My friend Maggie just introduced me to ReproDepot.com -- they carry all sorts of fabrics and trims and notions, including reproduction prints from the 20s to the 70s.  Check out my favorite Marimekko:

Some of their prints are only 7 or 8 bucks a yard and they do go on sale.  If pattern kits are your thing, they've got 'em, but I'd just as soon recover some dining room chair seats with this great splatter pattern:

And these hearts would be adorable in a child's room!

I'm already thinking about the next vacation I'm going to take and though I don't know exactly where that's going to be yet I do know that it will be somewhere sunny and warm and that I will need a bag for daytime trips to the beach with the family and it wouldn't hurt if the bag was waterproof to protect whatever gear we drag along with us to take pictures, listen to music, read, protect ourselves from the suns harmful rays, etc. It comes as no surprise that Steven Alan has made the perfect bag for just such a trip. The roomy bags are heavy duty canvas and lined with vinyl to keep all your clothing and devices absolutely dry in the event you get caught in the rain. The colors are basic and the price is quite right at $95. Get them right here on the Steven Alan website and have a great trip.

I had to chuckle when I read Tom Delavan's piece on taking the fear out of auctions (current issue, page 86).  He found a big abstract expressionist canvas at Christie's--not a true Franz Kline but still chic as all get-out--and bid $2,500.  It sold for $6k!  Not to sound like a first time museum goer, but I could've painted that myself.  In a way I did: I copied my favorite Kline on a 4' x 5' canvas.   The lesson?  You shouldn't fear auctions OR making your own art.  Pearl Paint has great prices on pre-stretched canvases, so buy one and a tube of black paint and go for it.  (Full disclosure:  I was afraid to tackle my own homage and it sat, blank and sad, on my floor for months.  Once I got up the nerve it took 45 minutes and I couldn't be prouder.)  Try a Kline or an Ellsworth Kelly:

This red color field is so simple but has so much graphic impact.  Why not copy it? Use a ruler and some painter's tape. You know what they say about imitation...big ups to Ellsworth.

Should you find yourself in Seville next year (and I highly reccomend that you do) there are a few places that need to be on your list. Most embarrassingly on ours was Zara, where the best deal are the silk and cashmere sweaters and cardigans for 40 euros each.  More traditionally are the tapas bars for delicous things like baby fava beans with jambon, or slices of jambon de Serrano which is so good, endless little dishes of delicious things come, and all the bars are pretty good.  We had dinner in a wonderful fish restaurant called Mariscos Emilio, tapas and cold red wine (vino tinto frio) at Bar Manolo Alfalfa in Plaza de la Alfalfa, both were very good even though they look quite ordinary.

For shopping there are wonderful places to buy Fedoras: Sombrereria Maqedano on Sierpes, 40 in Seville, but for home stuff you musn't leave without going to Populart on Pasaje de Vila, 4 also in the centre of town. As you can see in the window they sell the most beautiful old ceramics which are the perfect, if not the only sort, of souvenir one wants.

This is just in the prototype phase right now but I'm looking forward to having a clamp for every imaginable use in the very near future.

The designer, Jorre van Ast, is currently looking for manufacturers so if you have any suggestions send them his way via his website and definitely check out the other work on his website while you're there. His outdoor plywood chair has nice lines and feels refined enough for indoor use as well and his clamp-a-leg project can turn any old door into the table of your dreams. Both of these last two designs are also enviromentally friendly efforts.

I am in Southern Spain, staying at Trasierra where I have been exposed to a whole new heating experience,above is a perfectly normal looking table set for breakfast with a long table cloth, however, hidden beneath is a small round gas heater so that when you put your legs under the table they are kept toasty warm. While this isn’t so necessary in the well heated houses of America I do think it is a good thing for the terrace, you know those lovely sunny but cold days that come on either side of summer, well using this method you could easily sit out for lunch. Below is a look at what is going on under the table, with my sister as the model.

