the 60s/early 70s called the Youpla-do 2000 Lit Valise Parapluie, or Suitcase Umbrella Bed. I guess it's the...
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May 11, 2011

Oeuf Sparrow Crib Probably Still 20% Off At ModernSeed

Modern Seed is having a 20% off sale on its current stock of sweet, birch Oeuf Sparrow cribs. Though I love the $730 Sparrow in its original grey finish, for $146 off, I could certainly learn to love the...
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May 7, 2011

Phil&Teds: Metoo High Chair? I Don't Recall. CPSC: And That's Gonna Be A Problem

From the Department of Whoa That's Never Happened Before, So I got a personal email request from the CPSC yesterday. Not some mailing list alert, or even a "Dear Momblogger," pitch. A straight up, "Hi Greg, I know that you...
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May 3, 2011

Le Clochard Homeless-Lookin' Cardboard-Printed Sheets

Cardbird I, Robert Rauschenberg, 1971, ed. 75, image baeditions Oh, man, welcome to this installment of Dutch Conceptual Beddengoed. I've been looking at a lot of Robert Rauschenberg sculptures lately for the other blog, and so while I was...
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May 2, 2011

Ikea Lack Chalk Hack

I tried it once and ended up with a disastrous mess, with chalk paint sloughing off all over me, the kid, and the house. But it looks like someone has figured out how to successfully make an Ikea Lack...
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April 29, 2011

ducduc Announces A Very Exclusive Crib Recall

The CPSC and Ducduc have announced what may be the most exclusive crib recall ever, even more exclusive than the Netto Collection Recall of 2007. Five crib models [AJ, Austin, Parker, Cabana, and my favorite, Campaign, above] have been...
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April 28, 2011

Anthroposophical Kids Furniture, Also Coniferous

It really is the little differences. The Vienna auction house Dorotheum is selling this c.1930 Erwin Behr kids furniture made from "oiled coniferous wood" as an "anthroposophical child's chair and table," because similar styles were knocked together in the...
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April 21, 2011

Bunky Beds: Fatpack Polyurethane Bunk Beds By Marc Newson For Magis

Wow, awesome chunky bunk beds, Marc Newson! Do they come in green? HAHA, trick question! Bunk beds made from giant, single pieces of rotationally spun polyurethane that will ship across the world in a box the size of an...
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April 6, 2011

Greentime For Stokke At Magic Beans

If you've been holding off on getting a Stokke Xplory because you thought the green fabric was just a little too dark, well, spring has sprung, my stroller-shopping friend. Stokke is launching the Xplory in light green, and it's...
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April 3, 2011

And Then There Was One! Piet Zwart Montessori Chair

Rarity is not something you think of when it comes to Piet Zwart's designs. His modular kitchens have been in production for like 75 years. He designed both the post office AND the telephone company in the Netherlands. And...
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March 25, 2011

Do You Know Me? The Flat-Sided Mystery Crib

DT reader David still has a few months left to figure out who makes this crib and where he can buy one. Or at least one like it. The folks modeling the bedding have no idea who the manufacturer...
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March 14, 2011

Whoa, Pierre Berge!

You may remember Pierre Berge & Associes from such insane auctions as his partner Yves Saint Laurent's, and that out-of-nowhere Designs for Kids sale last winter. Next up, toward the end of the month, is the deceptively titled Shabby...
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Kid City: Silkscreened Ply Storyge Furniture

You may know Richard Shed from such designblog-ogenic creations as screwhead tape and Keith's console. But it turns out he's now got some kids somewhere, because he and Noel Bramley have been collaborating on an investigation of "the interaction...
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March 6, 2011

Josef Hoffmann Kids Furniture

I think Vienna textile manufacturer Max Biach's daughter Katharina was a teenager in 1902 when Josef Hoffmann designed this bedroom for her, but it's still sweet enough to stare at. The Neue Galerie included Biach's reassembled bedroom in their...
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February 25, 2011

Promemoria Kids: For The Most Aristocratic And Visionary Collectors Among Us

Finally master ebenista-turned furniture designer Romeo Sozzi has thought of the children. "My clients asked me for small versions of the furniture," he revealed, modestly, to the New York Times, who somehow found out about the opening next month...
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February 11, 2011

DT Friday Freakout

it's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned round-up of freakouts from the worlds of safety, science, and parenting to ruin your weekend, so here goes: You might as well let the kid drink Coke, because diet soda...
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February 9, 2011

There Is An Awesome Plywood Play Cube In A Barn In Europe Somewhere?

Alright, Internet, we have a job to do. In the NY Times, Berkeley feng shui master Liu Ming talked about the inspiration for the multi-function plywood cube-on-wheels his architect Toshi Kasai made for his loft. And it's not Ken Isaacs,...
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February 6, 2011

O-House: People, Kids Actually Living In Japanese Modernist House

The annoying thing about architecture porn goes triple for Japanese houses: they're always photographed completely empty, or with like one chair, as if they weren't in the land of the manga-hoarding otaku; there's never a trace of kids or...
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January 22, 2011

Trendy Canada Has Own Breastfeeding Laws, Haters

This just in from Canada's City of The Future: an op-ed writer for the Vancouver Sun has had it up to HERE with self-absorbed lactivists who go around jiggling their "human rights" in innocent furniture store owners' faces by breastfeeding...
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January 19, 2011

The Schachter Shack

For a brief, shining moment at the turn of the century, art dealer Kenny Schachter and I shared an architect. It was not, however, Ab Rogers, son of Sir Richard, who would build these sweet little nomadic, origami-like, bed/play...
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January 7, 2011

Maybe Call It The Time Out Bunk Bed

Good googly moogly, this is the sweetest-looking bunk bed I've seen all year. I wonder if a safety rail might make it feel too confining, though. "from the Winter 2004 catalog from ATD-American Co.: 'Official Headquarters For All Of...
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January 3, 2011

The Auction Of Misfit Toys

There are a few interesting kid-related things in Rago's schedule-filling, warehouse-clearing auction next weekend: Lot 130 is a kid-sized Thonet rocking chair with a couple of reeds sticking up from the woven seat and a random side table thrown...
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December 21, 2010

Rip + Tatter Cardboard Chair By Pete Oyler

This may be the coolest cardboard kid chair I've seen since the disposable car seat in Papanek & Hennessey's Nomadic Furniture. Which is, I'm sure, exactly what SaferCar.gov wanted to advertise next to ["Safer than a cardboard box!"] Anyway,...
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December 20, 2010

Enzo Mari Children's Table & Chairs?

Dear Internet, please tell me more about these plastic chairs, which our correspondent in Paris saw at the Musee d'Art Decoratif, and which are apparently by Enzo Mari? Because when I try to dig up info on them, I...
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December 14, 2010

Dust Me! La Quadra Cradle By Mario Ceroli

I feel like I could blog off of this Pierre Bergé Design for Kids auction for weeks. [Actually, I feel like I've already blogged about 3/4 of it over the last six years.] But this jumped out at me:...
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December 13, 2010

Hidden Hazard? Hidden From Whom? CPSC Finally Launching A Crib Bumper Investigation

Crib bumpers were invented by ace salesman Leo Koltun because after selling every returning GI's knocked up wife a playpen pad made from WWII surplus padding, he still had a shitload of padding left over. The company he founded, Kolcraft,...
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November 26, 2010

Kenny Scharf's Awesome Baby Bouncer & Crib Of Death

It took two-and-a-half years, but I finally found a picture of the crazy crib downtown artist Kenny Scharf made in the early 1980s for his daughter Zena. It's a snap of a book of Scharf's work posted on Art...
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November 22, 2010

But Your High Chair Ain't Got No Legs, Gunnar Daan

While we were in Amsterdam, we spent a lot of time in de Pijp, the neighborhood around the several blocks-long Albert Cuyp Markt which, once past the Heineken Museum, feels pretty normal and tourist-free. It's where we stumbled upon...
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November 15, 2010

Steampunk-Lite: Ironwork High Chair

Still trying to identify the manufacturer or designer of this awesome-if-deadly, vintage bent steel high chair. Take a look and take a guess! But while researching online, I did find this rather cool-looking early 20th century, twisted steel rod &...
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November 2, 2010

'Short Rest': Kid-Size Shopping Cart Chair By Stiletto

Though he got the idea of making chairs out of shopping carts from his mother in 1983, Berlin-based designer Frank Schreiner didn't start cranking out the actual merch until 1990. The kid-sized model, called the "Short Rest," originally sold...
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October 28, 2010

Baby, Remember My Name? Unknown Bent Metal High Chair

Just today, Michael from Stopping Off Place confirmed that the unidentified lithograph I'd helped a friend move out of his childhood home this summer was, in fact, by Ezra Jack Keats. [Vintage Children's Books My Kid Loves just posted...
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October 25, 2010

Less Is More Applies To Plexi, Too

Just the fleeting impression of a guy who knows a thing or two about inordinately severe crib design and plexi... And in completely unrelated news, Nurseryworks previewed their new all-acrylic Hollis crib at the ABC Kids Expo in Las...
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Amazing Wood Artist Alma Pearce Tossing A Baby

Amazing Joshua Tree-by-way-of-Heber-Utah wood artist Alma Pearce carved a containerload of biomorphic reclaimed wood stools for Japan, built a house by hand, and tossed his kid into the air 100 times before you even made your first pot of...
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No Via Boxes Were Harmed In The Making Of This Promotional Video

Here at DTHQ, we've been inundated with stinkbugs, so I've been climbing on our Via Boxes a lot lately to squash them on the ceiling. Even so, I'm a bit surprised that John, chief Via Boxer, drove his car...
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October 20, 2010

Ozoo, Par Le Maître De Plastic Kids Furniture, Marc Berthier

Ozoo 0600 desk, 1971, image via form.de We've seen some of designer Marc Berthier's kids furniture before, and we'd probably see more of it if the mid-70s oil crisis didn't wreak havoc on the economics of plastic. Or if...
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October 18, 2010

Expressionist Slot-Together Kids Chair

Sweet, unattributed, vintage, slot-together ply kids chair goodness this weekend at Mondo Blogo's favorite dealer, Jere Barnard. There are a couple of other kid design oddities in MB's post, so check it out. My Favorite Dealer, Jere Barnard [mondo-blogo]...
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October 14, 2010

Luigi Colani, The Designer Of The MONOBLOC Would Like To See You Outside.

And if you make it back alive, will you please tell me his name? This desk/closet/loft bed combination called the MONOBLOC was exhibited at the 7th International Furniture Expo in Paris in 1973. It is credited in Form Magazine...
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Nanna Ditzel Designed A Crib In 1962.

We all know about Nanna Ditzel's Toadstool tables and chairs. And her high chair. And her cradle. [Right? We do?] But how is it possible that I can't find any reference besides an 1963 issue of Form Magazine to...
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October 12, 2010

Chaises Anonymes Des Puces

An anonymous tipster traveling undercover in Paris shares wisdom from les puces:The flea markets are insanely expensive. In many cases, the vendors have no idea what they have/value, but they are just pulling insane numbers from the air. I...
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From Womb To Cradle, By Jack Rogers Hopkins

If all you knew about Calfornia craftsmaster Jack Rogers Hopkins was his Vulcantastic rocking chair ["Live Long and Rocker"], sit down, because Hippie Woodworking Christmas has come early. Mondo Blogo has posted more incredible images from his seemingly endless...
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October 8, 2010

Warhol Brillo Box End Tables For Everyone!

In my other blog/life, I've been researching the slightly absurd, increasingly high stakes saga of Andy Warhol's iconic Brillo Box sculptures. In a nutshell, it turns out that Pontus Hulten, one of the major museum directors in the world--he...
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October 4, 2010

Aawesome: Alvar Aalto Kids Chair

A nice-looking vintage example of Alvar Aalto's Child's Chair No. 103 is coming up for auction at Chicago's Wright20 next week. They list the date as 1930, but that's when Aalto made his first, related, bent ply and metal...
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October 3, 2010

There's More To Renate Mueller Than Jute Hippos

All the stuff I wrote 2.5 years ago about the New Hotness of eastern German toymaking legend Renate Mueller still stands: the only things different are that R 20th Century has finally amassed enough vintage Mueller to put on...
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September 28, 2010

Trick Contour Rocking Chair By Vladimir Kagan

It's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned rockerlusting around here. So thanks Wright20 for putting this sweet, c1955 Contour rocking chair by Vladimir Kagan up for sale next month. Kagan's very welcome 'round these parts, and...
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September 22, 2010

Pop Space: Perpetually Convertible Kids' Loft Bed Structure By Matali Crasset

A couple of years ago, Matali Crasset built a loft-cabana and library space with a bed underneath it for her young daughter Popline. And wouldn't it be even better, she thought, if such a structure could evolve and adapt...
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September 19, 2010

Gerrit Rietveld The Impaler? What's Up With This de Stijlin' Playpen?

Alright, every time I think I've exhausted the Gerrit Rietveld kids' furniture, something else pops up. We already knew that Rietveld basically had his furnituremaking breakthrough by designing stuff for his own kid and his friends' kids. But somehow...
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September 18, 2010

OG Slot-Together Ply Shelves By Harry Davis, Editor

Andy found this this summer, and then after talking to the folks at Modern Times to learn more about it, I promptly lost the link. In any case, there's really not much more to say at this point besides...
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September 17, 2010

Holy Moley, Billi Bolli 'Adventure Bed' System

Yes, now that we've successfully taken the plexi front off K2's Juddy bed, I've been thinking about bunk beds more. But no, I did not plan to make it Awesome & Unobtainable Bunk Bed Week around here. And yet,...
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September 16, 2010

Toobspotting: Whatchootalkingbout, Willis?

Holy smokes, and I'm not kidding. DT commenter MikeM thought he *might* have seen the H.U.D.D.L.E. Toobline Cornerbunk, the L-shaped bunkbed setup somewhere before... where was that? Oh, right, in Willis and Arnold Drummond's bedroom. And after some surfing...
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Alright, Southern California, Show Me Your H.U.D.D.L.E. Toobs

Four years ago, Daddy Types was the only Internet mention of Toobs, the awesome modular/homebrew/adaptive reuse children's furniture collection by Los Angeles designers Penny and Jim Hull. The Hulls and their new company, Hull Urban Design, Development, Etc., or...
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September 10, 2010

De Stijl-Style Slot-Together Ply Chair At Mid Mod

How does he find these things? Etienne at Mid Mod Design in the Netherlands has this awesome-looking, de Stijl-inspired beech ply high chair c.1950 on hold right now. I hope he keeps the pictures online after it sells, though;...
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September 2, 2010

Bwahahalvar Aalto Children's Playset

So what did we discover in the upcoming Rago Arts Discovery auction scheduled for Sept. 11? That even with "(Attr.)" and "unmarked" in the lot description, it still takes a pretty big set of stones to sell this pile...
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August 31, 2010

Ceci N'est Pas Un Crate Changing Table--Yet

Andy just sent this over, and he's right, it'd make an awesome changing table. This happens to be in Atelier Solarshop's pop-up store in Antwerp, which is up through Oct. 9, if you want to go scout it out...
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August 11, 2010

Prahawesome Crib In A Ramp House

Yes, that is what you think it is: an Ikea Gulliver crib on a little homemade platform on a big old ramp floor in a polyurethane-coated house outside Prague that was built for a psychiatrist who wanted a movie...
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August 10, 2010

Lost 90s Kids Furniture By Anthologie Quartett

Look, I'm not happy either about posting a vintage kids furniture story from 1991, a year I happen to remember myself quite well, thankyouverymuch, and it was not that long ago. Though I guess technically, it's just long enough...
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August 4, 2010

Really? Angelo Mangiarotti Plywood Bunk Beds?

They're long gone from Swedish designshop Jacksons, but last year, kiddesignblog Handmade Charlotte posted this awesome, if somewhat treacherous-looking, slot-together plywood bunkbed, and said it was from the 1960s by Angelo Mangiarotti. [Actually they said it's be Angelo Manglarotti,...
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July 31, 2010

Erich Dieckmann Ur-Bauhaus Kinderstuhl

You may know furniture designer Erich Dieckmann from such carpentry workshops as the Bauhaus and the Staatliche Bauhochschule in Weimar. Which covers the 1920s, the time frame attributed to this little painted pine kid's chair. It has that Dieckmann...
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July 28, 2010

Leon Meyer Rocking Chair Is Patented, Awesome

What a beautiful rocking chair, architect Leon Meyer! It makes me want to fold it right up and slide it away somewhere. This sweet chair looks like it can fold, but alas, it cannot, if only because Objects USA...
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July 23, 2010

German Kinderauktionen Round-Up

Seriously, if you're anything like me, you'd think Munich's OG delights began with McRibs and ended with fried, bubbly apple pies at the McDonald's in front of the airport. Turns out there's an awesome design auction house at every...
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July 20, 2010

FriendsWithYou: Mr. TTT Bench

That's the price you pay for getting your FriendsWithYou X kidrobot 34-inch fiberglass Mr. TTT bench colabo news from the site which lets BoingBoing read High Snobiety for it: you have to go hunt it down at actual stores,...
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July 15, 2010

Alright, We Get It. The CPSC's Gonna Ban Dropside Cribs.

