please and thank you

Now THIS is how we like to start a new week - a new month even ... an elephant grey (or should that be gray?) ARMSHELL sitting atop a black 'cats cradle' base.  To say that we need this would be an understatement.  However, WE NEED THIS.  Now.  Please and thank you.

Image: Circa Modern

skinny dipping

FOLKLORE is an independent London and online store set up by Danielle Reid and her husband Rob. The pair work with brilliant designers and makers and look for craftsmanship, quality, simplicity and durability in all of their products. As their website states, the DIP CHAIR, is a popular chair - and we can see why.  Based on the Windsor Style Chair that originated in England in the early 1700s, this exact style was invented in New York and produced in the mid-1950s.  Whichever way you look at it, this chair oozes personality.  With the natural wood versus the white makeover ticking all the right boxes, we particularly like the discreet metal rods which add that bit of extra decorative interest - as if any were needed.

Images:  Folklore

winner

We've gone all topical today and decided to back what we hope will be a winner for JAMES AUSTIN. Austin is a young designer maker whose first CHAIR is part of a range called 'Project Won' which is geared towards the upcoming London 2012 games. The chair - along with the other pieces in the range - is made entirely of sports hall flooring salvaged from around the UK. Each piece is handmade, one piece at a time, in his Shropshire workshop using time tested traditional joinery techniques. The individual salvaged planks are hand sanded, leaving the original sports lines on display and then recoated with a natural wax oil.

Images: James Henry Austin

honestly

We've been chatting here recently about a chair design attributed to Yngve Ekström. Whether the anonymous design is by Ekström remains to be seen, but we've got Ekström on our mind. So instead of an attributed to, here's an undisputed offering by Ekström in the form of a pair of oak 'Sibbo' armchairs designed in 1958 for StolAB. Honest, simple, traditional.  Yes please!

Images: Lauritz

all in the detail

Images:  Two Columbia Road, Kitka Design, Subtilitas, Kiss the Design, Danish Design Store