So, what’s the big fuss about fakes again?

By Michelle Ogundehin, editor Elle Decoration UK

Everything you wanted to know about our Equal Rights for Design campaign, based on the queries I’ve found myself repeatedly answering…

It’s all very well, but I’m not a designer, what’s this got to do with me?
There are estimated to be 250,000 designers in this country, so even if you’re not one, you’ll probably know someone who is. The Elle campaign is about people, not profit. These are the people who make your life easier, more efficient, comfortable and beautiful. Designers need to make a living, they live off their contribution to society which needs to be honoured, just the same way everyone is expected to get paid for their work. The creative industries are a major part of the UK’s economy, contributing 5.14% of the UK’s employment total, 10.6% of exports and 2.9% of Gross Value Added. If designers continue to receive current pathetic protection, why would anyone bother to become one? And that’s a lot of jobs and money to lose from the economy. Granted, most creatives work for love and passion, but fair recognition should also be part of the deal.

I suppose, but at the end of the day, aren’t ideas just ‘out there’, I mean doesn’t everyone have a right to profit from them? Good design and great ideas benefit us all for sure, but how would you feel if you devoted your life to inventing something that changed our everyday living quality, or even just made things a little prettier, but no-one gave you any credit for it? Let alone paid you? Would you think that’s fair? Isn’t it better all round to acknowledge who thought of what first, who collaborated with whom, and credit them accordingly? Plus, in response to the ‘but I could have done that’ knee-jerk response… the only answer is, maybe, but you didn’t, did you. From Picasso’s Guernica to Lee Broom’s ‘Decanter’ light (massively ripped off), they did it first, not you.

I’m listening, so what’s the petition all about then? The ELLE Decoration Equal Rights for Design petition is to prompt the government to look into the disparity between the protection afforded to intellectual property concerning design, and that of other creative disciplines.

Whoa, going too fast already, what do you mean by intellectual property? Intellectual property simply means that the owners of ideas are granted certain exclusive rights to protect those ideas. The tricky bit is that such ‘ideas’ are often intangible, unlike bricks and mortar. Nevertheless, musical tunes, literature, even words, phrases and symbols are already commonly recognised as intellectual property, and routinely protected via extensive copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and even trade secrets in some cases.

Ok, well that sounds pretty comprehensive, so what’s the gripe for design? In the UK, art, literature, film and music are afforded automatic copyright protection for 70 years after the death of the originating author/s. Whereas for design, registered designs are protected only from the date of issue and for just 25 years. And worse, if your work is unregistered (costs sometimes prohibit the registration of every permutation of a design, especially for young designers), protection lasts for only three years!

This needs to change! We want same rights and protection for designers as the rest of the creative industry are getting.

We need Your signature, please go to the Elle petition! This is for the designer, but also for you and me, so we all enjoy a more beautiful everyday life also in the future.

Arne Jacobsen 1902-1971
architect of St. Catherine’s College Oxford 1959-1964
Saturday 5th of May 2012

Skandium, Fritz Hansen, Spacecraft, Living Etc. celebrated together with 200 guests St Catherine’s first half century as a college.

The day started at the Skandium – Fritz Hansen store in Fitzrovia with a breakfast. Four busses took the crowd to St. Catherines in Oxford, where we where treated to an inspiring presentation on St. Catherines and Arne Jacobsens last and finest building project. Specialist Michael Sheridan, flown in from the US for this event, is an expert on Arne Jacobsen and author of amongst other ‘Room 606′.

St. Catherine’s is proud of its achievements of the past five decades, and looking forward to a future that sees Oxford’s youngest, and largest, undergraduate and graduate college continue to be recognised as an outstanding institution for learning, education and research in the arts and sciences. The fiftieth anniversary of the College’s foundation will also afford us with an opportunity to acknowledge the fact that the roots of the present-day College extend back into the nineteenth century: St Catherine’s College rests firmly upon foundations built by the students and academics who were members of the Delegacy or, later, St Catherine’s Society.

The origin of today’s College was a ‘Delegacy’ (a non-collegiate organisation under the control of the University) founded in 1868 in order to provide access to an Oxford education for those who could not afford the costs of college membership. That mission is once again particularly relevant as it approaches the 150th anniversary.