Big news from the CPSC today: they are making a couple of procedural changes to the safety testing protocols for both full-size and compact cribs! Actually, I think this huge announcement--accompanied as it is by statements from each of the...
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July 14, 2010

Plexibub! Australian Cribs From Ubabub

Ubabub is an Australian baby furniture start-up, just out of the renderings-only stage, with a strong mid-century modernist aesthetic and up-to-the-minute manufacturing and materials. Which means the Nifty Clear crib, with its awesome angled legs, perforated plexi sides, and walnut...
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July 13, 2010

Damn, Baby, That Is One Plexi Crib!

As shoppers for mid-range plexiglass cribs know all too well, there is no such thing as a mid-range plexiglass crib. On the value end, there is an awesome, truly inspired, $300 maple & plexi crib from Community Playthings. And...
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July 1, 2010

I Give Up, Where's The Retractable Baby Bed?

I was so keyed up to the a custom Korean playroom in the NY Times' Home Section slideshow today, that I completely missed this photo, which purports to show "a retractable shelf" which "could be used as a baby...
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June 26, 2010

Woodworkers' Kids Always Have The Nicest Hand-Carved Rocking Toys

Holy smokes. Master California studio furnituremaker Rick Pohlers created this rocking toy for his own kids in the 1970s. It's carved cherry with a leather seat, and features Northwest Coast Indian-style detailing on both sides. It's not huge, either,...
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June 24, 2010

Cribocalypse Now Redux: CPSC Recalls TWO MILLION Cheap Cribs

Wow, does this mean the CPSC has finally cleared their Bush-era Cribs Of Death cold case file? The CPSC issued recalls for over two million cribs, mostly dropside but also fixed-side models, from seven manufacturers. The recalls are based on...
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June 23, 2010

In Competition Blue & Yellow: Ikea Sniglar Co-Sleeper

As someone who made his kid's own sleeping situation, I will remind everyone that the first, middle, and last step of any crib hacking project is studying the CPSC's safety and testing requirements, and then assuring that your design...
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June 21, 2010

Hi, Koo!

Spring furniture fair Industrial designers hype their prototypes Time flies, work piles up, Browser tabs linger for weeks... Will I ever post? Bassinet/rocker?? Co-sleep-tivist contraption? It's Koo by Lunar. Auto-rocking, lights, LED motion sensors? Gizmo overkill "Genius maneuver!" "Minimize[d]...
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June 11, 2010

High, Higher, Highest Chairs

While looking at something else in their inventory, I realized Modern One may just have the high-designiest high chairs in all of Los Angeles, with vintage high chairs for every budget [that includes at least $1,100 for a high chair]:...
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June 10, 2010

Feeling Good, Louis!

The modern baroque Louis crib is out from David Netto, the guy who gave us white lacquered modernist nursery furniture in the first place. Not sure which is more surprising: how well it works, or that they managed to bring...
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May 26, 2010

Point Chair, By Sally And Peter Nencini

Wow, I can't get over how awesome this is. British designer/artist Peter Nencini and his needle-wielding wife Sally were commissioned to make a chair for a one-year-old boy based on Harry Nilsson's 1971 album/story The Point. [Which was also...
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Holy Smokes, The Nook Pebble Mattress!

So a couple of weeks ago a publicist friend--and seriously, while they're probably the most professionally hyperfriendly population on earth, I can count on one Simpsons hand the number of publicists I'd actually consider calling a friend--a publicist friend...
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May 5, 2010

DT Antique Mall Roundup

Over the weekend we took a kidfree road trip to Lancaster County, and on Sunday morning, when everyone else was at worship, we went to the heathen haven of Adamstown, which is chock full of antique markets, which is Pennsylvania...
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April 29, 2010

Stokke @ MoMA

I've posted about the rainbow of Stokke Tripp-Trapp high chairs in MoMA's cafe before, but never with such a great photo. Ahem....
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April 21, 2010

They Shoot Horses And Turn Their Rib Cages Into Cradles, Don't They?

Mamma mia, che fatto? Hungarian master woodmangler Laszlo Lapp exhibited this gut-busting, choke-hazarding, barber shop chair base-stealing cradle at the Milan Furniture Fair. At the Roberto Cavalli store, which I think means "dead horse" in Italian. The Most Hideous...
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April 19, 2010

OG Jean Prouvé Kids Desk

After you get over the excitement of finding a vintage Prouvé children's desk--in this case, at the Swiss modern design shop Quintessentia--you can start thinking about who the ungrateful little rugrats were who beat this table down were. Or...
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The Fifth Axis: Hut-Hut Rocker By Kalon Studios

Coochicoos seems to have been taken in by Kalon Studio's email last week that their new Hut Hut rocker is optimally-milled on a 5-axis CNC machine from your choice of five FSC-certified woods, and that the name means Giddyup...
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April 18, 2010

No. 4115 Kindergarten Chair By Kai Hoeffer Larsen

When we last left our hero Kaj Høffer Larsen, he was saving fragments of Kaj Bojesen wallpaper from behind the cabinets of his father's just-closed furniture and toy factory in Langeskov. Now we find him with "40 Years of...
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April 7, 2010

Mansfield Dad Still Working Out The Details Of His Cradle Of The Future

Despite neither being for sale at Christmas 2009 for £160 nor actually existing in the physical world, the Babycotpod's pod-shaped baby cot, the Cascara was awarded three stars for durability by Baby Hampshire Magazine. Working backwards from their editors'...
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April 5, 2010

Unicorno Pillowcase

Yeah yeah, I know tokidoki's a massive colabo licensing empire now, but seriously, when you're faced with unrelenting demand for unicorns and rainbows, it's nice to have a kawaii manga juggernaut in your corner. The kid's aunt bought her...
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April 1, 2010

Karin Mobring Ikea Playtable & Chairs On German eBay

Now, nothing against Mid-Mod Design, which is awesome, but this is how I like to buy my vintage 1960s Ikea kids furniture: just sitzin' in a gruppe on the side of the Straße for one shiny euro. Of course,...
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March 7, 2010

Vintage Ikea Kids Table & Chairs By Karin Mobring

I've been low-grade fixated on the idea of vintage Ikea kids furniture ever since I found the "Kid Size" exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum. I've been keeping an eye out for any pieces to turn up for...
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March 3, 2010

Why Not... A Robert Gober Nursery?

I've always loved the cute-but-unsettling evocations of vestigial childhood memories that adhere to the incredible, hand-made sculptures of Robert Gober. And it continues to surprise me that no one has ever licensed Gober baby furniture--actually, that doesn't surprise me...
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February 25, 2010

There Is A Perfect Age To Buy DMFD's Awesome Cork Kid's Chairs

Ever since the Cub chair, Brooklyn designer Daniel Michalik has been refining the technology for molding furniture from eco-awesome cork waste. His most recent kid-sized design, the Tilter chair, debuted at ICFF last year, and is currently available at...
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February 23, 2010

Kid-Sized Lambing Chair

This boxy kind of chair is apparently called a lambing chair, on account of all the lambs they have up there in Lancashire and Yorkshire from whence the design came. This particular boxy chair is kid-sized, and it rocks,...
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February 18, 2010

Good Price, Bad Karma: Richard Neutra Bunk Beds

How many ways can a bunk bed kick you in the nuts? These incredible, pared down, cantilevered beds were designed by Richard Neutra--excuse me, Richard FREAKIN' Neutra, in 1959. For the Singleton House, a masterpiece of modernist simplicity set...
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February 17, 2010

Sherrie Levine's Shiny, Rocking Playthings

I don't quite follow how these sculptures of vintage children's objects cast in bronze fit in with Sherrie Levine's ongoing questioning of authorship and originality. They're not quite as iconic as, say, Marcel Duchamp's urinal, which Levine had previously...
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February 9, 2010

CPSC Goes Through The Archives, Recalls 500,000 More Dropside Cribs

Just when you thought you'd heard every possible CPSC recall of 500,000 cheap dropside cribs, they spring a new one on us. Today the agency recalled all dropside cribs made by Generation 2 Kids and branded either Generation 2...
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February 8, 2010

Interlocking Stool Cube, This Time By Habitat

Every few years since the invention of lumber, someone invents a pair of interlocking cube stool/chairs for kids. This year, it's the UK design store Habitat, and the twist is, this one's made of molded ply, to give it...
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February 3, 2010

Jerry, Erik, Nanna & Bear

That kid there is Erik Ross, I met him once with his mother Lillian, at a party I helped organize for Sofia Coppola. Nice folks. And of course, that's a Nanna Ditzel high chair, which looks pretty fantastic. Never...
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February 1, 2010

Abitacolo Spectacolo! Robots Is Still Producing Bruno Munari's Kid's Bed

When I first posted about Abitacolo, the incredible powder-coated steel children's bed/storage/play contraption Bruno Munari designed in the early 1970s, I couldn't find it for sale anywhere. Robots, the Milanese retail fixture manufacturer Munari worked with, had non-vintage promotional...
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January 28, 2010

Wherein We Try To Figure Out Why Dorel Calls JPMA Certification 'Redundant'

OK, getting some clarification on why Dorel, one of the biggest crib makers in the country, and probably the most prominent member of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, doesn't JPMA-Certify their cribs, and what that means about the safety...
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January 26, 2010

So Why Weren't Dorel Asia's Recalled Cribs JPMA-Certified?

[Note: see the update at the bottom of the post.] Last week's crib recall was 635,000 fixed and dropside cribs made by Dorel Asia SRL, and were sold at "K-Mart, Sears and Wal-Mart stores nationwide from January 2005 through...
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January 25, 2010

Highlights From The US House Hearing On Crib Safety

You know what the US House Committee On Energy And Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations needs? Publicists. The Committee held a hearing last Thursday titled, "Crib Safety: Assessing the Need for Better Oversight," and so far, I've only found...
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Punch'n Cuddle Emotional Furniture Sounds Kind Of Conflicted

Some things, you hear them, and you can tell they are just meant to go together: Cookies'n Cream. Shock'n Awe. Duck'n Cover. Hookers'n Blow. Punch'n Cuddle:Punch'n Cuddle Emotional Furniture for Kids and Kidults Punch'n'Cuddle is what you get when...
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January 19, 2010

Another Day, Another 635,000 Dorel Cribs Recalled

The CPSC and Dorel Asia--they're based in Barbados!--announced the recall of over 600,000 cribs sold at Wal-mart, K-mart, and Sears between January 2005 and December 2009, last month. The cribs pose a strangulation and suffocation hazard because of faulty dropside...
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Lipstick On A Headless Pig: El Ultimo Grito Mico

High-design Italian or not, I've spent my years as a dad trying to avoid giant hunks of kid-targeted plastic. So even though it's from 2006, it's in MoMA's collection now, and it's in an upcoming exhibit of seating for...
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January 18, 2010

Das Gutenkinderauktionblogposten

The German auction house Quittenbaum has a design sale coming up in a couple of weeks, February 9th, which includes some classic pieces of vintage kids design and a couple of oddities: Lot 90: First up, the classic Schaukelwagen convertible...
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January 15, 2010

Awesome Triple Throne For Emperor Haile Selassie

Wow, Joey from Anonymous Works just snagged this beat-but-incredible little painting on eBay. It's apparently from an unrealized 1944 US Government proposal to build a "triple throne" for His Freshly Re-installed Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Signed...
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January 4, 2010

All Amby Baby Hammocks Recalled After Two Suffocation Deaths

As a designer/owner/parent of an atypical crib, I have always wondered what safety tests standards or tests are used for baby hammocks. They all seem so squishy soft and slingy, not qualities I'd associate with lowered suffocation or SIDS...
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While A Party, This Ain't, In Fact, No Disco

Congratulations to the Wary Meyerses whose kid finally arrived--11 pounds! While they were waiting, the DIY design gurubloggers whipped up a little outfit for him out of leftover hospital gowns, and they turned the standard-issue plexi hospital bassinet into...
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December 22, 2009

Whoops, Never Mind! IKEA Issues Worldwide Recall For Weird, New Leopard High Chair

Congratulations to IKEA for what may be the fastest baby product recall ever. The CPSC announced that the Swedish furniture giant has recalled the brand new--and freaky-looking--Leopard high chair worldwide barely two months after its release. Apparenty, the little...
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December 15, 2009

50 Million Roman Shades Recalled In A Day

Wow, and I thought the crib recall was epic. The CPSC has issued the biggest recall ever. Basically every Roman and roll-up blind and shade on the market, 50 million units at least, are being recalled because they pose a...
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December 1, 2009

Behold, Then Bid! The Edcom Systems E001 Hexagonal Cognition Crib

It's always the same: you think you're gonna have Crazy Stroller Week, and then suddenly an Absolutely Insane Crib crosses your path. Hold your horses and clear your loading dock, because an Edcom E001 Hexagonal Cognition Crib is for...
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Designers We Ripped-off, D'oh! We're Repentant!

Haha, in the middle of the reporting for Fast Company's long, devastating takedown of Design Within Reach, their screwed up CEO--the one who opened all the unprofitable stores and began proudly and systematically knocking off designers in pursuit of a...
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November 30, 2009

Changing The Changing Table: Kalon Studios Changing Trunk

First things first: I love Kalon Studios. They came up with beautifully made bamboo cribs with excellent detailing a couple of years ago, and they're still at it. And they've expanded. The IoLine Changing Trunk. Not a table, a...
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Whatever Floats Your CLC Cradle Boat

After hearing that several customers were scaling down the plans for the Eastport Pram to make little rowboat cradles, the fine boat kit builders at Chesapeake Light Craft decided to make an actual cradle kit available. Should take you...
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November 28, 2009

Sleepin' With The Grizzlies

Not only do bears drive our cars and come into our kitchens to make themselves a sandwich, now they are officially certified by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association as an infant sleeping device! Z Recs has the scoop:The Juvenile...
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November 23, 2009

Stork-Craft Recalls 2.1 Million Drop-Side Cribs Of Doom In US & Canada

DT's favorite crib guru Scott said it would be big, and now we know just how big the biggest crib recall in history really is: it's as big as the whole freakin' North America, that's how big. The CPSC and...
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November 21, 2009

Shrimp Shop Blog Bait: High Chair By Ramsey Conder

I think Ramsey is a brother type to South Willard shopkeep Ryan Conder. I also think this high chair is totally awesome. Shrimp Shop: South Willard X Reference Library, kicking off this very second at 8038 W. Third St.,...
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November 20, 2009

Whoa, The Awesome Leander Crib Is Available In The US!

I was just surfing through Inhabitots, thinking to myself, "Day-um, I sure don't cover the emergence of every single piece of shiny, new eco-blahblahblah baby gear like I used to," when I saw that the Leander Crib/ Toddler Bed/...
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November 17, 2009

Hey You! Go To Shrimp Shop This Saturday In Los Angeles

Andy from Stork Bites Man and Ryan from The South Willard are having a colabo joint for kids starting this weekend. It's called the Shrimp Shop. Here's just a taste of what to expect:Boro Pants Ceramic Mobiles Creative Playthings...
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Doris Duke's Leftover Thai

Doesn't this pile of Thai lounging pillows look like it belongs in a playroom? Except that you'd always be having to dig your keys, half-eaten apple slices, and Cheerios out of all those little nooks, they'd be awesome. The...
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November 9, 2009

Parenting Echo Park-Style

"People tell you you need all this stuff for a baby. All you really need is diapers, a place to change him and boobs." --mom/ceramicist Kelly Breslin, who shares a tricked out, 380-sf, converted bachelor pad in Echo Park with...
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And An Etsy Tumbled By, With A Private Boat Cradle For Max...

