Perhaps a sharp contrast to my previous post, this little table by Johnny Swing consists of square jars and a wire Eames-like base. As an object, it’s beautiful, I only wish the jar lids or the jar glass were a different color, like orange or a mix of bright colors. Either way, it’s still a very fun table.

Another nice booth at ICFF was the Test Collective. The wire standing light fixture and the laser engraved boards were cool to see. The lamps were especially interesting to me because they were so minimal compared to the rest of the lighting at the show. I like how the conical form implies the movement of light from the bare lamp.

Anna and I had the privilege to have dinner with Jean of notcot and Jen and Leo of Hero Design Lab, who are all old friends from grad school. Jen and Leo recently launched HERO 365, a line of smart, durable tools for living. The first two pieces are a rain collector and a drying rack. The rain collector is my favorite and it would look great outside a modern home or rooftop terrace garden. In my mind, a garden is always a wild place, and a fun rain collector makes perfect sense.

The rain collector was also featured as an ICFF Editor’s Pick by Metropolis Magazine

How fun are these little guys? I don’t know much about them, other than that they were designed by Matteo Cibic, but I dig them!

Via Sencha.

PS – Please forgive us if posting a bit spotty over the next week or two…we’re in the middle of finishing up preparations for the NSS and are feeling a bit overwhelmed!

Rickshaw is a recently launched SF-based bag company supporting high-quality, human-powered design. I checked out some of the videos behind the bags and found the video explaining the Zero Messenger really interesting. The bag is cut and sewn from only four rectangles of fabric with nothing going out to the landfill. All the pieces make it into the bag (including a few scraps), resulting in no manufacturing material waste. Plus the bags look great: clean, simple and functional. Check out the video below for the info.

A nice post at the Dieline showcases a collection of vintage beer containers and label designs. You can see the full set at Flickr. They look like cans of motor oil to me.

It is odd to think that these two things come from the same necessity to tell time. On the left is the Millhouse in the of Gutach Valley cuckoo clock and on the right is Wallstreet clock from Lexon.

Does form follow function? Can design ever be that pure if designing is done by humans? You could say that the two clocks have different functions because one is for decoration and one is for critical information. I guess they could be like the country mouse and the city mouse. I will leave it up to you to decide which is which. But in the end, they’re both still mice.

Thought Tonfisk’s new TERRAIN Alterable Chess Set was fun – different sized cubes that you can move around to create your own chess terrain…From their press release:

TERRAIN consists of 3-dimensional board made of 64 separate wooden blocks which can be altered and rearranged to create a variety of terrains in which to do battle. The game thus has an added dimension of difficulty. The wooden blocks are made of walnut and white oiled oak. The porcelain chess pieces are made by hand and each piece is unique.

As an American, I have never really given much thought to carpet beaters. I think you need a balcony, a busy street of motorinos, and an old nonna to warrant a carpet beater. But I would buy the Spank from Alessi if I had any of those things. But hanging a carpet off a fire escape just doesn’t have the same air to it.

The Blackbird,Fly is a 35mm twin reflex camera by PowerShovel/Superheadz of Japan. Powershovel designs toy cameras, these are not reproduced from some old Soviet plans or found in a warehouse somewhere. You can pickup one of these toy cameras in various specialty shops around the US or by mailorder. It takes pretty cool pictures, a BBF Flickr Group has a lot of examples of the results. I love that it uses regular old 35mm film and the exposure frame overlaps the sprockets.

And Four Corners Dark has an interview with Hideki Ohmori of Powershovel: part 1 and part 2.