Alan Bullock and the Creation of the College
In 1952, the year in which his book Hitler: A Study in Tyranny was published, Alan Bullock was appointed Censor (Head) of St Catherine’s Society. The permanent academic staff comprised Alan himself, and four Tutors, including Wilfrid Knapp and John Simopoulos. Alan could see that if it was to continue to develop and expand, the Society would have to change. In 1956 the Delegates took the momentous decision to transform the Society into a college. The University was persuaded to give its consent, and Alan Bullock began to look for a site and funding.

The modern Development of St Catherine’s and its Buildings
When the College opened to its first students in October 1962, only a few buildings were ready for occupation and none of them were complete. The band of pioneers who endured the privations of that first term quickly became known as the ‘Dirty Thirty’. However, by the end of the academic year 150 undergraduates had taken up residence. The College grew steadily. In 1974 it became one of the first five colleges in Oxford to become mixed and by 1978 was the largest college within the University.

Why St Catherine?
The club that became St Catherine’s Society took its name from its original meeting place, St Catharine’s Hall, a house in Broad Street now forming part of Hertford College. However the connection with the saint is is appropriate for a college founded on an ethos of high academic standards combined with a doggedly independent streak.

The Architect chosen for the new college had to be modern, innovative and highly humane in his design approach. After visiting a number of buildings by Arne Jacobsen in his native Denmark, it was decided, this was the man, able to represent the values one was looking for, and so to build the new college. The building is largely set up in tune with traditional college buildings in Oxford. One difference to traditional layout is, the communal buildings where placed in the centre of the grounds. Here traditionally a large extended courtyard was kept free. The communal buildings where placed centre stage by Jacobsen as he wanted these meeting places to be at the heart of the educational body. The materials used where brick fired to a specific size with a number of copper clad walls gracing the main buildings and lots of glass to reflect the sky, giving it a light touch. The building process had to struggle with severe financial shortcomings why a number of budget cuts had to be made and so dramatically influenced certain results of the project.

Our eminent group had the pleasure to have an excellent lunch, served in the dining hall and thereafter visit a number of facilities showcasing Jacobsen’s furniture. All facilities from corridors to meeting rooms, library, students- and deans dining room, all are graced with Jacobsen’s wonderful furniture, here sitting perfectly in scale. The architect used his entire design portfolio for the college from door handles over furniture to cutlery. All colour schemes from wall to floors where likewise chosen by the master and are still as relevant as they where day one.

We ended our day back at the Skandium – Fritz Hansen store where a draw revealed a winner for a 3107 chair and for the runner up the book ‘Room 606′ by Michael Sheridan. The Prosecco was flowing and so our longing dreams to all one day own as many pieces by this remarkable master as we possibly are able to house in our own homes…..

Arne, you are the greatest! 

In
a
gentle
way,
you
can
shake
the
world.

And your world is sweeter, sensuous, adventurous, peaceful, uplifting, making you fly like an eagle, sailing through silky soft skies……

Odeur De Sainteté, a secret, magical selection of scents.

The idea is to give an image evoking spirituality and culinary art; an elixir of life and magic potion. The fragrance workshop is in Paris on the banks of the Seine, just where the ancient perfumers always had their workshops, between Pont des Arts and Pont Neuf. Here, with a small team of noses, eyes, ears and languages they try to catch the illusion of the sky, all to reinvent the concept of luxury perfumes, healthy, free, natural, inspired, transformed.

The DNA of Odeur De Sainteté is deeply inscribed in nature. Under guidance of a Mediterranean pharmaceutical company, the compositions are harvested on 600 acres of preserved Languedoc land. Between lavender, rose, pistachia lentiscus, rosemary, citrus and spices under rough skies, the fragrances are created day by day. Treated like fine wine, they improve with time, move with the seasons to be savoured just at the right moment. In the fields herbs and scented xerophytes, which grew on the land already in the Middle Ages, will be replanted to harvest raw materials, to be distilled and captured.

Sainte Nitouche
Concealed, imbued with cumin and hibiscus with bare hands, skin against skin, perfectly disconcerting, changing.

La Menthe Religieuse
Haughty, rustling herbs and green delights making you shrudder. Gentle touches of basil tickle the skin. It is the Mintus.

 La Mer Supérieur
Bitter almond is more than bitter, a lover. Her sandalwood robe veils are quiet, soft rose, mysterious and smooth, at times absent.

 L’e Au Culte
Comforting, just like a walk through the garden of Hesperides where everything is as it always has been. You are Hercules or a nymph with all the fruit around you being golden.

