Design Stores in New York

After the Guggenheim I was in the mood for a little more "well designed stuff" shopping. Specifically stuff that was local or out of my price range. I got a little of both. Moss is a furniture, lighting and housewares shop in SoHo. I love looking at contemporary furniture and lighting because I'm always secretly designing a room in my head. Moooi's high backed Smoke chair made of "ebonized" read: burnt wood that had been sealed with resin and upholstered with a beautiful matte leather is a contempo-gothic masterpiece. The complete counterpoint to Philippe Stark's lucite Ghost chair. Speaking of Philippe Stark, another piece on display was his gun lamp. Base=gold covered AK with a lamp shade. My favorite lamp was a non-mass produced piece called Fall of the Damned Suspension Light made by Luc Merx and a clock called Real Time: Sweeper's Clock made by Maarten Baas. The clock is accomplished by a 12 hour cyclical film of two street sweepers pushing garbage in the form of analog clock hands around in a circle. The lines of garbage being pushed by the sweepers represent the hour and minute hands. You can buy it on Blu-Ray for $1,275.

My favorite piece is a small sculpture/vase by a local artist ChenChen. The Swell vase is made with expandable foam (Great Stuff for insulating cracks) sprayed into netting. The effect is really sophisticated for such humble materials.










Next I went to a store called Future Perfect which features work of local and regional artists. Again I saw Chen Chen's work. This time there were Ham Hock coasters made from slices of colorful, indistinguishable materials (likely not fluorescent ham bits). There was also a couple of metallic log stools by Jason Phillips among other fabulous and clever usable eye candy.

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