I had a lovely package waiting for me yesterday when I headed back to work after taking a week off.  This lovely print from Meg Werner Photography!  I found Meg’s blog the way you find blogs in blogland — by a fortuitous click.  I was so excited to hear she had started selling her photography which is lovely and layered.

I think I bought this photo in particular because it somehow evokes my childhood in Vermont. I like to think the flowers are apple blossoms since every spring there was a day or two when the apple trees blossomed and my mom and I would drive up the back roads and look over the valleys full of orchards in bloom and shake off the last shadowy remnants of winter.  Every time I look over at this print (up at work where I most need inspiration!) I’m reminded of spring even as the days are getting shorter and it reminds me that there are always moments when you get to shake off your shadows and just be.

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Last time we were in Boston, we stopped at our favorite bakery, Flour, in our old neighborhood, the South End. They have a unique take on the photowall — they DRAW their frames and change the art. LOVE it.

As you will know from past posts, I’ve been a huge fan on Blueprint Magazine since issue 1. I love the way they combine lifestyle, fashion, ‘women’s magazine’ content and decorating ideas in a delicious beautiful magazine.  I think it is the magazine of our generation of work/happiness juggling design loving women.  There are some smart gals and guys over there and as a reader I really appreciate all their work. Here are my favorite bits of the current issue (click for a larger image):

And, psssst, check out the silhouettes on the wall.

* Custom Swizzle Picks from foryourparty.com
* Yellow Rain Slickers from Helly Hansen
* Excellent looking men’s shirts from Steven Alan
* Beautiful Murano glass necklace form Salviati (can’t seem to find an online source for the necklace itself!)
* Cool DIY butterfly wreath on made with faux white butterflies…more butterflies here
* I loved the Mills Canvas red flight bag so much that I bought it in grey — color of the season!

Apologies for the light posting — we had a medical emergency over the weekend and while everything is okay, it has been a scary couple of days.

My mom is visiting to help out and noticed one of my favorite things — a decorative matchbox given to me last year by C for christmas.  I love that it elevates the act of using matches into something beautiful. My favorite sort of design is always practical in someway. Or maybe I’m interested in elevating the everyday object into something beautiful or that nourishes the spirit. Also, I’m something of a miniatures nut (see dollhouses here, re-ment here and mini rooms here).  My mother fell in love with my matches (see first image below) and insisted that I do a round-up here on decorative matches.

PS I looked for a online site that sells these and couldn’t source them in the US. The artist is Erkers Marie Persson and the manufacturer appears to be Sverigealmanackan.

via always cool Curiosity Shoppe

via iomoi.com

As I searched for matches to post I was surprised there aren’t more on the market. Any cool finds I missed?

I just heard word that on November 1, ArchiviaBooks, a bookstore holding more than 3,000 titles curated for designers, architects, collectors, and enthusiasts (that’s us!), will open in New York! The independent shop is the brainchild of co-founder and co-owner Cynthia Conigliaro, an alum of publishing house Rizzoli International. Evidently, Conigliaro designed the interior of the 800-square-foot space, located on New York’s Upper East Side with Maple wood and brushed stainless steel with Tuscan orange walls. Desk chairs are Eames, in white leather, and a Werner Panton chandelier glows from above. Sounds lovely. Can’t wait to check it out. The shop is located at 993 Lexington Avenue at 71st Street.

I’ve depended on these hip, customizable graphic print paperweights  from iomoi.com as perfect gifts for years.  I mean, who doesn’t love something with their name on it? I just noticed they’ve added some lovely holiday cards that just made me really happy that winter and Christmas are around the corner (it’s rainy and cold here in New York).  Somehow a cracking fire, trimed tree and wrapped presents sound really nice.

And, check out their nice line of notebooks and cool matches.

I’ve had the gallery wall on my mind for a while now and while Tim (the cat) was away in Barcelona, I (the mouse) went on an Ebay buying binge.   I’m working on a new vintage product for Abigail Vintage Stationery and Home, so some of my purchases were for that and will no doubt make an appearence in this space sometime soon.

However, more immediately, I’ve started collecting frames for our very own gallery wall.  I love the first print and frame ($7) and was pleasantly surprised by the vintage paint by number farm houses ($13 for the pair).  The oil was a splurge ($73) but when you consider how expensive it is to frame anything, I talked myself into it.

Vintage paint by numbers can veer into tacky/dated pretty quickly, but there are some sweet gems, see below!

I’m wrapping up here at the Corning Museum of Glass conference on Nature in Glass. It’s been an amazing four days. I’ve learned so much about glass (Tiffany lampshades, contemporary artists, lectures on landscape in glass, the history of tabletop decoration) and have been inspired for my apartment and for all sorts of projects. My head is spinning but I’m brimming with inspiration.