L’Enfant de Coeur
He arrives breathless, without warning and we immediately understand his torment. The incense assails, the myrrh torments and we want more.

L’Homme Quantique
Is built like a cedar of the Atlas. You meet, freshly, cooly, giving energy. Then its roots lull you into a floating mood, listen to them singing.

L’Etat De Grace
Pale pink and quivering, young, light, sweet and complex. Its wood is translucent, its petals sweet benzoin rejuvenating in a smile. 

L’Immaculée
Fell from heaven, designed round a small sugar core, freshly stuffed with jasmine, joyous, fleeting.

Sainte Nitouche
Concealed, imbued with cumin and hibiscus with bare hands, skin against skin, perfectly disconcerting, changing.

La Menthe Religieuse
Haughty, rustling herbs and green delights making you shrudder. Gentle touches of basil tickle the skin. It is the Mintus.

La Mer Supérieur

Bitter almond is more than bitter, a lover. Her sandalwood robe veils are quiet, soft rose, mysterious and smooth, at times absent.

L’e Au Culte
Comforting, just like a walk through the garden of Hesperides where everything is as it always has been. You are Hercules or a nymph with all the fruit around you being golden.

L’Enfant de Coeur

He arrives breathless, without warning and we immediately understand his torment. The incense assails, the myrrh torments and we want more.

L’Homme Quantique

Is built like a cedar of the Atlas. You meet, freshly, cooly, giving energy. Then its roots lull you into a floating mood, listen to them singing.

L’Etat De Grace
Pale pink and quivering, young, light, sweet and complex. Its wood is translucent, its petals sweet benzoin rejuvenating in a smile.

L’Immaculée

Fell from heaven, designed round a small sugar core, freshly stuffed with jasmine, joyous, fleeting.

Make your choice. It is you, your skin, your memory and your emotion that will respond. You can wear several compositions at once or use an extract to give your usual perfume a different breath. Feel free to share your experience.

Odeur De Sainteté by Chantal Sanier.

Bossa nova is a well-known style of Brazilian music developed and popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. The phrase bossa nova means literally “New Trend”. A lyrical fusion of Samba and Jazz, Bossa Nova acquired a large following in the 1960s initially from young musicians and college students. Since its birth, it remains a vital part of the standard jazz repertoire.

Rosa used the word in a samba:

“O samba, a prontidão e outras bossas são nossas coisas, são coisas nossas” (“The samba, the readiness and otherbossas are our things, are things from us”).

The exact origin of the exact term “bossa nova” still remains uncertain. Within the artistic beach culture of the late 1950s Rio de Janeiro the term “bossa” was used to refer to any new “trend” or “fashionable wave”. In his book Bossa Nova, Brazilian author Ruy Castro asserts that “bossa” was already in use in the 1950s by musicians as a word to characterize someone’s knack for playing or singing idiosyncratically. Castro claims that the term “bossa nova” might have first been used in publicity for a concert given in 1958 by the Grupo Universitário Hebraico do Brasil (University Hebrew Group of Brazil). This group consisted of Sylvinha Telles, Carlinhos Lyra, Nara Leão, Luizinho Eça, Roberto Menescal, et al. And in 1959, Nara Leão also participated in more than one embryonic display of bossa nova. This included the 1st Festival de Samba Session, conducted by the PUC’s student union. (This session was then chaired by Carlos Diegues, a law student). While these early musicians were likely using the term “bossa nova” as a generic reference this novel musical style, the term took hold as the definition of their own specific artistic creation to this day.

In terms of harmonic structure, bossa nova has a great deal in common with jazz, in its sophisticated use of seventh and extended chords. The first bossa nova song, “Chega de Saudade”, borrowed some structural elements from choro; however, later compositions rarely followed this form. Jobim often used challenging, almost dissonant melody lines, the best-known being in the tunes “Desafinado” (off-key).

Bossa nova was created by intellectuals in small clubs. It was a way to try and be modern, move forward in attempts to live a modern life like they seemed to do in the North of America.

Bossa nova is the music for an age in which everyone lives in an apartment.” — Sylvinha Telles

Bossa was a direct link to Brazilian architect and design. It is a need wanting to be modern just as Oscar Niemeyer created a modern vision for Brazil, Bossa wanted to be the music going alongside it.

