Iridescent California.

In San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood there is a giant rainbow flag, and flying above it today is a banner in black, the color of mourning and judges’ robes. The mood in California is prickly, and as I work in my office, surrounded by swatches of fabric and leather in a spectrum of colors, I find that I’m thinking about rainbows. Not in a unicorn or pot of gold kind of way, but in a humanity kind of way, and in terms of the symbols chosen to express our beliefs.

The rainbow flag made its debut at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade in 1978. Gilbert Baker designed and hand-sewed the first flag for his friend Harvey Milk, who was assassinated later that year. “I will always remember Harvey riding through the streets under the giant rainbow flag waving to the crowds,” said Baker. “It was an incredible moment of joy and we all felt that we were going to change the world.”

Originally made with eight stripes – pink for sexuality; red for life; orange for healing; yellow for sun; green for nature; blue for art; indigo for harmony; and violet for spirit – the combination proved impossible to mass produce because hot pink (always the drama queen) was not commercially available in nylon. The flag was reduced to seven stripes, and then to six after Harvey Milk was murdered. Following that tragedy, Baker’s flag was the symbol needed to demonstrate the unity of the community, but because the Pride Parade Committee of 1979 wanted to hang the flag from light posts with the stripes divided evenly, the indigo stripe (sorry harmony) was removed so there would be three colors on each side.

Today, these six stripes are recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers (a colorful group, I’m sure), and used worldwide as a symbol of gay rights and LGBT pride. When researching this story, I came across a Leather Pride Flag which at first I thought would be a great idea to support our upholstery collections, until I realized that the pride that flag symbolizes has more to do with bedroom furniture.

No matter what your beliefs, or your feelings about this week’s decision by the California supreme court justices (I’m lowercasing them because I can), I encourage you to keep an eye out for rainbows. Even if you’re like a guy I saw waiting for the commuter ferry recently who, as a rainbow draped itself over our foggy city, called his wife and told her to look out the window. His right to marriage will never be challenged, but he recognized the beauty of a rainbow, and that gives me hope that people’s hearts and eyes are still open.

Gwendolyn Horton

Victorious again.

Provocateur, artist, educator, designer and author of soon to be released American Badass, James Victore gave an inspiring presentation last Tuesday, hosted by AIGA New York. Victore’s talk was titled “How to Stay Hard,” and in typical fashion, he admitted first thing that he called it a “how to” solely to attract an audience. From his start as a wide-eyed teen wanting to make great posters, Victore has achieved resounding success with clients including Time magazine, the New York Times, Aveda and Yohji Yamamoto. He counts among his greatest achievement being chosen for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Victore’s present work includes “Dirty Dishes,” which are plates featuring his characteristic marker drawings. When he started the project he drew on purchased plates, but now he has moved on to actually getting his hands into raw clay: He says the physical “makety makety” of throwing the plates keeps the project interesting. A cleaner project was his illustration of the first two lines of an upcoming Steven King release, which Victore drew directly on the torso and legs of supermodel Bar Refaeli (at this point in the presentation MAC Cosmetics got a shout-out for providing the right tools for this unusual application). Victore shared some of his more personal work, including the “Coffee Notes” he and his wife Laura make for one another daily, and the illustrated DWR catalog that he created for his proclaimed mentor and DWR CEO, Ray Brunner. Part of Victore’s work is educating and mentoring aspiring designers, and AIGANY is running an eBay auction of several items created by Victore to support their presentation and mentoring programs. DWR donated a James Victore surfboard and a one-of-a-kind nesting doll set that Victore customized for our Tools for Living store. Place your bid.  

Who needs Paris?

Here at DWR, we’re blessed to have the best sales team on the planet. In past years, the salad days if you will, we would reward the highest sellers with a trip to Paris or a BMW for a year. With belts tightening all over, our CEO instead invited them up to his place in Marin, California, for decadent barbeque instead. Grey Goose + corn on the cob + an Eames La Chaise. Not surprisingly, hilarity ensued.

I’d call this a materials story.

Steel. Glass. Stone. Now you can add Legos® to that mix. Lego Architecture kits include everything you need build your own model of some of your favorite landmarks. We’re especially excited about their partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Get your very own replica of Falling Water (above) or the Guggenheim, ready to be painstakingly assembled and enjoyed. The release of these sets coincided with the May 15 opening of the Wright exhibit at the Guggenheim, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the opening of that landmark structure. The exhibit runs through August 23. The kits can be purchased here.

Adventures in design at ICFF.

For the design-minded, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair is pretty much a great time. Not only did DWR host five events over the course of the week, but there were some outstanding things to check out at the show itself. A few highlights follow. 

National Planter Project: Keep Austin modern.

Mark Word, who started his design/build company Mark Word Design in 2003, was pretty jazzed by the Gratia Square and Orb planters we sent him. “Their pure geometries and large scale give them such a powerful presence in a space,” he explained. Inspiration for the square planter came from a friend’s gardening book from the 1950s: “I saw a photo of ligularia and aloes. I liked the way the sculptural aloes contrasted with the soft round leaves.” By chance he saw this combination again while at a nursery. “My memory was jolted by the sight an aloe a few steps from a group of ligularia (Ligularia tussilaginea or ‘jitsuko star’),” he explains. Aloes and ligularia have different watering requirements, so Word filled the pot is with fast-draining soil and will water frequently to accommodate both. He finished the pot with an old fashioned pelargonium (“Coho”) and a tiny chartreuse sedum (Sedum makinoi). “I opted for a reserved tone that offered a hint of color as a complement to the dark chocolate black.”

Word took a different approach with the Gratia Orb. “While searching for just the right specimen to flatter the orb, I came across a beautiful bonsai bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) just coming into leaf,” he says. “Its angularity, fragility and height complement the bold rounded form of the planter. I could imagine it in a black and white Julius Shulman photo of a Case Study house.” The planting was finished with mood moss. 