...or whoever's parents shell out $2,200-3,200 for the incredible cypress and mahogany masterpiece by Warren Jordan of Beaver Boatworks, which converts into a rocker or a wagon, which is good, because your kid will sail in and out of...
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November 7, 2009

T Is For The Tiniest Shoppers

Wow, who at the NY Times T Magazine offices is having a baby? Because almost the entire Winter Design & Living issue is devoted to kid- and family-related design. Some highlights: Fred Bernstein's got a piece about how it's alright...
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November 2, 2009

Moss Kids T-Shirts

"Small children must be held": It sounds so sweet and loving, the saying on this little t-shirt. It's only when you learn it's from the front door of the self-important SoHo design emporium Moss that you realize they left...
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October 29, 2009

Ouch. Kristian Vedel See-Saw

If you were wondering why it's so hard to find vintage Kristian Vedel's molded ply kids desk-chair-cradles in good condition, now you know: see-sawing Swiss urchins. Kristian Vedel children's chair wins Silver Medal at Triennale di Milano, Form 028,...
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October 28, 2009

Socialist Canadian Hospital Bassinet Impresses Some

DT reader and comrade to the North Cameron and his wife just welcomed their second kid--mazeltov/omedetou!--and all are doing well. Or as well as can be expected for people trapped in the socialized medical hell of Canada, where Cam...
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October 27, 2009

There's More'n One Way To Make A Plywood Crib

Steve is an excited dad-to-be who wanted to design a crib or changing table that fixed "the one tangible thing about motherhood you [ladies] wish could be changed?" The answer he got back seemed clear enough: "I hate lifting...
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October 26, 2009

I Am The Errol Morris Of Jenny Lind Cribs

We got a Jenny Lind crib. At the time, it was the only simple crib we could find that wasn't Ikea or David Netto. We got it from Schneider's when they were still in Alphabet City. He said that it...
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October 19, 2009

Yes, Please, Thanks: Lego Kitchen By Simon Pillard & Philippe Rosetti

Damn, but I love/hate the Internet. How a simple idea, beautifully executed, can race around the world in serendipitous hops and jumps, shedding facts and context along the way. I don't know who Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti or...
[read the full post...]

October 14, 2009

Conran Nursery At Heathrow Is New To Me, Anyway

When we were flying to Japan with the kid, we'd sometimes stop into the nursery in the Kansai airport. It was the sole pinprick of enjoyment in that desolate, soulless disaster of an airport. [Seriously, Renzo, W. T. F.?] It's...
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October 13, 2009

From The Mixed Up Archives Of Mrs British D. Sign Council: Play Rocker Prototype By John Millns

No sooner is one vintage kids design mystery solved than another takes its place. The British Design Council has published its slide collection online, including this rather awesome-looking "child's rocking play fixture," which uses the same special, NASA-designed bend-into-shape...
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October 10, 2009

Ordering Off The Secret Menu: The Ikea Leopard High Chair

Double Double protein style, with well-done, animal style fries, please! The curator of the Pram Museum emailed the other day with news of a freaky high chair sighting at her local Ikea in Conshohocken, PA: curvy plastic base in...
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October 5, 2009

Fresco Fiamma Di Bloom: Un Seggiolone Rosso Molto Fantastico

I know that since the rather spectacular limited edition, red-enameled Fresco Fiamma high chair was introduced like three weeks ago at ABC Kids in Las Vegas, I'm a bit late to the Bloom game. To make up for it,...
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October 1, 2009

Dutch Plywood Awesomeness By Gerrit Van Bakel

Whether it was the name of his collection or it's just Dutch for "plywood furniture," Gerrit van Bakel's "meubel multiplex" phase lasted from 1966 until the around 1981. During that time, the artist cranked out nearly 80 different rounded-edge...
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September 28, 2009

Cradles Of Yesteryear From Auctions Of Yesterday

I love this great, old timey rolling cradle. I can put up with a lot of wicker to get close to those awesome wooden wheels. Meanwhile, I like the existence of this 100-year-old, wind-up rocking cradle more than the...
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September 25, 2009

OG Flintstones High Chair

You don't have to be Todd Oldham to appreciate the classic kitsch of Bedrock City; he's just the only one who photographed Bam Bam's or Pebble's painted concrete high chair for his new book. There are actually two Bedrock...
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September 22, 2009

The Second Awesomest Sam Maloof Cradle

Master woodworker Sam Maloof died in May at the age of 93. He made his first cradle in 1949 for his son Soliman. Back in 2004, when he was just 88, he told the Daily Star [Lebanon, the country]...
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K+J09: German Princess Furniture, 100% Child Labor-Free!

From what I can tell, Maja Prinzessin von Hohenzollern is the Sarah Ferguson of Germany, only [obviously] hotter, and luckier to be rid of her prince. Maja was the third wife of a Royal jackass named Ferfried Maximilian Pius...
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Mima + Alma Win K+J 2009 Innovation Awards

Well, the huge Kind + Jugend kid gear expo is finished in Cologne [stay tuned for a quick photo roundup]. A couple of the Innovation Award winners stood out--actually, Maxi Cosi's Innovation Award for its line of car seats...
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September 18, 2009

Prisunic Fiberglass Kid Furniture? Peut Etre!

There's apparently no marking on any of them, and I can't find any identical models in any catalogues, but the seller of these three pieces of vintage fiberglass kids furniture sourced from a local preschool says they are "surement...
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September 17, 2009

Those Dutch Again: Table With A Marble Run Routed Into It

That is pretty sweet. A couple of Eindhoven design students working under the name Ontwerpduo created this table where a marble run runs through the base and legs. It's part of a hotel for kids concept that also includes...
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September 16, 2009

Made From Cribs: Residue Chair By Huib Muilwijk

You know the saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Well, this is exactly like that. Except that instead of life, it's a business designing and making cribs on a CNC router. And instead of you, it's Dutch...
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September 15, 2009

Mid-Century Kids Rooms As Photographed By Maynard Parker

Maynard Parker was a prolific architecture and design photographer based in Los Angeles who shot for House Beautiful, Sunset Magazine, Architectural Digest, for decades. Though he died way back in 1976, his massive archive was donated to the Huntington Library...
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September 10, 2009

Buy The Set And Save! Not Really. Kids' Noguchi & Bertoia At Auction

They're not technically a set, but Lot 472 in this weekend's Rago Arts auction in New Jersey proves that Knoll has been pushing the kid-sized Bertoia chair/ Noguchi Cyclone side table combo on design-y families for years. I don't...
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September 1, 2009

Pluunk: I. Am. Canadian Bunk Bed.

It's Zed, not Zee, Zed. A sofa IS a Davenport. And this is NOT an Argington Uffizi Bunk Bed, it's a Pluunk. Canada is the second fastest renderer of two-tone, modernist bunk beds in North America, and the first...
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August 30, 2009

Seriously, What IS Up With Crib Mattresses?

Now that you mention it, Mark, what's up with all those impossible-to-comparison-shop crib mattresses? I'm a newly expecting father and I'm usually pretty good at cutting through the myriad of choices and identifying preference when it comes to most babies...
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August 27, 2009

Bam!

And that, my friends, is how you sell a bassinet in a depression. Argington just announced their newest, greenest, and cheapest nursery furniture ever, and I think it might just rock. The Bam Collection is available in birch or solid...
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August 26, 2009

CPSC Does Windows: 5.4 Million Blinds & Shades Recalled For Strangulation Danger

Whoa, now that's a recall. Six of them, actually. The CPSC has issued a sweeping set of recalls of window blinds, Roman shades, and roller shades sold at a whole bunch of major retailers and manufacturers, including Target, Ikea, Pottery...
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August 19, 2009

Larger-Than-Average Mickey Mouse Merchandise

1st Dibs: Come for the odd 1950's Mickey Mouse see-saw salvaged from a Miami Beach drive-in theater [$2,500 at Pierre Anthony Galleries in West Palm Beach, via anonymous works] Stay for the even more distended Mickey dresser, a head-scratching,...
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August 11, 2009

Huibert van Muilwijk Rolls Out New Q4 Crib

You know what, it's been too long since we had a good, old-fashioned crib rendering around here. So thanks to Huib for sending along these images of his next/new crib design, dubbed the Q4, which will debut at Dutch...
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August 9, 2009

Moonstruck: Fornasetti Luna Cradle

I've never quite been able to pin down Piero Fornasetti. Sometimes the slightly modern, slightly surrealist, slightly neo-classical Milanese designer's graphically intensive work feels crisp and fresh and great. And sometimes it feels like hopeless kitsch. I'm going to...
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Yes We Cane! Rattan Kids Furniture By Kay Bojesen [?!]

Is there anything that Kay Bojesen didn't make? In 1949, he created an export collection of rattan [spanskrør] kids and doll furniture for R. Wengler, basketmakers to HKH Frederic IX, King of Denmark. And the awesome pram above--sorry, doll-size...
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August 5, 2009

Men Shop At Mars, Parents Shop At Venus

Well, it's taken me a few years, but I think I finally have it all figured out: parenting, the difference between moms and dads, between quality and crap, between magazines and blogs, how to fluff an advertiser. And it's...
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Indian Bamboo For Kids By MP Ranjan

Prof. MP Ranjan sounds like the Eames and Enzo Mari of Indian design. Or at least Indian bamboo design. He's the head of the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, where...
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July 24, 2009

Red Hookalypse Is Nigh! IKEA Banishes Breastfeeding Mom To Bathroom

Pull up a POÄNG chair, folks, and have a seat. It's gonna be nothing but breast milk and meatballs for the rest of the summer. Of all the furniture joints in all the towns in all the world, a security...
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The AT-AT Imperial Loft Bed

If you have never found yourself cheering for a slideshow before, you haven't seen Bykmandan's making of his son's AT-AT Imperial Loft Bed. Duude. Star Wars Imperial Walker Loft Bed [youtube via dt readers rolf, sara, eric, david, geoff,...
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July 20, 2009

They Giveaway So Fast: Magic Beans 5th Birthday Daily Drawings

It feels like just yesterday when a couple of new parents emailed to say they were opening a cool baby store near Boston. And whaddya know, they're five and giving away amazing stuff every single day to celebrate Magic...
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July 18, 2009

Creative Stranglings: CP Indoor Gym House [Of Strangulation] On eBay

Wow, you don't see these on eBay very often. Nowadays, the company known as Creative Playthings makes nothing but slides and playground sets. But back when Creative Playthings was Creative Playthings, this was about it. The Indoor Gym House...
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July 16, 2009

Changing Table Americaine, Années 60!

The off-kilter photo is giving me a headache, but otherwise, this vintage table a langer, or how you say, changing table, which DT reader Catherine [sweet blog here] just spotted on Belgian eBay, is pretty sweet. The seller thinks...
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July 15, 2009

Birdspotting: Oeuf Robin $565 Crib Spotted In The Wild

Wait, Oeuf WHAT? DT reader Geoff sends along a head-scratching find: the Oeuf Robin, an all-FSC birch and pine, "made in Europe," "eco-friendly", full-size convertible crib that comes in at a rather remarkable $565. It's on the website for...
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July 12, 2009

Ninetonine Kids Furniture Son Grande y Mas Blanco

Ninetonine is a Madrid-based kids furniture company launched by Alberto Marcos and Sacha Bancroft Cooke. Their designs were floating around last year, but it seems like they've actually gone into production and heavy press releaseification this past spring. All...
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July 10, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Beach Edition

How about some alarming studies and news reports to fill your sunny parenting weekend with freakout and doom? Fat and lazy, true, but not dumb: child obesity researchers in East London found out some of their lazier test subjects were...
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July 2, 2009

Why Not...Use A Tool Cart For A Changing Table?

Indeed. Congratulations to Cookie editor Meryl's friend Sara and her husband for this innovative use of an automotive tool cart for a smart, sleek and chic industrial-style changing table! The industrial changing table that launched Daddy Types, which I...
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June 30, 2009

Finally, The DT Juddy Crib

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } I just posted some photos from a few months ago of the finished crib/toddler bed...
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June 29, 2009

Reference Library, Max Lamb, Enzo Mari At The Selby

The homebrewed messy modernist snake has eaten its tail, and it looks awesome. Andy Beach's April retail colabo in Milan with Apartamento Magazine has now gotten the The Selby treatment. Which means you can see the full-color, reissued awesomeness...
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June 25, 2009

Thonet Bologna! 1875 Bentwood Bassinet On eBay

Wow, there's something you don't see turn up on eBay every day. Or ever. A vintage modernist furniture dealer in Bologna, Italy has an original c 1875 Thonet bassinet for sale. He's done a full restoration on it, including...
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June 24, 2009

Make Your Own Inaba-style Pool Noodle Rooftop Furniture

A bunch of art world non-profits [as if there were any other kind of organization in the art world at the moment] are holding a big love-in of some kind this week at X Initiative, the old Dia building...
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June 22, 2009

Ride'em Panton! Flying Chair By Verner Panton

Verner Panton showed the Flying Chair at the 1964 Cologne Furniture Fair as part of a total Panton environment. It caused a sensation, but it was never put into production, and only a couple of installation photos survived. In...
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June 18, 2009

Kid-Size Womb Chair, HAHA! knoll kids shrinks its greatest hits

Oh, wait, we already knew about the kid-size Saarinen Womb chair. And the baby-size Womb chair. AND the mini-Mies Barcelona chair, which were part of Knoll's 2007 attempt to keep up with the Genius Joneses. I guess that went...
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June 15, 2009

Das Kreativische Spielthingen? 1960 Kibri 'Building Furniture'

If it's known at all outside Germany, it seems that Kibri is primarily a toy company specializing in dolls, models, and particularly model trains. So maybe this set of c. 1960 Kibri, Kindler & Briel modular play furniture that's...
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June 13, 2009

Found: That DIY Plywood Bed Set-Up From The 70's

You remember that kind of awesome, Supergraphic-equipped plywood bed the American Plywood Association was propagating in 1975? The one with the optional boxes for TOYS, SHOES, and THINGS? Well, it truly was the Age of Free Plywood Love, because...
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MacNetto! Maclaren Bought Netto Collection

I think that's called a scoop. I'm hearing from multiple parties that the deal for Maclaren to acquire Netto Collection was finalized Friday, and it will be announced publicly on Monday. After dabbling a bit with portable cribs, and high...
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June 12, 2009

N Is For Nido? Gigantic Nest Sofa By Gianni Ruffi

You may know the Italian furniture company Poltronova as the one-time manufacturer of sofas shaped like giant baseball mitts. So you may not be as surprised as I was to find out that they produced Gianni Ruffi's La Cova,...
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June 11, 2009

Mass Modern Auction @ W20: Thinking Of The Children

Part of me wants to shout out about all the interesting-looking kid stuff in Wright20's upcoming Mass Modern auction June 27, and part of me wants to shut my piehole, because there are lots of lots being sold no reserve,...
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June 10, 2009

Hey Wha?? Vladimir Kagan Bassinet At Wright20

Holy smokes. I've been chasing a sweet, modernist plexiglass bassinet since literally the day the kid was born. How is it possible I haven't heard of this insane Lucite and oak model Vladimir Kagan designed in 1970 before it...
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June 3, 2009

Slide Chair, By Evan Dublin

The kid most always has fun, but I inevitably find myself trying to fix playgrounds in my head. Not that I can even pinpoint what's wrong with them, of course, but Evan Dublin's awesome Slide Chair, made from 100%...
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Late Model Rietveld High Chair At Sotheby's

After he finished the Schroder House in Utrecht in 1925, Gerrit Rietveld turned over his furniture business to his assistant Gerard van de Groenekan, who produced the designs until 1971, seven years after Rietveld's own death. Sotheby's Amsterdam is selling...
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June 1, 2009

MacNetto?

How many people on how many sides of a rumor do you have to know personally before it becomes awkward to post about it? If what I'm hearing about Maclaren buying Netto Collection is true, then I guess I'm about...
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J. Crew Plays Hide The Awesome Kids Chair

I see some drop ceiling tiles, super-smooth floor treatments, and non-original moldings, so I'm going to assume that Mister Mort's sneak peek of J. Crew's fall/winter 09 menswear collection went down in a showroom somewhere, not a store. Which...
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May 31, 2009

Lord Have Murphy! ECS, Eames Contract Storage

"ECS we hope will help architects, designers and school administrators whose planning and maintenance requirements are extraordinary and multitudinous." In an attempt to expand their reach into the dorm and contract furniture market, Herman Miller launched the ECS, the Eames...
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May 27, 2009

American Plywood Association Kids' Bed, c. 1975

Dave recently posted some scans on Grain Edit of awesome, vintage vacation house plans from the Douglas Fir Plywood Association . The DFPA changed its name to the American Plywood Association in 1964 when it brought in the new...
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May 26, 2009

Actually, Someone Did Put Baby In The Corner

Miss Ann M. Coleman graciously donated this painted wood & iron baby tender, complete with seat, to the Nantucket Historical Association in 1895, baby tender being the olde fashioned term for "crate fo fmall it renders a child immobile...
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May 24, 2009

Avril 68! To The Prisunic Furniture Catalogue, Citoyens!