Loving Flair,

the ultimate magazine; bold, adventurous, short lived, never forgotten………

Fleur Fenton Cowles (January 20, 1908 – June 5, 2009) founded the amazingly imaginative, versatile, innovative Flair magazine in 1950. She died aged 101, said that Flair, the magazine she edited more than 60 years ago, should and would be her obituary. Flair was a short-lived, loss-making, exhilarating project, meant to showcase the persona Fleur had invented for herself. Media professionals and students have admired it ever since its 12th and last issue appeared on US newsstands in January 1951. By then, Flair had served its purpose for Fleur, becoming in its single year of existence, “a lifetime passport .….. it still opens doors to writers, painters and designers”.

She understood early in the popularisation and feminisation of American newspapers the connections between print, fame and advertising, and the hunger for ideas – she was never short of those: “I have an idea a minute.”

In Washington she met Gardner “Mike” Cowles Jr, temporarily at the Office of War Information but more usually occupied in the family publishing business. She upgraded her name to Fleur, and Mike and Fleur married, both for the third time. She was at last in the right place to be who and what she wanted. She joined Look magazine, which Mike had founded, as associate editor and oversaw a redesign, adding fashion and food and inventing the formula for later newspaper colour mags. Circulation increased, and so did advertising.

She wrote a fashion column for the New York World-Telegram; she worked in a Boston ad agency. Her first husband, Bertram Klapper, owned a firm making wooden cores for shoe heels. Her second, Atherton Pettingell, an ad executive, had been her boss. She was better at copywriting than he was, and together they set up an ad agency for New York’s luxury businesses, including Helena Rubinstein cosmetics.

The couple travelled the world with access at state residents, royal palaces and the most fashionable artists and film stars at the time. But she wanted her own magazine. It had to have flair, she kept saying – and there was its name. Postwar Manhattan had a huge pool of magazine talent, energised by designers and graphic specialists who had fled Europe. They had ambitious ideas of what a magazine could be, which had to be something new, something never executed in mag. world, drawn from surrealist collages, Japanese ephemera, memories of 1920s stencilled fashion plates, and the pop-up and pull-out books from childhood dressed in innovative layouts.

Nothing was too good for Flair, which promised “the best things, the first things, uniting its readers in an aristocracy of taste”, and delivered them, with food, fashion and the arts besides. The magazine was on sale every month from February 1950 for 12 issues, loosing money like running water, Mike scrapped it. Fleur never forgave him.

She coined the word ‘heptitude,’ which meant being knowledgeable about food, dress, and living. People were dazzled by the new magazine……Everyone who counted was talking about it incessantly. Of course, people also thought the magazine would send Mike Cowles to debtors’ prison, it was enormously sumptuous.. Every pundit in town was scrambling to weigh in with an opinion about the magazine that promised, in its editor’s letter handwritten in gold ink, to “give direction and fullness to life.”

Strutting hatless in a behatted era in exclusive tailored suits, with huge horn-rimmed glasses and a trademark Russian emerald ring. She was Fleur Fenton Cowles.

Enjoy a collection of Fleur’s best of Flair published through Cartago.

Without craftsmanship, design is meaningless. Before we enjoyed the elusive birth of the designer, the craftsman was both designer and maker, executor.

Craft is celebrating a come back world wide, entering the mainstream, as people are looking more and more to place their money for well executed objects, surrounding their lives with value, rather than short lived throw away goods.

Great manufacturing is everywhere, check out Mabeo Furniture from Botswana, Africa. Peter Mabeo is collaborating with international designers such as Patricia Urquiola and the Swedish architects trio Claesson Koivisto Rune, to create simple, beautiful crafted furniture. The  Mabeo brand uses good design, combined with a high levels of craftsmanship, carefully selected sustainable raw materials and people development to carve out a niche for themselves in handcrafted high end designer goods, appealing to an international clientele loving versatility.

Mabeo has been featured in highly regarded  design magazines all around the world and in online publications. Apart from their premiere at Design Week in Milano, Mabeo has also exhibited at 100% Design in London and has been a regular exhibitor at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York, where he and his team has been honoured with the Editors choice award for Best Craftsmanship, both in 2006 and 2008. Since the 2006 international launch, some significant, high profile hotel projects in New York and in Stockholm have been realised.

Long live good craftsmanship, with greetings from  the Mabeo team in Botswana!

