A (relatively) easy as pie DIY shelving unit made from fir boards, threaded metal rods, nuts and washers from Ali of Design Public, over at Hatch.
Full instructions and fun process shots at the original post.
I love that this technique seems endlessly adaptable—to different shelf materials, different heights and shapes of shelf, and so on. A raw edge on the front side of the shelf boards? Yes.
She gardens, she builds…Michelle Obama may already be hands down the ReadyMade-est First Lady ever.
Here’s a picture of Ms. Obama with California First Lady Maria Shriver at the Bret Harte Elementary School in San Francisco on June 22. She was there as part of a playground build organized by KaBOOM, an organization that facilitates community-built playgrounds. (And a design-forward organization at that—check their collaboration with architect David Rockwell.)
The playground build was part of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, and kicked off the Obama Administration’s “United We Serve” initiative, which calls on Americans to volunteer in their communities this summer. Over 600 volunteers came out to build the playground and paint a mural of labor leader César Chávez.
The images were sent by Chronicle Books editor and ReadyMade reader Christina Amini, who was on hand with a passel of playground-building volunteers to cheer Eugenie Harvey, the author of How To Change the World for Ten Bucks, who gave the keynote address at the NCVS opening session on Monday.
More pictures from the build after the jump.
Just when I think I’m over lamps and lamp projects, another stunner comes along.
The tiered Romanesque chandelier from Re:Design Technologies is custom made to order from “thousands of paper clips.”
Buy one for $320 on Etsy or become inspired to get yourself a box of clips and settle in for a rainy afternoon of experimentation.
According to the Re:Design blog, the designers (Penelope Bridge of Merritt, British Columbia, and her husband) acquire the circular parts of their chandeliers from vintage lampshades, which they strip for the stainless steel hardware. Bridge’s Etsy profile says that her favorite materials include “used building materials and ordinary household items used outside of their intended context.” Nice.
(via Notcot)
Hello and happy Friday, everyone. Today I’m pleased to debut the first in a series of posts that will appear each week, on Friday. The series’ working title is Weekend Warriors, and it’s about the good stuff: people who make things and the things they make in their free time, when not working for the man, feeding the business, or otherwise toiling on the j-o-b. We hope it’s a dose of inspiration for you going into your own weekend…
Another awesome reader project for today. Peter Von Erickson lives in New York and has a garage workspace in Brooklyn. He’s a professional maker—he freelances building custom furniture and props for advertising and also teaches model-making part time in the industrial design department at Pratt—and it shows in the recycled wood desk he recently built for his wife.
The desk is made from “parts found on the street, in my basement, in dumpsters, and at flea markets.” Peter says it took about two years to find them all. They include:
• Ball and claw legs taken from a sideboard found in Astoria, Queens
• Glass knobs purchased at a flea market
• Butterfly doors and hinges taken from a piece of discarded furniture Von Erickson found in his basement, thrown out by a neighbor moving back to Japan
• Wood of the bottom drawers made from a headboard Von Erickson’s wife found in a dumpster on a rainy night. She pulled the massive panels out of the trash and called her husband to pick up both her and the wood.
Von Erickson’s Brooklyn workspace includes “pretty much all the basics,” he says. “Tablesaw, bandsaw, scrollsaw. It’s pretty cramped right now as I recently acquired my grandfather’s non-running 1955 Packard car as a restoration project.”
More pictures after the jump!
This is my first in another weekly post that we hope will help make Thursdays the main food day here on our blog. Each week I’m going to share 5 of my food finds from the previous week—from trends, to restaurant news, favorite blog posts, recipes, new products I’m loving and gadgets I can’t live without. If you come across something fabulous in the food world, I’d love to hear about it!
Moving Day for In Good Taste: My friend Maris has been writing a food blog for a while now and she just moved it to a new (and newly designed) home. She’s part of a group of food bloggers around the country who are baking their way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. After seeing her posts on bagels and dealing with a severe case of missing Murray’s bagels now that I no longer live in nyc, I’m convinced it’s time I tried to make both of them at home.
Super Sugar: I bought a jar of lavender sugar from the folks at Blue Gate Farm at the Des Moines Farmers Market a few weeks ago and I’m itching to sprinkle it on top of a batch of sugar cookies. It’s raw sugar blended with their own dried lavender and they tell me it’s also great in tea. We’ll see how much I have left after baking!
Free (super cute!) Recipe Cards: Love these downloadable perfect-for-summer recipe cards (or note cards depending on your mood) from Creature Comforts.
Do Good, Win Chocolate: Dagoba, one of my favorite chocolate companies, is running a contest with their Seed the Day program, which is a new initiative to inspire 15,000 people to volunteer in their community. You get to submit your ideas for what you’d like to do to green your community (say start a community garden) for a chance to win one of 25 Chocolate for Good Kits—which contains 24 2oz. Dagoba organic chocolate bars, 25 packets of seeds, two sets of work gloves, two Dagoba hats and tools.
