dawn recommended the elegance of the hedgehog last week, and as luck would have it a friend had it and lent it me.

my favorite quote:
“Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there’s anything divine about our animal nature. This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us.”

second favorite:
“In Japanese “wabi” means an “understated form of beauty, a quality of refinementmasked by rustic simplicity.”

related to my love of simply made diy furniture, i came across enzo mari’s “autoprogettazione” furniture on the container corps blog.

roughly translated as “self design,” enzo’s 1974 book gives instructions for building easy-to-assemble furniture using rough boards and nails. above are two examples of container corps’ beautifully made versions of autoprogettazione pieces.

further google research revealed more historical autoprogettazione designs…

which reminded me of countless other designer’s work and gives me a nice historic context it didn’t have before. two examples that come to mind: piet hein eek’s work, and the studio mama pallet project.

below is a page from the autoprogettazione book and an example of studio mama’s pallet lamp, made from cast-off wood pallets.

you can buy diy instructions for some of the pallet furniture on studio mama’s website. below see how amistad o nada, a non-profit in buenos aires, has taken studio mama’s design to make and sell pallet chairs from local materials for the local market which gives people jobs as a result. diy indeed.

love. love. love. the most beautifully made hand-bound book i’ve seen in a long, long time!

i’m not sure if i’ll use mine, although the container corps swears that if you bring yours to the shop here in n.e. portland they’ll take out the block of pages for your archives and put in a fresh set for a small fee.

angela chose the classic poppies for her 40% off uncommon coupon.

spring is here! last week we had a week of dry sunny weather, this week it’s back to rain… and all the bulb flowers are out.

today in the studio i’m wrapping up another round of new stationery goods for chronicle books, some of which will match the journal i showed you earlier, and some of which will use the image above.

things to learn from Matt Edgar on Vimeo.

yup. yet another dutch designer. and yet again one of my students gets credit for finding this!

mr. borstlap did the illustrations for the “let children learn” campaign for the dutch postal service back in 2009. stamps [below] raised funds for the charity, there were also posters and a video [above].

reminds me somewhat of the one book animation i did with my friend seth so so long ago. that was so fun to see my guys come to life! maybe i should dig that out and post it on vimeo!

ooooh, liv emailed me a pic of her new uncommon phone cover, above, courtesy of the 40% off coupons i was given to give away. i still have one left!

my post on juliette warmenhoven the other day reminded me of the amazingly fantastical work of sarah sze.

an american, although i first saw and flipped over her work in paris [back when i was a student/ jet-setter living in nyc and flights to europe were cheap]. although i doubt if i could ever part with it, the book for that exhibition is now worth $100 according to amazon!!!

there are plenty of other good books on her work available for you to check out at more reasonable prices. although i must say that her work is better experienced in person to fully appreciate the intricate and delicate details, and the sophisticated use of space.

the last few days have been spent slogging through a big project with nothing left to do but sit in front of the computer for hours and hours putting everything together.

it’s these times in a project that i need frequent breaks, and books to read during those breaks when i’m resting my hands, my eyes, my sanity.

the two books i read this week were ecotopia and a million miles in a thousand years: what i learned while editing my life.

ecotopia, in the words of one reviewer, is “a vivid, comprehensive, positive vision of what the earth’s future might look like, if those who care about sustainability had a say.” it was written by a man living in berkeley in the 1970′s, and the book perfectly encapsulates what a person in that position then would envision a perfect world to be now: a west-coast-based society that embraces 20 hour work weeks, green technologies, pot smoking and lots of willing partners for sex. i couldn’t help thinking that many of the people i encounter here in portland on hawthorne blvd. live a version of that life already.

a million miles… is a great book for people who want to live a meaningful life but don’t know how to begin. the author is fascinated with the possibilities of living a better life by taking cues from movie plots to actively create a worthwhile story in which to live. two passages in particular that i loved:

What amazed (Wilson) Bentley was the realization that each snowflake bore the scars of it’s journey. He discovered that each crystal is affected by the temperature of the sky, the altitude of the cloud from which it fell, the trajectory the wind took as it fell to earth, and a thousand other factors. [p. 240]

and

…Our bodies were designed to change and it isn’t (physically) possible to be stagnant… our interaction with each other, with the outside world, and with intangible elements such as time make us different people every season… “The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed in it’s former place.” [p. 68]

another day, another dutch designer. surprise, surprise, right? well, i’m still working away on some projects and still can’t show them off yet! so. juliette warmenhoven. via bloesem.

her inspiration often comes from very small everyday things that are been taken for granted and not receiving the attention it deserves, like the plants in your home. combinations of unnatural nature.