My home was once featured on Apartment Therapy DC and in the interview I said I like the idea of designing with freedom being the inspiration. Upon reading the interview I realized what I said made no sense because I didn't expand on it and I came off as crazy. What I should have said is that I'm inspired by American symbols of freedom, such as red, white and blue, and eagles.
I think placing dramatic eagles in your interior is a way to reference freedom without hanging a flag above your sofa.
Here are some eagle items I think are especially beautiful and convey freedom without being over the top.
This is a gorgeous 18th c. Italian carved and gilt eagle holding a placard. Available through the Kevin Stone gallery.
Here's an eagle made in the USA in the late 19th century. Carved and painted, this piece is dramatic and dynamic. Available through the Outsider Folk Art Gallery.
A pair of eagle lamps via LUM. Price tag: $2,600.00 for the pair. Ouch! I can hear my wallet screaming from my purse. Still gorgeous and bold though.
One of my favorite eagle pieces I've come across, a French eagle podium placed in a Charles Faudree interior.
Excuse the crude image, it's a scan from House Beautiful. But it is a piece that speaks for itself as a free-standing sculpture.
And finally my FAVORITE eagle piece that I had to dig out of my "archives" (that's fancy for magazine clippings) to find the image.
Another scanned image and I have no idea where I found it, but isn't it impressive? So dynamic. This piece would define any entry way. When I hit it big, I am going to find one of these for my own home.
Now that's a statement piece. Aboriginal art meets grandma's junk jewelry drawer.
Noble House Designs is selling this beauty for $150 on Etsy. You could rock this necklace with a simple black dress and... that's it! Outfit complete! You can thank me for all of the compliments later.
The third installment on the third week! I did it! This time I bring you good tidings of the great joy I found in researching the “nesting” practices of the beautiful Bowerbird!
Bowerbirds, native to Australia and New Guinea, are my all-time favorite birds because of their elaborate mating rituals. All right, ya’ll. Hold onto your mice. (Mouses?) Because things are about to get steamy up in here.
First the male begins by building a “bower” which looks sort of like a short hallway/hut made of reeds and sticks. Sometimes he’ll even paint the walls of the bower with a mix of chewed up plant material and saliva that he applies to the surface with a leaf. Yeah, that’s right. This bird has got some mad regurgitating and smearing skillz. Then the male gathers things like stones, feathers, bits of plastic and tin foil, and fusses over arranging a colorful display around his bower while he waits for a lady friend to arrive. These carefully curated courtship “avenues” aren’t meant to be where they raise their young, however. Because the males are pretty plain in the feather department (unlike the flashy red male cardinals, for instance), the bower is intended to be the main attraction in enticing as many females over to his place as possible. The more experienced “lovers” tend to be older males who have been doing this sort of thing for a while, so their bachelor pads look nicer and more organized than the younger dudes down the block. Sometimes they’ll even steal things from their competition's collection, or even destroy their rival’s crib altogether. Man, that’s cold! I love the idea of the guy being the decorator in this scenario and the gal deciding which one she wants to get with based purely on how meticulously he lays out his wares. Once the lady decides this gentleman has got it goin’ on, she is lured across the threshold of his bower, and the mating can begin. Cue the Barry White music…
Old Faithful Shop is selling this adorable set of Totem Cups. Stackable so the design can be changed 4!.... yes I just inserted a math equation... sorry about that.
Illustrator, graphic designer, and knitter of these cool wrist worms, Sandra Juto lives in Berlin but is Swedish by birth. She has an online portfolio where she features the bulk of her work, a blog where she posts daily snapshots, and a Big Cartel shop for her prints and yarn-based products. I’ve had her “favorite-d” for quite some time now, and have found the photographs of her beautiful every day to be the most inspiring.
The look of her pictures is so clean and crisp, clear and gray, bright and optimistic. Lately the photos have leaned heavily on tabletops spread with sumptuous looking food, whether homemade or out on the town. (Those Euros really know how to eat—cheese and greens with every meal? Yes, please!) Others feature still moments from her studio and the lovely wet walks in between. All of them make me want to hop a plane to Berlin immediately.
Shown above getting held up while shopping for modern furniture has amazed and schooled me from the first day I met her. When I entered my graduate program I falsely believed I was special because I cared about decorative arts and knew more about the history of decorative arts then anyone I knew. Well, I was in for a surprise. In my program everyone loves decorative arts, hence the title of the program (MA in the History of Decorative Arts), and Kait seems to always know more about them then anyone.
I posted about arrows recently and Kait, the most amazing finder of all finders, facebooked me this:
A silver Navajo spoon with arrow handle from approximately 1930. Reblogged from here. So looks like arrows in design pre-date 2011 and we are just repeating a motif from the past.
Post your arrow finds in the comments section and put me to shame.
I’ve recently decided that I no longer want to read movie reviews before paying $14 to see anything in the theaters. Choosing to spend that chunk of change on a night out at the movies, I always hope that it will be worth the commitment. But sometimes I can’t help myself. When I get really excited about something, I want to read everything I can about it, and often that leads to soaring expectations that end in a crashing let down.
Rarely do I get the opportunity to go into a movie knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going to play out before me on screen. All I knew going into this one was what I gleaned from the movie posters on the subway: Ryan Gosling was in it. (Eh, ok. I’ve seen The Notebook. But his presence alone in a film has never been enough to pique my interest in actually seeing it.) He was probably going to be driving somewhere. And Carey Mulligan was also in it. (She is awesome. I have been on a Carey Mulligan kick as of late. Never Let Me Go was REALLY heartbreakingly beautiful. An Education was also lovely. I have not seen Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. And I probably never will.) She was enough of a draw to make me want to see what this Drive was all about.
So this is not meant to be a review of Drive by any means. I detest spoilers (and their alerts!), and I hate when people get me amped about a movie that can’t possibly deliver on such glowing praise. But I just have to tell you that I walked out of the film last Thursday night feeling completely euphoric. And I’m still going on about it to anyone who’ll listen. And now you’re my captive audience. MWA-HA-HA-HA! So here it is in 1000 words or less. Why Drive was the most perfect movie ever made:
The soundtrack.
The music had a very 80s synth-pop feel, and each song felt as if it was created specifically for the scene it soared into. Every tune was better than the last. I have listened to these three on steady repeat for the last two days and I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon. It was perfect.
The love story.
Usually I am the first to pick bones with the evolution of a relationship on film not being convincing enough. Often they could use one or two more scenes to really demonstrate a connection being established between two characters, but this was not the case in Drive. Micky and I have actually been debating this all weekend (it was his only little issue with the film, which he agrees was otherwise perfect), but I think the romance between the Gosling and Mulligan characters was unusually and flawlessly conveyed with very few words and many long silent stretches that were full of electricity. It was poetry.
The tension.
In so many ways Drive was a good old-fashioned heist movie. The moments between the crashes and the bloody explosions had me holding my breath and pressing my hand to my throat more than the actual “action” shots themselves. Gosling played a completely cool James Dean-type, a wanderer with no past and no future. He was an unflappable professional who you had complete confidence would get the job done. Parked and waiting in one scene, the seconds of his watch ticking closer to the five minute deadline, you see him suddenly tighten his grip on the steering wheel and you realize he’s starting to lose his cool. The sound of his leather driving gloves rubbing against the steering wheel was a subtle gesture that precisely conveyed a sense of impending danger. It was profound.