Spectaculaire. Except for the launch date, which turned out to be a couple of weeks before France imploded in a massive wildcat strike and student revolt, the affordable furniture collection launched by the French department store Prisunic looks damn...
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May 22, 2009

From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs Lif E. Magazine: Woodward Cradle By Fritz Goro

When the history of dramatically lit photographs of quirky 19th-century American inventions is finally written, February 9, 1945 will have its own chapter. That's the day LIFE magazine's legendary science photographer Fritz Goro unpacked his Klieg light at an...
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May 19, 2009

A-S-S + Hole: Vito Acconci's Name Calling Chair

Name Calling Chair is a kind of alphabet of building. Name Calling Chair equates basic building with basic language with basic insults. What you see is what you get; what you read is what gets you. When he created his...
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Wharton Esherick's Captain's Bed Was Sweeter Before

I know it was a little rough--OK, a lot rough--but seriously, this twin-sized captain's bed with built-in drawers that Wharton Esherick made for Julian Bloch in 1925 was much cooler before it was stripped clean and refinished. On the...
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MasonGray: ducduc, Ethan. Ethan, ducduc

We were out of town, so I missed it, but I haven't seen much interesting kid-related news at all coming out of the ICFF expo in New York last weekend. And one of the bigger launches has barely registered...
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25 Pedra De Sal: Portuguese Changing Table X Bicycle Mashup

Except for the linkless mention on Designboom, I can't find any information at all about Jacinta and Casimiro Costa, the parent/designer duo who apparently made this crazy contraption. Dubbed 25 pedra de sal [25 rock crystals], it's a mobile...
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May 8, 2009

Insane Argington Bamboofest At BKLYN DESIGNS This Weekend

Alright, this is like five kinds of freakin' bamboo awesome all in one. Argington is one of the half dozen kid-related design outfits participating in the BKLYN DESIGNS festival this weekend in DUMBO. [The others are Boo-Coup, Casa Kids, Hugh...
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What's Wrong With This Piet Hein Eek Picture?

If you ignore my sloppychoppy highlighting, nothing. But HOLY CRAP, DWELL MAGAZINE! If you're gonna have a fine interview with Piet Hein Eek, and then you add a 27 [!] slide slideshow, DON'T have the caption on the 27th...
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May 7, 2009

Simplicity/SFCA Out Of Business, Into Trouble

First things first: IF YOU HAVE ANY SIMPLICITY CRIBS, CO-SLEEPERS, OR PLAYARDS, CHECK THE CPSC RECALL NOTICES. THEN STOP USING THEM NO MATTER WHAT. THEN DESTROY THEM. DON'T PUT THEM ON CRAIGSLIST OR WHATEVER. AND REPORT ANY SAFETY INCIDENTS...
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May 6, 2009

Papi Culla: So What Else You Got, Riva?

As far as I can tell, Riva 1920, the maker of the Pininfarina Giulia, does not offer any cribs or cradles carved from solid blocks of cedar. Maybe in a couple of hundred years, when the hardwood trees in...
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Pininfarina Giulia Rocking Horse Object For Riva 1920

The names Pininfarina and Giulia go together like, well, like Alfa and Romeo. So I was a little concerned that would Pininfarina blithely attach the name of one of its founder's last and greatest creations to anything, much less...
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May 5, 2009

Molto Colani! The Limited Edition Luigi Colani Action [sic] Figure

Decked out as they are in remarkably detailed recreations of the butter yellow trenchcoats the Professor created for Swissair in 1990 and possessed of the maestro's intense, visionary gaze into the biomorphic future, the 1/6 scale collectible figures of...
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May 1, 2009

Justice Dept. Turns Illegal Hardwood Crib Smuggler Every Which Way But Loose

So I had a call into the press office at the Department of Justice today--more on that later, definitely stay tuned--and their crib guy called me back. Only it wasn't the crib guy I was looking for; it was...
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Cheap Crib Recalls R Us: Dorel x BRU Cribocalypse Tally Climbs To 472,450

The CPSC added another 96,000 Jardine cribs to its existing recall yesterday, bringing the total to at least 472,450. Jardine is a brand name used exclusively at Babies R Us and Toys R Us to sell low-end cribs [mostly...
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April 23, 2009

Paper AND Plastic: Somewhat Compostable Children's Chair By Claesson Koivisto Rune

See, Magis? You can make plastic-looking furniture for kids without using ecologically damaging petrochemicals. At Milan 2009, the Swedish architecture and design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune is debuting a compostable [!?] plastic children's chair called Parupu, which is Japanese...
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April 22, 2009

The Sofa Is A Series Of Tubes: Martino Gamper Per Il Bambini

Besides the obvious coolness of saying I have a piece in the Andy Beach-curated Everyday Living Objects Shop in Milan--I mean, Milano--is saying I'm in a show with Martino Gamper. Yeah yeah, Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari! Martino Gamper! I...
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April 21, 2009

Tribeca Is Everyone's Suburb!

"Our Suburb" is an 11,000 sf townhouse conversion in Tribeca. The nickname was given by Curbed.com, which got it from an excited comment by one of the owners at a Landmarks Commission hearing. The owners, who used to have a...
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April 17, 2009

Amber In The Sky With Felt-Covered Plywood

I'd lost track of Thomas Maitz's Amber In The Sky loft bed since first seeing the renderings in late 2007, but as Swiss Miss reports, the awesome bed is now in production and on sale, at least in Germany....
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April 16, 2009

Oh, BTW, The Juddy Crib Is Done

I guess now that K2's been sleeping in it for a couple of months, it's safe and stable enough to mention that the juddy crib is done. Stay tuned for some more glamour shots and lessons learned. Besides the...
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April 7, 2009

Atelier XT: Portuguese Indie Furniture

I've had this in my browser for weeks now, and I realized what was holding me back: I wanted to post just about everything in Atelier XT's 6,000+ flickr stream. Graca Paz and her husband Francisco are artists living...
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April 1, 2009

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

The only thing I don't understand about this insanely awesome tauntaun sleeping bag--with guts printed on the inside, and a freakin' light saber zipper pull!--is why it took nineteen 29 [simple math!] years for them to make it. Seriously,...
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March 31, 2009

There's A Sale At Jenny's!

It's true, I am constitutionally incapable of passing up a chance to make an Airplane! reference. It's also true that Jenn from Minor Details is doing some major Spring Cleaning, which means clearing out her private hoard of vintage children's...
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Stokke, Chicco, Chicco, Stokke?

One of the many things I learned from Pamela Paul's book, Parenting, Inc.: Chicco's pronounced KEE-koh. Because it's Italian, obviously. Also, they're huge. The parent company Artsana has like EUR 1.6 billion in sales for three business lines, only one...
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March 25, 2009

Richard Dattner's Habitot, The Ur-PlayCubes

Wow, awesome. While poking around a bit more on urban planner/architect/playground designer Richard Dattner's PlayCubes concept--which, according to the 2000 monograph of Dattner's work, seems to be doing just fine, thanks--I found this: Habitots. And this is what we...
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March 24, 2009

Say What? Worapong Manupipatpong In Stockholm, Piet Hein Eek In America

Students from the Konstfack exhibited a "Garden Furniture" themed show at this year's Stockholm Furniture Fair. Which gives a bit of context for Worapong Manupipatpong's garden bench with roof and play loft, which he dubbed the White Tower. I...
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March 19, 2009

Since Cheaper Ones Are Already Unsafe, Your Dropside Crib Will Probably Become Illegal

A tipster phoned this in yesterday, and I when I went to look up the Consumers' Union expert's phone number to get confirmation--hello!--it was already on their safety blog. The Baby Industrial Complex panel that works with the CPSC to...
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March 17, 2009

Pinocchio Rug: Come Schnuggle On My Felty Balls

Two things we know for sure about the Pinocchio felted ball rug made for the Danish furniture shop Hay: the Nepalese felted wool ball industry is enjoying full employment, and that hair magnet is going to be a pain...
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March 16, 2009

Heavy, Man: Tank Chair Two-Man [sic] Prefab Ply Rocker By Doug Michels & Bob Feild

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Tank Chair, 1968, Doug Michels & Bob Feild, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I found a...
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March 9, 2009

Live Long And Rocker

To the Star Trek purists who will scoff at my Vulcan reference in the title and claim that clearly Jack Rogers Hopkins' carved and laminated wood rocking chair shares obvious design vocabulary with Imperial Klingon culture, most notably the...
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March 4, 2009

Jesper K. Thomsen's Play Furniture Will Help You Keep Up Your Poor, Homemade Front

Flaunting one's wealth was always kind of tacky, but in this straitened times, it has become unseemly even to invest in quality. When one's investment banker neighbor has been laid off, it's impolite, not to mention inconsiderate, to be...
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February 24, 2009

Has Huibert van Muilwijk Got A Shelving Idea For You

If you're like me, you're wondering what Dutch wunderkind designer Huibert van Muilwijk has working on since launching the M/V Crib in 2007. Well now we know: sweet wood modular shelving. HvM sent along photos of a prototype of...
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Recession Is Over! (If You Want It) Netto Collection's Having A 40% Off Sale

After seeing retail performance the last quarter or two, my guess is that supplies are lasting longer and quantities are not as limited as many manufacturers would like. Thus, the "Fight the Recession! sale at Netto Collection The designer's...
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February 23, 2009

Piet Hein Eek Tree Trunk Kids Furniture

"It's important for children to realize that wood comes from trees," said the Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to the New York Times in 2007. And the Piet Hein Eekiest way to do that? Kids furniture made from tree...
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February 21, 2009

Well Done, Except For The Obvious: The Staypuff Crib-on-Wheels

Check out this spectacular crib, headsmacking for both its "why didn't I think of that?" practical ingenuity, and "what were they thinking?" name. The Staypuff Crib is a managed forest pine crib built on top of a utility wagon....
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February 20, 2009

The Right Start, The Sudden Finish

Sounds like the Right Start is not going to make it to the finish line. DT reader Jay files this report from California:Just wanted to give you a heads up that Right Start retail stores are selling off their entire...
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February 18, 2009

Can You Think Of Two Worse Things To Buy If You Have A Kid?

Seriously, worse than a ceramic remote control, and an indoor fire table? I dare you. [via dt reader eric]...
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Mammut: The Ikea Plastic Crib For Closers

It's not on the website, and there's no NEW! tag, but I spotted this gigantic plastic crib, from Ikea's gigantic, plastic Mammut collection, yesterday. $219. I want to like the Mammut stuff. We have a few of the stools...
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February 17, 2009

Fold The Rod And Spoling The Child

We made a ginger wafer run to Ikea this afternoon, and while the kid was playing in the ball pit, K2 and I went to check out... the newest additions to the children's furniture collection, which turns out to...
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February 16, 2009

Elephant Chair with Lamp, 1928, by Alexander Calder

Though it's not clear to me whether he made it in Peekskill or Paris, the date [1928], size [about 8-in. high], and materials [scraps of steel, burlap, and paper] place Elephant Chair with Lamp squarely in Alexander Calder's early...
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February 11, 2009

DTQ: Forget The Must-Haves. What Are The Won't-Misses?

Some friends are expecting their first kid in a couple of months, and when we had them over for dinner, the wives took the nursery tour while the men adjourned to the library to talk about important stuff, like US...
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February 8, 2009

Flame By Tom Dixon, Heavy Machine For Sitting Baby

This is how Kenny Schacter described Tom Dixon's Flame Cut Series of steel furniture when he showed it at Design Basel Miami last December:An installation of unfeasibly heavyweight furniture where Dixon challenges our ideas of acceptable materials, processes and...
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February 6, 2009

Modern Tots Gone Tots Up?

Ouch, it had to happen sometime, and it sucks when it does. But it appears that ModernTots has closed down. Back in 2005 when there were just a handful of modern kids' design shops, ModernTots opened online selling the new...
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February 3, 2009

Suima: The Japanese Robocrib Of The Future/Past

The Suima robot crib by Maruki Development, a subsidiary of Tanigawa Kensetsu, a homebuilder in Nagasaki, is scientifically designed to detect a crying baby and rock him back to sleep. It is the product of four years of research...
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January 30, 2009

UPDATE: Dwell Studio For Target Cribs NOT Part Of Stork Craft's Massive Recall After All

A reassuring piece of news to the folks who bought Dwell Studio cribs at Target: despite what Target may have told you, the Dwell cribs are not included in the massive recall of Stork Craft cribs. Here's an email I...
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Plybrary Goodness: Borup & Becker's Puzzle Table & Chairs

Birgitte Borup and Carsten Nikolaj Becker designed the Puzzle table and chair set in 1997 for the Danish library outfitter BCI. The simple, curved birch ply design allows for multiple tables to be pushed together, and the stools nest...
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January 29, 2009

Aqua Netto: Royal Blue Lacquer Nursery Furniture At Barney's

Remember when, after so many years of white MacBooks, Apple introduced the black model? And how it cost as much as a more powerful, but typical aluminum MacBook Pro? And how, for a while, certain Apple fanbois scoffed at...
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January 28, 2009

Swing Low, Sweet Bassinet

In case you're like me, and you assumed that the Leander was the coolest bassinet ever to come out of Denmark, we can look together at Søren Ulrik Petersen's Swing Low Cradle and resolve to become more well-versed in...
[read the full post...]

January 26, 2009

Wow, Hella Jongerius' Porcupine Desk Is In Production, A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Hella Jongerius's Porcupine Desk which Vitra debuted at Milan in 2007 actually went into production. With a pricetag of EUR486, it's probably the most expensive marker holder your kid will have until he becomes the chairman of Merrill Lynch....
[read the full post...]

Eiermann Table For Kids

In 1953, architect Egon Eiermann designed some tables for his office out of angled, cross-braced, tubular steel and whatever the German equivalent of Formica was. A knock-down version followed in 1965. For about ten years Richard Lampert has been...
[read the full post...]

January 22, 2009

Hmm, Does The Stork Craft Crib Mega-Recall Include The Dwell For Target Cribs?

1/30 UPDATE: The short answer is NO. Totally different design and parts. Target's notification to Dwell buyers was a mistake. Details below Last week, the CPSC issued the first giant crib recall of the year [um, yeah?] covering over...
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January 21, 2009

Netto Collection & Cub Kids Sample Sale, 1/22 - 24

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...
[read the full post...]

Morgen Kinderbeds @ IMM Cologne

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...
[read the full post...]

January 16, 2009

So I Finished The Juddy Crib

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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January 15, 2009

Leander Cradle, Denmark's Most Popular Hanging Cradle, Now Rocking On US eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

Dude Made A Coffee Table From A Stroller!

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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January 13, 2009

OTO Transportation Rugs By The Nought Collective

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,...
[read the full post...]

January 12, 2009

Mama Mia! That Is An Awesome Throwback Nursery

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...
[read the full post...]

January 9, 2009

DIY Pre-School & Playground, Topaz Internment Camp, Delta, Utah

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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January 7, 2009

Once You Have Black, You Best Take It Back: Muniré Black Cribs Recalled For Lead Paint

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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January 2, 2009

The Greatest Generation's Nurseries, Cont'd

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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January 1, 2009

Playing For Kepes

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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December 31, 2008

Vedelesque: Creative Playthings Molded Ply Chair On eBay

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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December 17, 2008

Straigh From BF Denmark: OG Peter Table & Chair By Hans Wegner

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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December 15, 2008

New Crib Safety Standards [Finally] In The Works?

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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December 11, 2008

Back When I Was A Boy, We Built Our Own Damn Cribs!

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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December 8, 2008

In Soviet Union, The Catalog Orders You

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...
[read the full post...]

December 5, 2008

Ooh La La, Check Out This Chaise d'Ecole de Charivari

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...
[read the full post...]

DT Nursery Trendwatch: Grey Is The New Orange!

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...
[read the full post...]

December 4, 2008

Dutch Museums Pony Up For Rarest Rietveld High Chair Of Them All

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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Takashi Murakami's Giant, Furry Balls

.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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November 28, 2008

Thanks To Jamie Hayon, The Chicken Shape Is No Longer Unexplored

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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November 27, 2008

Eames Walker

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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November 25, 2008

Fantastique! Papa Built His Kids A Birds Nest In 70's France

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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Ikea Store Ikeahack? Play Kitchen Made From Something Else

.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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November 21, 2008

Before MTV, There Was Life Cribs

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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November 20, 2008

Morigeauing, Geauing, Gone. Canadian Baby Industrial Complex Just Got Smaller

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...
[read the full post...]

November 14, 2008

Sweet Slot-Together Rocker/Chair From Master Woodcraft [?]

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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November 11, 2008

Hey, Little Buddy! Mingei Bamboo Stool/High Chair

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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November 9, 2008

DTQ&A: Gary Panter On His Classic Paramount Hotel Playroom

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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November 7, 2008

Lou Lou La La! Tiny Little Philippe Starck Chairs--And Other Designblok Sightings

.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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November 6, 2008

Thonet 511 Rocker At Christie's

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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November 3, 2008

Lost New York: Gary Panter's Paramount Hotel Playroom

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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November 2, 2008

Whoops, Missed The [OG Milk Crate] Potty

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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Greg Lynn, For One, Welcomes Our Plastic Toy-Recycling Robot Overlords

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...
[read the full post...]

October 30, 2008

Gregslist: Blobby Architect Wants To Recycle Your Toys Into Furniture

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??...
[read the full post...]

October 24, 2008

Mary Heilmann's Clubchairs, Kid-Size, At The New Museum

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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October 22, 2008

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Kristian Vedel

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...
[read the full post...]