We All Scream: It’s high ice cream season and this week’s post from 101cookbooks highlights a soon to be available book Lola’s Ice Creams and Sundaes: Iced Delights for All Seasons. Just seeing the few images that Heidi posted will make you swoon and possibly dig out your own ice cream maker (or try our coffee can version!).
I’m heading to the Fancy Food show early next week so you can expect a full show report from me here next Thursday!
A little over a month ago, I made the 17 hour drive from NYC to Des Moines as I moved myself to the Midwest. I had only one planned stop—at The Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland. I’d desperately wanted to go to Jeni’s to have some of her remarkable ice cream (in flavors like Salty Caramel and Strawberry Rose Petal) that’s made from nearly all local ingredients. But, it proved to be many hours off of my route, so instead, I looked for a restaurant that served her products and wound up at Greenhouse. I’d read a little bit about it online before going so I knew that the chef, Jonathan Sawyer, was committed to running a farm to table restaurant and that they were the first certified green restaurant in Ohio. But I didn’t expect to be entirely blown away by the food. I was there in the middle of spring and my meal included four vegetables that I’d never tasted before—ramps, fiddlehead ferns, garlic scapes and cardoons. It was totally fun and pretty unusual to have that type of a food experience. Plus, I got to end the meal with a dish of Jeni’s Salty Caramel ice cream, so as far as I’m concerned, it was one of the best meals I’ve had in years.
And even though I don’t have plans to be back in Cleveland anytime soon, I’m delighted to know that I can make this tart at home (with the help of some friends and perhaps a bottle or two of wine since it’s definitely involved!) and once again experience their stellar ability to combine seasonal flavors.
Lake Erie Creamery Goat Cheese and Potato Tart with Heirloom Tomatoes
Serves 4
Potato Tart
1Whole Large Idaho Potato (peeled, thinly sliced, soaked in cold water)
1 QT Blended Oil
1 TBS Goats milk Bechamel
4 TBS Caramelized Onions
½ cup Goat Cheese (a washed rind semi aged aka Lake Erie Creamery Blooma or Coach Farm Log)
1Tsp Picked Fresh Thyme
TT Salt Pepper Nutmeg
1 TBS Melted Butter
1. Heat a 4qt sauce pan over medium heat. Add oil to pan. Heat oil to 325 degrees, then begin blanching the potatoes. Place four slices of potato carefully into the oil, allow potato’s to cook for two minutes then remove with a metal spider or slotted spoon. Season with salt and allow cooling and drying on parchment paper. Set aside.
2. In a 4” round tart pan brush lightly with butter, line with slices of blanched potato slightly overlapping, then place a thin layer of caramelized onions and some picked thyme on top of the potatoes. Coat the onion mixture with a thin layer of béchamel and some goat cheese.
3. Bake tart in a 375 degree oven, for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Garnish with the remainder of the goat cheese (shaved) and the heirloom tomato salad. Enjoy.
Tomato Salad
2 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil
¼ cup Heirloom Tomato’s (assorted room temperature heirloom’s sliced into small wedges)
1 TBS Wheat Beer Vinegar (The Greenhouse Tavern makes a lot vinegars in house so just buy the highest quality malt vinegar you can afford)
1 TBS Chervil (thinly sliced)
¼ cup Watercress ( or any thin peppery green lettuce
TT Salt & Pepper
1. Combine Heirloom Tomatoes, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Chervil, Wheat Beer Vinegar, Watercress and season with S & P. Set aside to garnish tart.
Caramelized Onions
6Whole Sweet Onions (thinly sliced)
2 TBS Duck Fat (or beef or chicken fat)
1 TBS Butter
4 Fresh Bay Leaves
1 Bunch Fresh Thyme
TT Salt
1. Heat a 12” sauté pan over medium high heat, add duck fat and allow to melt and warm up. Add all of the sliced onions and season heavily with salt. Stir continuously for about twelve minutes or until onions achieve a light golden brown color.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees, add 2 bay leaves, half of the thyme and the butter to the onion mixture. Try and cover the fresh herbs with the onion mixture so the herbal aromas steam into the onions. Bake until dark golden brown (approximately 30 minutes) stirring every five minutes. Add the remaining fresh herbs to the onion mixture and taste for seasoning. Cool onion mixture and reserve for tart or other use.
Goats Milk Bechamel
4 TBS Butter
4 TBS All purpose flour
4 Cups Goat milk
2 TSP Salt
1 TSP Freshly grated nutmeg
1. In a medium saucepan, heat the butter over medium-low heat until melted. Add the flour and stir until smooth. In another saucepan, heat up milk with salt and ½ the nutmeg. Wisk milk mixture into the butter & flour mixture and simmer over medium low for fifteen minutes. Strain reserve.
*I also wanted to add a note about the lights in the restaurant. I was slightly obsessed with them—they are made from bike rims—and I’ve learned that Jonathan and his wife Amelia made them! Makes me love the place even more.
Jay Baldwin is a Californian, the CEO of Jay Baldwin Design, a senior adjunct professor of industrial design at CCA, and the author of the book Buckyworks: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today. He was also a senior editor of the original Whole Earth Catalogs with Stewart Brand and crew, which pretty much makes me want to pinch myself when I see him.