I was browsing the Friend site today and came across this Tord Boontje hanging light fixture:

And I immediately thought of Nigel Tufnel from "Spinal Tap":

There's definitely something mullet-esque going on here, but I kind of love it.  Tord calls it the "Icarus Light" -- you know, son makes his own wings with  wax and feathers (sounds like something I'd do), flies too close to the sun ... well it's not a happy story. But this fixture is sheer delight!  At $79.50 plus ten bucks for a wiring kit I'd hang three of them over a bar or kitchen table.

When I was painting my bathroom, I wanted to do a Greek key border above the [hideous] green marble tile.  Surely, I thought, there is a store or website that offers stylish stencils like the six-inch repeating key motif I had in mind.  Nope.  The ones I found were dumb and dinky and I ended up winging it--and the painting took a combined 28 hours.  Bad idea.  I don't know how to feel right now after a quick Google search yielded exactly what I was looking for a year ago:

MB Historic Decor carries this perfectly proportional key in 4-, 6- and 8-inch versions for $27.50 each.  Completely worth it and beautiful above tile or around a plain door frame.  But a few tips: you don't want the traditional ducks-and-hearts look, so apply several coats with your stencil brush to make it opaque.  And my fellow compulsives might want to fill in the diagonal spacer lines freehand.  It makes such a difference! A bad pic of my finished result:

It may be just a little politically incorrect to love this as much as I do, but when I saw this I began to feel sleepy and warm and imagining a nap in this hammock in my imaginary house upstate where snow was quietly falling outside and the sun was beginning to set and the smell of Hungarian goulash soup permeated the house as I sipped my hot spiced cider with rum and tossed the hate-mail for writing about this piece into my fireplace. Then again, maybe you like this as much as I do.

Coyote hammock from Bless. Check out their entire site to get the whole story.

I Just love Denise Dorrance's cartoons.  She sends them randomly to my email address and I always love getting them.  She has a wonderful sense of humour, click above and you will see her webpage. 

Tori Mellott has such a swank coffee table in her Festivus-ized apartment (current issue, page 94), but it's a custom piece and costs over $2K!  For the rest of us revelers there's a great new furniture and accessories line called Bungalow 5 that offers this Jacqui coffee table:

The curves are a little more pronounced--Ming meets Marrakech--but it's fun and whimsical and retails at less than a third of the price of Tori's Niermann Weeks beauty (check their website for locations). It comes in a bunch of other colors and of course I couldn't resist painting a half-inch gold border around the edges.  Just not after two spiked eggnogs.

OK, this is just too good a deal to pass up so go get rid of your old dining table right now, don't look back and don't cry because you won't miss it, then go to the Design Within Reach website and buy this AVL Shaker dining table
and you'll then discover the wonder of having a beautiful brand new very well consrutced table for the cost of a table from the unmentionable place where they sell disposable furniture somewhere in New Jersey. It's designed by Joep van Lieshout for Moooi-another favorite from the Netherlands-and DWR is selling these tables for way less than wholesale, so much less that this entry normally would be peppered with expletives from top to bottom were it not for the fact that it can't be. Here's a shot of the one I picked up a few weeks ago just so you know I'm serious.

They're available in a few finishes and while I don't think its companion chairs are the most comfortable I like the utilitarian look and I'm still contemplating picking up a few of them. Don't wait on this one because a deal like this doesn't often come along. Seriously.

I am suffering from present panic- stations, why are men so difficult!  I have solved one of my male Christmas present traumas this year at Bonnie Slotnik's divine shop at 163 West 10th street (212 989 8962). She sells vintage cook books. While I was in there buying my father's Christmas presents: Lady Jekyll's Kitchen essays, French Bistro Cooking and The Omelette Book (with illustrations by the wonderful Hilary Knight, there is another old cook book that he did the illustrations for called The I Hate To Cook Cookbook, which is an old American favourite). I realised that actually you can get quite a lot of quite tricky people books in here.  There is something for almost anyone.

