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Literary Colors
Author: Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada This is a page from the book The Japanese Art of “Kusaki-zome,” Nippon Colours: Dyeing in a Hundred Colours with Juices of Plants and Grasses, by Akira Yamazaki, grandfather of my colleague Kazuki Yamazaki, who is, along with his father, Seiju Yamazaki, among the foremost authorities in Japanese natural dyeing and...
Botanica
The honey-colored Botanica VI vase (Nepenthes Villosa) is composed of bois durci (sycamore wood and egg albumen), dewaxed shellac (a resin extracted from insect secretion), and beeswax. Part of the Botanica series, it represents a collection of vessels made from pre-industrial plastic that were created by Studio Formafantasma, a conceptual design practice known for its...
Education and Industry
This textile sample was designed and woven by Marianne Strengell, one of the most important textile artists and educators of the 20th century. Strengell employs a moody palette of blue, violets and blacks, punctuated with a metallic sheen reminiscent of stars emerging at twilight. The warp is composed of wool and rayon, with linen, lurex,...
The Tangible Earth Project – Professor Shinichi Takemura
The Devastating Effect of the Tsunami in Sendai, Japan, on March 11th, 2011 The horrifying images on television of the earthquake and tsunami that afflicted the Japanese coastline last Friday remind us of the fragility of the civilization that we have developed on our planet, and show the enormous power of nature. Professor Shinichi Takemura...
Optics and Aesthetics
  James Carpenter Design Associates opened their studio doors to Cooper-Hewitt Members on October 6. Members were captivated by the ‘show and tell’ of prismatic effects of transmitted and reflected light. JCDA seeks to bring light into our lives in a way we recognize, translating its abundance or rareness, and always its richness. Masters of...
Meier 75
Personally, I am partial to Richard Meier’s approach to architecture. According to Meier, a building is an act of “willful artificiality;” a “man-made” spatial construct that functions as a receptacle for experiencing the world of nature. Meier’s white walls act as nature’s film screen capturing ever-changing patterns of reflected color and light. While Meier credits...
Designer of the Year: Campana Brothers
Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campana will receive the prestigious Designer of the Year Award at this year’s Design Miami. Earlier this year, the brothers mined the museum’s collection and chose a diverse group of more than thirty objects, dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries for the Campana Brothers Select: Works from the...
Straw and Earth
An energy-efficient straw bale house is being built on the Mall, across the street from the US Capitol. Natural builders from around the country converged on Washington DC to construct the straw shelter and a bamboo shade structure. Rose Morin, a green builder from New Mexico and one of the over dozen volunteers with Builders...