Vintage Typewriters

We can hardly remember the world pre iPhone. Can you remember writing anything on typewriters?
I think the vintage typewriters are actually coming back in style. These rejuvenated ones are Kasbah Mod.
via fab.com
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Clothes Hangers by REsign

by REsign
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Sarah Turner - Twitter Ball

562 reused plastic bottles, hundreds of LED lights and live Twitter feed are the ingredients for this Christmas holiday installation. Working with design company Sennep, this giant tweet-reactive bauble, flashes different colours when selected words from Cohn&Wolfe's holiday message are tweeted. 
by Sarah Turner. 

Kiel Mead - Birdie Light

I have seen lamps made of many many things (i.e. the one made of Bic pens I wrote about recently), but this one by Kiel Mead - made out of badminton birdie / shuttlecock - is definitely surprising... More and more I catch myself looking around, spotting objects suitable to be transformed into lamp. And I'm on a lamp-hunt at the moment (to my freshly renovated kitchen), so it may result in something interesting.

Bic Pen Lamp by enPieza!

During my visit to London in April I have visited Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in Notting Hill. Versa Design, the studio I'm an Art Director at, specializes in packaging design and I'm always looking for some inspoiration for our future projects. Apart from the packaging collection, showcasing decades of package design history in UK, they also had a small display of lamps by enPieza! made of the ubiquitous Bic pens. The idea is actually pretty simple, but that's the thing with simple ideas - they are difficult to come up with.
pics via trendhunter

Ikea My Way - Furniture From Ikea Hangers...

During my visit to Poland's biggest design fair - Arena Design - one of the exhibitions I explored the most was Ikea My Way. Ikea together with Fine Arts Academy in Wroclaw organized a competition for students to create furniture from already existing items from their offer. Since I myself have furniture made from weird objects in my apartment, I looked in awe at the examples of their creativity. Lamps made of rubbish bins or seats made of little dog toys. This chair / wine rack / magazines holder by Maciej Pala won in the Best Design In The Lowest Price category. It uses plastic clothes hangers, that are less than 30 cents each, to create a multi-functional piece of furniture.
additional pics via ikea and 7rano

Michael Wolke

Another example of reusing and recycling, lamps made of discarded cardboard by Michael Wolke (by the way, there's more pics on interesting pieces made of reused objects in reduce : reuse : recycle on our facebook page). via


Trough the variety of corrugated cardboard which can only be reached by using discarded Material, the lamp “Beute” becomes a selection of unique light objects. By dissecting and rearranging of the Material, the designer compresses the conquered corrugated cardboard and uses it as raw material with specific characteristics. 
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Critique Collective - Discarded Circuit Board Jewelry

 I knew you could make jewelry out of a lot of stuff, but computer circuit boards..?

Jewelry_cycle is an educational showcase of wearable treasures made from re-purposed and re-cycled materials. With the idea of an exhibition in mind, co-curators Christine Dhein and Christoph Koch asked the Critique Collective to create wearable art from a variety of small, discarded circuit boards. Circuit boards are commonly made from fiberglass, epoxy resin, and a variety of metals, which is likely to be one third of the material. These metals include copper, silver and gold, which add a precious element to what would otherwise be considered e-waste. These artists discovered the hidden potential, and transformed these materials to create brilliant, sparkling jewels. Photos from & via

Kibako Grass Jewellery

This unique jewelery was sent to me by Anna Sklodowska, who is also the author of these pieces and owner of kibako – internet gallery showcasing unusual jewellery. Her designs are based on the recycling of everyday objects and materials, as she tries to turn them into something beautiful and different to the original use. She likes bold shapes, often playing with assymetry. The „Grass” collection (above) is made of thin rubber threads that Anna bought at a florist, they immitate grass pretty well. Oh, also an intersting fact – Anna is actually and archologist, but she also works at frescos preservation!

Paulina Ptasznik - Recycled Furniture

Two weeks ago I published a short post about amazing work by Katie Thompson. I am still impressed by the way she turns old and sometimes devastated objects into new and desirable pieces of furniture. I was surprised to see something - well, more than similar - by Paulina Ptasznik, graduate of Fine Arts Academy in Poznan. No matter who came up with the idea of using suitcase to build an armchair first - I still ♥ it.

Patka Smirnow - Eco Bags

My visit at arena design in Poznan is a fruitful one and I'm truly delighted to be here. The fair was opened by Karim Rashid, as I mentioned earlier on this week, and I have to tell you a few words about his lecture, but I need to come back home first and get hold of my own computer (rather than my brother's). Polish designers featured at arena design will pop up at the site for sure in the upcoming weeks so do come back to see it!

