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% …

The French Line at Lafayette Bistro

Great French food is not all that easy to find—nor is it easy to find a warm, comfortable, persuasively French provincial bistro that can provide it. Our answer is the snug little Lafayette Bistro in the Queen West village area, …

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 …

“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuities. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver.

Art we love: Sacred and Profane Love (Self-Portrait II) by Harold Klunder

Harold Klunder is everywhere regarded as one of Canada’s most powerful painters.  His latest exhibition, Black Sun, now at the Clint Roenisch Gallery is a remarkable experience, both for the majestic trio of paintings making up the Black Sun …

Art We Love: Ominous Footpath by Susanna Heller

Veteran painter Susanna Heller–Canadian born, educated at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and now living in New York City (where she has lived, in fact, for many years now)–is a maker of exceedingly vigorous, searching, …

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 …

Art we love: Art Brownies

These hotly coloured, inventively composed mini-blocks of art activity are, in fact, Art Brownies: small, unique works of art made by various artists, both local and international, on one standard format, each Art Brownie being a mini-canvas consisting of a …

John Petcoff of Little Lennox

As well as being a tireless and successful restauranteur–see our video about his seafood eatery, Oyster Boy–John Petcoff is also passionate about art and about running a gallery.

His former art gallery, Lennox International, was at Queen West and …

John Petcoff of Oyster Boy

You’d never figure that a guy from northern Ontario, from Espanola–where there isn’t an oyster to be found anywhere–would become an internationally recognized expert on that most succulent of shellfish. But that’s what restauranteur and art gallery-owner John Petcoff has …

Art we love: About the River by Thrush Holmes

When a relatively unknown, soft-spoken, 26 year old artist with the lyrical name of Thrush Holmes (his full name …

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.…

Art we love: Tabletop DNA by Bradley Harms

We think this large (77 by 54 inches) acrylic by Winnipeg-born, Vancouver-based painter Bradley Harms is really pretty hot. It’s titled Tabletop DNA.

This airy, open-hearted painting, as absorbing and as intimately inspectable as a game-board, is something of a …