LA PIG

My press hungry pig made an appearance in the LA Times today.

                                                                                                                                                                      

Thanks to my friend Carson for the spotting and laptop photo!

Color Report: Thankful Red

My travels this month took me to Sewla, a monastery high in the Bhutanese Himalayas.                    
                                                                                                                                                                   

I am very thankful to our friends Michael Reynolds and Eric Hoffman for bringing us on this incredible journey. We hiked 5 hours, uphill, to get there. We stayed at the monastery for two nights and despite the simple life the monks lead, it was a sensory immersion for this designer from New York - the chanting, the silence, the stars, the butter candles, the incense, the mountain light, and the honest food.  It was here that I found my new favorite color, the deep burgundy red of the monk's robes. It is a color that will never look the same to me again. Morning and evening prayers featured a sea of red robes set to a score more minimal and haunting than a Phillip Glass symphony.

The red played beautifully against the minimal  Himalayan backdrop for music practice.

This deep shade of red is now, to me, the color of compassion and duty. While I was travelling a good friend became very sick. Edward James (Barney) Brown was an artist, an art restorer, and one of the most magical people on earth.  My new friends at the monastery helped me honor him by hanging some prayer flags. As they wave, the flags are said to send prayers out over the mountains and valleys. 

Barney was not very religious, but I am sure he would have been inspired by the monks, in their red robes, helping us hang the colorful flags. Barney might have gotten out his water colors and done a painting of the red robes or the flags waving. Barney died on November 13th, as I was returning from my trip. 

I know a thankful red color story is a bit of a stretch, but somehow it made sense to me. Color takes on meaning. This year, in addition to the myriad of things I have to be thankful for on a daily basis, I wanted to give a special shout out to the red monks of Sewla for their hospitality and thoughtful ways. I also wanted to thank Barney for everything he taught me about art, and color, and enjoying life. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Jet Lag

My return from India and Bhutan resulted in major jetlag. Last week is a blur but we managed to take in a lot of NYC culture.                                       

                                                                                                                                                                  

Monday: I hit the ground running at the Museum of Art and Design Gala dinner at a table hosted by Kris Fuchs and Maria Sepulveda, my friends at Suite NY. It was a fun event, they kept the award ceremony short and let people have a nice dinner. The only picture I took, of Holly Hotchner, the Director of the Museum, on the big screen monitor presenting an award, does not do the evening justice. Even in my jetlag I had more fun than this. I am sorry I did not get a pic of Vladimir Kagan receiving his award, or of my fun table mates.

Tuesday: We cooked dinner for friends and had a little toast to the passing of our friend Barney Brown. The Magic will be missed.

Wednesday: I completely forgot we had tickets to the 9/11 Memorial :( But we did get some rest.

Thursday: For some reason I felt it would be a good idea to get John Jasperse tickets at BAM. John and I love modern dance, but the evening just fell apart. The Wall Street protesters held us up, we didn't have time for the adventurous meal in Ft. Greene we had planned, and we ended up sleeping through the whole dance piece. It looked interesting, between nods. Lots of fluorescent tape. The NY Times gave it a nice review. I think. The piece had very few points of engagement. As you read the review, just imagine trying to stay awake ...

Friday: John made some very hot Tortilla Soup.

Saturday: Finally coming out of the haze we caught Melancholia, Lars Von Trier's epic new film featuring a hauntingly beautiful Kirsten Dunst. I am still processing it. Scary and beautiful. I didn't immediately love it, but I woke up thinking about it on Sunday morning and it colored my whole day. It is a powerful fantasy.

Sunday: We saw a great production at NY Theatre Workshop in the hood on 4th Street. It is a stage adaptation of Once. The movie was a folk cult sensation a few years back and I love the music. Now it has been set for the stage. At $75/head, with Broadway aspirations, in this perfect little theater, with a bar set up on the stage and a dozen very talented musical performers I would say run-don't walk to get tickets for the holidays!

Harry's Travels: Bhutan #2

I will be boring friends for a long time with my pictures of Bhutan. I've seen so many beautiful things. One of my favorites was this Geometric Poem. The grid motif appears repeatedly in Buddhist temples, and God knows I love a grid, but here it's coupled with text and apparently it reads in all directions. Our guide could not read it because it is written in an ancient language, but the concept and the resulting pattern are mesmerizing. Like an ancient, holy crossword puzzle.

Harry's Travels: Bhutan #1

We landed in Paro, Bhutan last Friday, sorry about the late news, but Internet has been spotty. We spent our first morning visiting Tigers Nest (Taktsang). It is two hour plus hike up to see this spectacular temple. It appeared out of the fog dramatically. It is a fully functioning temple and we attended our first of many Bhuddist prayer ceremonies in one of its small shrines.

On the way up we passed this little retreat cottage, tucked in a ravine. I love the intersection of the simple cubic form and the rocky landscape. This is a retreat house, where a monk will go for three years and three months to contemplate and pray.

Katonah Yoga NYC

Visit our latest interior project at the grand opening of Katonah Yoga NYC this weekend. Free yoga and Pilates classes!