October 19, 2008

Crewel Kids: Vladimir Kagan X Erica Wilson Mashup Rocking Chair

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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October 18, 2008

Tarantino X Frank Lloyd Wright Mashup, Of Sorts

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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October 13, 2008

But Does The Netto Crib Convey?

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...
[read the full post...]

October 11, 2008

Rubber BetterBaby Cages

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...
[read the full post...]

October 10, 2008

KidsLab Successful Belgian Experiments For Wall And Floor

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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October 8, 2008

Remember That One Kid With The Prouvé Bed?

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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E15 Children's Tafel For The Glorious People's Revolution

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...
[read the full post...]

October 7, 2008

xO Skool Desk, Or I Know What Philippe Starck's Intern Did Last Summer

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...
[read the full post...]

October 6, 2008

Plexi Hospital Bassinet's A Plexi Hospital Bassinet, Except We Call It The Plexi Hospital Bassinet

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...
[read the full post...]

You Take A Seat, I'll Take That Sweet Berceau De Maternité

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...
[read the full post...]

October 5, 2008

Bet Your Kid Don't Have A Hitler Chair This Fancy

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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October 1, 2008

Classic Cosco Chair In Rare, Sweet Rocker Format

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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Childsform: So Far, We Know There's A Spool Stool By Michael Marriott

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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Tony, Nanna. Nanna, Tony: Marble-top Trissen Stool On eBay

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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September 30, 2008

They Reissued Kristian Vedel's Kid's Chair! Wait, Who's They?

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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September 29, 2008

Cubi-Q: German Play Furniture Is Awesome, Cubic

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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September 27, 2008

Yet Another Rietveld Kids Chair [And Table!]

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 23, 2008

Il Ritorno!! Corraini Reissues Enzo Mari's Play Wall

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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September 22, 2008

Starting to Build the Crib

.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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September 19, 2008

And So Comfortable! Dad Builds Awesome, Kid-Sized Rietveld Chair

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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September 18, 2008

Good Morning, West Hollywood Craigslist! Nurseryworks Nursery Workin' It At 80% Off

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...
[read the full post...]

Fleurville Calla: Still Coming Soon, Now With Pricing!

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...
[read the full post...]

September 17, 2008

Two High Chairs, Both Alike In Uncomfortableness: Piet Klaarhamer's Rietveldian High Chair

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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The Awesomely Unsittable High Chairs Of Gerrit Rietveld

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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September 15, 2008

Crate Chair Junior By Gerrit Rietveld, Reissued By Other Rietvelds

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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Wait, I Didn't Even Know There Was A Jens Risom High Chair

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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September 14, 2008

In 1970, Arthur Espenet Carpenter Created The Coolest Rocker In The Entire Alpha Quadrant

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...
[read the full post...]

September 13, 2008

Hey Internet! Günter Beltzig Made This Molded Fiberglass Slide In 1966!

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...
[read the full post...]

September 12, 2008

Behold, The Ur-Leather High Chair

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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Welcome Back To School, Children! Our First Lesson: The Baby Box

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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September 11, 2008

Lipstick On A Deadly Pig: 200,000 Graco Bassinets Are Actually Simplicity

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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September 10, 2008

Monte Tavo High Chair Debuts At ABC Kids Expo

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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Real Estate Market Sinks, Mint Netto Nursery Floats To Surface

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....
[read the full post...]

Sami Rintala's Luoto Changing Table I Could've Believed In

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...
[read the full post...]

September 8, 2008

Alexander Girard Carpet Tiles By Flor

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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September 6, 2008

Toys R Us Imports Sweet Crib Safety Standards, Demands Its Cribmakers Share Them

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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September 2, 2008

Timkid Mio: Giant German Crib Bumper Comes With Wooden Frame, Converts To Desk

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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Heckuva Job, SFCA! Simplicity Bassinets Of Death Still On Sale--From The "New" Simplicity

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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August 31, 2008

Aha, Bloom's New Flat Furniture Is Stephen Procter's Old Flat Furniture

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,...
[read the full post...]

August 29, 2008

Did Muji Have Kids Furniture Before? Because They Have It Now

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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August 28, 2008

After Two Strangulations And Corporate Shrugging, CPSC Orders Retailers Pull Simplicity Co-Sleepers Off Market

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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Kinda Eamesy Kid's Chairs Put The Phen Back Into Phenolic

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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August 27, 2008

Don't Sit On That! Kids Chairs In Fancy Pairs, Via 1st Dibs

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...
[read the full post...]

Have You Seen My Dog, Monsieur? Ja, At Der Auktionhaus

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...
[read the full post...]

August 24, 2008

Got Too Many Euros? Kidstuff Roundup From German eBay Auction

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...
[read the full post...]

August 21, 2008

One Ikea Antilop, Two Ikea Antilop, Red Ikea Antilop, Blue Ikea Antilop

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...
[read the full post...]

August 14, 2008

Das Boot Mit Zwei Kinder

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...
[read the full post...]

August 8, 2008

Luigi Colani High Chair Concept

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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Luigi Colani's Rappelkiste Kid Unit, Just For Compleatness

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...
[read the full post...]

August 4, 2008

Mamas & Papas Knocks Off Bloom Fresco For A Loop

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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August 3, 2008

Big, Black Mimesis: Chaise Morphogenesis

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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July 22, 2008

This Here Faux-lar Bear Rug Made From Sheepskin By Crazy Icelander

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...
[read the full post...]

July 16, 2008

F-Raise Has A Great Crate Chair There

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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July 15, 2008

Whew! Kids And California Modern Houses DO Mix

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....
[read the full post...]

July 13, 2008

From Ortho, Makers Of America's Favorite Herbicide, Comes America's Favorite DIY PoMo Cradle

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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July 10, 2008

OG Torendo! Japanese Wooden Kindergarten Chairs

[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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July 8, 2008

The Difference Between Campana And Country

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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June 30, 2008

Wal-Mart Seeks To Destroy Our Milk Crate Way Of Life

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...
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June 27, 2008

Antiques Backroadshow: Vintage Vinyl In Goldsboro

.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...
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June 24, 2008

Hey Denver Minimalists! Craig's Got Your Changing Table!

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...
[read the full post...]

June 16, 2008

Sweet Gilbert Rohde Playpen Now A CPSC-Certified Objet

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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You Can't Make Money Flipping Ikea In New Zealand

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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June 13, 2008

Jean Prouvé Nursery School Chair

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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June 11, 2008

Prouve/Corbu/Perriand Kid's Room? But Where'd That Dog Come From?

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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Mathieu Mategot Kids Chairs, S'il Vous Plait

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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Rad Mod Play Table & Stools At Hi+Lo Modern

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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June 7, 2008

Plastastic! Puur BabyC Cradle And/Or Something By Dripta Roy

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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Kid's Wall Unit From Shipping Pallets

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...]

June 6, 2008

There's A Rocker Sale At Modernica!

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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June 4, 2008

Itay Ohaly's Papa Chair

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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June 3, 2008

Nuna High Chair From Holland, Not Ork

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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June 1, 2008

Peter Simensky's Plywood Milk Crates For Artware

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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May 29, 2008

Duluth Trading: Plan Station Could Also Be World's Manliest Fold-Down Changing Table

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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Interesting Kids Stuff Coming At Wright20

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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Filmmaker x Beavers Colabo Chair For Grey Rabbit

"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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May 27, 2008

By The Felt Rugs Of Grey Skull!

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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May 22, 2008

Kunigi Unu: Mom, Dad, I'm A Polyurethane Foam Pouf

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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May 21, 2008

What I'm Thinking About Nurseryworks' New Neo-Traditional Collection

.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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DT@ICFF: Baby Furniture Swagdown

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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May 19, 2008

DT@ICFF: The Leander Bed Finally Comes To The US. Sorta

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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DT@ICFF, Or Should I Say ICNCFF?

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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May 18, 2008

DT@ICFF: Kids Design Roundup

.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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DT@ICFF: Enzo Mari Kids Furniture

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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May 15, 2008

And Meanwhile, Sparkability's Having A Sale Today

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...
[read the full post...]

Nice. Via Toy Box Is Having A Sale Right. Now.

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...
[read the full post...]

May 14, 2008

DTQ: Anyone Going To ICFF? Anything I Should See?

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!...
[read the full post...]

May 13, 2008

Totally Tubular: Japanese Hospital Bassinet

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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May 12, 2008

Serious/Silly Nursery Chairs At Wright20

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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May 10, 2008

Fantastique! Bronze Bassinet By Philippe Hiquily

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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May 9, 2008

Niice. More Wall-Mounted Via Toy Boxes, Please

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...
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May 8, 2008

Hey! Modernist Furniture Made By A Mom!

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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Little Red Stuga Keeps Making Toy Versions Of Landscape

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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May 7, 2008

DTQ: What Do You Think Of Your Dozuki?

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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May 4, 2008

Hey-o, Julianne Moore's Tripp Trapp Is On eBay

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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April 28, 2008

Sweet Vintage Ply: Childcraft Nesting Chair Blocks

.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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April 26, 2008

Well, There's ONE Maarten Baas Clay High Chair

.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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April 24, 2008

Truck Kids Room Wins Kips Bay Decorator Showdown

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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April 23, 2008

Boon Has A Flair For Customer Service

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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DT Retail Scoutabout: NY Bed Edition

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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April 21, 2008

Abitacolo: Bruno Munari's Kid Space Machine

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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I'm Kenny Scharf's Kid-Sized Gumby Chair, Dammit!

.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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Thanks, Uncle Keith! The Haring Crib

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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April 20, 2008

Nice Raacke!

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...
[read the full post...]

April 19, 2008

Interdependent Children's Furniture By Eiry Rock

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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April 18, 2008

Papst Red Ribbon: Vintage Fiberglass Kid Furniture Goes 1 For 2 In Vienna

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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April 16, 2008

DT Clearance Sale Scoutabout

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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New Dad-Designed Edo Rocker At Thos. Moser

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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April 15, 2008

Now That's A Hackable Wall-Mounted Metal Changing Table

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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Bookhou Felt Kids Chair, From Canada

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...
[read the full post...]

April 14, 2008

Hmm, But Ikea Already Has Wall-Mounted Changing Tables

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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Ikeahackable? Laptop Workstation-Into-Diaper Workstation?

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...
[read the full post...]

April 6, 2008

Dad The Builder: Can You Fix This?

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...
[read the full post...]

April 3, 2008

Mr. Jalopy's Vintage Kid Chairs of Wonder

.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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April 1, 2008

From Germany To Silverlake With Love: Flototto Kids Chair

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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Childsply: Filling In The Pieces

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...
[read the full post...]

March 31, 2008

Noted Control Freaks Flaunt $6 Million Crib Of Death

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...
[read the full post...]

Restoration Hardware Baby & Child Will Try To Out-Crate & Barrel Pottery Barn Kids

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...
[read the full post...]

March 28, 2008

Finnish Government Handouts Totally Killed Local Cardboard Baby Box Market

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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Whoa, Get Ready For The Launch Of BabyGap Home

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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Finnish, Not Finished: Jocular High Chair Concept

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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Hotrod Finnish Walker And Crazy Ball Pit Chair From Helsinki Design Week '07

.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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It's My Kid In A Baby Box By Andrew Stafford

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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March 27, 2008

Where's Childsply When You Need It?

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...
[read the full post...]

March 26, 2008

Sweet Kidshouse From Studiomama

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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Built-In And/Or Wheeled Nursery By Merge Architects

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...]

March 21, 2008

WooHoo! DIY Crib Of Death Takes Design*Sponge Bronze

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...]

March 20, 2008

Ghodiyu: Think This Indian Baby Hammock Will Scratch My Hardwood Floor?

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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Alright, Bloom Otto Table, I'll Bite: What Is "Stylewood"?

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,...
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March 19, 2008

House For Sale. Giant, Foam Blocks House For Sale

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...]

March 14, 2008

The Other Cradle Of The King Of Rome

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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Average Weight Of Ineke Hans Furniture Drops Dramatically

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...]

March 13, 2008

Wow. Shagtastic Lucite Rocker

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...]

Sweet, That Molded Ply Fold-down Changing Table Is By Bo Ekstrom

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,...
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March 12, 2008

Two's A Trend! Another Stylish Crib Of Death Photoshoot

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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Ooh, Will Homemade Crib Of Death Win Design*Sponge's DIY Contest??

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...]

Ombelico: Sweet, Belted, Modular Storage By Marc Sadler

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...
[read the full post...]

March 7, 2008

Ausgezeichnet! Phidibus Bassinet Converts To Rocker, Bench, Desk

"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...
[read the full post...]

March 6, 2008

Oof! BabyMod Olivia Crib At Wal-Mart Looks Familiar

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...
[read the full post...]

March 3, 2008

Morigeau Lepine, Meet JC Le Penney

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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This Is Not The Bloom Baby Bassinet You Were Looking For

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...
[read the full post...]

Hit Or Miss? First-hand Accounts Of Dwell For Target

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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February 29, 2008

Mini-Eames Made By Eames, Shot By Eames

.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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Do You Know Who Makes This Molded Ply, Fold-Down Changing Table?

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...
[read the full post...]

February 28, 2008

I'd Like To Thank The Crib Bumper Industrial Complex: CPSC Warns Of Crib Threat From 'Soft Bedding'

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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February 24, 2008

DIY Dad-To-Be Loses Study, Gains Sweet Oeuf-like Built-in Crib

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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February 22, 2008

FOUND! That Sweet Plexi Hospital Bassinet UNFORTUNATELY SMALL!

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,...
[read the full post...]

February 21, 2008

Whoa, Bold Move: Kid-Sized "Mini Eames" Chairs From Park Life

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...
[read the full post...]

February 20, 2008

A Long Time Ago In A Star Wars Tie-In Pitch To Pepsi Far, Far Away

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...
[read the full post...]

February 14, 2008

NYT: BREAKING Having A Kid Changes Glass Coffee Tables, Things

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...
[read the full post...]

February 13, 2008

4-yo Rokke Stingray Rocking Chair Wins Innovation Award

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...
[read the full post...]

February 7, 2008

Great Moments In Marketing: The Story of Hushamok

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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They Sure Don't Make'em Like They Used To: c1946 Cardboard Bassinet

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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February 6, 2008

Buckminster Fuller's Kiddie Koop Crib Revealed! Or, Uh, Someone's

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...
[read the full post...]

February 4, 2008

Bring Out Your Bed! Bring Out Your Bed! Argington & ODA Launch Mod, Wheeled Bassinet

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...
[read the full post...]

Lolita Midsleeper Combi Kid's Bed Light Of A Fire, Fire Of Online

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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January 28, 2008

Did Buckminster Fuller Really Design A Crib Called The Kiddie Koop?

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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January 24, 2008

The Baby Zebra Skin Rug Is Just The Beginning

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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Whoa. Dwell Baby Didn't Make Their Own Oeuf Crib [For Target]

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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January 23, 2008

Whoa, Dad Made His Own Oeuf Crib

.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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January 21, 2008

DT eBay Scoutabout: Fire Sale Edition

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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January 18, 2008

Get It For You Wholesale? eBayer Selling Mod Kid Gear At Unusually Low Prices

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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January 16, 2008

The Moral Of The Story: Don't Turn Your Back On The eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

Aftermarket Tray For Stokke Tripp Trapp: "Worth Every Kroner"

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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Optimistic CPSC Chairwoman Pronounces Recall Glass "Not 95.5% Empty, 4.5% Full!"

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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January 14, 2008

Elle, Yeah! Vik Muniz Knows From Jennifer Delonge

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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January 11, 2008

So About That Juddy Plywood Crib...

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...
[read the full post...]

DT Retail Scoutabout: January Is Baby Sale Season

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...
[read the full post...]

January 10, 2008

Sweet Piet Hein Eek Nursery Set, Sweet Price, Uh, Ready To Pick Up

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...
[read the full post...]

All The Furniture That's Fit To Knock Off: Kid-Sized O-Zone Looks A Lot Like Aarnio's Bubble Chair

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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January 9, 2008

Suh-Weet Plexi-less Plexi Hospital Bassinet On eBay

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,...
[read the full post...]

January 4, 2008

Hospitalspotting: Cambro Coffee Cart/Changing Table

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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January 3, 2008

Una Bassinet Maravillosa, Uno Aluminum I-Beam Like-A-Bike From Barcelona

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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January 1, 2008

Revisiting The DT Checklist: Milk Crate Wall - DONE

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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Via Toy Box, Now Available In Chalkboard Black

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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December 31, 2007

Did You Know The Juno Bed?

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...
[read the full post...]