Design by Katri  is a young, upcoming Finnish fashion label defined by timeless elegance and a strong presence in contemporary fashion. Katri Niskanen, the young talented woman behind the label, creates sophisticated drapings that flows beautifully around the body. Her creations can fit any generation at any time. Spring-Summer 2012 just arrived  at selected retailers and in the online boutique http:www.designbykatrin.com. Design by Katri is also invited as guest designer to The Rookie Showroom during Stockholm Fashion week that starts February 6.

A bit of Helsinki, World Design Capital 2012, and its vibrant design scene is coming to Stockholm. Finnish experimental social gathering HEL YES! will perform in Eric Ericsonhallen February 7-11.  This culinary, design, fashion, music, cultural experiment that popped up during London Design Festival  and Helsinki last year, presents gastronomy, design and dance, side by side, by some of Helsinkis many creative citizens.  Guest choreographer in Stockholm will be Kenneth Kvarnström and Helsinki Dance Company and artist Maria Duncker will bring her Bone Orchestra. The creative minds behind the happening is restaurateur Antto Melasniemi, artist Klaus Haapaniemi and designer Mia Wallenius. The menu for the evening has its roots in Karelian tradition.  During the pop up in London Antto Melasniemi’s dishes included a Karelian pot (pork, beef and lamb stew), Archipelago bread, cinnamon buns with whipped raspberry pudding andliquorice crème brulee. Left to see what delicacies she will create for Stockholm.

Here on the blog we haver already noticed Helsinki making it to the second place in The New York Times’ list of must-go-destinations 2012. Destination number 44 on the very same list is the region Dalarna in Sweden. Dalarna has always been known for its beauty, the blue mountains, the red-painted wooden houses and traditional craftsmanship. The traditional pattern of the Kurbits flower is a symbol of Dalarna, and in recent years the kurbits have emerged very successful in interesting new interpretations and contexts within art and design. One example is the French fashion house Rochas who used local Dalarna artist Slotts Barbros kurbits patterns on skirts, cardigans, scarves in their spring and summer collection 2011.

From The New York Times:

44. Dalarna, Sweden

A storied region offers a getaway from Stockholm. Most travelers knowSwedenonly for the urban cool ofStockholmand Gothenburg. But when the sun approaches its summer apex, city dwellers often leave town for one of the country’scentral provinces, Dalarna. Its deep forests and glimmering lakes host traditional midsummer parties, and every brick-red farmhouse deserves its own postcard. With Dalarna’s southern edge only about 125 miles from the capital, getting there — by car, bus or rail — is easy enough, though the rustic landscape of “the Dales,” as Dalarna translates, can feel worlds apart.

That’s made it a natural respite for Swedish painters like Anders Zorn, whose home in the town of Mora is now a museum. Artisans still produce traditional handicrafts like the Dala Horse, a national mascot. But Dalarna is not just for summer journeys: every March, the region hosts the Vasaloppet, one of the world’s biggest cross-country ski races, and autumn brings incredible foliage and rich game dishes at restaurants of surprising sophistication like the Dala-Husby Hotell. by  EVAN RAIL

Helsinki is placed number two in New York Times “the 45 Places to Go in 2012” list, http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/travel/45-places-to-go-in-2012.html?pagewanted=all, published earlier this month. Panama, Helsinki and Myanmar are topping the list whereas London made it to number four. Helsinki being the World Design Capital for 2012, the capitals huge Design District, the new Helsinki Music Center are some of the factors behind the top position:

2. Helsinki, Finland
Design. Design. Design. Aesthetics fuel a new cool.
Copenhagen’s culinary awakening and Stockholm’s trend-setting fashion may have ignited the world’s current infatuation with Nordic culture; now Helsinki is poised for the spotlight.
The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design has designated it the World Design Capital for 2012.
Design has long been part of the city’s DNA, but in recent years the scene has been increasingly energized: the official Design District has ballooned to encompass 25 streets and nearly 200 design-minded businesses, which range from shops selling housewares and furniture to boutique hotels and clothing stores. Design has infiltrated the restaurant scene as well, notably the elegant Chez Dominique and the hot newcomer (and Michelin-starred) Olo. On top of all that is the spectacular new $242 million Helsinki Music Center. Student ensembles from the Sibelius Academy — the sole university in Finland devoted exclusively to music — will perform in the striking glass-walled space, and both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestras will give concerts in 2012.
By INGRID K. WILLIAMS

NEW YORK TIMES Published: January 6, 2012