i not dead

A dear out-of-town friend used to tease me about how bad I am about staying in touch, particularly when I get swamped with work and other projects. She'd laughingly beg me to just at least send her a post card every couple of months, letting her know I was still alive. "It'll only take a minute," she'd point out. "Just three words will cover it: 'I not dead.'"

So consider this post my postcard to you.

I'll be back pretty soon, once things quiet back down. And I've got great stuff to share! Bob and I finally had an open house / house warming / house blessing celebration a couple weekends ago, and we'll soon have a complete Flickr slideshow to share of the before, during, and after of our renovation project, along with stories to share from the open house event itself. And, beyond that, I've still got photos for you from two cool modern house tours I attended, plus a bunch of other things I've stumbled across and been mulling over in the last few weeks. So hang in there, dear readers!

Meanwhile, we're in an interesting state, both luxuriating in our beautiful new house (and the feeling of being finally finished with thinking of the house as a project on our to-do list) and also frantically trying to get caught up on the work, etc., that we got behind on while getting the house ready to open up to all our friends and neighbors.

Just a little... bit... longer... though, and things will finally be back to normal. See you soon!

old school lighting gets revved up

How fun are these red utility pendant lights from CB2!?

landscape lighting: playing with Japanese lanterns

Two cool outdoor projects recently came to my attention, both of which took a Japanese lantern and transformed it into something completely new.

Thanks goes to Juliane Evans for highlighting this first one on her blog. It's a Martha Stewart project, in which these light sculptures were created from bamboo poles, strings of white lights, and stacked Japanese paper lanterns. Placing them by the pool like this, however, adds a whole other dimension. Brilliant! In more way than one. :)

Photo courtesy of MarthaStewart.com.

This second project is a shed that was created by Barry Bless and Jennifer Watson on the grounds of their vacation home in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Amerherst, Virginia. They were inspired not only by the modern lines and luminous quality of their Rocio Romero kit home, but also by traditional Japanese paper lanterns. They used translucent fiberglass panels to create this effect. By day, sunlight filters in, providing natural lighting inside the shed. At night, flip a switch inside the house, and this utilitarian shed is transformed into a sculptural accent that lights up the landscape. Big thanks to our friend Leigh for sending Bob the link to Bless and Watson's "Luminhaus" website!

Night photos: Dwell. Daytime photo: Richmond Magazine.

Both of these beautiful projects are getting me excited for this October, when the third annual InLight Richmond will be held downtown, featuring temporary indoor and outdoor art installations -- all inspired by and/or utilizing light as the medium. Both of the above projects are reminiscent of some of the smaller-scale works I saw there last year. (To view images from last year, poke around the InLight website.)

Sunset idea house: barn-style

Stumbled across photos of the Sunset Monterey Bay Idea House recently. With it's barn-like look and interesting textures inside and out, I couldn't resist posting a few of the images here...

cool wall decor

In a mod kind of mood? This nifty wall decor might be just up your alley. Combine sets of these paintable Wallter retro slats and stick them on your wall for dramatic effect.

fabric designs of Lucienne Day

We spent last weekend in Washington, D.C., celebrating Bob's birthday. The highlight of the weekend for me was our trip to the Textile Museum, where they're currently exhibiting a collection of mid-century decorating fabrics -- mostly ones by the groundbreaking British designer, Lucienne Day. What a delight it was perusing this collection! It truly felt like we were looking at art.

Image courtesy of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Something of a design celebrity in the 1950's and 60's, Lucienne made a name for herself designing fabrics that brought a colorful, modern sensibility to formerly gloomy post-war British living rooms. Her first big hit was "Calyx" (above), which she designed for a Festival of Britain dining room exhibit by her husband, furniture designer Robin Day. Heal, the fabric house she designed for, was so convinced that they wouldn't be able to sell this unusual new pattern, that they only paid her half her typical design fee. "Calyx" took the decorating world by storm, however, and ultimately Heal not only paid the other half of her fee but also went on to print and sell many more of her designs in this same vein.

Lucienne's subsequent fabrics continued what she introduced in Calyx: Playful and humorous abstract renditions of subjects from the natural world. An illustrated look inspired by modern artists such as Klee and Kandinsky. And cleverly disguised repeats that helped make the designs feel more like art, less like "patterns".

Over time, her signature look evolved, and she began introducing more geometrics -- in the form of typography, as broad blocks of color underlying the illustrations, and ultimately with large geometric shapes taking center stage.

If you fall in love with Lucienne Day's designs, you can purchase reproductions of some of her fabrics from the Glasgow School of Art (the source of the above images, except where noted). Expect to pay 75 pounds per meter, which works out to about $115 per yard at today's exchange rate. Or, save some money and instead get yourself a copy of Robin and Lucienne Day: Pioneers in Modern Design, available from Amazon.