Martin Pierce Hardware

Inspired by natural forms, sculptor-designer Martin Pierce's first collection of bronze cast hardware and cabinet pulls adds substance and beauty to some of the most utilized but often overlooked areas of furniture and interiors. Using the ancient lost-wax casting method, the British-born, Los Angeles-based furniture-maker (in collaboration with his wife Anne) crafts pieces of exceptional detail and diverse texture.

Above: the trumpet flower, dragonfly, sycamore leaf, fiddlehead, and mushroom cabinet pulls from the Flora and Animal lines.
Below: matching heroic door pulls from the Hedgerow line (inspired by the English gardens of Pierce's youth).

Planning 2007

Where did 2006 go?!? Having missed the opportunity to shop for a decent wall calendar at the beginning of this year (as I was up to my eyeballs in work and didn't even realize it was 2006 until mid-February), I ended up preemptively purchasing my 2007 calendar on a work-sponsored shopping spree at the bookstore last month. Although it's quite cute (the TeNeues Retromodern calendar with patterns by Susan Eslick, which at least three people think is very me), I'm still on the prowl for something a bit more unique. Two possibilities from the MoMA online store:

Phases of the Moon
A modern and rather literal interpretation of the traditional moon phase calendar, this large-format wall-hanger tracks the waxing and waning of the moon in elegant silver arcs. Usually available at the MoMA online store, but it appears to be out of stock at the moment.


Jumping Point
Colorful and efficient, this interactive calendar allows you to mark the passage of days (and highlight occasions) by punching out each specific date's dot to reveal the color underneath.

Gifts for the Technophile

Bringing us one step closer to the cool, isolationist dystopia of a Gibsonian future, today's personal gear is all about multi-tasking on the move.

Oakley's Thump Sunglasses ($229) integrate fashion, shade, and sound in one package—apart from the standard flip-up lenses and ergonomic design, the Thump stores up to 120 songs on 512 megs of memory, plays six hours of sound (from a single charge) on adjustable Mylar speakers, and comes with a USB cable for efficient file transfer (Windows and Mac compatible). So I suppose it's only a matter of time until they come up with a version that allows you to channel the mirror-eyed Molly and watch video on the inner surface of the lenses.

And keeping you lean, green, and mobile, the tri-petal Solio Solar Power Charger ($100) stores eight to ten hours of solar power and works with mobile phones, PDAs, MP3s, digital cameras, gaming devices, and GPS units. Very new technology may require adaptors, but these will probably be the same as those required for standard chargers.

And on the homefront, Bang and Olufsen's A9 Keyring ($80) doubles as a miniature remote control that extends the "smart house" integration of the Beo 4. Beautifully and ergonomically designed (like all other B&O products), the A9 allows the user to turn the radio, TV, and lights off/on with one button press as they leave or arrive at their home.

Jeroen Verhoeven + Demakersvan

Expected to sell for up to US$60,000 at the Sotheby's December 15 auction of "Important 20th Century Design" pieces in New York, Jeroen Verhoeven's Cinderella table is a creative gem among thousands of attempts by young industrial designers to fuse historical inspiration and modern technology.

While most furniture designers today are using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) to create perfected cookie-cutter pieces, Verhoeven and his group Demakersvan ("Themakersof," composed of twin brother Joep Verhoeven and Design Academy schoolmate Judith de Graauw) use CAD-CAM to construct beautiful, complex designs that convey the feel of old-school craftmanship even as they push the limits of the technology to generate bold, new forms.

Based on the aesthetic of 17th and 18th century Dutch furniture, the seemingly freeform Cinderella table is composed of 57 individual slices (a total of 741 layers) of birch plywood, designed, manufactured, and assembled via CAD-CAM and then finished by hand. Other Cinderella tables in the series (of 20) have already been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Despite their success in the art world, Verhoeven and company have said that they do not wish for their work to be locked away in museums forever. They are currently working on having many of their pieces, such as their popular How to Plant a Fence (designed with the aid of Dutch bobbin-lace artisans), manufactured more inexpensively in India so as to make their work accessible to the general public.