Hmm, I Love The Smell Of Dutch Mahogany Modular Kid's Furniture In The Morning

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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December 30, 2007

Awesome Ndebele Cardboard House From Driade

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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December 28, 2007

Words Of Wisdom, Rugs From Mark Mothersbaugh

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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December 27, 2007

Babyhome Aluminum Baby Gear From Barthelona

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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December 25, 2007

Iremonya Faiver Box Storage & Awesome, Elmer-ish Nappy Chair

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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December 22, 2007

Via Toy Box Unboxing, Building, Stacking, Stuffing

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...
[read the full post...]

December 17, 2007

Achtung, Baby! Sweet Bauhaussy High Chair

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....
[read the full post...]

December 14, 2007

Ilo Modular Kid Furniture System Still Vaporware At This Point

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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Little Red Stuga, Baby You're Much Too Cute

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...
[read the full post...]

What Chair Is This Bubkin-Wearing Kid Sitting On?

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...
[read the full post...]

December 13, 2007

Nanny Rockers Not Just In Wicker Anymore, Before

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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December 12, 2007

Wait, So Did He Build The Plexiglass Playhouse?

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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December 9, 2007

Microdorm 2: Ken Isaacs' Living Structure For Kids

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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December 6, 2007

The Casalino Chair Is Back In Production

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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December 4, 2007

DT Checklist: Stuck On Some Juddy Wall Shelves

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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December 3, 2007

It's My Hippie Kid In A Box! Ken Isaacs' Living Structures

.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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Takashi Shinozaki's Rebis Rocker And Plant's Kasten Shelves

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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December 2, 2007

Is That A Cardboard Doll House I See Before Me?

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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December 1, 2007

Ellinor Rocking Sofa Has Heirloom Right In The Name

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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November 29, 2007

Is The Ikea Trofast From Changing Table Heaven?

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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November 28, 2007

Tobifant: Luigi Colani's Knock-Together Activity Table

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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While You Were Watching Sesame Street, Luigi Colani Reinvented The Plastic Stacking Chair Several Times

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...
[read the full post...]

November 27, 2007

Speaking Of Ristomatti Ratia, Check Out This Kid's Bed

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...
[read the full post...]

DT Checklist: Modular Storage To Fill Kids Room Gap

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...
[read the full post...]

November 26, 2007

Ninna-Nanna Inna Canada: Sweet Bassinet From Monte Design

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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November 23, 2007

Ikea Arrow Rug By Sophie Bouy

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]...
[read the full post...]

November 20, 2007

High Five To 10 Grain For Their Molded Ply Play Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

November 19, 2007

Castor & Chouca: Le Bambou Crib Hyper-Chouette

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...
[read the full post...]

November 18, 2007

Paperpod Singlehandedly Revives The British Cardboard Spaceship Industry

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...
[read the full post...]

November 16, 2007

SkateLab Furniture

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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November 13, 2007

Someone's Been Sitting In MY Eames Chair

.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...
[read the full post...]

Here, Have A Biscuit. Oreka Kids Plywood Play Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

Uh-Ooba: Those Sweet Molded Ply Cribs Are The Last Ones. Ever.

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...]

November 11, 2007

Hopscotch & Bugs: From The Awesome Carpet Files Of Ms. Karin Mannerstal

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...
[read the full post...]

November 9, 2007

Kid-Sized Shaker & The E-Chair High Chair, From Hiromatsu Furniture Co.

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....
[read the full post...]

November 7, 2007

Custom Tripp Trapp Mashups: Have It Your Way At Magic Beans

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...]

Permis De Construire, Nominally Sofa-Shaped Blocks By Matali Crasset

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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Some Puzzle Furniture From Tokyo Designers Week

.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...
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The Buena Vista Rocking Chair Club

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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November 5, 2007

Teak 182: Danish Spindle-back Rocker By Frank Reenskaug

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...]

November 4, 2007

DTQ: Chinatown Shopping Bag Furniture?

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...
[read the full post...]

November 3, 2007

DT Headline Roundup: T-Mag, C-Class, L-Word, ABC Edition

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...
[read the full post...]

November 2, 2007

Core77 Covers Dutch Design Week: DT Covers Core77

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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Suh-Weet Price On Suh-Weet Maple Hollow Blocks By Community Playthings

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...]

Woo Hoo! Ooba Crib Just Went On Sale

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...
[read the full post...]

November 1, 2007

Holy Crap, Takashi Murakami Furniture!

.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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October 31, 2007

For Sale: Baby Crib. Never Price-Checked.

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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October 28, 2007

Sweet DIY Slot-Together Cardboard Play Kitchen

.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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October 25, 2007

CPSC: Apparently, 1mm Bumbo Baby Seats Aren't Meant For Use On Tables

.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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October 24, 2007

Vitra Doesn't Know Where This Kid Rocking Chair Comes From

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...
[read the full post...]

October 23, 2007

Groovy Plastic Toadstool Table & Chairs

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...
[read the full post...]

October 22, 2007

RAW Clothing, Awesome Handmade Gifts, By My Modern Life

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...
[read the full post...]

What, No Repair Kit? Simplicity Crib Recall Timing Was Simply PR

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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October 19, 2007

She's Baaack! ModMom Designs, Builds Owyn Toy Box

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,...
[read the full post...]

October 18, 2007

Pottery Barn Kids Kids Names, Fall 2007 Edition

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...
[read the full post...]

October 16, 2007

I Shall Call Him Mini Sleepytime Rocker From Nurseryworks

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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Where Would You Put A Free Eames Rocker? Contest At Design*Sponge

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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October 13, 2007

In The Nursery Of Good And Evil: Antonio Rubino At The Wolfsoniana

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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October 12, 2007

Eames High Chair? Sure, Just Get A Saw...

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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October 10, 2007

Huh? They Hang Babies OVER The Bed In Sweden?

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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October 9, 2007

JPMA's Statement On The Biggest Crib Recall In History, Annotated

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....
[read the full post...]

Barcelonita! Knoll Makes Kid-Sized Barcelona Chair

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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Saarinen Womb Chair Now Available In Three Sizes: Just Right, Too-Small And Way Too Small

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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October 7, 2007

Kid-Sized Exbox Chair By Giles Miller At London Design Festival

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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October 6, 2007

Design21's Child's Play Competition: Anyone Find Anything Interesting?

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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October 5, 2007

Whoa. George Nakashima Rocker Rocks

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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October 4, 2007

Recycling? Finish Your Self Junior Cardboard Chair & Nomadic Furniture Cardboard Car Seat

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...
[read the full post...]

Maitz and Laphoeff Bunkbeds: One Of These Things Is Somewhat Like The Other

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...
[read the full post...]

Idea: Put A Child-Sized Chairry In Your Home Theater!

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...
[read the full post...]

'Ello, Ven. Wot About London [Kid-Free?] Design Week?

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...
[read the full post...]

October 3, 2007

Hand-Painted Restaurant High Chair In Springville, Utah

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...
[read the full post...]

October 1, 2007

Yo Jersey, Don't Let Me Catch You Painting This Creative Playthings Kitchen!

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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September 30, 2007

Jukka Disk Game & Roller Seat From Finland From Kiosk

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...
[read the full post...]

September 27, 2007

DT eBay Roundup: CP Farm, Swing & Miami Beach Netto

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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DT Retail Wholesale Scoutabout: Dwell, Offi

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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Manhattan Couple Celebrates The Miracle Of Square Footage

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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September 26, 2007

Robert Wilson Had A Lot Of Children's Chairs

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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September 25, 2007

CPSC As Busted And Dangerous As A Simplicity Crib

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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September 22, 2007

The Alphabet For Jack, By Standard Motion

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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September 21, 2007

Wow, Undoboy Mega-Blik Installation Video

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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This Week In Deadly Crib News: Bumper Study, 1MM Cribs Recalled

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...
[read the full post...]

September 18, 2007

Hushamok: A Soloflex For New Parents

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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Jojo The Robot In The Nursery

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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Robots In The Nursery

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...
[read the full post...]

September 17, 2007

Hipposmile Highchair: Ballsout Sinocanadian Stokkeknockoff!

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...
[read the full post...]

Lunetta Crib-In-A-Tube By Kotura

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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The Icansit High Chair Puts The Swarovski Crystals On Its Skin.

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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September 16, 2007

Stokke, I Shrunk The Sales Reps!

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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September 13, 2007

ABCWatch: Scott Bennett's Pacific Crib - Mainstream Modern

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 10, 2007

Spumoni-esque Cradle Alle Genovese

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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Vintage Plastic: Efebino Stool By Stacy Dukes

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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September 9, 2007

Another Awesome Cart-Turned-Industrial Changing Table

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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Peder Moos, Peder Moos Cribs Don't Do The Fandango

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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September 8, 2007

Iscrewya: $119 Ikea Crib, Now $311 On eBay

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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Play Furniture By Kay Bojesen & Magnus Stephenson

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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September 4, 2007

Media Frenzy: More Recalls, More Hollow Industry Reassurance

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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No Cradle Is An Eisland, Except This One

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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September 3, 2007

Enfant Modernisme: Kazam Evolutionary Table At Balouga

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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August 31, 2007

Look! Shiny New Object! High Chair Alfons From Sirch

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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August 20, 2007

Jawdropping Industrial Chrome Crib, Was $9,945 Now $560, Needs Wk

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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DTQ: What's Missing From The Non-Fugly Kids Market?

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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Huge, Hand-Woven Pacman Carpet At Our Children's Gorilla

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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August 18, 2007

Sweet Sweet Maximo Toy Box Discovered At Target

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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August 16, 2007

Sweet Ikeahack: Gulliver Crib + Thinply + Router

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...
[read the full post...]

August 15, 2007

Dude's Selling A Maxi-Cosi CabrioFix On eBay, Also That Ikea Trofast Cradle

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,...
[read the full post...]

August 12, 2007

Icon Mag: Kids Designer Furniture? Bring On The Recession

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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August 10, 2007

Woo Hoo! Tokidoki + ducduc + Yoya Colabo Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

August 6, 2007

Potholder Rug Made From T-Shirts And/Or Sweaters

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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August 4, 2007

Pristine Eames Rocker, One Baby-Having, HM Employee Owner, On eBay

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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Japanese Mid-Century Modern: The K-Chair Mini By Karimoku60

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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Cardboard Kid Goodness From Riki Watanabe's Carton Furniture Series

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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August 2, 2007

No. Way. Carbon Fiber Shell Rocking Chair By Garageworks Industries

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...
[read the full post...]

July 26, 2007

Hermelin: Sweet Ikea-Colored Crib--From Ikea

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...
[read the full post...]

July 20, 2007

Incredible Vintage George Nelson Children's Desk On eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

Trofast: Vintage Ikea Cradle/Sofa By Erika Pekkari

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...
[read the full post...]

July 19, 2007

Offi Da Charts: Price Increase On Nursery Furniture Leaves Gap In "Affordable Modern" Market

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...
[read the full post...]

Once You Have Lack, You Never Go Back

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...
[read the full post...]

July 16, 2007

Oops. CP Hollow Blocks Are Being Knocked Off Already. By CP.

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...
[read the full post...]

July 15, 2007

Please Someone, Knock Off This Kids Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

July 11, 2007

Mod Mom Furniture Applies Lessons Of Digital Video Revolution To Kids Furniture

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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Spy Shots: Bugaboo Furniture Undergoing High Altitude Testing In Park City

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...
[read the full post...]

July 7, 2007

"Minimalist Daycare": Community Playthings Crib $10 On eBay

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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Wack Sparrow: Sweet, New Nursery Furniture From Oeuf

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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July 5, 2007

Kidsmodern Euro Crib Prototype Smorgasbord

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...
[read the full post...]

June 29, 2007

LOLOL Eero Aarnio Puppy: Three For $98 At DWR

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...
[read the full post...]

Whoa. Netto Crib & Changing Table On eBay - Mint Cond, Man W/Van Not Included

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...
[read the full post...]

June 28, 2007

Freeway-Shaped Miles Carpet By Big-Game

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."...
[read the full post...]

June 27, 2007

Kickass Geekdad Ikeahack Problemsolves Topbunk Smackdown

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...
[read the full post...]

June 26, 2007

Skip*Hop Playspot Challenges Red-Yellow-Blue Playmat Hegemony

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...
[read the full post...]

June 24, 2007

Going, Going, Gone: Kids Eames, Japanese Dump Trucks, Community Playthings On eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

June 23, 2007

Sweet, Green Gotham Rocker By Peter Danko

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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Bassinet Ackwards: Culla Belly Cradle/Co-Sleeper Concept Wins Big, Clueless Design Competition

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...]

June 18, 2007

Starry, Starry Nursery By Aguirre, Rath Of 15th St

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...
[read the full post...]

June 15, 2007

Daddy Surfs 1: 1933 Bertha Sander Baby Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

June 14, 2007

Think Of The Children's Furniture! Wright20 June 23 Auction Roundup

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...
[read the full post...]

June 13, 2007

Design For Kids Smorgasbord At H&G

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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June 9, 2007

Sweet, Comfy-looking Danish Rocker From Surfing Cowboys

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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L'Etat, C'est This Keith Haring Rocking Baby

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?...
[read the full post...]

June 8, 2007

SeeSaw Bookshelf By BCXSY, Eindhoven

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,...
[read the full post...]

June 4, 2007

Silicon Valley Nerdsery Includes Cray Supercomputer

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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June 1, 2007

Twin Cradles From The New Chinky Workshop

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...
[read the full post...]

2 Weeks 2 Save On Herman Miller, 2 Clicks 2 Spot Modernseed's Ad

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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May 31, 2007

From The Sweet Sweet Cradles Of Mrs Nanna D.Itzel

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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May 30, 2007

Combi Transition High Chair: Kids Table In Disguise

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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WonderWood, WonderWood, We're On Our Way

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...
[read the full post...]

May 28, 2007

Kid-Sized Molded Ply Chair By Gerald Summers [Yes, That Gerald Summers. No, Not That Chair.]

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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KidsModern@ICFF: The Show That Keeps On Giving

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...
[read the full post...]

May 25, 2007

Daddy's Not Typing For A Few Days

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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May 24, 2007

Have You Seen Me? E-27 Re-Serve High Chair Still Being Sold From Renderings

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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Vintage Swedish Play Screen By Stephan Gip, c.1970

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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May 23, 2007

Dost Thou So Hunger For This Sirch Ply High Chair? Yea, My Liege

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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ICFF Linkbait: MocoLoco Kids Roundup

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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May 21, 2007

Design-Curious Bloggers Pushing Strollers Flee As ICFF Opens To "Public"

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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YiAhn Bassinet @ICFF: Toy Box In Disguise

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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Euro II High Chair: Because There's No "A" In Tripp Trapp. Oh Wait...

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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May 20, 2007

ICFFSpotting: Hot Cot At Notcot, Nume Design, And More

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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May 18, 2007

ICFFWatch: Offi Lays An Ovum Bassinet

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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May 17, 2007

Hey-o! Nomads And Nomadic Friends In NY Mag

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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May 16, 2007

Euuhhhrrr... Plastic Flower Cradle By Philippe Pradalie

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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Elmer The Patchwork Built-In Storage Unit

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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Ellen DeGeneres Induces...Mayhem! By Giving Away 300 Bugaboos?

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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May 15, 2007

Studio: Slot-Together Plywood Art By Tobias Putrih

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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May 14, 2007

Paper Or Plastic?

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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Regarding What's Up With The Vintage?

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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May 13, 2007

Borge Lindau & Lindekrantz Are Dead? Why Can't I Find Out Anything About Their Joker Furniture?

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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May 10, 2007

Form Magazine Archives: 50 Jahren Of Awesome KidMod Design

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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May 7, 2007

Selections For The Expectant Furniture Collector

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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May 6, 2007

Russkie Modernist Rocker Just Went On eBay

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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May 2, 2007

The End Is Nigh: Hulk Hogan Child's Chair

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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April 26, 2007

Musical Furnishings: It's A Table! It's A Marimba! It's A Table! It's A--

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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Arbitrage Opportunity: Eames Elephant Gets $800 Spread

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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DT Exclusive: First Crack At Nurseryworks On Sale

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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April 25, 2007

Nursing Room 0+ Collection: Polycarbonate Cradle Designer Cranks It Way Past 11

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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April 23, 2007

Sweet Juniper - Mies Mashup

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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Fluffizoo: More Foam Animals

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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Sweet Suiko Crib Convertible By Sirch

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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2. Put Your Chick In That Box. Gearability's Baby Box How-To

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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April 18, 2007

Milan Reports @ Kidsmodern: Hella Jongerius Kid Table

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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April 17, 2007

Chalkboarding Is Definitely Not A Crime

Hello, five kinds of awesome. Chalkboard Skateboard, $80 shipped, by Brooklyn design duo Mary & Matt [maryandmatt.net via notcot]...
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April 16, 2007

And By "Vintage," They Mean, "We Wheeled It Out Of Wal-Mart's Cafe"

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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Tiny bObles Make Me Warm All Over

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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April 15, 2007

Russian Kids Furniture Smuggled Right Under My Nose

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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April 14, 2007

Normal Room: And The Winner Is...IKEA

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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April 11, 2007

Wait, Don't Throw Out Those Old Paint Cans!

