Tag: homes

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Fake Food Is Trendy Again

While a minimalist interior may have represented an aspirational environment only a few years ago, it seems that intermittent lockdowns and supply-chain-induced shortages have led people to re-evaluate the aesthetic of an empty Home Garden USA.

The result is a resurgence of maximalist home décor that embraces pattern, color and ornamentation. Cabinetry that may once have been wood grain is now jewel-toned; streamlined furniture has given way to all things squishy and wiggly; trends like “cottagecore” and “grandmillennial” aim to elevate items that are handmade, chintzy and secondhand.

Is it any wonder that fake food is back, too?

Charcuterie and cheese candles, resin-cast croissants and Jell-O salad lamps are hot items. Retro-style fake cakes are big on Instagram. The high-end jewelry brand Mociun sells faux glasses of spilled wine and melting ice cream cones alongside $10,000 engagement rings. And Yukiko Morita’s Pampshade lamps, which are made from real baked goods that have been preserved, can sell for around $80 apiece.

For John Derian, the founder of an eponymous home décor and decoupage line, the resurgence of fake food is very welcome. Mr. Derian has had a fake cake sitting on his kitchen counter at home for 14 years, he said, and he estimates that he has been selling food-themed items in his store for about 20 years, starting with a stuffed doll made by Nathalie Lete that had sausages for arms and a steak for a head.

“I do love funny things,” he said.

These days, Mr. Derian also offers more elegant fake food items for customers who are less interested in kitsch, including stone bananas and cherries carved in Tuscany using marble from the same quarry that Michelangelo favored.

For about 10 years Mr. Derian has also been selling food-shaped candles by Cereria Introna, an Italian company that has been around since 1840. (This year, Cereria Introna, which makes all of its candles by hand and supplies many other design shops including East Fork and Fruit and Flower Shop, saw demand for its food candles in the U.S. increase to the point where it was unable to fulfill all of its orders.)

Mr. Derian often displays the paraffin wax beauties, which include doughnuts, cakes, cupcakes and pies, in the front window of his shop.

“Everyone responds to them with joy,” he said. “Sometimes I move them around the shop, but I keep putting them in front because they’re just something bright and colorful and cheerful.”

In recent centuries, fake food has remained popular in more utilitarian settings. In Japan, fake food, or sampuru, is displayed in the windows of restaurants, and can cost hundreds of dollars for artisans to custom make. In the U.S., fake wedding cakes can help preserve a visual tradition of a layered confectionary, while helping to cut down on the price of the real cake served during the reception.

But when it comes to fake food as objets d’art in the American home, Sarah Archer, a design and culture writer and the author of the 2019 book “The Midcentury Kitchen,” suggests looking back to the 1950s and 1960s, when fake food became a midcentury trend.

“Blown glass fruit was super popular in the ’50s and ’60s, especially after World War II when it was more affordable and kind of interesting or enticing for middle class Americans to travel abroad to Italy,” Ms. Archer said in a recent interview. American tourists would return from their journeys with glass apples or pears as souvenirs.

Fake fruits made of wax and plastic were also popular, although fake fruits made of those materials could be construed as kitschy, depending on the audience.

“It kind of represents domesticity and a certain middle class effort at beautification, but it’s also kind of tacky at the same time,” Ms. Archer said. “It occupies a sort of nebulous status.”

For some of the artisans and brands that sell fake food today, the question of taste — or of questionable taste — is what drew them to the trend in the first place.

Leanne Rodriguez, an artist in Oakland, Calif., who goes by Elrod, began making fake gelatin salad lamps during the pandemic; in a recent interview, Ms. Rodriguez said she wanted the effect “to be a little on the disgusting side.”

Using recipes for gelatin salads from midcentury cookbooks as inspiration, Ms. Rodriguez suspends hot dogs, vegetables and chopped fruit made out of clay in sparkly resin. Her creations, which she has branded Mexakitchen and sells as part of her Mexakitsch line of artwork, emanate an eerie glow from LED lights inside. Ms. Rodriguez said that a fascination with kitsch is what drew her to make the lamps in the first place, and the more she makes them, the more opulent they get.

“A lot of people don’t get it,” said Ms. Rodriguez, whose creations cost between $100 and $3,500. “And the ones who do get it really love it.”

