Thursday 3 April 2014

In the port of Amsterdam...

... there is a lot of pretty things around. 

Today I spent half of the day rambling and randomly discovering them around. Love those moments when you are left to yourself and not constrained in time rambling in an arty neighborhood. These are the moments of pure enjoyment and excitement for me. I am missing this year's famous Salone del Mobile in Milan and while my today's stroll cannot nearly compete with the grandness and all kind of entertainment of Milan's show, I still enjoyed it: Amsterdam keeps on positively surprising me and each time revealing a new facet. 

The Frozen Fountain     

Very ordinary entrance did not promise much, but the vitrine with quite unordinary chair (Steltman chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld) dragged my attention. I was happy to step in as the store turned to be one of those hidden city gems that are not covered in any tourist guide. 

Steltman chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld and reissued by Rietveld Originals company are priced in the range from €1748 to €3745 depending on the materials



Heaven for interior designers, artists or slackers as I was today, the place contains furniture, textiles and art objects such as decorative rather than usable porcelain and ceramics....



Hybrid porcelain from Seletti inspired by the different dinnerwear in vintage shops

...also depicting animals obsessed with cakes...



...and even a night lamp from my favorite Amelie movie


Amelie lamp designed by Michael Sowa

Belarus-born Vika Mitrichenko in a witty manner using hand-decorated porcelain revitalizes Soviet sport trophies and commonly found "Girl with a Paddle"-type sculptures. In total, she made 13 variations with sometimes not fully clear text-engravings. I love and want them all! 


For saying that it is not so easy to bury one's talent in the earth
 For saying that life is not a sport competition after he was push aside by his colleagues from his position as head coach 
 For putting reproductions of the works from the futurist movement between the pages of a TV-program read by his mother-in-law
For saying that it is not so easy to bury one's talent in the earth
 For practicing his future coach talent being a coach to himself in his childhood
  For giving lectures on the history of art to his bedside neighbours in the hospital during his rehabilitation after a heart attack
  For devoting himself to his children after his career ended
  For saying to his boss Mr. V.B. a head of a sports committee that he is a stupid idiot
  For starting to visit artist studios and becoming interested in their works after he lost his position as head coach

Lamps...


Glass Fantasy lamps by Roos Kalff are made of stacked old glasswear, thus each lamp is unique, can be also customized and maybe that's why so expensive (almost €1300). To me it reminds Mike Kelley's John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project in which he used fragments of glass gathered alongside Detroit river, some dated back to the 1920-30s


Glass...
Masks by Melvin Anderson are inspired by African and Caribbean culture

Black Mirror by Bernard Heesen is a product of an inspiration from a tradition of hanging mirrors in the meeting rooms of Dutch cabinet. The result - cheerful and playful, but at the same time sinister neo-baroque objects

Bernard Heesen's creativity is in charge for these Waffle vases
The sweets topic is also covered in the photo project Sweet Coincidence by Nina Kopp and Joyce van den Berg - a study of the beauty and promise throughout the candy making process
 Leftovers of candy-making process were documented over a period of one year and resulted in over 240 photos of freakish remains of wannabe lollipops, lozenges and other sweet treats



Chairs...

Design by Marcel Wanders
The Continuous Story chairs by sculptor Harald Schole

Libertine Gallery


 Walls  

Jaski Gallery   

Michel Vanderheijden van Tinteren (b. 1965) and Roel Moonen (b. 1966), together Dutch duet Les Deux Garçons, actively involve morbid humor into production of their absurd sculptures that mix taxidermied animal heads with porcelain pieces purchased at auctions or through antique dealers. 


   

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