Well it’s actually Saturday morning, and I’m craving a “Full English” breakfast… Remembered this picture I took of a great Full English I had a month ago at Spitalfield’s market. Tasted as good as it looked.
London
Surprise!
I’m a huge fan of Howies in the UK. It’s not just their designs but also their ideals and such, a great company overall in my opinion. It’s unfortunate that those ideals often mean their clothing is unaffordable to me, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t stick to their guns…
Anyways, I was thrilled to get the above Howies shirt in the mail the other day as a surprise gift from my wife. My previous favourite shirt had been lost at the laundromat and the design on this one sums me up to a tee. If you’re in the market for a new shirt, give their site a browse, they are always throwing up new stuff…
Photo of the Week
I’m really glad I started photo Friday, while I sometimes struggle to find interesting posts on other days of the week, I always have a great idea for which photo to use each Friday. I should really start putting pics aside when I edit them as I often forget the one I wanted to use (which has the great consequence of me usually finding others equally as good or even better)…
This week’s photo is from our recent trip to London. Taken on Totenham Court Road, this was the front window of a camera store I’ve seen many times and even bought film in several year’s ago. I liked the colourful storefront and grabbed this quick pic with my Agfa Optima, using expired Kodak E100. While the film expired a few years ago, it’s been kept frozen and hasn’t let me down yet, unfortunately my stash is almost out and I can’t afford the fresh stuff.
London Design Festival
London Design Festival is on all this week. As chance would have it, I’m going to a wedding this weekend in Reading so will have some time to take a look around London. I’m also planning on hitting up 100% Design London at Earles Court, should be a great weekend!
bone-shaker magazine
I was over on Howies browsing their new fall line of stuff the other day. Tons of great stuff but unfortunately they discontinued the jacket I’d been wanting. My “Work Hard – Canoe Home” t-shirt will always be my favourite, although I may need to ad to my collection when I head to London in September.
Anyways, while on their site, I stumbled upon bone-shaker magazine. To quote their own website, it’s “a celebration of cycling and the people who do it.” It’s a wonderful magazine with some amazing pictures and artwork. The magazine is now in it’s second edition and is shipping to stores across the world. The magazine is ad free which is always a bonus!
I’ll be picking up a copy at Howies and I hope to have some of my photos in their upcoming edition.
Unto This Last
Been a bit heavy on the photography posts lately, most likely as I’ve been busy and have only had time for taking pictures and not for building things.
Last spring while wandering the streets of London, UK, I stumbled across the greatest store in the world (IMO). It’s a little furniture shop off of Brick Lane called Unto This Last. While the designs are amazing, it’s more the principle behind the shop that really got to me. The shop is named after a John Ruskin essay from 1860 which among other things suggests that manufacturing should be kept local. The store not only manufactures all it’s pieces on site, but they are made to order, so they don’t have vast amounts of stock sitting around. This saves them from renting warehouse space, and ensures they don’t end up with extra furniture that can’t be sold.
All of the pieces are made out of plywood, and are cut out of large sheets using a CNC machine. These machines are basically a computer controlled router which not only allows for precise cuts, but also enables the store to plan out their cuts on the computer beforehand, ensuring little to no waste of wood. The furniture is sold un-assembled (flat pack), however they will build it for you if required. They are also able to do some customization to the pieces, such as lengthening a table, raising the height of a stool, etc.
What excites me about this store, is that they could have a store such as thing one in communities all over the world, and designs could be downloaded by individuals just like we purchase movies or songs off the internet. You go to your local shop, browse the online catalog till you find the piece you like, you pay for the design and fabrication, and in 3-5 days, you pick up your finished furniture. Just imagine, you could find a really nice design by a Danish furniture maker, but instead of having that piece of furniture shipped across the world, you could have it made at the end of your street.
Craft Collective 