The joy that fake food can bring to a home is something that Jazmine Rogers, a content creator in San Diego, was familiar with from her childhood.

Her grandmother had a collection of fake fruit made out of cardboard, and when Ms. Rogers was decorating her own home in San Diego, she made sure to seek out fake food pieces to display. In addition to a glass ear of corn and a glass orange in her home office, she bought a fake cake made of cardboard and spackling paste to hang on the wall.

“There’s something about it that just feels really homey to me,” Ms. Rogers, 25, said. “It’s kind of like playing with your food, it’s like your food’s in places that it’s not supposed to be. There’s something fun about it.”

Ms. Rogers’s fake cake was made by Jasmine Archie, an artist in Austin, Texas, who has been surprised and delighted by the market for her eccentric, color-saturated confectionary-inspired creations.

“People freaked out,” Ms. Archie, 25, said about the first few fake cakes she made. “It’s already on the market, but it was so untapped with my generation in my opinion. And I was like OK, I could totally market this and see what could happen.”

Ms. Archie believes that part of the reason her pieces are so popular is because of what cakes, especially colorful and lavishly decorated ones, represent.

“When I see a cake, I always think something celebratory is happening,” Ms. Archie said. “I think when people look at a cake, and in my case, it just brings them happiness.”

It’s this happiness and playfulness that inspired Mociun, the fine jewelry brand, to begin selling fake food in their boutique in 2018. Caitlin Mociun, the designer and founder of the company, which is based in Brooklyn, had a personal collection of fake food that the brand would use as props in product shoots and as display items in their store. So many customers asked if the fake food items were for sale, that Mociun began offering them alongside ceramics and glassware.

“I think the humorous aspect of it is definitely appealing to a lot of people,” said Marney Zaslav, the director of buying and operations. Especially in the last few years, fake food has become a distinct category for Mociun; items can range in price from $15 to $400.

“A lot of these things, even if we just put them in our window in the store, they definitely stop people in their tracks when they walk by,” Ms. Zaslav said.

Lately, consumers haven’t just been window-shopping; they have been seeking out fake food items online.

According to Etsy, there has been a 36 percent increase in searches for faux cakes on the site in the last three months, compared to the same time the previous year.

There has also been a 32 percent increase in searches for food-inspired candles and a 16 percent increase in searches for food or fruit-inspired ornaments over the same time period. (Also: a 1,133 percent increase in searches for cereal candles — perhaps the hottest new thing in fake food home goods, thanks to TikTok.)

Dayna Isom Johnson, a trend expert at Etsy, attributed the uptick in searches for these items to two factors. “The first is that shoppers are looking for creative and playful ways to add brightness and vibrancy to their space. Faux food is an easy way to inject a sense of freshness into any space, while lasting longer than the real thing,” she wrote in an email.

“The other is the influence of social media,” she added. “Etsy sellers can react quickly to emerging trends faster than big-box retailers so we’re constantly seeing emerging inventory that reflects something we’re seeing in the zeitgeist — in this case, the cereal-inspired candles.”

Ms. Archer, the design and culture writer, said that she thinks consumers are craving interior design choices that are as comforting as they are whimsical.

Fake food is “a relatively inexpensive, easy and creative way to make your home joyfully wacky,” she said. “I definitely think that there is a desire for a sense of play.”

Visit : https://homegardenusa.com/

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Time to turn off irrigation controllers

California has welcomed recent rain showers with open arms and we will continue to hope for a wet season throughout the winter. While we celebrate the much needed precipitation, it’s also the time to be consciously conserving, Home Decor Ideas.

Water management is a phrase you will hear a lot as we collect our efforts as a community into every pipeline of saving water. One of the easiest ways you can do this is by adjusting and/or turning off your irrigation controllers this time of year.

A controller is the device, or electronical “clock” that operates an irrigation system with intended frequency, duration and start times. It plugs into a 120 volt outlet on the outside of your home or in your garage.

Most systems typically have 12-14-gauge wires that run from the controller to each one of the valves. It sends a low amount of voltage, (between 12-14 volts), to operate a solenoid which then actuates and opens the electric valve.

