Yokoo styling

After having done a bit of styling on my own products, and sat in on a professional shoot or two, I am in awe of the hard work done by stylists, and always delighted by a fresh approach to the presentation of a product. So when I spotted these witty product shots for knitted things by Yokoo, I just couldn't resist sharing. Hope they inspire you too!

And the icing on the cake (so to speak): this photograph for sale called i wear many hats.

Giveaway - Acoustic Arabia

It's December, the month of frenzied gift-giving! And in the spirit of the season, we have another CD to give away from Putumayo World Music. This time it's Acoustic Arabia: a collection of contemplative and introspective acoustic music from the Arabic world.

To win yourself a copy of this collection, just visit the Putumayo website and find the answer to this question:

Name one of the three divas performing in the group Les Orientales.

Click here to send us an email with the answer, and remember to include your name and postal address.

Chromolab inspiration

Today, a series of jolts of glorious colour to inspire, courtesy of the marvellous and witty Chromalab team:


Chromalab consists of a husband and wife team in Boston, who know how to give an old piece of furniture a colour kick in the pants! Visit the Chromalab website and shop for more of their eye-popping inspiration.

Via Design*Sponge

Report from NYC: Little Friends of Printmaking

The humble print has exploded on the Web as an affordable art work bursting with imagination. I could spend my whole day – and my entire paycheck – buying up prints on Etsy. As the cold winds whip through Wall Street and the art market starts to feel the chill, I take comfort that for a mere $25, I can buy me a heart-stopping little showpiece, like these by the Little Friends of Printmaking.

The Little Friends of Printmaking are the husband-and-wife design team of James and Melissa Buchanan, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They make silkscreen prints, usually in batches of no more than a hundred, which they sell on their fabulous website.

Many of their prints start life as posters for music concerts, film festivals and book readings. Okay, so you didn't actually see Yo La Tengo at Memorial Union Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin, but you feel like you could have been there.

James and Melissa also make art prints that they take on travelling exhibits around the country. I asked James which of his prints were his favourite. "They’re all our children," he said with mock affection. "I tend to divorce myself from them when they come out of the house." Jeez, I hope this guy isn't actually planning to have children any time soon!

Seriously, it's clear that the Buchanan household must be a fun place. A visit to their website is worthwhile, not only to see their fabulous portfolio of posters, but also to read their zany captions.

Where DO they get all these wacky bolts of imagination? "We watch too much TV. We connect the dots wrong between things," said James. "We keep a list of all our crazy ideas."


Not too shabby for a design duo with few prospects after graduating from art school just four years ago. "We were music fans, so when a promoter asked us to make some posters, we thought it would be fun. We didn’t have an inkling we were interested or good at design," says James.

To read about another up-and-coming print artist - this one based in my home town of Brooklyn - take a visit to my blog, The Brooklynist.

Lei Xue

Is a pile of crushed beer cans ever capable of having aesthetic appeal?


Well, perhaps when Lei Xue makes the cans out of porcelain and decorates them in a traditional Chinese motif usually seen on delicate teacups.

Via Design for Mankind

Air Lines poster

When I consider graphic design and aviation, all I can think of is diagrams showing how to put on your life jacket, but artist Mario Freese has come up with something that's a lot more interesting, and delicately beautiful too.

His work, Air Lines, tracks the paths of scheduled airline routes on a finely detailed A0 wall poster, available on both black and white backgrounds.

The flight paths he's traced include the big transatlantic flights as well as local Cessna routes, and the web created is quite extraordinarily complex.

Contemplating all this incessant criss-crossing of the globe makes me appreciate those diagrams showing me how my life jacket will help me survive a plane crash a whole lot more!

Visit Mario Freese's Air Lines website for more information and for the opportunity to purchase your own.

o.live

After showing Rupert Smith and Warren Matthee's home in Wednesday's post, I thought it might be interesting to show you more of their boutique store, o.live, Chemistry of Living. I went to the store to take some snaps, and also managed to pin Rupert down and get him to answer a couple of questions:


What is concept behind o.live ?
Warren and I started o.live about 10 years ago, and the idea was that is would be an outlet for local creatives, and also somewhere we could show the things we are attracted to. It started out as a tiny shop that was going to be a "hobby" for when we were not busy. But 10 years later, i's become something a lot bigger and more time consuming.


I'm always unsure how to pronounce o.live. Can you help?
o.live is pronounced like the word "olive". The spelling is a play on words, highlighting the word "live". We included the unusual punctuation as a bit of a joke, because we came up with the name at the time of the .com boom.


How much of what we see at o.live reflects in your home?
There is definitely a crossover between our house and the shop. Both are filled with things that we love, and we're often torn between what to keep and what to put in the shop.


What are you noticing in terms of trends, reflected in your store?
I do think that retro / vintage is very big, and combining it with new and old makes for an interesting mix. Of course, these days we need to be thinking green, and o.live embraces this by finding and updating old furniture, as well as having tables and benches manufactured from reclaimed wood.



What are some of your favorites in o.live right now?
Vintage gold porcelain tea set , framed vintage horse prints , feather inner pillows for lounging and elongated reclaimed wooden table and benches re upholstered 50's and 60's lounge suites.

Thanks, Rupert (and Warren too)! Visit o.live, chemistry of living at the bottom of Kloof Street in Cape town.

Odili Donald Odita at Michael Stevenson

Currently showing at top Cape Town gallery, Michael Stevenson Contemporary, is a show of large acrylic paintings and wall paintings by Odili Donald Odita, a Nigerian artist living and working in Philadelphia.

Eternal - Odili Donald Odita

Here and There - Odili Donald Odita

I think they are just beautiful to look at, and was pleased to see that the press release backs me up on this one: "At a time when people habitually mistrust intuition and visual pleasure, his work relies heavily on both". There's more to his work than just an enjoyment of these massive colourful canvasses, of course, but being swallowed up by colour and shape is enough reason to go and visit the gallery.

Click here to find out how to get to Michael Stevenson Contemporary in Woodstock, Cape Town.

Special issue: Fortune's Favours

One of my favourite shops in Cape Town is O.live Chemistry of Living, an interiors boutique run by Rupert Smith and Warren Matthee. The shop is an amazing and ever-changing mix of flea market finds, modern classics, sophisticated ceramics and glassware, all arranged just so. Rupert and Warren must have a closely-guarded little black book, because somehow the things on the shelves at O.live are not to be found anywhere else.


O.live is always so impeccably styled, I've always been curious to see how Rupert and Warren's home looks, and the Celebrate! issue gives us a peek into their newly-renovated home, on pages 98 - 107.

The wallpaper in the sitting room is by Osborne & Little, while the lounge suite was a lucky second-hand find.

The kitchen has echos of the shelves of O.live, with beautiful things arranged beautifully, creating an air of bounty and care.

If you like what you see, do check in to the blog again tomorrow, for an interview with Rupert, and some more pics of O.live too.

Production: Lauren Shantall
Photographs: Mark Williams

Special Issue: Retropolitan

Whenever we put together another fab issue of ELLE DECORATION, there's never enough room for all the pics of the gorgeous homes we've hunted down for you. That's why this blog is such a treat for us - we get to share everything, adding to your enjoyment, and ours.

Along with architect Joy Brasler and designer Debra Parkington, Mike Johnston rescued a mock-Spanish horror, turning it into a retro-glam tropical pad of note. There's already full 10 pages of pics of this sensational Durban home on pages 80 - 89 of the Celebrate! issue, but here's even more, so enjoy!

Production: Lauren Shantall
Photographs: Angie Buckland