architecture

Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention is on view at the Art Institute through January 15, 2012. A Chicago native, Goldberg is known for the Marina City, Raymond Hilliard Homes, and River City projects. As both an engineer and architect, Bauhaus-trained Goldberg envisioned re-invigorated downtowns with multi-use buildings. He created urban communities utilizing industrially innovative concepts such as prefabricated modules and cantilevered construction. The Astor Tower of the early 1960s is contemporary to Marina City. Goldberg also designed private homes, furniture, ...

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Have you heard that?  Have you said that?  I'm not speaking about dating, but rather singles and pairs in the antiques and design business.  Lamps, chairs, vases, chandeliers, mirrors, sconces - just about anything.  For those of us in the antiques and design business we seem to be all too preoccupied by pairs.  The desire to have a mirror copy of a room, to have even numbers throughout, to have a numerical balance - it just doesn't add up.   Let's examine your living room.  A sofa with a matched pair of end tables on either side with a matched pair of lamps or vases sitting on top.  ...

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If I had to pick three great names in 20th Century design, I think they would be Frank Lloyd Wright, George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi.  I was coming of age when they had already achieved a certain agelessness. Their names and work continue to endure.  We're lucky to have items by each in our September 17 auction. Frank Lloyd Wright's last project was the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue. Who can forget Isamu Noguchi's sets for the Martha Graham modern dance company? And Nakashima's offspring continue in his tradition. I won't say Roland's looks like a museum these days, but when you see ...

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When people speak of Cidade Maravilhosa, Rio de Janeiro, they are generally speaking of the lush tropical natural beauty that is rivaled only by its inhabitants.  They generally are speaking of Carnaval, The Girl from Ipanema and other such icons that conjure up beauties and the beach.  They are not generally speaking of world class architects and furniture designers.  But they should be.Hi, my name is Heather Karlie Vieira and I'd like to introduce you to a world of important design.  Oscar Niemeyer, Joaquim Tenreiro, Sergio Rodrigues, Jorge Zalszupin, Percival Lafer, Jean Gillon, Michel ...

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  On Wednesday, June 29, the US Postal Service officially debuted their Pioneers of American Industrial Design stamp pane at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York City. After Presentation of Colors by the High School of Graphic Communication Art Navy Junior ROTC, Bill Moggridge, Director of the Cooper-Hewitt and inventor of the laptop computer, 1979, welcomed the audience.  Jessica Helfand, Design Subcommittee Chair of the Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee said “It was a great day for design and designers.” Of course, our favorite was the stamp featuring two industrial sewing ...

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The history and beauty of Charleston, South Carolina, are featured in the current exhibition at Payne Fine Arts. From paintings, including an unusual WPA-era view of the College of Charleston, to the silhouettes of Carew Rice, to a burgeoning field in Charleston collecting, that of original vintage photographs and Albertypes,  to historic engravings, the "Charleston Collection"  has something for all those who have fallen in love with the "Holy City." For our friends and collectors of Kentucky and regional art, the site has recently added artworks and prices that should prove tempting. From ...

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April 20, 2011Here is a tiny slice of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I missed seeing the 4-foot wide Magazine Alley, though. I have to put that on the list for my next investigative journey. Every day you can walk through history on your way to the grocery store, cocktails or the drugstore. I love the different architectural styles that exist cheek-by-jowl in an old town. Everything is re-purposed and re-used; recycling at its highest level.

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April 14, 2011We walked from the Tidewater Inn to our elegant dinner party at Mason's, past this delightful little structure. Its address is The Smoke House, 102-2 East Dover Street. Like 221B Baker Street, although without any of the fictional mysteries attending... It was a evening bathed in butterscotch light and an early spring glow. I like the small scale here, and that the building is still being used. There was a cat sitting on the porch next door, who seemed quite put out that we stopped to comment and take photos. Watch your step when you go exploring in Easton.

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This is our day off after the Chicago Print and Drawing fair and before the McNay Fair in San Antonio.  We are in the Texas Hill Country, actually Stonewall, established 1860. We spent the day visiting historic Fredericksburg and Enchanted Rock, a pink granite batholith, the second largest in the US.   Since arriving last night we’ve also seen llamas, alpacas, buffalo, something that may have been a dwarf antelope, horses (thoroughbreds, palominos, and miniatures), camels, sheep, goats of many stripes including “showgoats,” several kinds of cattle (longhorn, black angus, and Dutch-belted, ...