Water pressure is built up in the valve at all times, so once that signal is received, the solenoid opens and pressurizes the sprinkler or drip system. Once the electronic current stops, the solenoid closes, which in turn closes your irrigation valve and stops the flow. This device is the key to saving water. If the controller is turned off, your irrigation system will not run; if the clock is on, the irrigation will run based on the pre-programmed run times and frequency.

It can be tricky during this time of the year when we have a big early rain and then the weather begins to warm back up; you may not be sure what to do with the programming of your controller.

There are some great components available that will help you with this process and one is a rain sensor. This unit will interrupt the scheduled program if it senses rain or moisture. It can help avoid the sprinklers coming on during or right after a rain. They are less than $100 in most cases and I recommend every landscape have one.

Many people ask me, “When is it time to completely turn my controller off for the season?” The simple answer is after the first rain hits, its generally safe to turn your controller off for the winter.

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Landscape marked by giant designs

You may well have witnessed aerial pics of geoglyphs in Peru and Chili or even people situated in Fantastic Britain and Australia, but here in the United States we also have equal cultural treasures.

A geoglyph is outlined as “a huge structure or motif created on the floor by strong aspects of the landscape, these types of as stones, stone fragments, gravel or earth.” Additional than 600 geoglyphs of the precise style known as “intaglios” have been found in the Southwest, Get Auto Tips.

Amid the ideal-identified and most interesting are the Blythe Intaglios, considerably less than 4 hrs driving from Las Vegas, in the vicinity of the lower Colorado River in jap California. These gigantic artworks are greatest considered from helicopter or airplane but without a flying equipment at your disposal, a stop by by way of car and shoe leather can be satisfying, too.

Intaglios had been presumably guy-created extensive ago, by engraving, tamping and scraping away the all-natural desert pavement, which uncovered the lighter soils and gravel beneath. These intaglios are so substantial that they have been not obvious to non-Indians until finally 1932. That yr a pilot, George Palmer, discovered them though traveling from Las Vegas to Blythe, California. His discovery led to a study of the region by the All-natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

There are 6 intaglios at this web site, lying in 3 spots, atop two mesas. Intaglios are categorized by their designs, these as anthropomorphs (humanlike), zoomorphs (animallike) and different geometric shapes. The greatest anthropomorph at this site is 171 ft from head to toe. One particular, named the Human Determine, has arms stretched out and the feet turned outward and measures 105.6 toes from suggestion to toe with the arm span measuring 91.8 ft large. There are apparent knees and elbows. For some reason, anthropomorphs so significantly found out lie in close proximity to the Colorado River.

At this web page there are also zoomorphs that look to be a rattlesnake and an animal assumed to stand for a cougar or probably a horse. There are interpretive signs with aerial photographs, possibly the viewpoint from which the artists envisioned their performs to be considered.

Many presume they are religious figures as they are organized to be visible to supernatural beings in the sky. Scientists really do not all concur on the precise age of these geoglyphs, but most imagine they ended up manufactured by the Mohave and Quechan Indians about 450 to 2,000 many years ago. However, neither of these peoples, who reside close by on the Colorado, claims to have designed them.

Even so, these will work are thought of sacred by Native Americans. They are mentioned on the Countrywide Register of Historic Areas, and now lie in the Significant Marias Location of Critical Environmental Worry, selected in 1987 to secure the cultural and normal sources in the location these as these intaglios, location rock art, Alversons’ foxtail cactus, barrel cactus and wildlife such as desert bighorn sheep.

Regretably, the Blythe Intaglios weren’t fenced in until finally 1974 and hence expert destruction prompted by 20th century humans and their wheeled automobiles. This instance really should provide as a warning to those people of us who enjoy the back state.

When other intaglio web-sites have been recognized in our area, there are considered to be a lot more even now unidentified and therefore unprotected. If you are out poking all-around in the desert and you do stumble upon what may possibly be a internet site, respect it. Be certain not to disturb in any way and just take a extensive detour about it. It can be ruined for good by driving on it, or disturbing it in any way, possibly even walking on it. Higher than all, hardly ever increase your own design and style as this compromises the website and modifications the meaning of long-in the past men and women who developed it.

For far more facts make contact with the Bureau of Land Management’s Yuma discipline workplace in Arizona at 928-317-3200 or go to www.blm.gov.

