Green Desk Inabstracto

Following the success of their sleek, blue, compact 001 desk—perfectly scaled for condo use– Toronto’s Projector Design has now released a second desk, the handsome green 002 desk, designed by Chris Stevenson and Matt Conacher.

The desk’s high-gloss sides are …

Design We Love – Venice Chairs

These exquisite, custom-made, classical Venice chairs from Industrial Storm somehow manage to epitomize both modernist severity and economy of line with with a luxurious sense of timeless, old-world comfort. The chairs come in two models (one slightly larger than the …

Design We Love – Trinity Bed from StyleGarage

Design we love – Verso Contemporary Pendant Lamps.

As gorgeous as Industrial Storm’s hanging lights are, they are admittedly quite expensive. For those who don’t want to put quite so much into a lamp, there is this sleek alternative–at designer Julie Jenkinson’s Verso.  These contemporary grey, steel, pendant …

Design We Love – Industrial Storm

These exquisitely designed and crafted hanging lamps from Sterling and Son, New York–and available at Toronto’s Industrial Storm–feature glass canopies and metal liners.  The lamps come in three sizes, with diameters of 18 inches, 23.25 inches and 31 inches.  …

Design we love: Lotte lamps at INabstracto

We dropped in to INabstracto a few days ago to chat with owner Kate Eisen, and it was only when we were leaving that we noticed the delicious still-life she had made from grouping five Lotte lamps together on a …

Design we love: Julie Jenkinson of Verso

Designer Julie Jenkinson has just opened her own small and charming design shop at the rear of Kate Eisen’s INabstracto. The place is wittily called Verso (as in “what is on the other side of the page?”). We spoke …

Design we love: Kate Eisen of INabstracto

Kate Eisen’s store, INabstracto: Mid Century Modern Furniture & Design, is as much a design museum and gallery as it is a retail outlet for historically significant design objects. We talked to her a few days ago about what INabstracto …

Design we love: an old wagon jack?

We saw this strange rustic object in Robin Fraser’s shop–called REC + ART HISTORY–on Queen West last week. He explained that it was a wagon jack, for hoisting up your wagon and fixing its ailing wheel. It has a …

Design we love: chandelier feathers

At Symbolist, an intriguing and always mysterious second-hand store at 1080 Queen Street West, there is a big basket filled with these charming metal feathers. They cost a mere $3.00 each, and while they once apparently graced a chandelier …

Design we love: Industrial Storm’s cracked coffee table

This lean, noble table–Industrial Storm‘s Cracked Coffee Table–is visually powerful enough to be regarded as both furniture and sculpture. Described by Industrial Storm’s Hanson Tan as “Asian inspired with a contemporary sensibility,” the table features a top …

Design we love: Freitag messenger bags

The Swiss design firm Freitag has been creating its unique, ecologically impeccable line of bags since 1993. They are made of recycled truck tarpaulins, unraveled seat belts, old bicycle inner tubes and recycled airbags. The company’s Top Cat bag is …

Design we love: Is driftwood making a comeback?

We remember (admittedly, it was quite a long time ago) when driftwood was considered to be a really chic design accent–people were putting soft, sinuous hunks of it here and there (on mantlepieces, on bookshelves, in the corners of rooms). …

Design we love: Herman Miller meets Julie Jenkinson

Here’s a charming example of revitalization. For her sprightly reimagining of  classic Herman Miller seating designs from the 1970s (by Don Chadwick), Toronto-based designer Julie Jenkinson has reupholstered the chairs in her crisp Animaze fabric, silkscreening her drawings onto 100% …

Design we love: Prairie tables

What might first appear as mere abstract detailing in the eccentric shapes of these sleek, white, interlocking tables turns out to have geographic meaning: the tables, which have MDF tops and solid ash legs, actually come in the shape of …

Design we love: black cat lamp

We were both attracted and, at first, a bit put off by the funky directness of this little lamp. Its tasteful black shade is profoundly belied by the body of the map—which is a feral-looking black cat-made of fired clay!…

Design we love: Buddha machines

Maybe there ought to be a column in this blog called Design That Simply Catches Our Fancy—a place to explore objects that, while they may not kick the history of design ahead by much, are, nevertheless, attractive and pleasing.

Like …

Design we love: the Duke lamp

This guileless-looking but somehow cheerfully forceful lamp–the Duke table lamp by Salgado Saucier of Milford, Pennsylvania–is made of resin with a silk shade. According to Hanson Tan of Industrial Storm you can have the lamp “in any colour in the …

Design we love: horse brasses at Index G Gallery

This personable cat is a typical example of what are known as horse brasses – that is, solid brass castings used as tackle fasteners and sometimes just as decoration for parade horses. They were at the height of their popularity …

Design we love: the Luna table

“We live our lives in the middle of things. Material culture carries emotions and ideas of startling intensity. Yet only recently have objects begun to receive the attention they
deserve.”
-Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (MIT Press, …

Design we love: the GT rocker

We were struck by the clean, classic beauty of this modernist rocking chair at STYLEGARAGE on Queen Street West. We grew even more impressed when we found the sleek—and almost absurdly comfortable chair—was designed and built right on the premises.…