News: Grey Malin shoots iconic pieces by Eameses in French Polynesia

Photographer Gray Malin is reconsidering the way we traditionally experience design objects through his latest series ‘art of living’. in the pristine turquoise waters of french polynesia, malin has conceptualized an iconic selection of mid-century modern furniture set atop a reflective mirrored platform — refracting an abstract tableau of both the pieces, and the surrounding landscape.
Malin has situated archetypal mid-century modern designs by charles and ray eames atop a floating 15 foot square mirrored platform handcrafted with the help of local engineers. emphasizing the form of the furniture, ‘art of living‘ was photographed from a vantage point where the colossal mount otemanu presents a symmetrical and stunning backdrop. by situating stylized interior design elements in an unexpected outdoor setting, the series places natural and manmade beauty side-by-side, asking viewers to interpret the art of design in a new way.

Courtesy for sharing: www.designboom.com

How Should We Live: A New Exhibition Of Modernist Design 1925-1950 at MoMA

As modernist design becomes canonized, spurred by the recent enthusiasm for midcentury furniture, it’s easy to forget that an aesthetic we now take for granted was, in fact, a product of radical experimentation guided by political and philosophical thinking as much as by artistic vision.
An appropriately spare new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called How Should We Live? puts that thinking on display, with original pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, as well as ones by figures known more for their architecture, like Le Corbusier.

More info at: www.moma.org
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Experimental Lounge Chair, Charles and Ray Eames, 1944

Prototype for "La Chaise", Charles and Ray Eames, 1948

How a Leg Splint Shaped the Eames Chair

Before Charles and Ray Eames sculpted plywood into undulating furniture, they refined their techniques on medical devices. During World War II, the United States Navy engaged the American design duo in creating a new leg splint. The result was an object both beautiful and practical, with its biomorphic curves that delicately protected a wounded leg.
"The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics" at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England, includes one of the Eames leg splints in its exploration of prosthetics and modern art. Nearby is Louise Bourgeois’s 1985 “Henriette” bronze disembodied leg sculpture, a tribute to her sister’s disability, as well Martin Boyce’s “Phantom and Fall” that uses pieces of an Eames leg splint in an Alexander Calder-like mobile. It responds to the brutality and playfulness of the 1930s and 40s, as well as the uncomfortable dissociation of form from function in our appreciation of postwar design. 

Read all at hyperallergic.com (thanks for sharing)

Installation view of ‘The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics’ (courtesy Henry Moore Institute)

Remember "India Report" in London Design Biennale

Biennales—from Venice to Chicago—have become ubiquitous events for the art and architecture worlds. And now with the inaugural London Design Biennale (LDB) at Somerset House, the rest of the design spectrum, from graphic and industrial design to furniture and virtual reality, have their own global platform.
This month’s LDB brought in installations, prototypes, and designs from 37 countries and featured 30+ talks with over 100 leading designers, design critics, and practitioners to explore the theme of ‘Utopia by Design.’ These (often whimsical) installations used design to reconcile each country’s past, present, and future, exploring issues as diverse as smart cities, the environment, global migration and the refugee crisis, postcolonial legacies, and food systems.
Below are a few of the highlights from the event, which ends today. And read our review of the Biennale here.
The London Design Biennale also marks the first time India has put forward an installation in a major international design event. India Design Forum Founder Rajshree Pathy made sure that their presence at the event would be as dramatic as the country itself.
The design of 'Chakraview’ employs the chakra system—a philosophical journey that begins with desire and consumption, moves to emotion, then speech, and finally to enlightenment—as a metaphor for India’s cultural, spiritual, social, and economic progress since independence. Six colorful silk tapestries hang above a mirrored floor, bathing attendees in the color and chaos of the space. A separate, blue, womb-like audiovisual room connects attendees to the seventh, most spiritual, chakra.
The installation also references imagery from the Eames’ 1958 India Report, produced after the three months Charles and Ray Eames spent touring the country, looking at the potential and importance of design in postcolonial India. The exhibit asserts that design is not just about developing aesthetic solutions, but indeed solutions to social problems facing India today.

