Mad Men has trained a generation of TV watchers to become eagle-eyed connoisseurs of Saarinen furniture, IBM Selectric Typewriters, and Western Electric Model 500 telephones, raising the bar for set designers who are acutely aware that accuracy counts. But designers also know that television sets are not museum installations: The verisimilitude of physical details must work in tandem with aesthetic choices that help us understand who characters are.
Read MoreAn historic porcelain factory in the hills of Saxony has its very own collection, invisible to the eye, but richer and more precious than the finished products of its kilns. Though there are rooms here filled with thousands of plaster moulds and centuries worth of subtle variations on a single form from the manufactory’s line of tableware and figurines, the collection that makes the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory irreplaceable comprises the memories, expertise, and skills of the people who work here. Passed down, mastered, and refined in an unbroken chain through political upheaval and social change, the knowledge that permeates this place is more priceless than any object, and more fragile than porcelain itself.
Read MoreTry to imagine Grumpy Cat as a professor of German literature at an Ivy League university, haunted by deep misgivings about his role in academia. Now imagine that he has opposable thumbs, an iPhone and a love of wry German aphorisms, and you might end up with something pretty close in spirit to Eric Jarosinski’s Twitter feed, @NeinQuarterly. Nein’s avatar is a stylized rendering of lovable Frankfurt School misanthrope Theodor W. Adorno, who is depicted sporting a monocle that he didn’t wear in real life, but plausibly could have.
Read MoreThere are two public works on view in the Northeast right now by the Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse. One, in Philadelphia, zips past as you ride a moving train; the other, in Brooklyn, inspires you to stand still and look closely. Both works introduce unexpected bursts of saturated color into ordinary, even dreary urban settings.
Read MoreChef Pierre Calmels didn’t go to art school, but he’s found a kindred spirit in artist and designer Gregg Moore, a professor of Ceramics at Arcadia University. Moore’s exhibition “Heirloom“ at the Philadelphia Art Alliance revolves around “Table d’Hôte” (“The Host’s Table”), a unique family-style meal that the artist and the chef developed together.
Read MoreThe first thing you see when you enter Collective design fair at the Moynihan Station Skylight space is a mini-exhibition of work by Hella Jongerius, organized by Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell of design think tank Moss Bureau. The presentation includes a group of stuffed “Quilted Vases” (2006) by the Berlin-based Dutch designer. These rather cozy versions of Jongerius’s famed “Red White Vase” from 1997 tell you that this is not a deadly serious presentation for expert eyes only. The pair of well-behaved live chickens at the center of Dienst + Dotter’s booth confirms this hunch.
Read MoreOn the afternoon that I visited the 2014 Whitney Biennial, I caught sight of a high school group being led through the exhibition by an engaging young arts educator. I slowed down as our paths converged on three large ceramic sculptures by the Los Angeles–based artist Sterling Ruby. Each one is roughly the size of a major appliance, hand-built, and covered with bold, exaggerated finger marks. Every square inch is uneven, almost obsessively so. The color palette of the glazes ranges from brilliant copper red to soft black and army green.
Read MoreFired clay, which we tend to associate with heat and flame, is actually frozen in time.
Firing affords us the opportunity to behold and study the evidence of an object's physical transformation: all those drips and pools of glaze suggest suspended animation, and remind us that the pliable nature of the raw ingredients - their flow - has been abruptly stopped.
The Middle East has long been synonymous with masterful craftsmanship: architecture, ceramics, textiles, carved wood, manuscripts and metalwork dazzle museum-goers and tourists alike, and inspire designers and artists all over the world. In the traditional cultures of this storied region, women still play a secondary role as artisans, says designer, entrepreneur and global traveler Tucker Robbins. Currently working with the Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage, Robbins had the insight that collaboration among cultures within the Islamic world is critical to developing a network of craftswomen powerful enough to open the doors to economic and artistic possibilities.
Read MoreBeing associated with that special combination of luscious imagery, romance, and personal turmoil makes artists and designers juicy subjects for movies. Such recent examples as Pollock and Frida aim for seriousness and verisimilitude, but without having known these artists, we can only guess how much these portrayals ring true. My personal favorite movie-subject artist will always be a fictional one: Catherine O’Hara’s postmodern harridan, Delia Dietz, in Tim Burton’s 1988 masterpiece Beetlejuice.
Read MoreMost works of contemporary art that you find in galleries and museums are finished by the time they’re on view; in the case of performance art that unfolds in real time, a “work of art” isn’t really an object but an experience or an interaction. This summer, the Philadelphia Art Alliance has invited a group of artists called the Miss Rockaway Armada to create something that is part performance, part salvage operation and part sleight of hand. It demonstrates that the processes of designing and building something can tell a story. And what’s their story?
Read MoreAmerican studio ceramics have come a long way since the late nineteenth century when the “Saturday Evening Girls” decorated children’s tableware by hand in their Boston workroom at the Paul Revere Pottery. Just as the vogue for arts and crafts style was on the decline, European modernism gave American design a jolt of creative energy, introducing the clean bold forms of Bauhaus tableware to a population that was beginning to tire of lily-pad and sunset motifs and the like.
Read MoreAnxiously reading the headlines about Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis in the wake of last week’s earthquake and tsunami, I’ve been looking around for effective ways to help the relief effort.
A benefit auction starting March 24th offers a great way to send much-needed funds to Global Giving’s Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund, a grassroots organization that is well-equipped to deploy supplies and aid across the country. Handmade for Japan, which was organized just one day after the earthquake on March 12th by Ayumi Horie, Kathryn Pombriant Manzella and Ai Kanazawa, will raise money for Global Giving with an eBay auction featuring the work of artists from the US and Japan.
Read MoreAn outlet mall sweater that will never fit. Fancy toiletries so heavily perfumed you can’t bear to keep them in the house. A DVD of an Adam Sandler movie that you wouldn’t have gone to see when it was in the theaters. “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. This December, millions of gifts will be bought, wrapped, shipped, opened — and either returned, or consigned to obscurity in the basement.
Read MoreI was seven years old the summer that “Back to the Future” hit movie theaters, and my entire second-grade class collectively lost its mind. Suddenly obsessed with glowing jukeboxes, the Andrews Sisters, and 3D glasses, we wore poodle skirts on Halloween and begged our parents to talk about the far-away fifties. We were too young to appreciate all the things that made our parents glad the era had come to an end - legal racism, sex discrimination and homophobia, and constant anxiety about the threat of nuclear war.
Read MoreOn October 15, 2008, 27 prominent American ceramic artists unveiled a diverse group of cups, plates and other pots called "Obamaware" as a fund-raiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign [figure 1]. It was a great idea-a convergence of the handmade aesthetic beloved by progressive Americans, a "green" object you can use over and over, and a way to support the arts during difficult economic times. What better way to support the candidate for change?
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