Don't miss out on a free class - they're filling up quickly!

Banana Bowl Spotting

The Banana Bowl for Areaware was spotted in "Miami Marvel" of Elle Decor.

Harry's Travels: India #2 Color Report

As luck would have it, we arrived in Varanasi just in time for Chhath.

Varanasi is the holiest Hindu city on the banks of the Ganges River. The sights have been amazing and we hit it right for Chhath, a festival during which women make offerings to the sun god in honor of their sons. We were up at 4:30 this morning to fireworks and thousands of women lining the banks of the river with baskets of fruit and flowers and incense. It was beautiful. Most of the women wear fluorescent orange stripes on their foreheads in addition to their bindis.

























It all made sense when the sun appeared above the river.

I am in awe of India's spiritual use of color.

Harry's Travels: India #1

I am in India on my way to Bhutan. Nothing humbles your design sense as much as a trip to India. Design is all about control, India is all about letting go.

As much as any designer, maybe even more, I am comfortable embracing the reality of things. Life is random and sometimes going with the flow enables some incredible results. No country does random as well as India. Our first stop was the Hanuman temple in Delhi. Out front they sell flower garlands. The garlands are used to adorn everything from stores, to cars, to temples. The world needs more flower garlands, it is such a beautiful gesture. And to my Western eyes it seems so decadent; they will after all, just decay; but herein lies the beauty.

India offers many examples of random embellishment. Note the tassels on this banana truck.

There are many lessons to be learned here. One of the things I noticed today is how many components go into an experience. The atmosphere, the smells, the sounds. We visited Agra today and the Taj Mahal was splendid. White on white marble, in a smoky haze, lit by a setting sun, and hoards of visitors, a sea of humanity, paying their respects.

Monday Cocktails

My first ever Cocktail Table is complete.

I got it back yesterday from the sandblaster. I am putting the prototype up for auction in the 2011 Design Trust Art + Design Benefit Auction that Cindy Allen, the Editor of Interior Design magazine, organizes every year. This small table (14" x 14" x 17") will complete any room. Look for it on their website soon (I'm a little bit late with my entry), and bid on it there, or you can attend the event and bid live. It is a fun evening.

There will be more Cocktail Tables to come, they are part of my REALITY work. In this series, instead of casting from life, I re-use the vestiges of our lives. The Can Clusters I created a few years ago are a similar idea. Waste transformed through order and finishing.

To me, these liquor bottles connote good times, some may see danger and sadness in them, others may relate to the particular brands, or just to the iconic nature of bottles in general. Whatever the association, meaning is latent decoration. The beauty, however, is not fully tapped until the artifacts are ordered and finished. In a batch of random bottles there are many sizes and shapes so each one of these pieces will be unique. This table for example employs all rectilinear bottles and I was amazed at how this selection went together as a perfect square. I had them sandblasted to get them one step away from reality.

There is much potential in trash. These bottles are extremely structural, reuse redeems the energy that went into making them, and prevents the energy needed to recycle them. However, reusing waste is not as easy as it sounds. Production is much more difficult than I had imagined. For the moment, my cocktail tables will all be unique creations. Of course, not every bottle will do, so I dumpster dive at our local recycling center selecting only clear liquor bottles, clean them, and arrange them. They are
sandblasted and UV glued together. The tops and bases are solid virgin glass. I have always been a proponent of mixing reused and new. Silicone stoppers and bumpers complete the table.

National Design Awards 2011

I Attended the National Design Awards last night and it was feeling very "establishment."                                                                                                                                   

The room was fun, designed by David Stark (again), and I sat at a cool table. Chris Hacker (L below) hosted. He is a friend and one of the best art directors I have ever worked with (Aveda, J&J, Steuben, Warner Bros). In addition to friends and colleagues he invited his 95 year old father, who was the star of the evening. 

Congratulations to all of the winners, but the ceremony was long-winded and it seemed like the big guys took over this year. I know, where would we be without the big guys, but some years there are a few underdog winners too. Natalie Morales hosted and Sigourney Weaver presented an award, so there was some star power in the room. Mathew Modine presented one of the last awards and commented on how dry the room was. 

One cannot be too judgmental, it is a charity event and there are probably a whole host of forces at work that I will never understand, but it is the National Design Awards! Where was the design? Where were all of the designers? We need to shake this party up.

I did run into my friends from the Corning Museum of Glass. They had made the award. It is pretty beautiful, check it out here.

I love this sh*t

I discovered an amazing new product. Gorilla makes a super glue that delivers on the promise. Incredible strength and speed. 

And the cap really works to keep it unclogged. 

Pig Safety

Got this email the other day from my friend Lisa Roberts of My Design Life:

"Hi Harry, I gave my TV producer Sara Baxter your pig as a thank you for the end of the TV series. She sent me this photo on her way to work. Thought you might like to see it. xo Lisa"

So I just wanted to shout out to Sara and thank her for putting safety first.

Foodie NYC

Last night was a beautiful night and my friend Cathy suggested we visit Madison Square Eats, the food trucks at Madison Square Park.