M+D+F in San Francisco.

I sell modern design. It is a career that brings me pleasure every time I walk in the door of my Studio and see the brilliant and beautiful designs that I am surrounded by all day long. Some look at a cubicle wall eight hours a day, or a half-dug ditch, or a stack of paperwork – I stare at Bertjan Pot, Poul Kjaerholm and Nani Marquina. Much like when I drool over clothes by Thom Browne or Raf Simons, I am in awe that there lives a flesh and blood human able to create something so stunning, so refined, so intelligent. There is a reason that artists should be exalted: They are genuinely rare. Very few people can do what they do, creating something out of nothing, bringing life to pedestrian materials. To most of us a chunk of wood becomes firewood. To a designer it becomes something the world has literally never seen before. To a brilliant designer it becomes something breathtaking and, yes, life-changing. This is why I feel it is truly an honor to work with the designs and designers that I work with every day. 

All that lofty introduction is to say that hosting an event such as M+D+F at Design Within Reach was two tons of fun. 

Celebrate design – with a discount.

If you’re going to be in New York for ICFF, you’ll be immersed in cutting-edge design, going to fabulous parties, hobnobbing with the design elite. (If you are in New York this week, stop by a DWR event or two.) If you’re like most of us though, you might be looking for something a little more…accessible. Perhaps you live near Palm Springs or Cleveland, Ohio. Perhaps you’ll be in New York, but don’t even like hobnobbing. Perhaps you want to save up to 70% on seating, dining, bedroom items and Tools for Living. Perhaps then, you should check out a DWR Annex Warehouse Sale, this Saturday and Sunday only. Learn all about them here.

National Planter Project: Desert delights.

With over 30 years of experience in landscape architecture, William Kopelk, the founder of InsideOutside in Palm Springs, has an intimate understanding of the modern desert garden – he was hired to revamp the garden at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House. “For that project, I employed my classic four-step approach to customize the gardens for my client; Analyze, Evaluate, Create a Design Solution and Implement. The result was a total utilization of ground and air.” He took the same approach with our New Pot 50 Planter. We asked him to fill it with plants that thrive in the Palm Springs desert. His first stop was Moorten Botanical Garden. “They’ve been here in the desert since 1938,” explains Kopelk. There he chose Echeveria Lucita (a hybrid of Echeveria runyonii) and Aloe nobilis (Gold Tooth Aloe). “Both do well in protected areas and require little water. The Aloe’s flower attracts hummingbirds in the summer.” As a trick to ensure good drainage – crucial for keeping these plants happy – Kopelk used plastic packing peanuts inside a mesh bag beneath the soil. This desert-happy planter now sits on the patio of Palm Spring’s Towers Condominiums.

From the CEO: The “new” economy.

All this talk about a new economy and a changing consumer ethos gets one thinking, especially when your livelihood depends upon selling stuff to consumers. So first I had to find out the real meaning of ethos. 

ethos –noun 1. The fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. 

It appears our “new ethos” is all about value, and perhaps changing our disposable goods habit. Being old enough to remember a time before chain stores and disposable everything, the new ethos seems a bit like the way my parents lived and the manner in which I was raised. As the saying goes, everything old is new again. 

You see, depression-era parents who made it to the middle class and placed value on quality and longevity of products raised me. In fact, we just moved my 86-year-old mother out of her house and in with us (a story for another time), and she still has the same furniture she bought in 1956, and it still looks great. 

Now, as someone who makes a living selling furniture, this can be concerning at first. 

M+D+F in New York.

The Modern + Design + Function is an annual design contest that DWR has rolled out across the country. The winning entries were celebrated at Studios at the end of April and we thought we’d share some of the results with you. At the Flatiron Studio in Manhattan, more than 50 entries were received. The winning design was the grandly scaled Excel Floor Lamp by Rich, Brilliant, Willing – three young designers who create with the end user in mind. Winner for best sustainable design was Karl Zahn, whose Vladimir Mirror was made using two partially destroyed shipping pallets. The scars on the lumber tell a story of its travels. While the form is reminiscent of old Victorian mirrors, its origin is far from gold leaf. 

Pictured below, top to bottom: John Fondrisi, Proprietor of Flatiron, with Rich, Brilliant, Willing. Karl Zahn in front of Vladimir. M+D+F juror Ondine Karady with Cue Bench designer Matthew Bradshaw.

Posted by Kimberly Oliver

National Planter Project: Geoffrey Nimmer on Long Island.

“As a garden designer, I have always stood in awe of and had great respect for the process of nature,” says Geoffrey Nimmer, president of East End Garden Design in Water Mill, New York, “But this time of year, it is so satisfying to jump start spring just a little.” We sent Nimmer a tall Gratia Planter Box to fill with seasonally appropriate flora that thrives in the Northeast, and he decided to bring in spring with some flowers. While visiting the nursery, Nimmer got inspired by Helleborus orientalis (Lenten Roses), which is an evergreen perennial that blooms in early spring. “When they’re done flowering,” explains Nimmer, “I will plant them in the shady garden and they will bloom year after year.” He filled in around the Helleborus with Ranunculus asiaticus (Turban Ranunculus), which are an annual and won’t make it into the warmer months. “Those will end up in the compost pile.” And finally, to fill in the bare spots around the others, he used Viola odorata (Sweet Violet): “I could put them in my garden when they are finished blooming, but they tend to re-seed like crazy and will end up everywhere. Even though these are the violets of song and story, I believe their fate is the same as the Ranunculus.” Nimmer’s website, which is here, is coming soon. Or, you can get in touch with him at eastendgardens at aol dot com.