Esoteric Survey

This is actually from last weekend. I didn't go anywhere this weekend and that makes this the last pile of the year. It was a decent one I think.  Tony Paul chair for Woodlin Hall and two George Nelson for Howard Miller perforated metal clocks.  I haven't had one of these  model 2204 Howard Miller clocks in a long time.  The more I looked at the clocks, the more familiar they looked. I was dying to get home to compare them to Esther and Gross Wood bowls. As you can see, it's an exact match.  I'm not a George Nelson/Howard Miller expert by any stretch of the imagination but I do know they used some other items by different designers that they transformed into clocks. The seat of a Fritz Hansen stool and Bitossi ceramics are the ones that come to mind.  That makes it a California Design Nelson Clock.  I guess you can add Good Design to that as well. 

  Casa Orgánica (1984) by Javier Senosiain in Naucalpan de Juárez, just outside of Mexico City.  The architect designed the house for his family. A Pedro Friedeberg chair in the living room of the original portion of the house, which is underground. As Senosiain describes it, the initial concept was defined in two large spaces: one day and one night, looking for the feeling that inside the person will enter the land, that was aware of the uniqueness of this space without losing integration with the exterior green areas. For the construction process a moldable material was needed given the design of the house: ferrocement was the right answer. This material, the origin of reinforced concrete and long forgotten, promised a monolithic sculpture, resistant, moldable and highly elastic. The ferrocement assembly began to be placed on the template that looked like a skateboard rink, forming the envelope with a metallic skeleton, in which the rods were arranged in the form of rings, c...

Abel Sorensen for Knoll nesting tables and 1950s modern plywood cabinet and wall shelf. The cabinet and shelf didn't come together but they look like they should stay together, They were produced from 1947-1950. More iron, including a magazine rack by Fred Press. That's a Roger Bailey bell in the background. As seen in Good Design, 1952. Also, hi Olga. Image: NY MoMA

I was able to get a lot closer to the Walter S White Wilcockson house in Indio.  For background on White and the house, see my previous post . As mentioned before, there was an estate sale at the house. I showed up several hours after the sale started to get a look inside the house without the crowd. I did not see the "Calder" mobile that was advertised but I have my doubts. Are you ready for the inside?  Are you sure? Here is what it looks like behind the that glorious apex. The 1980's were not kind to this house.  Nothing a lot of sledgehammering couldn't fix. I dropped this in on the other post, but I should probably mention it again. The latest word is that the house was purchased by a developer who is planning to demolish the house. This happened after the church who was planning on incorporating it into their new campus decided to scale back their project. This decision was made after the City of Indio would not let them have access to the site off Avenue 49.  ...