Cool new ideas

While I have been laying rather low lately, other people have been really busy. A couple of crafty designers have caught my eye this past year, and last month they were both amongst the designers presented in the '100% Norway' section of the 100% Design Exhibition in London.

Kristine Bjaadal has designed a table cloth with a hidden pattern in the mesh, which only appears when wet. So what could have been an ugly spill, will now bring out a pretty pattern. Clever, eh?

Siren Wilhelmsen has created a clock that knits the passing of time. In her own words: "It is knitting the hours and the days and shows the time as something that is constantly moving, changing and developing. Every passing of a half hour is marked by the knitting of a mesh, a full day is registered as one round around the clock and a year results in a 2-m-long scarf. After one year the yarn has to be replaced  with a new one and a new year can be knitted. The year that has past is this year's scarf. And the coming year is the thread still unknitted."

Inger Waage

Continuing on the theme from the previous post, I would like to present another great Norwegian female artist from the previous century: Inger Waage. She was a designer at Stavangerflint and Figgjo Fajanse from 1953-1979. Her work was incredibly popular at the time (and still is), and I think absolutely every Norwegian home has at least one item by her. But although her work is well known, very few know the name of the designer behind it. This web page has collected a lot of information about her and some of her fellow designers at the time, and there is a fair amount of information also in English. There are also an impressive collection of pictures of her work scattered around. If you follow the top entry under 'Linker' you will find examples of almost everything she made. There is also a video showing some of her work on YouTube.

Agathe Hjelvik

I found this great hand drawn poster at a second-hand shop today, and it was love at first sight. It is signed ‘Agathe Hjelvik’, but is not dated.

The shop had no information about where it originally came from, or who the artist was. But it was one of a total of four posters by the same artist, and one of them had the year 1928 on it, so we assumed that they were all from about the same period. I have made a few inquires to try and find out more about her, but so far I have come up with nothing. It seems there are very few records of artist from this period, especially if you did commercial work, not to mention being a woman. So I'm imagining she must have been one cool chick - a creative working woman at a time where this was less common. Drawing inspiration from Art Deco, the Far East and Bauhaus...?

All things pretty

While researching how to use decals on pottery online, I happened upon this blog by Heather Moore from South Africa. I have taken the pictures below from her Flickr page.

The whole blog is just very, very pretty, and packed with crafty ideas that really makes you want to go ahead and make stuff yourself. In my case it inspired me to make this:

Not really a craft project, but what can I say....I was hungry :-)

Nicoletta Brunklaus

I am so in love with the latest collection by Dutch designer Nicoletta Brunklaus. Both very modern and with great patina. It is called 'House of Anne' and I think I have read that all the photos are taken at the school she attended as a young girl.

Lampshade with cot-outs in some of the windows