Lots of of Deborah Wall’s columns have been compiled into books about climbing in the Southwest. She is also the creator of “Great Hikes, a Cerca State Guide” and a co-creator of the book “Access For All, Viewing the Southwest With Constrained Mobility.” Wall can be achieved at Deborabus@aol.com.

Visit : https://ahjedlvjmxsd.com/

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Art at their heart: homes that have become museums | Interiors

If you are reading these pages, chances are you like nothing more than having a good snoop around other people’s houses. Below is a selection of five of the world’s best house museums – inspiring, creative, but ultimately delightfully domestic spaces that have been preserved as they were when the owners lived in them.

Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City, Mexico

Casa Luis Barragán is the home of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, who built his home in this former working-class district of Tacubaya in Mexico City. Completed in 1948 and inhabited by Barragán until his death in 1988, it’s widely considered to be Barragán’s purist expression of “emotional architecture” and is the only Unesco world heritage site of its kind.

From the outside, the vast concrete façade – barred and austere – belies the extraordinary beauty within. Coming in off the street, visitors gather in a sparse vestibule lit by yellow-tinted glass. Described as a “decompression sluice”, it creates a state of sensory expectancy: what next?

Visitors will find the rest of the house much as Barragán left it – sparsely furnished with chairs picked up from local flea markets and devotional objects (crosses, angels, skulls) collected on his travels. Natural light is carefully calibrated throughout: a gold rhomboid lands deliberately across the desk in a room designed specifically for Barragán to make and receive phone calls. (The phone, desk and chair haven’t moved for more than half a century.)

Weightless staircases connect the three levels and a restrained palette of wood, stone and thick adobe makes up the at times monastic space, which Barragán enlivened with paint colours that could compete with the Mexican sun. Burnt orange, Calpol pink, egg-yolk yellow and a kind of institutional lilac coat the soaring walls of this extraordinary home that will no doubt continue to be a place of pilgrimage for architects, designers and artists for decades to come.
casaluisbarragan.org

Kawai Kanjirō Memorial Museum, Kyoto, Japan

Kawai Kanjirō was a leading figure of the mingei movement. The house, now a museum, was built in 1937, by hand to his own design, and filled only with Kawai’s favourite possessions.
Kawai Kanjirō was a leading figure of the mingei movement. The house, now a museum, was built in 1937, by hand to his own design, and filled only with Kawai’s favourite possessions. Photograph: Alex Ramsay/Alamy

Crouched on the tatami mat in the home of the Japanese poet, writer, sculptor and ceramicist, Kawai Kanjirō, is a carving of a hollow dog. Kawai made the object from recycled wood when the house was first built in 1937. Glossy as a conker, it was used by Kawai throughout his life as an armrest and kept stuffed full of dried persimmons – his favourite snack. It is just one of the pieces that brings the home of this extraordinary artist to life.

Kawai was one of the leading figures of the mingei (“folk art”) movement which developed in Japan in the 1920s and argued that beauty was to be found in everyday, utilitarian objects made by nameless craftsmen as opposed to “high art”. Exploring the rooms of Kawai’s humble home and studio, the argument is articulately made.

Kawai believed that “lifestyle is work, work is lifestyle”. It follows that his house is a total expression of his art – built by hand to his own design and filled with only his favourite possessions. As well as the fruit-stuffed dog, there are disarmingly simple displays of quotidien objects on every patinated surface.

In the garden, visitors can explore the wood-fired kiln that Kawai used to fire his pieces – some of which are now in the V&A. Visitors will also spot a perfectly round stone outside. This was a housewarming gift which Kawai – always inquisitive, always playful – routinely rolled around the gravel, enjoying it from various positions before moving it on.
japanvisitor.com/japan-museums/ kawai-kanjiro-memorial-museum

Farley’s House, East Sussex

Works by some famous visitors to the handsome red-brick Sussex farmhouse owned by photographer Lee Miller and artist Roland Penrose, which played host to the likes of Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington.
Works by some famous visitors to the handsome red-brick Sussex farmhouse owned by photographer Lee Miller and artist Roland Penrose, which played host to the likes of Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington. Photograph: © Lee Miller Archives/leemiller.co.uk

Farley’s House became an unlikely hangout for writers and artists after the photographer Lee Miller moved here with the artist Roland Penrose in 1949. From the outside, this handsome, redbrick farmhouse gives nothing away: you can imagine Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington missing it entirely before becoming completely lost on the single-track country lanes that surround Muddles Green.