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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April 9, 2007

The Nauvoo Cradle

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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April 8, 2007

These Vinyl Hand-Shaped Kids Chairs Weird Me Out

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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Awesome Set Of Vintage Palaset Storage Cubes

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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April 5, 2007

Four Odd Mod Rockers Coming Up At Auction

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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April 4, 2007

Mission Style Cribs After Stickley

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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April 2, 2007

"Silly Adults" At Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

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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March 30, 2007

Now That's A Baby Box: Cardboard Rolling Crib By Album di Famiglia

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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Boost Booster Seat: LikeAYellowPages

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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March 29, 2007

Ioline Crib From Kalon Studios: Angeleno-Berliner Werkstatte

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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Celery Lullaboo Cribs = Crunchy Goodness

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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Whoops: Sample Sale At Netto Collection TODAY, 3/29-30

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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March 27, 2007

It's My Kid In A Box

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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March 22, 2007

Plush Squid Is Bigger Than All Y'all

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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Unbelievable Headlines! Gay Uncles And Sperm Switcheroos

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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March 21, 2007

Kickin' It Foldschool: DIY Cardboard Kids Furniture

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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March 19, 2007

Ducduc Hunting In The Meadowlands: 70% Off, No Waiting

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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March 16, 2007

Baby Hairy Bertoia Chair By Douglas Homer

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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March 15, 2007

Fabulous Eames Child's Chair Comes Out Of Closet, Goes Straight To eBay

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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March 13, 2007

Angus Goble's Corrugated Kid Furniture At Bubble

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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ducduc boos

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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March 12, 2007

Crafty Miracleworkers Transform Busted Entertainment Center, 10 Lbs. Cottage Cheese, Into Mod Toy Kitchen

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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March 8, 2007

Truck Studio Crib For Nurseryworks Gets The Big 10-4

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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March 7, 2007

Yum Yum: Chair, Strollers From Bloom In The Spring

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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March 1, 2007

Some Vintage Swedish Kid's Furniture

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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February 27, 2007

Some Random Gear Links: Muji In America, Disney/Campana, Acrylic Cradle, &c.

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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February 22, 2007

And That, My Friends, Is What A Publicist Can Do For Your Business

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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Awesome Felt Rocks By Molo Design

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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February 21, 2007

Q: What Makes A Nice Restaurant High Chair?

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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February 19, 2007

Wha Wha Wha?? 6-Foot Ugly Dolls

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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February 15, 2007

Holy Smokes, Actual Gerhard Richter Carpet

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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February 14, 2007

Entirely Unprompted Dream Furniture For, By Italian Kids

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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Whoa, Kid-Sized Tetris

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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Pampers Chairs, Recycled

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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February 13, 2007

Whatever Happened To Rosemary's Berceuse?

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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"Fun On Wheels" By Stephan Gip: Furniture In Disguise

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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Matali Crasset Is A One-Woman Ikea Kids Department

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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February 12, 2007

Greg Ball's X-Crib Design Matches Skateboard, Probably Legal In Canada

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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Re-Produkte: Rocking Products For Reproducers

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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February 10, 2007

C&C Custom-Painted Eames Shells

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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February 9, 2007

After Successfully Conquering $2,300 Crib Market, Ooba Lowers Prices

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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February 8, 2007

Apartment Therapy: Now For The Nursery

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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February 6, 2007

Matali Crasset Kids Desk For Balouga

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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February 5, 2007

Celebrity Buys Mid-Century Rocker By Ib Kofod-Larsen!

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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February 4, 2007

Gula: Spoon-Shaped Stool By Shigeki Fujishiro

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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February 2, 2007

21st Century Family Modernism By Richard Hutten

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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February 1, 2007

FOR RENT: Repurposed Tanker Truck Pod/Crib By LO/TEK

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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Call It Piet Hein Eekian: Work Table Made From Road Signs

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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I Can't Get Enough Of That Piet Hein Eek

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,...
[read the full post...]

January 31, 2007

Play Plus Soft: A Playroom With A View

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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January 29, 2007

Kid-Sized PJ/Miesian Playhouse By Rirkrit Tiravanija

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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Ligne Roset Togo Chair For Kids

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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January 28, 2007

Cuusoo Seikatsu's Customer-Driven Design [For Kids]

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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Well, They DO Stink... Biohazard Waste Disposal Can On eBay

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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January 25, 2007

Computer-Generated 'Reading Cocoon/Bookcase' By Studio Roosegaarde

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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January 24, 2007

Q: Painting A Kid's Play Table

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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Foamy Karelia Chair By Liisi Mogenson Beckmann

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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January 23, 2007

eBay Roundup: Changing Tables

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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January 22, 2007

Hans Wegner Children's Furniture

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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January 21, 2007

DIY Chalkboard Table?

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,...
[read the full post...]

January 20, 2007

Los Folding Rocking Chairs De Costa Rica

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,...
[read the full post...]

January 17, 2007

Habitat VIP For Kids By Kinda Random VIPs

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...
[read the full post...]

January 14, 2007

Story Time Rocker By Hal Foster Taylor

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...
[read the full post...]

Lindam Worship: Another Sweet Slot-Together Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

January 13, 2007

Modern Nursery On/At Target: Slotti Crib By Cosatto

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...
[read the full post...]

Attention Wal-Mart Non-Shoppers! Modern Nursery Collection??

"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...
[read the full post...]

January 10, 2007

Heyo, ModernTots The Website Now ModernTots The Store

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,...
[read the full post...]

Panton Junior: Duh? Or FINALLY?!

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...
[read the full post...]

DT Readers Get A Jump On Sparkability Nurseryworks Sale

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...
[read the full post...]

Rubber Baby Cribby Bumpers By Creative Playthings

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...
[read the full post...]

January 9, 2007

Sad Ghost Lamp, 2004, By Marcel Dzama

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...
[read the full post...]

January 3, 2007

Day Ambushed By Ikea Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

December 21, 2006

In Process: One Sweet, Sweet Dad-Made Heirloom Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

December 19, 2006

For Sale: One Sweet, Sweet Dad-Made Heirloom Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

December 18, 2006

Hexi-Hollow Better, Not Better Named Than Hexagon Happening Hollow

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...
[read the full post...]

December 17, 2006

Welcome To Disney Campana: The Mickey Plush Toy Sofa

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...
[read the full post...]

December 12, 2006

Donald Judd Twin Daybed

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...
[read the full post...]

December 10, 2006

The Little Empress's High Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

December 8, 2006

The Kid Learns The Lesson Of Bad Feng Shui

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...
[read the full post...]

December 4, 2006

Dude, Check Out Those Bassinets! Lucky Little Bastards

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,...
[read the full post...]

December 1, 2006

Le Petit Prince, Le Ventre Geant

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...
[read the full post...]

Mein Bauhaus, Er Hat Giant Blocken

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...
[read the full post...]

November 28, 2006

One Dad's Search For A Kid's Table

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...
[read the full post...]

November 23, 2006

I'm Thankful For Modernseed's BroSis Lounge Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

November 22, 2006

Molded Plywood Cradle By Creative Playthings Totally Rocks

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,...
[read the full post...]

Whoa. Richard McGuire Designed Bedding For Land Of Nod

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,...
[read the full post...]

November 21, 2006

Mid-Century Swingline Group Kids Furniture By Henry Glass

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...
[read the full post...]

Victoria Staten Gear Hits Market In Time For Ski Season

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...
[read the full post...]

November 16, 2006

Apartment Therapy Now Also Nursery Therapy

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...
[read the full post...]

November 15, 2006

Abstract Riding Animals Available In Foam [Soon], Plywood [Not So Soon]

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...
[read the full post...]

November 14, 2006

Niiice. Pristine Creative Playthings Townhouse On eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

November 13, 2006

The DT Elmo Nursery Project

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...
[read the full post...]

November 8, 2006

Design ME Some Modern Utopian Soviet Textiles, Comrade

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...
[read the full post...]

November 7, 2006

What Could Fix This Almost-Cool Ikea Blimp Minimalist Toddler Bed?

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...
[read the full post...]

November 2, 2006

Nume, Nume, Nume, Nume Fruit Salad-Colored Kid's Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

October 27, 2006

What Do You Make Of This? There's A Sample Sale At Dwell Baby's!

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]...
[read the full post...]

October 24, 2006

Mod Modular Mondrian-y Kids Furniture By Hiroki Takada

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...
[read the full post...]

October 20, 2006

Belgian Design Fair Whips Up Baby Holding Pen

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...
[read the full post...]

October 19, 2006

MoMA Design Store Is 20% Off For Members Through Oct. 22

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...
[read the full post...]

Speaking of Deals...

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,...
[read the full post...]

October 17, 2006

Mocoloco, For One, Interviews Our Ooba Overlord

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...
[read the full post...]

October 14, 2006

You Can Rearrange These Tangram Shelves A Million Ways. If You Really Want To.

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...
[read the full post...]

October 11, 2006

Slightly Judd-y Kids Chairs Made From Orange Crates

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...
[read the full post...]

Awesome Molded Ply Table & Chairs From Modernseed

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...
[read the full post...]

October 10, 2006

Nurseryworkin' It: Sparkability Now Rocking 50% Off On Final Stock

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...
[read the full post...]

October 3, 2006

Three Cool Rockers May Be Slightly Useless For Parents

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...
[read the full post...]

September 29, 2006

Ooh Ooh More From Ooba: A Crib, A Playtable, A Toy Box

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...
[read the full post...]

September 28, 2006

Put Balouga On Your Next Paris Kid-shopping Trip

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 25, 2006

The Bloom Bloom Room: More Stroller-vation From The Far East

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...
[read the full post...]

Mutsy: All That And A High Chair, Too

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...
[read the full post...]

September 24, 2006

Brio's New Target Market [Hint: Starts With Gr-, Ends With -ups]

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...
[read the full post...]

All Aboard! The Brio Colour Furniture's Here

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...
[read the full post...]

September 21, 2006

The Argington Catalogue, AKA The Connecticutter Magazine

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...
[read the full post...]

September 18, 2006

Argington Rocks Casbah With Sahara Crib/Delphi Changing Table Combo

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 14, 2006

ABC Kids Report: Nurseryworks Keeps On Truckin' With Sweet, New Miracle Cribs

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...
[read the full post...]

Woz's House Has Cave, Murals For The Kids

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....
[read the full post...]

September 13, 2006

Netto's Netto, Except They Call It Le Netto

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...
[read the full post...]

September 12, 2006

Mod Nursery Showcase Showdown, Live On ebay 9/16

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...]

September 9, 2006

Judd Is In The Air: Swiss Nursery Furniture From Zewi & Bebe Jou

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 7, 2006

Braniff Blanket By Alexander Girard

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...
[read the full post...]

September 6, 2006

Table & Chairs On eBay Are Cool, Vedel-esque, $500+

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,...
[read the full post...]

September 5, 2006

Dad-made Baby Bed, A La Francaise: Lit De Camille

"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...]

September 4, 2006

Returned To Secaucus, Seventy Percent Off: DWR Annex

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...
[read the full post...]

August 31, 2006

1 Balloon + 1 LED = 1 Awesome Balloon Lamp

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...
[read the full post...]

August 22, 2006

What Do You Make Of This? There's A Nurseryworks Sale At Sparkability!

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...]

August 17, 2006

Hans Wegner Rocker: 'Wholesale' In Silver Lake

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...]

August 16, 2006

I Dwell Into The Burning Ring Of Fire

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...]

August 14, 2006

Sweet Nanna Ditzel High Chair

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...]

Vaya Con Brio, My Darling: Awesome Brio Grow High Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

August 11, 2006

Zid Zid For The Kid Kid

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...
[read the full post...]

Tente Smiles Casters: Happy Shiny Movable Nursery Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

August 7, 2006

The Our Children's Gorilla In The Room

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"...
[read the full post...]

August 4, 2006

You Mean THIS Sweet Weimar Bauhaus Bassinet??

"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...
[read the full post...]

Awesome Blik + Threadless Mashup Wall Decals

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...
[read the full post...]

July 28, 2006

The New Ikea Rug

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...
[read the full post...]

July 26, 2006

Welcome To The Gesell Dome

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...
[read the full post...]

July 25, 2006

The Aircrib: B.F. Skinner's Baby-In-A-Box

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...
[read the full post...]

July 20, 2006

One-Stop Corporate Brand Shop Launches. DT One-Word Verdict: Finally!

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...
[read the full post...]

July 16, 2006

Whoa. Vladimir Kagan Contour Rocking Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

July 15, 2006

Sweet Child Child Chair By Maartje Steenkamp At ModernChild

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:...
[read the full post...]

July 14, 2006

Latest Hotel Amenities For Families: Deathtrap Cribs

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...
[read the full post...]

July 13, 2006

"Put Them In The Hardwood Maiden"

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...
[read the full post...]

RU Kickin' It Old-[Pre]Skool With Community Playthings?

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...
[read the full post...]

Now on Flickr: DIY Hippie Furniture, Cardboard Carseat

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...
[read the full post...]

July 9, 2006

There's A Design Public Online Sample Sale RIGHT NOW

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...
[read the full post...]

July 6, 2006

Johnny, Who Is Our Next Contest Prize Sponsor? Alexander Girard Pillows, Come On Down!

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...
[read the full post...]

July 5, 2006

Nomadic Furniture 2: DIY Kidgear Boogaloo

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...
[read the full post...]

July 1, 2006

Larva-Sized Chair From Hivemindesign

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,...
[read the full post...]

June 29, 2006

Sinus Kids Table & Chairs From Lama Collection

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...
[read the full post...]

June 28, 2006

Rocker From Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle

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...
[read the full post...]

June 26, 2006

Nest: Kids Furniture So Eco-Friendly, Even The Name Is Recycled

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...
[read the full post...]

June 25, 2006

Random/Interesting Kids Stuff On eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

June 24, 2006

Plable: Play-Under Table, By Yumiko Tanaka

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...
[read the full post...]

Woodie Chairs: More Sweet Commercial-Grade Kids Furniture

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...
[read the full post...]

June 21, 2006

Max In The Box Chair-Table Things

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...
[read the full post...]

June 18, 2006

Stokke Stokke Hippo

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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Stokke Tripp Trapp, Now Available In Viking & Gnome Sizes

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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June 14, 2006

DWR Jax Merchandise Sks LTR On Craigslist

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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Sweeeet Danish Kid Gear From Collect Furniture

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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June 12, 2006

One Of These Vintage Cosco Chairs Is Not Like The Others

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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June 11, 2006

Interesting eBay Auction Roundup

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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Offi Oval Bassinet From ICFF

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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June 9, 2006

Weird: Actual DisneyWorld Signs On eBay

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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June 7, 2006

Nurseryworks Storytime Bookcases Look Mighty Fine

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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June 6, 2006

Dutch Artist Made This Kid's Chair Out Of Shelf Brackets

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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Niiice. Kristian Vedel Molded Ply Chair On Ebay

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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June 2, 2006

From Grandma's Toy Closet

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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June 1, 2006

See? Cariboo Cares. So They Added A Bassinet Changer

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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Cub Chair For Kids [Not Netto Cub, Either]

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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Cold War Era Folding Rocker By Niko Kralj

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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May 28, 2006

Once You Have Black Crib, You Never Go Back

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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First The Apt., Now The Crib

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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May 26, 2006

ducduc: Your The Table Is Ready, Sir

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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The Kinderzeat Is Dead! Long Live The Tripp Trapp!

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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May 25, 2006

I Shall Call Him Mini-Mies. At Least Until Knoll's Lawyers Come For Me.

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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May 24, 2006

ICFF DT Roundup, Part Two

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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May 23, 2006

ICFF DaddyTypes Roundup

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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May 20, 2006

ICFF Rumor: DWR To Take Its Jax And Go Home??

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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May 18, 2006

Tetris Shelving Is Now Available For Flatpack

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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May 17, 2006

A First: Brooklyn Model Townhouse Has A Nursery

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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May 16, 2006

Netto Cub-Scouting

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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May 15, 2006

Von Dutch Children's Rocking Chair. Damn.

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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Arne Jacobsen Seven Chair-Swing Tweaked Out By Camper

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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May 12, 2006

Calla High Chair: The New Fleur Down In Fleurville

"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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DIY Own Dutch Self: Tree Trunk Bassinet

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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Reissuing The Moderno: The Rocker That Made Yrj�� Kukkapuro A Household Name

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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May 11, 2006

With A Booth Sporting Several Pieces Of Flair, It's Boon Time at JPMA

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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Wha Wha WhAA? There's A Sale At Netto's!