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SANTA FE, N.M. – December is the best month to be in Santa Fe. Snow sugars the old town and farolitos – occasionally still the paper bag and candle variety of childhood memory – climb stepped adobe walls. Pinon scents the night air. At the nearby pueblos, feast day dances bind the generations in spiritual traditions as old as time. A first stop is Coulter Brooks Art & Antiques at 924 Paseo de Peralta.  Jan Brooks and Lane Coulter  –  who is known for such well-thumbed references such as New Mexican Tinwork, 1840-1940; Navajo Saddle Blankets: Textiles to Ride in the American West and ...

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August 18, 2010One of the windows at Fernandina's Fantastic Fudge. The shops in downtown are mostly housed in historic and architecturally pleasing buildings. There are a couple of independent bookstores, ice cream parlors, the usual T-shirt shops and lots of restaurants. It was a pleasant place which we ambled about while doing our best for the economy: several lunches, four ferry tickets, books, post cards, ice cream, a sun dress, scented soap...

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August 17, 2010This is part of the fishing fleet in Fernandina Beach. This was the view from our porch last week. It was an extraordinary place to sit and watch the world go by. The unionized dolphin showed up just before the sunset show every night, while murmurations of roseate spoonbills flocked to perches on nearby Rattlesnake Island. Sometimes we would turn around to look at the water only to see a city-block-sized cargo freighter gliding by! Just amazing.

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August 16, 2010Back from vacay - but it will be a light week - we will be taking the Tall One away to college later this week. We slipped away to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island last week. What a delightful place! We stayed away from the beachy scene and found a nice quiet corner in Old Town, right across the street from this Victorian pile which was used in the filming of "The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking". It looks like Miss Haversham could have been happy here so I don't know how the mischievous Pippi and her horse and her monkey were contained. We were told it was ...

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July 29, 2010Here was a missed opportunity, the Queen Street Grocery. Apparently it is the be all and end all - good local and organic foods, excellent crepes and wine! Who could ask for anything more? This should be a fixture in any downtown, a nice corner market where you can stock up on a few groceries from the CSA, buy a newspaper, have a coffee, catch up on the gossip and oh, maybe buy that nice bottle of wine for dinner. Their slogan is "Local Fresh + Organic Deliciousness." I just liked it for the beauteous "Q" on their window. People who get the typography right might be ...

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When you go to Charleston you must tear yourself away from the glories of the gardens and window boxes and your new friends, the gardeners. You simply have to visit Blue Bicycle Books at 420 King Street. The facade is narrow, but the shop itself telecopes and extends magically back from the street for miles! The Tall One and I had to make two visits because we were overcome with Stendahl's Syndrome after the first go round: the sheer number and array of books was too much for us.We had a restorative lunch at The Pita Pit (351 King Street) another little, narrow, crooked-fence sort of ...

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July 27, 2010Double secret probation bird's eye view of a garden on Meeting Street.I imagine this is the what the Tall One might have seen (had he stirred himself from bed, early one morning during our Charleston trip) strolling up Meeting Street. Once again it was just me and the gardeners and a few people scurrying off to their jobs. It was too early for the horse drawn carriages and rubber-neckers, so I found lots of almost-legal places to park as I wandered. Two Meeting Street has architecture that challenges my liberal arts college art history training. The Calhoun House has a ...

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July 26, 2010 This is the Charles Drake house at 50 South Battery. The garden echos the strange melange of architecture: Sweet potato vines! Colonial Revival! Shocking pink crape myrtle! Queen Anne! Asparagus fern! Arts and Crafts style!Heavens to Betsy, this house has it all. Circa 1890, it is a veritable newcomer to the neighborhood. The Drakes eclectic tastes called for a stone foundation with a paneled, shingled and clapboarded second-story. There is a porte-cochere, an arched arcade and curved windows, interior and exterior shutters, gingerbread, columns, capitals, balustrades ...

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Once dubbed the "Crystal Palace," The Arcade in Cleveland, Ohio, was an architectural tour-de-force when the massive skylit structure first opened in 1890. Modeled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuell II in Milan, Italy, this shopping mall is visually breathtaking in any century. John D. Rockefeller was one of the oringinal investors in this early American indoor mall. The Arcade, designed by John M. Eisenmann and George H. Smith, epitomized the elegant, modern shopping experience. Thanks to a $60 million restoration begun in 1999, visitors can enjoy The Arcade more than a century after ...

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Frank Lloyd Wright's bold, textile-block Ennis House in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles is for sale with an asking price of $15 million. An eclectic incarnation of the world-renowned architect's work, the Mayan-inspired house was built for men's clothing magnate Charles Ennis and his wife Mabel in 1924. Wright created four textile-block houses in Los Angeles County between 1923 and 1926. Ennis House is the grandest of them all, encompassing more than 20,000 16-inch by 16-inch concrete blocks in 6,000-square feet at the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. Listed by the U.S. ...

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