I was pinching with one hand and snapping photos with the other when I spied Jay Baldwin at Maker Faire with his creation, the Quickup Camper. The hand-made, pickup-truck based RV gets 20 miles per gallon at 70 miles oer hour, which is about double what “conventional designs” (his words) get.
The camper folds down to a sleek profile for driving, and opens up to reveal an appealingly simple RV interior, complete with sink and cook-stove.
Holy re-use, Batman! This intimate yellow chair looks like the perfect hideaway for a mod super-villain (who might sit in it while discussing evil schemes on this phone). The yellow chair frame is made from a reclaimed jungle gym slide that the chair’s maker, Evan Dublin, found at the Build It Green salvage yard in Astoria, Queens.
Evan recently finished his undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute, where he majored in industrial design. Jonas Workroom, a Manhattan upholsterer, did the upholstery work on the chair, which Evan describes as a wing-back. The upholstery fabric is a wool blend, with foam padding underneath. The legs are white oak. Evan calls the one-of-a-kind creation the Slide Chair. We call it a promising start to a young designer’s career.
Last Saturday I ventured to kind of the crossroads of the world, Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The subway was a mess and the rain unceasing but I was excited to get to sit in on my first photo-shoot as ReadyMade’s editor. Our creative director, Stephen Perfetto, was already hard at work by the time I arrived at the home of designer Nilea Alexander, the creative director of Underground Love Story and the subject of an upcoming story in our August/September (re) fashion issue.
Stephen and Nilea (along with photographer, Jonny Valiant and assistant Pete) were holed up in Nilea’s home/workspace trying to capture exactly how she lives and works.
Though the day was a dull, heavy gray, there is something otherworldly about the Eastern Parkway (where Nilea lives), despite its uber-utilitarian name, that never fails to pique my interest. There is a grandness about it and its tree-lined pedestrian walkway lends it a very civil air, which is always welcome, particularly on rain-soaked afternoons.
After a run through the downpour I got to Nilea’s and was (obviously) not disappointed. Her home from the outside is kind of a classic Brooklyn abode replete with stoop (which I’m always a sucker for—seriously, please consider this a call to all ReadyMakers out there for the “Interior Stoop Challenge”). This has always been a dream of mine and have been working on some designs for a while but would love to hear—and see—your thoughts as well).
Inside, I was getting a bit more of a San Francisco vibe. Nilea is a designer with a refined sense of style that carries through from her eclectic furniture mix that ties her living room together, to her bedroom with envy-inducing vintage finds, to her workspace downstairs that showcases the clothing she has designed and made for her line.
Getting the chance to peak into people’s living and working environments has always been one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s an unending fascination that I obviously share with many others (if you haven’t already, be sure to check out Design Sponge’s weekly “Sneak Peaks,” the relatively new Spanish interiors magazine Apartamento and Etsy’s new video series “There’s No Place Like Here,” an awesome compliment to their “Handmade Life” videos). It’s kind of like each person is their own country. Not to get all preachy or righteous sounding—and obviously this is a sentiment that has been stated time and time again so nothing original here—but when so many of our towns and cities have been slowly evolving to banal sameness having the opportunity to check out people’s personal spaces (in person or through photography) remains a great reminder that we are all still so unique, no matter how uniform we can sometimes appear.
Now, enough of the mush! Be sure to keep an eye out for Nilea’s place in our August/September issue and don’t hesitate to let us know if there is someplace (a house, a workspace, a city or town) or someone we should be training our lenses on. In fact, we are on the lookout right now for a small town or city (population 60,000 or less) with an amazing making scene. We’ve got some ideas but want to hear yours so leave a comment or drop me a line!
This is the best kind of reader mail: someone writing to say they’ve not only done one of the ReadyMade projects, but improved on it. I appreciate David Hershey appreciating the galvanized metal look of the shanty cap and pan in June/July’s birdfeeder project, and his modification to make the birdseed self-replenish. He writes:
Hey,
I just wanted to say that I loved the bird feeder in the latest issue (“Step 1,” June/July ‘09, page 12) and went right out to the hardware store to get the supplies.
I changed a few things around. First off, I did not paint it; I really liked the shiny metal look. Also I cut out three holes in the bottom of the shanty cap, so I could fill up the inner tube and have it refill the pan as the birds eat. I was able to cut through it with plain old scissors. The final change was I found metal wire and clamps for super cheap and it really makes it look quite professional. The wire was a quarter a foot and the clamps were maybe a buck.
All in all the bird feeder was a huge success and I have been enjoying birds in my backyard ever since.
Thanks,
David Hershey
Lancaster, PA
It looks like the birds have been enjoying it, too. Thanks for writing, David.
Do you have a project to tell us about? Go ahead and send us an email.
This is the ReadyMade editors' blog. ReadyMade is named after the term that Marcel Duchamp coined in 1915 for a series of sculptures that playfully rethought the relationship between people and mass-produced objects, everyday items and art. ReadyMade is about people who make things and the culture of making.
