big fish little fish _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _/ _ _ _ shaky home for the night under Elephant & Castle subway _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _/ _ _ _
The following cardboard related memories from being a wean still pertinently corrugate in my thoughts today…
- An apple ‘crate like’ card board box was my boat
- The Fyfe banana cardboard box housed my beano collection
- Clarkes shoe boxes became open top apartments that allowed my 2 inch high plasticine people to mingle & network
- Stuffing as much cotton wool into my father’s empty match box as I could, plopping a blob of red sauce & mushing it in, preceded only by making an untidy and impatient hole in the back to squash my finger through. All executed with a mischievous glee that I innocently held in abundance as a child …
natalie doris: oooohhh wonna see a dead finger? yeah?!!
“shuffly card board box sound”
natalie doris’ mother*: oh heck!!!
natalie doris: tee hee hee!!.. ere sis!!! you wonna see a dead finger?!
natalie doris’ sis: Aye!
“shuffly card board box sound”
natalie doris: woooarrrrhhh. tee hee hee!! MUMMY! – we’re goin’ out now…yeah i’m gonna knock on mrs wright’s door to show her my dead finger, tee hee hee!!!
(*please note it was natalie doris’ mother that just moments before showed natalie doris the step by step way of how to make a dead finger…)
yup cardboard boxes made homes for all sorts of unusual thingimajigs… and I have probably only touched upon the disposed wonderment these (often crumpled and gnawed containers) exerted.
Its sad, I never see kids make dead fingers anymore… maybe cos less parents smoke and have match boxes lying around? I would love it if a child came round and knocked on my door and said ‘hiya, wonna see a dead finger?’ but things like that don’t happen anymore … the love of cardboard is still there with smaller kids for sure, but when do they have nothing else to play with apart from cardboard? By the gappy teeth age (8yrs old) all is lost as spare time= playstation 2’s and grand theft 4’s.
Playing with cardboard is essentially a ridiculous concept and 8yr olds now just cant be seen as ridiculous…
…perhaps I shouldn’t say this but my very first cardboard experience (even though I was too young to remember) was my ‘first drawer’ of baby clothes – it was actually a cardboard box decorated with silks and frills…times were hard in the ghetto** y’know and I had an extremely creative and ingenious mother who made everything beautiful…I wish she had taken a picture of this box but sadly she never. I properly nuzzle down in imagination as to how it looked on the occasions my mum decides to repeat the story of how she got everything ready before I decided to make an appearance
**albeit not as ghetto as this
Cardboard box and life eh? PERSONAL stuff. Personal I discover to Andy Warhol too. During the last 13 years of his life, Andy kept a cardboard box beside his desk at all times, filling it up with things that cluttered his workspace. Once filled he sealed it,archived it and turned it into a piece of art. read more here
Oh ok OK!.. nuff of me nattering on about where I draw cardboard inspiration from… you want to peak at the cardboard design goodies I have hoisted from internet…you wanna see cardboard like you never saw cardboard before. Top 10 time…
- Dutch design peeps (HUH) again lead the way in shedding light on cardboard
- marvellous cardboard tea and cake bar in East London (where else?)
- for those that fancy an upmarket night on a park bench? All in the safety of yer own home…nobody battering you awake in the middle of the night to steal that £5.63 its taken you 4 days to gather..
- Miss Julia, au francaise j’taime your cardboard furniture click on mobilier link, then installation link to see!
- i’m bored of cardboard… ok perhaps swig some liquid cardboard through your eye , may perk ya up?
- i’m still bored nat, i need blood!! ok, what about going out on a eco killing spree and bringing back cardboard safari?
- there is a ton of cardboard furniture out there to choose from, tho I think the soft paper collection by molo design based in vancouver exceeds all (tho the miss julia collection is dear to my heart!)
- IF I SEE ANOTHER EMPTY LOO ROLL SITTING ON THE FLOOR BESIDE THE TOILET, I SWEAR…FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY CANT YOU JUST PUT IT IN THE BIN?!…um cos i’m making this.
- y’know my limited ‘dead finger’ imagination as a child never took me to making a flying cardboard carpet… I love these eastern silk screen prints, could quite possibly be the coolest thing I have found in this whole blog piece…
- Nothing is an ideas company (in yes the Netherlands! Of course the blooming Netherlands…I should start calling this the ‘Dutch blog’ the filthy amount of dutch design I highlight) Alas Nothing commissioned an office from the said ‘nothing’ type material to amazing never seen before results . And they ask their visitors to have a wee scribble on the furniture. Oh you school teacher bawlbags, if only you had THE VISION in our cloaked classrooms…we may have grown up slightly more at ease with ourselves and less stoked…
Alas I can only try and remedy my current life’s study/work space…I am presently making designs to build my own desk over the next couple of months, and have decided that all my files and folders visible in the desk vicinity will be cardboard. (Haven’t went as far as cardboard desk but who knows?) At the mo, I’m excited enough to be purchasing brown cardboard archive boxes to be shelved tidily above my desk space. Dearly tempted to make neat perforations in the front, yes, I am a HUAAge fan of MeBox and am unashamed of the blatant unoriginality in my perforated DIY archive box quest.