I’ve gone to a few conferences for work, but going to a conference for something I’m passionate about (design, decorative arts) is an entirely different experience. For anyone reading who is passionate about something and sort of in their own world, I can’t recommend enough finding a conference on something related. You’ll met people who care about similar things and end up with amazing leads and inspiratoin.

I spent this afternoon in the library where I started research on the topic of still life painting and Beth Lipman for my final paper (I’m attending the conference as a requirement for a class I’m taking in my Master’s Program at the CooperHewitt Design Museum in the history of glass). I’m sure you’ll here more later on that!

As promised, here are some more of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka sea creatures, which are make of flamed worked glass (painted and glued as well). The models were used as teaching models in university science classes to show invertebrates that were very difficult to preserve (the alcohol the animals were preserved in would eventually leech all the color from the animal flesh).

Thank you to Holly at Decor8 for making Design Scouting blog of the week!

Loving the concept of solar powered garden gnomes which would have delighted me as a kid.

… This cool wrapping paper via Design for Mankind…

And check out a great round up of creative walls from Decor8!

I’m attending the glass conference as a core requirement of my history of glass class (say that twice fast). I’m here with around 15 others from my program and around 150 other glass enthusiasts. Today’s lectures focused on Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka who made glass plant and animal teaching models for universities around the world from the late 1880s to 1936. The flowers are beautiful (see below) but the sea creatures are haunting. In a quick search of the internet, I can’t find many good images, so I’ll take a few tomorrow and post.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Corning Glass Museum — I was pretty sure they’d have some beautiful ancient glass and probably some Corningware. What I didn’t expect was the extraordinary collection of contemporary glass. I’ve never paid too much attention to contemporary glass — mostly because what I have seen has been loud colors and odd shapes that just sort of exhausted my eyes.

However, the images above are from Beth Lipman, an artist influenced by Dutch still life paintings. See more of her work at the Heller Gallery in NYC or online. I’ve always been inspired by Dutch still life paintings (and those painters who’ve been inspired by them). These below are from the Met’s collections. There is a nice connection between still lifes and collections and display. I love including “still life” in my daily life, even if it’s just an arrangement of candles, mail and fruit on my dining room table.

I’m off to the 46th annual Glass Conference at the Corning Museum of Glass as it is a requirement of my History of Glass class. I’m particularly interested in the exhibit on Harvard’s collection of glass flowers (pictured above). How amazing is this image, rendered in glass! More tonight! Abbey

My husband traveled to Barcelona this past week on business and brought me back two of my favorite things: chocolate and stationery! Best of all blank journals. I’m the luckiest! The graphic packaging of the chocolate Xocoa is an indication of how delicious the product is (i love the bag almost as much as any of the gifts!). The chocolate is indescribably good. Yes, I scanned an empty wrapper, its already all gone. I’m without words for its buttery deliciousness. And, they don’t sell it online. Anywhere. Any readers live in Barcelona?

Sotheby’s is having two fantastic photography auctions October 15 and 16th (you’ll need to create a free log-in to browse the auction lots — there are hundreds more!) What I love about auctions is the chance to see images, objects and furniture I wouldn’t ordinarly have a chance to see before they get snapped up into a private collection. I think the cinema image by Hiroshi Sugimoto and the bentwood chair garden shot by Josef Sudek are breathtaking.

I particularly like Sotheby’s photography auctions because the auction catalogues are printed on beautiful paper and if you buy a catalouge (between $35-65) you can cut up the images and frame them. Since very few of us can afford the $100,000 (!!) some of these photographs will fetch, its the next best thing! I’m thinking of using my leftover “jobbers” from this project (finished product below) to frame some of the images above (I LOVE the hand, a self portrait by Andy Warhol).

(Photographers above from top to bottom: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carleton Watkins, Josef Sudek, Andy Warhol, William Eggleston, Walker Evans)

P.S.I blogged about another great photography auction here.

I couldn’t resist posting these silhouettes from the most recent Martha Stewart Weddings — I love this idea and the wedding looks lovely with lots of attention to detail. The artist here is Karl Johnson, whose amazing work I’ve blogged about before. Some of you have asked how to make your own silhouettes and via the Jane Austen Center:

1. Hang a large piece of white paper on the wall of a darkened room.
2. Have a person sit in front of the paper.
3. Shine a desk lamp at the person to create a defined shadow on the paper.
4. Have the sitter turn sideways so that the shadow is a profile. Tell him or her to sit very still.
5. Use a pencil to draw an outline of the sitter’s head, neck and the top of his or her shoulders.
6. Use a copy machine to reduce the drawing to the size you want.
7. Use a glue stick to fasten the copy to a sheet of black paper.
8. Cut around the outline.
9. Pull the white paper off the black one, flip the black one over and stick it on the front of a blank greeting card or on a sheet of light-colored paper.

What amazes me is that artists like Karl do the silhouettes free hand… Anyway, one of these days I’m going to test this silhouette making out of Tim!