The moonlit ambiance was great, as was the lobster roll, but before we could decide on a second course all of the trucks shut down. So we headed over to Eataly and ended up getting a table at Birreria, their open-air, roof-top sensation. It has been packed all summer with tourists, but it only took a few minutes to get a table at 9pm on a Tuesday in October. The design is very European beer hall, but it makes good use of red, one of my all-time favorite colors. Unfortunately they had the retractable roof closed.

My food was perfect. I had two salads including this one that is composed of cooked and raw vegetables. It was a feast for the eyes until I dug in, and then it became a complex mix of flavor and texture. Yum.

Thank You Mr. Jobs ...

                                                                                                                                                                         

Found this pic of a very swarthy Steve Jobs standing on the moon with my first computer. My Apple II and my Epson computer (zipping away in the early morning) got me through my Poly-Sci degree at Alfred University.

PIG LOVE / PIG HATE

Another pig spotting ...                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                

Our friend Mari Balestrazzi at Morgans Hotel group was visiting a factory and the CEO has a collection of 1500 pigs, including ours in gold. Unfortunately right next to our Bank in the Form of a Pig is one of the most offensive ripp-offs I have seen on the market to date - the silver boar. I first saw it in Paris a couple of years ago. Yes, it is a boar, with teats, and I don't think it is a bank, but come on, it  looks like they modified ours. I hate it. 

Pentawards

I attended the Pentawards ceremony last night at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square.                                                                                                                                         

The Pentawards is an award program for packaging design. We already knew we had won a Platinum Award, the best in the luxury packaging category, for our BANG bottle, but this was the actual ceremony where they hand out the awards. The reception featured a coffee service in the lobby. What, no bar? 

I had forgotten how cool the inside of the Marriot is with the elevators shooting up and down, and the lit hallways lining the atrium. After a coffee, the 200 or so winners filed into the conference room where awards were to be given. 

 

It wasn't the Oscars, but it was interesting. Lots of good work honored, and people had travelled far and wide to attend, 21 countries were represented. Afterwards they served drinks and food, and I hung out at a table full of Greeks. They were all feeling pretty bad about the economic situation back home, but happy to be recognized on the international stage by the Pentawards. From left to right below: Marina won an award and her husband Kostas is a TV star in Greece. Apparently he created quite a stir on the flight over. Andreas Kioroglou is also a designer, and his client Konstantinos Verdes, who makes a rubics-cube-like toy, wanted to know where to party in NYC. 

 The very trippy rug ...

And our Platinum award for the design of the Mark Jacobs BANG bottle ...

In addition to the award, we won a free booth at the Luxepack show in Shanghai in March 2012. Nice. Now we have to figure that one out.

Color Report: Chartreuse

Much of my color inspiration comes from John's garden. This chartreuse Kniphofia is having a second flush of blooms (because John is such an amazing dead header!) and it made me stop and contemplate its yellowish-green hue. Colors from nature are hard to incorporate into our lives, but Shirley's recent report on the colorful work of Luis Barragan made me realize that color can be a powerful tool. I'm growing bored of neutrals. Chartreuse bathroom anyone?

Wave Hill

First, I'd like to thank Shirley for her last two posts on Mexico. I am encouraging the HAD team to weigh in with interesting things they see and do, and it looks like Shirley had an amazing trip to Mexico. I am jealous that she got to see all of the Luis Barragán architecture - that is something that has been on my list for a long time.

I've had blogging fatigue for the last few weeks, but I'm officially back at it. Fortunately the Wave Hill Gardener's Party supplied some great material last Thursday night. Wave Hill is a beautiful old estate in Riverdale, just north of NYC on the Hudson River, that has been preserved as a public garden.  The Gardener's party is their annual fundraiser that starts with cocktails and a plant sale.

The sun was going down, but I managed to explore the green house and the trough garden (with a vodka and tonic in hand). Trough gardening is a beautiful old tradition whereby alpine miniature plants are grown in cement troughs. I love the intersection of the geometric troughs and the organic plant material. In the picture below you can see the party underway in the background.

Dinner in the tent features a very generous auction to benefit the garden. Heavy hitters bid on unique plant specimens and boat cruises to benefit the garden. The rest of us bask in the glow of the philanthropy. Adam Rose and Peter McQuillen were our hosts, and our very-fun table table included from left to right: Peter McQuillan, myself, Colleen McQuillen, Jeff Waeschle, John Holm, Adam Rose, Cathy Deutsch (a graduate of the Wave Hill intern program that was being honored), Matt and Carleigh Farley, and Joanne Guzman.

Mexico City: Food

Mexicans love to eat and drink, and they do it pretty well. I was surprised by the number of restaurants and food stands, way more than in New York City. Food is a big part of the culture and you see it everywhere. It's hard to walk by and not have a taste, especially when the smell and vibrant colors makes you hungry for more.

Making cotton candy on the streets

Flautas (taquitos) before you order

Flautas after

Candy stand (they love their sweets)

Poblanos for Chiles en Nogada (seasonal dish)

Tacos al Pastor

Churros in the making

$2 Torta