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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Spinny Cabinet

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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May 10, 2006

More JPMA Swag: ducduc & Skip*hop

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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May 4, 2006

That Stainless Steel & Plexiglass Bassinet From The Hospital

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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April 29, 2006

The Crib Blog Update: Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione

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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April 27, 2006

It's Norwegian For: DIY Kid's Chair

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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April 24, 2006

ToddWorld. Excellent.

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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Intellicot: You Still Have To Feed The Kid Yourself

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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April 23, 2006

Cannabis-Print Chintz Fabric

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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April 21, 2006

"Mazel Tov! I'm not the father! Buy this crib :) - $200"

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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April 18, 2006

Target Hot Shop Sports Treehugger Stuffbump

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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April 10, 2006

Warber: It's Dutch For Minimalist Hardwood Baby Furniture

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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April 9, 2006

Other Daddies Typing: I'm A Total Slacker Edition

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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April 2, 2006

Matrix-Lookin' Fleece Blanket Covered With Binary Code

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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March 27, 2006

Counting Shirt From Magis Me Too Collection

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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March 23, 2006

Swiss Alphabet Cabinets [Sorry, No Umlauts]

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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Kids And Minimalism: At Home With The Judds

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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March 21, 2006

For The Geek-Conceptualist Nursery: The ASCII Carpet

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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March 20, 2006

Kid-size Ikea Table, Lack, Is Sweet, Freaky-Cheap

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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March 18, 2006

Turn A Stokke Kinderzeat Into A Slide

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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March 17, 2006

Boon Wants To Get This Potty Started

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...
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March 16, 2006

Just A Sec, Let Me Figure Out How To Make A Buck Off This Post...

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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March 14, 2006

Advice: How's The Compact Crib Working Out?

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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Next Up: The GummiLight Venus DeMilo

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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March 10, 2006

Oeuf Changing Table: Nice, But How To Get It Home?

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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March 8, 2006

Travel Today, Bed Tomorrow

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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March 7, 2006

Eames Tattoos

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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March 5, 2006

Other Daddies Typing: Oscar-Avoiding Edition

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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March 3, 2006

Art Bargains For Your Nursery?

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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Wha wha wha?? A Child-sized Eames LCW Chair??

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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February 28, 2006

"Rokke" Is Danish For Stingray, Rocking Chair

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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February 24, 2006

Donald Judd In The Nursery?

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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Invaders For Your Wall Space

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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February 23, 2006

Dutch Chair Allows Kids To Draw On Paper--Or Carpet

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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Meanwhile, Elsewhere In The New York Times,

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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February 22, 2006

Score One For The 'Burbs: Sweet Modern Playshed From Velocity

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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February 16, 2006

Let Us Now Praise Famous Crib Critics

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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February 13, 2006

Felt Love: Gewoon Felt Stool

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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February 12, 2006

Spotted: Vintage Nanna Ditzel Toadstools & Bassinet

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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February 11, 2006

Sims2 Baby Gear

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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Bilibo Static Hair Sweeper Also Chair, Fun Kid's Toy

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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February 10, 2006

The 'Stunningly Sweet' Ikea PS Trivas Dad-Child Armchair

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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An Interview With MoMA's Paola Antonelli

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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February 8, 2006

Alphabet Tiles In Your Driveway

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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ducduc + DWR UES Sun. Feb. 12

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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February 7, 2006

FLASH: Ikea High Chair Spotted In Berlin Children's Restaurant

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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February 5, 2006

Alphabet Floor Tiles

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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January 26, 2006

Wow, Rare Kid-sized Eames Chairs On eBay

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...
[read the full post...]

January 21, 2006

Buy Retail, Sell Wholesale: Seimi Bassinet from Netto Collection On Ebay

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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January 19, 2006

John Deere Rocker [and Stuff. LOTS of Stuff.]

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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January 12, 2006

Home Cookie-ing: Take Four Chefs, Add One Oeuf...

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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January 7, 2006

Ooba Bassinet: Mid-Century Meets 21st Century

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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January 6, 2006

Where Did The Mid-Century Modern Cherub Crib Go?

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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January 3, 2006

Crib For Six? Rustic Capsule Hotel? Dog Spa? You Decide.

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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January 2, 2006

Alvar Aalto-inspired High Chair By Ben Af Schulten

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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December 26, 2005

There's More Handmade Christmas Where That Came From

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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December 23, 2005

Tufted Wool Rugs By Graffiti Artists

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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December 21, 2005

Jellio Turbo - Recommended For Children Under 3

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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December 19, 2005

I.D. Mag's Intriguing Baby Products Of 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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December 18, 2005

Mirrored Crib Turns Child Into His Own Babysitter

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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December 14, 2005

What Would Le Corbusier Do?

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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December 9, 2005

Daddy Types: The Crib Blog

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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Sweet Chair For Sitting Indian Style [Feather Or Dot]

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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December 6, 2005

I Want A Kid-o Bib: A Must For Christmas

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...
[read the full post...]

November 29, 2005

Get Me Some Limited Edition Art Wallpaper NOW

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...
[read the full post...]

November 22, 2005

Sweet Vintage Kids Trove Just Hit Ebay

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...
[read the full post...]

November 21, 2005

Baby Head Drawer Knobs

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...
[read the full post...]

November 20, 2005

Bald & Beautiful [& Belgian & Box-like]

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...
[read the full post...]

November 9, 2005

Hello Kitty Dark Side Paintings

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....
[read the full post...]

November 8, 2005

Keith Haring Wall Decals From Blik

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...
[read the full post...]

November 4, 2005

New Dwell Baby Sheet Patterns

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...
[read the full post...]

Orange You Glad You Waited To Buy A Nest High Chair?

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...
[read the full post...]

October 26, 2005

Celebrity Babies [Heart] The Amby Baby Hammock

"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...
[read the full post...]

October 25, 2005

Embroidered Swedish Rocking Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

Buy A Gorillaluce And Save The Gorillas A Little Bit

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...
[read the full post...]

October 24, 2005

Stokke Kinderzeat: No Fat Chicks?

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...
[read the full post...]

Someone Needs To Take A Time Out. In A Nest High Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

October 23, 2005

Some Nursery Candy From CribCandy

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...
[read the full post...]

October 22, 2005

London Architect Dad Builds Eco-, Kid-Friendly Dreamhouse Undergroud

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...
[read the full post...]

October 21, 2005

Hand-Painted Nursery Seuss-scape

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...
[read the full post...]

October 16, 2005

Williamsburg Hearts The Kids, The Real Estate, The Ikea

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...
[read the full post...]

October 14, 2005

Is This An Ikea High Chair?

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...
[read the full post...]

October 13, 2005

Dad-To-Be Graduates From Rocking Chair U. With A Month To Spare

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...
[read the full post...]

October 10, 2005

Open House (In More Ways Than One)

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...
[read the full post...]

October 9, 2005

Tweety: Dutch Birdhouse/MP3 Player

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,...
[read the full post...]

October 5, 2005

And To Think That I Saw It At Yoyamart

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...
[read the full post...]

October 3, 2005

The 9-Tsubo House With Kids? [That's 320 sf, btw]

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...
[read the full post...]

September 29, 2005

Tables & Chairs For Kids: NYT, For One, Welcomes Our DWR Overlords

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."...
[read the full post...]

September 28, 2005

Sweet Vintage Cosco High Chair on Ebay

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...
[read the full post...]

September 27, 2005

Have You Had A Visit From The Storkcraft?

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...
[read the full post...]

September 25, 2005

A Reading From Lamentations (Of A Dad-To-Be)

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...
[read the full post...]

September 23, 2005

Stokke-Spotting At MoMA

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...
[read the full post...]

September 22, 2005

Missed The Target: Philippe Starck Potty Training Set on Ebay

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...
[read the full post...]

September 19, 2005

I Want To See More Seimi

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...
[read the full post...]

Chalkboard-Painted Furniture Makers, Make Way For ducduc

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...
[read the full post...]

Where Do You Want The ducduc, Mac?

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...
[read the full post...]

September 11, 2005

But If I'm Selling Crib Bumpers, They MUST Be Safe

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...
[read the full post...]

September 9, 2005

Domestic Wall Stickers From Colette, Colette of Paris.

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...
[read the full post...]

Where's The Bamboo Crib?

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...
[read the full post...]

September 6, 2005

Slex Sleuther: What's Up With This Swiss High Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

September 5, 2005

Marcel Wanders Pebbles Stool For Magis: More Cute Plastic

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...
[read the full post...]

September 4, 2005

Affordable Eero Aarnio Chair & Puppy

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...
[read the full post...]

'Feng Shui': Chinese For 'Ceramics Hayloft'

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...
[read the full post...]

August 31, 2005

Which One Of You Drove The $6,000 Crib?

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...
[read the full post...]

Foamz: Cheap Cool Euro Furniture For Kids

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...
[read the full post...]

August 30, 2005

MoxBox Bamboo Storage from ModernTots

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...
[read the full post...]

Sam's Club Wooden Changing Table Saves You Mad Money

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...
[read the full post...]

August 29, 2005

Baby Store Recommendations In [Your City Name Here]

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...
[read the full post...]

August 28, 2005

Leander Kid Beds: Something Is Rockin' In Denmark

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...
[read the full post...]

August 25, 2005

"Black is a hot color for cribs."

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.,...
[read the full post...]

August 22, 2005

Say It Together, Williamsburg: "MiniJake, You Complete Me"

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...
[read the full post...]

Anyone Recognize This Plexi Crib?

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...
[read the full post...]

August 15, 2005

Roll These La Vaca and La Vaquito Cowhide Stools Right Over PETA's Toes

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...
[read the full post...]

Bronto Plastic Childrens Chair by Richard Hutten

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...]

August 11, 2005

DWR Childrens Furniture: DT Readers Report

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...
[read the full post...]

August 5, 2005

Baby Blogapalooza Opens Kids Section at Design Public

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)...
[read the full post...]

July 28, 2005

Baby Gap Bedding: ZZZZZZZ

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...
[read the full post...]

July 20, 2005

Baby Overboard! The Boat Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

July 17, 2005

This Cardboard Cradle Will Rock Your Crunchy World.

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...
[read the full post...]

Wow. R. M. Schindler Child's Chair

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...
[read the full post...]

June 5, 2005

Herman Miller 10% Off Thru 6/18, Including New Eames Rockers

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...
[read the full post...]

May 19, 2005

Americans Can Now Invest In A Nest Egg

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...
[read the full post...]

May 18, 2005

More ICFF Cribspotting

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...
[read the full post...]

May 17, 2005

DucDuc Clues: Baby Furniture Spotted At ICFF

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...
[read the full post...]

May 5, 2005

Impressionable Suckers R Us

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...
[read the full post...]

April 22, 2005

The Weeks Rocker

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...
[read the full post...]

April 19, 2005

Will The Owner Of The Precious Moments Toddler Bed Please Come To The Front?

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,...
[read the full post...]

April 8, 2005

Tricked Out Highchair Roundup

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...
[read the full post...]

April 7, 2005

Whoa, Nice Basket

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...
[read the full post...]

April 4, 2005

Architect Builds Tripped Out Dreamhome, Then Has Twins

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...
[read the full post...]

April 3, 2005

Maartje Steenkamp's Highchair for Droog Design Adjusts (One Way)

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...
[read the full post...]

April 2, 2005

Vintage Bertoia Chair for Kids

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....
[read the full post...]

March 31, 2005

Parent Companies, The NYT Is Onto You

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...
[read the full post...]

March 30, 2005

A Quick Link Roundup: Cool Stores

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,...
[read the full post...]

March 24, 2005

Born To Shop? How About Give Birth To Shop

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...
[read the full post...]

March 21, 2005

Dad-made Arts & Crafts Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

March 15, 2005

Stainless Steel & Plexiglass Crib - It's The Little Differences

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...
[read the full post...]

March 8, 2005

Kids Furniture From The Guy Who Made Bjork's Bed

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...
[read the full post...]

March 6, 2005

My Other Rocker Is An Emeco

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...
[read the full post...]

Babylon High Chair Converts To Magazine Rack

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...
[read the full post...]

March 3, 2005

Changes To The Changing Table

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...
[read the full post...]

February 28, 2005

Prenatal High Chair [No, you read that right]

I'm sure it's pronounced Prey-nah-TALL. Pr�natal 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...
[read the full post...]

February 11, 2005

Do You Need A Dummy Stand?

"Dummies seem to be always lost, so here�s 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...
[read the full post...]

Now You Seimi Baby Collection? Now You Don't

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...
[read the full post...]

Joel's not getting off THIS Babysitter.

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...
[read the full post...]

February 10, 2005

Ralph Rapson's Rapid Rocker, Re-Introduced

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,...
[read the full post...]

Oh! Chair, Oh! Walker, Oh! Jungle Gym

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...
[read the full post...]

February 3, 2005

God Bless You And Your Sweet $300 Maple Crib

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...
[read the full post...]

January 20, 2005

NY Times' Designer Crib-a-palooza

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...
[read the full post...]

January 19, 2005

Who's The Genius Who Invented The Crib Bumper?

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...
[read the full post...]

December 28, 2004

Womb House, by Atelier van Lieshout

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...
[read the full post...]

December 20, 2004

A Tray For The Stokke Kinderzeat

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...
[read the full post...]

December 12, 2004

Bellini Crib Rated #1 [Among Politicians On The Take]

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...
[read the full post...]

November 28, 2004

The Modernist Nursery

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...
[read the full post...]

November 15, 2004

Oh, Oh, Got To Go To Kid O

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...]

October 17, 2004

My Pretty Expensive Pony

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...]

Sweet Modernist Oak and Steel High Chair

[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...]

October 15, 2004

Not Your Grandmother's Glider--Finally

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...]

October 14, 2004

Rietveld Early Modern High Chairs

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 Gerrit Rietveld was designing childrens' versions of his modernist, geometric chairs....
[read the full post...]

October 11, 2004

Obligatory IKEA Caveats

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....
[read the full post...]

Totally Decent IKEA High Chairs

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...
[read the full post...]

October 5, 2004

Stitch'T: Quilts Made From Your Old T-Shirts

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...
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September 23, 2004

The Caring Cot: Pampers Wants To Replace You With A Robot

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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September 22, 2004

Glow-in-the-Dark Nursery Rugs

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....
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September 20, 2004

Yow Baby, or If You Fancy A Shag...

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...
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September 14, 2004

Where all the vintage Stokke Kinderzeats at?

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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August 22, 2004

Lab-quality Stainless Steel Crib

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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August 21, 2004

Pop-up Travel Beds

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...
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August 19, 2004

Marshmallow vs. Baby Rack

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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The Kid's Room is a Tent

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....
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August 8, 2004

Japanese Hotel Crib

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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July 22, 2004

Adopt the kid, Adopt the decor?

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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July 21, 2004

Antique Cradle from Iowa

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...
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July 17, 2004

Chinese Bamboo Strollers, Orphanage Gear

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...
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July 14, 2004

Awesome Scrapwood Crib by Piet Hein Eek

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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July 5, 2004

Sweet Arts & Crafts Crib, Bedding

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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Hang-out Baby Lounger, by Oeuf

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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Whoa. Japanese Recliner Bed/Chair

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...
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June 29, 2004

The Classic-est Crib

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....
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June 22, 2004

Ikea, therefore I am.

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...
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June 17, 2004

Molded, Modern, Modular Bed for Kids

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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2-Seat Share Chair

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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June 16, 2004

Atelier Van Lieshout's 'Bad Furniture' Crib

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...
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June 5, 2004

Nest 2: High Chair Boogaloo

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:...
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May 31, 2004

Canadian Changing Table Superstore

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...
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Birch-ply Utility Cart/Changing Cart

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...
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Tall Grass Crib

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...
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May 30, 2004

Eames Rocker: The Modern Solution

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.
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May 29, 2004

TRUCK "Built-By-Me" Children's Rocker

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...
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May 22, 2004

Vintage (seriously) Ikea Highchair

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...
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May 19, 2004

Three Centuries of Kids Gear at the Wadsworth Atheneum

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...
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May 13, 2004

Baby Furniture Cool Enough for the Dutch

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...
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May 11, 2004

Japanese Low Chairs

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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May 7, 2004

Play Table by Marcel Wanders

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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May 6, 2004

Jean Prouve Cradle

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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April 29, 2004

Nest: A High Chair for a Shagpad

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...
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April 2, 2004

Baby Bjorn Babysitter 1-2-3

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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March 24, 2004

Baby Sheets: Boring isn't the Problem

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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March 16, 2004

Um, Gay Manhattan Dad wants a La-Z-Boy?

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...
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Modern Seed: way modern design for kids

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...
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Stokke Tripp Trapp, aka the KinderZeat high chair

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...
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March 10, 2004

Baby Furniture for your SoHo loft

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...
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February 21, 2004

Jeep Sahara Limited XT portable crib

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...
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February 13, 2004

Industrial Changing Tables

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....
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