Film Noir

Johnny Walker Noir, that is. 

Vintage Japanese 35mm Ceramic Camera Flask, with a 16 oz. capacity.

+ In the shop +

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Truck Furniture

Truck Furniture's new book:

For years TRUCK has created simple, honest furniture in their workshop in Osaka, Japan. This book traces the nine-year journey of Tokuhiko Kise and Hiromi Karatsu, the couple behind TRUCK, as they set out to create a place of their own, where they could live and work comfortably with their large family of one daughter, five dogs and eight cats. Together they planned and constructed a house, a store, a workshop and, with the help of their friend, celebrity chef Kentaro, a cafe called Bird, and surrounded them with individually selected trees and plants.  Written by the couple themselves and lavishly illustrated with their own photographs, this is a book we hope you'll want to keep in your living room and return to many times. 

http://truck-furniture.co.jp/book/book01.html

Kinokuniya carries it and we're very psyched to get it.

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Happy Birthday Marie Helvin

h/t EmmaPeelPants

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Beautility

The potter Toyozo Arakawa, in the first part of National Geographic's "Living Treasures of Japan" (1980). Starts at 2 minutes in, but for context you should watch it from the beginning. PBS aired this on an amazing "Japan week" in 1980 and I've never forgotten it. 

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Happy Year of the Hobbit Dragon!!

It's both!!

Conversation with Smaug, watercolour by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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New in the Shop

Among 15 things we just added: 

Rare 1960's Honeywell Tap-Lites,

J.B. Blunk-ish Redwood Burl Cheese Board ,

and a Koons-ian Ceramic Doggie

Please Don't Eat the Mistletoe!

The Wary Meyers Shop

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J.B. Blunk at Greens, San Francisco

Sculptor J.B. Blunk's amazing redwood masterwork in the cafe area of Greens restaurant in San Francisco, 1979. Although it could be 2011, since thankfully it looks exactly the same today as it did when it was built and opened by the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 70's. Where else can pull up an Aalto stool and have a coffee on a J.B. Blunk? Nowhere!


See also: Checks Please! Milton Glaser's Big Kitchen
From the ever-inspiring book The Interiors Book of Shops & Restaurants, 1981.

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Poul and Hanne Kjaerholm's House, Denmark

Poul and Hanne Kjaerholm's home. Architect: Hanne.
 from Living Architecture Magazine (Denmark) #2, 1984.
Love it.
 If you click on a photo you'll be sent to our Flickr, where the original magazine scans are (a little bit back).

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ノルウェイの森

Norwegian chimney sweep.

 Equal parts Japanese Kanji character and modernist bird, it's one of my favorite objects in our shop.
Also it could be a model for a great spiral staircase, or very cool parking garage.

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Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji

Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji. 1959

"I have photographed the mountain more than 150,000 times,
but I fear that I have still not exhausted all its possibilities."

Cover design and layout by Ryuichi Yamashiro
Published by Charles E. Tuttle Co.

Japan, you are in our hearts.

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The Ghost and Mrs. Snowblood

Squeaky-voiced 1930's actress Jean Arthur's house in Carmel California, 1976.
Equal parts Lady Snowblood and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,
with a little helping of the Mines of Moria and Fangorn Forest.

And that's just the living room.

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Koji Tatsuno

Designer Koji Tatsuno's (Alexander McQueen's old boss) very cool Paris apartment. From British Elle Decoration magazine, 1998.

70's sofa and rug found at the Marseilles flea markets.

"Home is about creating a space you feel comfortable in, and to me a comfortable environment is one that is aesthetically pleasing."

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Double Happiness

Two awesome old Chinese lamps from a yard sale, $5.

Related: "The Lover":

featuring more happiness and really beautiful production design.

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Kei Bohji-san

A monkey pile of Japanese teak chimpanzees, slightly altered from Kay Bojesen's Danish original. The little one in the middle was on a shelf in my dad's closet growing up and the rest are from yard sales over the years. In the last few months we've used them in our son's room as a mobile (with vine-green yarn)(too dangerous), coat hanger (upside-down off the back of the door-too fragile), and semaphore (Beatles "HELP"-style for "FAOM", which didn't look that good- actually neither did HELP, as they changed it to the more design-friendly NUJV.) The new project is to make a little Ofuro hot tub barrel to keep them in, Macaque-style. If that doesn't work they're going up on a shelf.

Related: the back cover of "This Week: Guide to Wonderful Copenhagen, May 5-May 11, 1973", brought back and stuck in a drawer by my grandparents.

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Brutalism & BMWs

Brutalist pegboard- notice how the lights can be moved to any hole.

Above, from Suzanne Slesin's 1987 book "Japanese Style", including Toyo Itoh's awesome ping pong courtyard, Tadao Ando's supercool partially bermed brutalism, and Kenji Hongo's vertical bunker with its 1978 BMW 530i parked in the rock garden garage.

Below: the cover of next month's Brutus Casa (from Japan). Related? Probably not, but those older BMWs do go nicely with giant slab architecture.

Read more about the cover house above over at What We Do Is Secret

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Flea & Easy

Miscellaneous things we found at yard sales, mostly last summer. 

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