Bonnie has every conceivable type of cookery book, from Ukranian Cooking (which was surprisingly thick) to Martha Stewart first editions.  There are very funny old Emily Post etiquette books, books on cocktails which are always good presents, buffets, Chinese cooking at home, ice cream, chocolate, every nationality - just loads, and over the road is the wonderful Three Lives Bookshop, one of the oldest in New York. Books at Christmas are a really good gift.

This is the small pile i am giving my dad for Christmas.  It is a fun shop to be in, you will find all sorts of things that you want and you can shop here quite inexpensively, most of these books were about $20 each. 

Jonathan Adler is the gift that keeps on giving. His bath collection for Croscill has been at Bed Bath & Beyond for years now, but I still can't get over the lacquerware:

The pieces are so well made and the colors are  perfect (though I miss the vermillion).  Eighteen bucks may seem a bit steep for a soap dispenser, but the design is timeless--I haven't found anything as simple in fancier stores.  My favorite is the waste basket, which could travel to a study or bedroom. 

...I can't help but love this little Wall Mounted Stag from Digby and Iona.

So while the rest of the free world may have already moved on and found new things to fixate on in design like bold colors and rapid prototyping, I'm still holding out and saying let's all embrace the antler one last time by hanging this little vestige of a nearly bygone day on our walls. It looks great on its own or use this little gold plated number as a coat hook... and those celebrating a certain holiday on December 25th, you can use them to hang your stockings.

For decades Scientific American had the most incredible covers, dominated by one graphic image--windmills, insects, cell diagrams--all verging on the psychedelic.

I bought a stash of these from a street vendor a few months ago, but The Paper Boy News and eBay offer great examples for as little as a few dollars.  I cut out three of my favorite cover shots and mounted them with 7-inch silver frame kits from Pearl Paint (no mat necessary and less than five bucks each).  Science was never really my subject ... but these look fab hung in a row in my tiny kitchen!

Those who know me know I'm a big wearer of hats. Well, hat really. I have just one hat that I've worn for the last two plus years almost daily and while I've kept my eyes open for a replacement or at least an alternate to give number one a rest, I've yet to find one that fits. Fits right anyway. So just as I was bracing for another winter in my really-not-so-warm hat I was introduced to Victor Osborne, these fantastic hat makers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You go to their showroom, pick from a number of styles, pick your fabrics and they'll make your hat to fit even your hard to fit head. They're so well designed and so well made I may get two... just like my friend. Thanks PW.

I love the oversize rope-covered lamp in Steven Sclaroff's living room (current issue, page 185) but I'm sure it's one-of-a-kind--and out of my budget!  Pearl River carries the Abacca Rope Lamp, a smaller and more modern take on this style that comes with a boxy white shade:

I'd switch out the shade for a creamy pagoda version and apply some jute loop fringe at the edges with a glue gun to mimic the personality of Steven's find.  These would look great as a pair on a red lacquer console or as bedside table lamps!

Just when I think I might finally be over Dutch design I find something like this and I am obsessed all over again and I have to thank my lucky stars that not every designer went to Eindhoven to study because you just know what the world might be like. USB Memory Stick from OOOMS.

Antony Todd the wonderful New York event designer has just opened an interior design store on East 11th street, by University Place.  The store is wonderful, his style is super chic and very neat.  Rush matting on the floor and an oversized mirrored leaned up against a wall is a signature style of his.  The things I loved were his lacquer pieces, consoles and coffee tables in wonderful colors, a perfect Prussian blue, this glorious red and a very cool white coffee table.

There are chairs and sofas both vintage and from his own collection and his look is to upholster in rich jewel colors or beige linen.  I think the shop is great, it is the perfect place to stop for the few splashy items that bring a room together.

ANTONY TODD HOME
44 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
T: 212.529.3252

www.antonytodd.com

Sorry for this terrible picture. I took it, but I really love the things in it.

Good prop stylists know the value of scale and repetition, so why not follow their lead on your table this season with an assortment of silver spheres?

CB2 carries them in sizes from three to ten inches in diameter, in stainless steel and aluminum.  They're inexpensive, so I'd mix big and small, shiny and matte, scattered at random or spilling out of