There is only one exception to the cardboard box rule for me…the cardboard box I truthfully distaste is the one you get in the post asking you to build it and then put all your spondulas in it. I have 1 filled to the brim on my desk, but I’m darned if I can be arsed to send all those 2ps to Africa. So alas I have a constant crappy shaped and laden box with a pic of an unfortunate child with big sad eyes constantly looking at me as I google restaurants and the like…cant throw the thing out cos its for Africa like… I just wish there were better ways to help those people than them obligatory & tasteless trinkets. Actually I just remembered a better way… in 1985 my mate from school Emily watched Live Aid. The next morning she got out her half eaten cardboard box of cornflakes, sealed the top up with sticky tape, wrote ‘to afrika” on the front and crushed it into her local postbox. Oh to be THAT postman. Bliss
To put it simply and conclude, everyone should be allowed unashamedly to explore cardboard, ideally starting at a very young age. Kids & cardboard merge together very well.
Well almost the same thing in place called Japan…
ND
Filed under: Art & Design
OK I wasn’t planning on doing a post just yet, but I was sort of catapulted into this one for 2 reasons;
1. My van has broken down and I find myself relying on the bus
2. I happened across an amazing Russian bus stop the other day while I was snooping the net and it sort of rocked my socks off.
So yes, as I feel Northern Ireland is lacking in bus stop design, I thought I would investigate how other countries around the world address the issue of ‘waiting’.
Filed under: Art & Design
What is it about the Netherlands and very favourable cutting edge eco design? (more…)
Filed under: Art & Design
And no we aren’t talking about Mickey Stone proclaiming that his storming of Stormont was a performance piece. (more…)
Filed under: Art & Design
Yes, I am a sucker for retro design, which is why I often wonder what is going to happen to the wonderful televisions like this one*, that one* & this other one* by 2010. Our video art forefather Nam June Paik who died in 2006 will obviously not be present for the digital handover. However, I feel he has already left us a fitting answer to my question in his piece Alexander Graham Bell.
What does the future hold for retro design in the digital handover?
Filed under: Art & Design
Thinking about it, the octopus is such an obvious creature to infuse with the honored chandelier, yet very few would contemplate melting the two together due to lack of imagination on their part. Adam Wallacavage has that imagination, and is not afraid to hang it from the ceiling. His opening collection starts with this gold & green dixie la rue
His careful use of brass and shells ensure these wonderful objects are not borne to the family of tacky seaside trinkets. Far from it, these are the chandeliers that you could envisage hanging from the royal halls of Atlantis. Well, maybe I am getting a little carried away… though they are certainly chic enough to be seen in a James Bond Movie. (Yes Octopussy, I just had to get that in hee hee!)
With Medusa Adam collaborates with Jodi Rice to produce a chandelier just that little bit darker in artistic mood. You will also notice the ceiling rose/medallion if you slide along to number 5 on the collection of pics on Adam’s website . Now, can you spot in this picture the amazing owls! I don’t know if Adam creates these too, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Perfect in symmetry, these owls blend gently with the accepted shapes that these ceiling medallions often boast. It provides a wonderful focal point past the chandelier and truly celebrates the ceiling that we paupers often leave bare. I could easily find myself lying on the floor and looking up at this particular chandelier, not moving for at least a week and not getting the slightest bit bored.
The finale has to be Fenicologia (I think you have to slide along to photo 19 to see this number) where Adam collaborates with the successful accessory designer Tarina Tarantino. The outcome is a very precise ensemble of pearls to complement Adam’s clever use of octopus legs and starfish, producing this gloriously beautiful and elegant sea delight. Or looking at it another way, if you had a machine that could genetically splice an octopus, a chandelier and Barbara Cartland together this is the result, and more to the point it is exactly this reason as to why it captivates me so much!
Design can be about clever splicing, didn’t you know?!
Doris
Filed under: Art & Design
Graham Sykes and Robert Walmsley are young brave lads from the north of England, pioneering in design briefs and making us fully aware of the difference between ugly and outstanding typeface. They have commandeered as a uniform design duo teacake
A blog (from the hills) provides a wonderful reflection of how their nifty design work is filled with a deep personal passion. tesco i hate you a piece which I feel reinstates this fact as it has obviously not been a commissioned piece…unless Mister Sainsbury’s has been on the ringer to them!
I also like their confidence in posting up prototypes of commissioned work for us to peer and hopefully see how they develop. One such first stage they make public is for a personal stylist called Lucy Long.
Further to this they also blog about the things that inspire them. And our webblog being what it is, we appreciate this ever so much. As important as it is to get to the final brand stage, and however fantastic the branding is in engaging us about its identity; it only really hits home to us mere mortals when we are given the chance to observe the detail in the particular design journey. These young men seem to effortlessly carry you with them on their blue print voyage and I am utterly on tender hooks to see how they develop over the next ten years.
Doris
Filed under: Art & Design
Can true design exist without choice? Surely design evolves through competition, just like natural selection? And further to this as the Groove Armada sort of said, if everything looked the same, we’d get tired at looking at …each thing.
I am pontificating particularly on design in the home. Now if you live in Northern Ireland and have a limited budget, you couldn’t look much further than Au Natural, Argos, MFI or DFS. Then IKEA plopped its boxed blue self beside Belfast City Airport last December. Now we are not saying that there are some right good designers working for Ikea, what I am saying is give us more credit, we are still living in a design drought! We feel Ikea is so 7 years ago now and for various political reasons we seriously missed the boat there. (How we hate it when politics interferes with design!!) So, the crux of my vain is how long will a town like Belfast have to wait for unto this last
Yes Ikea has certainly tempted people in opening the drawer to the world of fashionable and reasonably priced storage. Draw near those who have been seduced..now is the time to take a look at these honeycomb shelves, and what about these rather retro LP shelves!! Keep it simple and demand design.
Doris
