Sandwiches

WALNUT ARMADILLO IN PRODUCTION

So you really like the original Armadillo coffee table in steel but, if you’re gonna be honest about it, it’s just a bit too, oh, steely for you. Well, sometimes we know how you feel. You want something a little woody, a little more homey, a touch more old-timey. Well, relax and kick your feet up because we made this table just for you.

BIG CHIP'S BADASS PLYWOOD SKULL

You've probably guessed (if you've even thought about it at all) that we don't own all of the machines used to make our furniture. Press brake? No, sir. Water-jet? Are you fucking crazy? CNC? Nope. For that last bit—Computer Numeric Controlled cutting of our MDF Roadrunner chair and new MDF Roadrunner stools—we send the CAD files to a local shop called Denver Woodworking. We went down there today to preview our new stools (totally awesome) and saw this mind-blowing piece. It's a laminated plywood skull made with incredible attention to detail. According to Chip, the CNC-whiz who's working on it, it'll be part of a 12-foot full skeleton he's making for his lawn in time for next Halloween. The skull alone is about two-feet tall and totally dialed in every respect. Damien Hirst should stick to pickling sharks—when it comes to skulls he can't touch our man Chip.

HOLY SHIT! ROADRUNNER STOOLS IN SOLID WALNUT!

We're making the oiled MDF version of these gorgeous lads now but we just couldn't wait another few days to post these up. If they were any hotter they'd be on fire. In solid walnut, of course, with stainless steel footrests on the counter and bar versions. And since we were never sure why backless stools have no seat slope front to back (to mimic the slope in your legs with your feet on the footrest) we added one—and it turns out we were right: it's way better. In fact, these may be the best stools ever made. Ever. We're crazy? Show us a better one—more comfortable in a backless style, better looking—and we'll tell you you're crazy. So there. They'll be priced slightly below their brother, the Roadrunner chair, as soon as we add them to the shop section of the site.

FUN WITH GOOGLE TRANSLATE: PART 2 (LEBEN.AUDENA.DE)

The second—and final for now—installment in our funny web-translation posts. This time from a German blog, handsome and worthy again, called leben.audena.de. The strange bits about dessert in the translation (like the layer of "nougat" in our forming plywood) may stem more from a recurring foodie trope than Google's garbling. Anyway, our favorite parts are down in the "about the author" section. Apparently the blogger has some fine Tillmanesque skills and magic powers: "with this one can steal horses, take root and moving mountains." We've no idea what that means but we'd sure like to find out.

FUN WITH GOOGLE TRANSLATE: PART 1 (MOOOGU.CN)

It's always fun for us to see referrals to our site from other sites. It's more fun when the referrers are sites in a language other than English because we get to feed the site into Goggle Translate and see what bits of silly nonsense it spits out. Most fun is when the silly nonsense ends up revealing a core truth in a way we never could (or would). A classic case in point: this post on a handsome Chinese blog called Mooogu.cn. Google rendered part of the caption below the photo of our prototypical Armadillo coffee table in walnut as "more good-looking tables and chairs designed by children." Couldn't have gotten it righter. A shot of the full post in partial translation after the jump.

LAMPS, A TEXTILE AND A LIGHTER AT THE DAM

You may have been asking yourself, "What's up with all the fucking chairs, man?" Fair enough. A break, at least for today, to call out these fine non-chair objects: Konstantin Grcic's Mayday Lamp for Flos; Lucienne Day's Runic Textile from 1959 (with Arne Jacobsen's Visor Table Lamp in front); and of course, George Blaisdell's Zippo Cigarette Lighter, designed in 1932 and fresh as the new day. In keeping with the theme of the week, these are all at the DAM as part of Darrin Alfred's What is Modern? show. The show will be up until at least late 2011, but why wait?

PANTON AND GEHRY AT THE DAM

So that's Verner Panton's Stacking Side Chair in plastic at left and Frank Gehry's Wiggle Side Chair in corrugated cardboard at right. The Panton chair is a very smart piece of design—it's a single piece of material in an elegant form and, as the name claims, it stacks—but we'd never want it in our homes. Why? Hard to say, exactly, except that it screams plastic and it may be just a bit too swinging and groovy for its own good. As for the Gehry chair? Sure, it's very Gehry. But it looks indigestibly intestinal in profile and you gotta think those corrugations fill up with all manner of household funk. Plus it's called the Wiggle Side Chair and it was part of a group of pieces called Easy Edges and those names are totally squishy. But hey, maybe that's just us. These two are at the DAM on the second floor of the Ponti building as part of the What is Modern? show.

WEGNER AND GRCIC AT THE DAM

Well if these two aren't two peas in a pod we don't know peas and we don't know pods. At left, of course, is Hans Wegner's Round Armchair (model number JH501) in teak and cane, manufactured by Johannes Hansen in Denmark and designed in 1949. Iconic and dumbfoundingly lovely. At right, Konstantin Grcic's Monza Chair, for Plank in Italy. It's from 2009 and it's fresh and it's smart in wood and polypropylene. Side by side, they're like a father and son (or a mother and daughter, depending on your gender bias) with just enough family resemblance to see the lineage and enough generational difference to know there's no way they're siblings. Though you'd be forgiven for telling them they could be siblings, wanting to flatter the Wegner because it's so timeless and has aged with so much grace. Both are on view at the DAM as part of the What is Modern? show. More to come.