Thank for sharing: metropolismag.com

Vintage Home: Using 20th-century Design in the Contemporary Home

Vintage Home, by Judith Miller, Firefly Books, 288 pages, $50.

Vintage furniture offers the best of both worlds. It brings a sense of the past and a degree of craftsmanship so often absent in today’s furnishings. A well-placed piece can become the focal point in a room and create a sense of style that you can decorate around. Vintage items can be found in a wide variety of places and it pays to know what to look for so you can spot those treasures.
Judith Miller provides a guide to 20th century designs and their origins so you can tell the difference between an Eileen Gray-designed glass and chrome table and something created by the Charles and Ray Eames Aluminum group. Filled with colour photos and detailed background information on the designers and the importance of their creations, this is a valuable resource book for anyone wanting to bring vintage style into their home.

See more at: fireflybooks.com

Kinfolk #21: Introducing the Home Issue

Kinfolk Issue Twenty-One: Within the pages of the fall edition of Kinfolk, the home becomes more than the sum of its walls and floors, chairs and wallpaper—more than a collection of objects. We delve deeply into the very nature of home, exploring what’s hidden, unseen, mysterious and sensual asking, “What have we forgotten, or overlooked, in the rituals of our daily lives?” In turn, the home and everything it contains are not merely ends in themselves, but the complex elements of each person’s evolving and deeply personal narrative—the foundations of a well-lived life.

News: Designers still at risk under new UK copyright law, warns intellectual property lawyer

Recent changes to UK copyright law might not give furniture designers the protections they expect.
The changes – which extend copyright for industrial design from 25 years after an item is first marketed to 70 years from the death of the creator – were considered a win for UK designers and brands whose products were replicated.
To qualify, designers will need to prove their product is "a work of artistic craftsmanship", a criteria for which there is no statutory definition. It is up to courts to decide individual cases based on past precedent.
This means pieces like the widely copied DSW Plastic Chair by Charles and Ray Eames – advocates for democratic, affordable design – might not be protected from copying.
The UK government has repealed section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This brings the country – once derided as "a Trojan Horse for the importation of copies into Europe" – into line with the rest of the EU, which has longer-lasting copyright protections.
While the future of the laws may be uncertain following June's Brexit vote, for the time being UK copyright protections for industrial design have been broadened.
Section 52 previously exempted industrially manufactured pieces from the protections afforded to artistic works. Now designers are not explicitly exempt but instead need to prove their work actually is "artistic".
Where there is a real prospect the design would qualify as a work of artistic craftsmanship.
In addition, in light of the relevance of what may have been in the mind of the designer when they created the design, it would be prudent for designers and businesses to prepare such statements now for future use in the fight against copyists.

Read all at dezeen.com

The Eames DWS chair by Charles and Ray Eames (1950) is one of the most widely copied furniture designs.

A maker of miniature midcentury furniture talks all things tiny

Chicago-based designer Michael Yurkovic combines two of Curbed’s favorite things: Midcentury modern furniture, and tiny things. Yurkovic handcrafts 1/12-scale replicas of iconic designs like Charles and Ray Eames’ shell chair and Eero Saarinen’s tulip chair—as well as staged room boxes—that are so detailed and faithful to the original that it’s hard to believe, at least when seen in photographs, that they’re miniature.
Yurkovic, like many children, got his start building model airplanes and cars with his father. This led him to a career in industrial design, where he worked on consumer electronic products like telephones, then a stint in toy consultancy, both of which required a lot of model-making.
Then about two and a half years ago, after having dabbled in midcentury modern furniture restoring and further developing his hand skills, he walked into his first miniature show and noticed that there was an incredible void in the market for midcentury modern design. Everything was Victorian or otherwise traditional. “I didn't quite know exactly how I would do it, but I knew I could,” Yurkovic recalled. “So I walked out of that show and dove straight into miniature, just full time midcentury modeling.”