For now I'm going to leave you with another Polish designer, Patrycja Smirnow, also known as Patka Smirnow, who creates amazing hand bags out of used plastic bags. I was going to buy one of them at the recent Etnodizajn festival in Krakow, but unfortunately run out of money minutes before I reached Patka's stall. I'll make it up to myself next time I get to see her work!

Pleciuga - Dowry Chest

Last Saturday I attended the Ethnodesign / Etnodizajn festival in Krakow, which I really (really) enjoyed. Most of the teams featured at the fair presented objects inspired by folk culture or made out of sustainable materials. I will feature most of them when I finally have a bit more time to sit down and go through all the photos I made and check out the business cards I brought in a big bag. For now then a truly amazing standing chest by Proteindesign, woven out of used magazines strings. It's based on a dowry chest given to the bride in the traditional Polish villages, so you can order one if you're planning a weeding sometime soon... :)

A Few Cool Chairs...

In February I featured a little post with some kick ass chairs. They were sent over to me in an email, from God knows where, so I don't know where they come from. But good things need to be shared nonetheless!

Joanna Figurniak Cube Lamp

Another great project by Joanna Figurniak from Moo Studio. This time Joanna explored the sustainability subject and created a lamp out of empty egg boxes. Cube lamp is part of the recycling project. Made of six eggs boxes, clip with 24 blinder clips. Simple construction let fold and unfold the lamp individually. Lamp set includes: six eggs boxes, 24 binder clips, metal construction, bulb holder, and cable.

Grupa WZOROWO - Broken Glass Lamp

I am pretty excited with an upcoming event in Krakow - ETNODIZAJN Festival 2010. Hosted by the Etnographic Museum, festival features both local folk artist as well as those inspired by the folk art. One of the design teams showing their projects will be Grupa WZOROWO and the three young women behind it: Agnieszka Bar, Agnieszka Kajper and Karina Marusińska. Picture above shows their lamp, made of shreds of glas and an old jar. Not really folk inspired - pretty clever nonetheless.

Bannerina Lamp

Bannerina Lamp by Katarzyna Okinczyc is made of used banners, changing the advertising patterns, printed on the banner-mesh fabric, into decorative wonders. The thing I like about the whole project is that every item is unique and it helps to recycle so many useless and otherwise poisonous for the enviroment banners that hang on the buildings for a short period of time, only to be trashed. Bannerina was the winner at 2008 Prodeco awards

Floppy Disk Lamp by +OYO

Do you have a bunch of old, completely useless floppy disks lying around? They aren't as easy to come by these days, the way we love to throw things away, but if you do have a few here's an idea what to do with them. Polish design studio +OYO - a duet of young designers Olga Dabrowska and Adam Groch - created a floppy disk lamp. Floppy disks in collaboration with plexiglass lasercut shades give modern effect, with a bit of industrial charm. Works great especially in minimalistic spaces. Looks good to me.

Waiting For the Sun - Wooden Sunglasses

French boutiques Kulte cooperated with another French team Waiting For The Sun to come up with something unique: very fashionable sunglasses made of wood. Each pair is: handmade, carved out of tea wood, ultra light, stylish, enviroment friendly, wrapped in one of a kind packaging (2041 cm2 scarf designed by various artists).

Lauren Cahill - Unwanted Books

My friend's grandfather started a foundation taking care of unwated books. They redistributed the books among small schools libraries, sent the to the Polish people living abroad to cultivate the Polish language, offered them for sale in bulks, based on a chosen subject. I was raised to respect books and the written word so it's hard to throw out books, while there's so many coming my way I simply need to make space for new additions. I was thinking about all that looking at Laura Cahill's pretty amazing objects she'd created from old books....

My idea of using second hand books came around after doing research into common unwanted objects. One of the most common unwanted objects that can be found at either charity shops, car boot sales and sometimes on the streets are books. I discovered that the glue in old books make them extremely difficult to recycle. Aware of this I challenged myself to turn the second hand books that I had been collecting, into desirable objects such as furniture, lighting and ornaments.

Malafor Design

There are so many paper tubes lying around in our studio. We have negatives delivered in them. The printing house we work with has diecuts delivered in them. And I never thought I could have them transformed into bookshelf or magazine holders! Just like the polish studio Malafor. I'm going to come back home tonight with a bag full of them and get the saw in action...