Behind the traditional exterior, visitors are soon plunged into the intimate, colourful world of the Surrealists. Much like nearby Charleston (country seat of London’s Bloomsbury group), nearly every surface was marked by the creative imaginations of those who passed through here – from Penrose’s spectacular fireplace mural to the tile created by Picasso and incorporated into the splashback behind the Aga.

Works by many of those who visited Farley’s are hung on the blue, yellow and pink walls while Miller and Penrose’s own extensive sculpture collection can be explored in the garden. (The house also holds the Lee Miller archive of 60,000 negatives, manuscripts and ephemera.) The rooms have been left exactly as they were: there are cigarette butts in the ashtray and the home bar is fully stocked. It’s as though the owners have just dashed out to collect another friend from the station.
farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk

Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

Newly restored blue awning on the balcony of E-1027 Eileen Gray’s villa 2021 E1027 EG 05686©ManuelBougot
Pioneering designer Eileen Gray’s modernist masterpiece overlooking the Mediterranean, where she lived with her partner Jean Badovici. They worked on the design for three years, between 1926 and 1929, and it was recently restored to its former glory. Photograph: ©Manuel Bougot

Built on supporting stilts on a vertiginous hillside terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Villa E-1027 was Eileen Gray’s first architectural creation. An all-white modernist masterpiece with a colourful past, it was conceived as a ship-like seaside home for the pioneering Irish designer and architect and her partner, Jean Badovici. (The name was derived from the interlinking of their initials: E for Eileen, 10 for the J of Jean, 2 for the B of Badovici, 7 for the G of Gray.) The couple worked on the design for three years between 1926 and 1929 and lived in it together for just two, before separating.

The interior was as meticulously planned as the main structure. Gray designed every piece of furniture, including the adjustable, circular chrome bedside tables, which are now widely considered a design classic of the 20th century. Swivelling screens, shelves and labelled storage devices were designed to give each guest their own space and a place to stash their oreillers (pillows).

But the clarity of Gray’s vision was lost soon after her departure. In the 1930s, Le Corbusier – a friend of Badovici’s – painted several controversial murals on Gray’s all-white walls in a seemingly deliberate act of desecration. During the Second World War, the external walls were used for target practice by German soldiers.

The villa was in a total state of disrepair before being bought by the Conservatoire du Littoral in 1999. In 2014, the Cap Moderne Association embarked on a six-year programme to restore the building to Gray’s exacting standards. It reopens to the public this summer.
capmoderne.com

JB Blunk’s House, Inverness, California

Interior of JB Blunk’s house, 2016
The California home of American sculptor JB Blunk, which he conceived as a living, breathing work of art. The redwood cabin was finished in 1962 and now the artist’s daughter lives there with her family, though it will be open to the public next year. Photograph: ©Yoshihiro Makino

The American sculptor and “master of the chainsaw”, JB Blunk made this redwood cabin between 1958 and 1962. It is a living, breathing work of art. Even the bathroom sink – carved from a single piece of cypress and textured with a chisel – remains a functional work of art. In an interview from 1977, Blunk said: “I consider this whole place – house, studio, fruit trees, vegetable garden and chickens – one big sculpture.”

The cabin is deep in nature on a south-facing slope of the Inverness Ridge with views down the valley to Tomales Bay. Large, sculpted river and beach stones collected by Blunk edge the driveway and path down to the house. As visitors approach, they walk through Entry Arch, a massive sculpture carved from a single piece of old-growth redwood in 1976.

Inside, Blunk’s paintings, pottery pieces, objects, and sculptures coalesce. “My father crafted every single thing – from the doorknob to the plates that we ate dinner from,” recalls Mariah Nielson, Blunk’s daughter, who lives with her family in the house and uses his studio.

Before his death in 2002, Blunk made it clear that he wanted to share this regenerative refuge with others. Over the years, Nielson has invited friends, artists and designers to visit and make work on site.

“Sharing this place with others and watching the creative energy continue to move from one artist to the next is an especially rewarding way of sustaining Blunk’s legacy,” says Nielson.

The house will open to the public for monthly tours in 2022.
jbblunk.com