Curbed.com spokes to Yurkovic about his design process, why he thinks people are gaga for everything tiny (and midcentury modern), and how it all might fit within the context of the tiny house movement.
Why were you drawn to midcentury modern design?
I naturally gravitated towards the midcentury modern era because I thought it was all so exciting. There was new technology and new materials and processes, and just a whole new optimistic culture was going on then, bringing a whole fresh perspective to what furniture, as well as other things, could be. The furniture also really made it's way into pop culture in a big way. I like the clean lines, the purity of form. And because it's non decorative and so minimal, usually, the real devil is in the details. There's not all this spare ornamentation, so you can see how an arm is attached to a side of a chair, or the exact curvature of a molded shell. All those things were really carefully considered and that really appealed to me, and I think really challenged designers at the time /.../.

Read all at: curbed.com

Thanks curbed.com for sharing.

San Francisco International Airport hosts new exhibition "A Modern Approach: Mid-Century Design"

"A Modern Approach: Mid-Century Design" is an exhibition located in the International Terminal Main Hall Departures Lobby, San Francisco International Airport. The exhibition is accessible to all airport visitors from August 27, 2016 to April 9, 2017.

The online version of the exhibition is viewable at: www.flysfo.com/museum/exhibitions/modern-approach-mid-century-design.

This exhibit presents a sampling of modern design from the 1930s to the 1960s through examples of mid-century studio art, graphic design, and manufactured goods.

Mid-twentieth-century modern design balanced expression with efficiency and utility. Geared towards everyday living, modern design redefined housewares, furniture, and decorative arts. The form of each object followed its function, with innovative construction methods finished in natural tones and bold colors. Working in the spirit of their time, mid-century designers created items that lent style and comfort to the necessities of modern life. By the early 1950s, the most distinctive American furniture and decorative arts expressed a refined modern design, celebrated by "Arts & Architecture" magazine and in museum exhibitions.
Mid-century designers announced the modern era through the clear and concise use of new materials such as plastic, aluminum, and molded plywood. Charles and Ray Eames implemented the brilliance of good design on the greatest scale, with more than two million of their fiberglass chairs sold through Herman Miller by 1966. On the other end of the spectrum, art and design converged in unique artisan and craft items to personalize modern interiors. Overall, mid-century designers introduced a multitude of new products for modern living, and their best designs stood effortlessly on their own or harmoniously within a group. 

Source www.flysfo.com with thanks.

Blast from the past: a look inside Polaroid’s SX-70 instant film camera

In 1972, Polaroid shared with the world its latest creation — the Polaroid SX–70 instant film camera. Designed by Polaroid co-founder and inventor Edwin Land, the SX–70 at that time received quite the introduction with a wonderfully produced video created by none other than Charles and Ray Eames.
At roughly eleven minutes long, the film breaks down every detail of the camera, using footage and animated graphics to show how the iconic single lens reflex Land camera was meant to be used.
Unlike the vague teaser videos we’re used to seeing nowadays for products, this commissioned video breaks down everything the SX–70 is capable of and does so with impressive video production values that echoes the mid-century aesthetic associated with Charles and Ray.
From the simple steps it takes to open the camera to the ingenious design that enabled it to collapse down into the size of a few deck of cards, the video manages to simplify the impressive engineering feats that made instant images possible.
The film was originally shown at a Polaroid stockholders meeting and later used as a marketing tool. It was the first of four films Charles and Ray Eames made in collaboration with Polaroid and it went on to win a Bronze Plaque at the Columbus International Film Festival in 1975.
As brilliant as the film is, it now only serves as a sad reminder of what once was. Once on the bleeding edge of photographic technology, Polaroid has now been turned into little more than a name and logo that anyone can slap on a product if they’re willing to shell out enough money in hopes of making a little profit off a brand name that has long since left its glory days behind.

Source www.digitaltrends.com/ with thanks.