Sandwiches

DESIGN AFTER DARK PART 1: 2008 (ELECTROSUX/ELECTROFUX)

Here's the first in a series of three posts about our contributions to Design After Dark, the fundraising auction event for the Denver Art Museum's Department of Architecture, Design and Graphics. This here is the very strange object we donated in 2008: the Electrosux/Electrofux. Handsome and tech, we thought, though the piece was nearly banned from the show for its phallicism (or for something—we never got the full story).

Lest you think we're just pervy doofuses, this was the task: they showed us an object from the DAM's design collection and a word ending in "ish" and asked us to use the two together as the starting point for a new piece to fit inside a 12-inch cube. We were assigned a very fresh Electrolux vacuum from the thirties and the word "outlandish." We gave them this: the Electrosux/Electrofux (Love Explosion). Here's how we described it: "The Electrosux/Electrofux is an outlandish extension of two cultural trends that the iconic vacuum helped establish: the mechanization of domestic life and the fetishization of high-design appliances and consumer electronics. Our piece inserts itself into the warm, wet center of domesticity and offers itself as a clean, mechanical alternative to the most fundamental (and messy) household labor." Made from milled aluminum, various bits of steel, some audio cables and o-rings, surgical tubing, test tubes, rubber stoppers, a baby-bottle nipple and the disembodied head of a Pink Jelly Big Tool.

SIGNS THAT OUR NEIGHBORHOODS DON'T SUCK: ORANGE CAT STUDIOS MURAL

We've posted up other murals from Five Points before, some from parts of the crew behind this piece on the Orange Cat Studios building at 2625 Larimer. We're feeling this style in a big way, and feeling murals generally: they're neighborly, especially on a building's public face. This bit looks northeast up Larimer, smack in your sights as you head into downtown.

TO GOOD FOOD WITH GOOD PEOPLE

Wherever you are, we hope you're ears-deep in something delicious.

OUR HUMBLE BLUE (OR SOMETHING PRETTY CLOSE): PANTONE'S 2010 COLOR OF THE YEAR

Sure, they're a year late but still we're flattered. Pantone has finally gotten wise to the cool heat of our standard blue powder coat color, or their best approximation of it, naming it their color of the year for 2010. In their words it combines "the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, [evoking] thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing." Yikes! All that new-agey, soothing, invigorating languor is making us a bit queasy (read the rest of their blathering press release at this link). Write whatever nonsense you will (even if it really has nothing to do with us)—the color is still beautiful. Give us a ring if you want a sample chip.

TURTLE DESK (PART 3)

The last of our posts (for now) on this fine and fair new DB product—look for more information below and in our production catalog in the coming months.

TURTLE DESK (PART 2)

A close-up of the drawer box on our new friend; for more, see the post below.

TURTLE DESK

Yeah, we're suckers for Montssori-style, self-directed, hands-on learning, with warm memories of polishing pennies, making bread and learning long division on an abacus (one of the stories David's mom tells TO DEATH). So maybe we took extra care with this piece and his friends since they were bound for the teachers at a Denver Montessori preschool. He's the first but not the last: we'll be adding a version of this Turtle desk to our production catalog in 2010. Long and narrow, with two shallow drawers tucked under his shell. Affordable and fresh. Really, what more do you need? Maybe a few more storage and cable-management options—we'll figure those out as we bathe in egg nog over the coming days.

SIENA: PIAZZA DEL CAMPO

The Piazza del Campo in Siena, site on the day we were there of one fool's mad solo lap in the drizzle. Not quite the rush of the three laps of bareback mayhem that is the twice yearly Palio, but, as far as random funniness goes, not bad either. In the video through this link (which shows the thrilling insanity that was the August 2007 race) the start and finish line is more or less where the camera is positioned in the photos above.