Category archive: furniture

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...
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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 Roger 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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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??...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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]...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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]...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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'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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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."...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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?...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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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