Category archive: furniture

February 3, 2012

Metamorphokit (1971): Build It Yourself Modular CalArts Dorm Furniture

Good googly moogly, all this work on DIY/modular/industrial/plywood/Bauhaus bedroom furniture and I'm only finding out about Metamorphokit NOW?? I am clearly doing it wrong:Dubbed Metamorphokit by the designers [CalArts faculty member Peter de Bretteville and Toby Cowan], it was...
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January 16, 2012

The RAPEX Of Europa

Alright, the unrecalled Ikea Antilop high chair is becoming an endangered species. Did DT get it wrong before, when I said that Antilops made between 2006 and 2010 were being recalled for having ridiculously flimsy safety straps? Because the Daily...
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January 12, 2012

50s Mickey Mouse Rug At Rago

At first I was trying to puzzle out a date for this decent-looking, 4x5 ft. Disney rug that's coming up this weekend--yow, the 13th? Friday morning!--at Rago Auctions in New Jersey. But then I realized that Lady and the...
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Vintage Molded Ply Kids Chairs At Mid Mod

Once you build a mold for the plywood, it's just a matter of coming up with all the different uses for the shape you can now make. That's my takeaway from this odd, 1970 chair and fish-shaped storage box...
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January 10, 2012

Unidentified Local Hack Buys PR Bullshit About NurseryWorks Lucite Crib

First of all, it's US Magazine, right? So what do you expect? Except that it gets repeated and retweeted everywhere, with nary a mention of whether it's true or not. So let's make this clear, as clear as a...
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January 6, 2012

Oops Crib: There It Is.

It's been a while since we had a good ol'-fashioned custom crib gawkin' around here. So say hello to the Oops Crib, from Savanna-based eco-craftspeople at Structured Green. Structured Green specializes in furniture and architectural fixtures made from their...
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Ikea Antilop Recall! World's Greatest High Chair Has World's Flimsiest Straps

If there's one thing Ikea's famous for, it's meatballs. If there's two things, it's cheap, stylish furniture. The third thing? Value engineering the hell out that furniture year in and year out, to squeeze every possible penny of profit...
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January 5, 2012

LAT: Schindler With Kid

I would guess that when you marry an architect's daughter, you're not going to be fazed by your father-in-law's inserting himself in your househunting and remodeling projects. In fact, you might even welcome it. Especially if you've got a...
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January 1, 2012

Future Systems For Kids: Dinghy Sofa & Josef's Bed

Until I just reorganized some shelves and went through my stash of their 1990s architecture books, I guess I'd forgotten how utterly awesome Future Systems was. The London firm comprised of Amanda Levete and Czech emigre Jan Kaplicky was...
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December 15, 2011

I Am The World's Severest Bed Stylist

First off, let me say we have a good friend who is a bed stylist--or a soft stylist, in the inustry lingo--and I wish her a rich and rewarding career for as long as she wants it. That said,...
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December 14, 2011

Golden Child: Kid Design Round-up From Skinner Auctions

There sure are some fascinating kid-related things coming up this weekend in the 20th century design sale at Boston-based auction house Skinner. But first, the stuff you might actually want to bid on: RESULTS UPDATE: Hah, or not. None of...
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December 5, 2011

OG Walter Papst Kids Table At Mid Mod

I don't know where he finds this stuff, but he sure does. And over and over again, too. Mid Mod Design has a kids table by fiberglass kids' furniture pioneer-turned alien hunter Walter Papst, for just EUR900. A price...
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November 30, 2011

Klinki Modular Furniture/Toy Construction System

Once again, the incomparably awesome, mildly impenetrable archive of Form Magazine yields a small treasure. This time, it's the Klinki building and play system, from Form 88, published in 1979. Klinki was made of wood, and came in three...
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November 28, 2011

Scrapwood Playground At Tule Lake Internment Camp

In WWII, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the west coast, stripped of basically everything they couldn't carry, and imprisoned in inland internment camps, rows of tarpaper barracks in the desert surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers....
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November 26, 2011

Kid's Corner By Martino Gamper

Speaking of Martino Gamper, he has a thing for corners. And so in 2002, he made Kid's Corner, an awesome, little reading & play space, which was included in a larger exhibit, The Book Corner. The shots here are...
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Dorm Find: Gio Ponti Hotel Parco Dei Principi Headboards

Poor Gio Ponti's Hotel Parco dei Principi furniture! It gets no respect! I mean, in 2007 Martino Gamper hacked it apart and used it for lumber for a performance at Art Basel. And now, somewhere outside Firenze, a couple...
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November 25, 2011

Auchan, Les Enfants! Mini Vintage Parisian Pop-Up Mall

For whatever reason, Paris seems to have some pretty solid sources for vintage kids' design. So it's tres interessant that a group of antique dealers and design shops in Paris have banded together for Mini Vintage, "le premier salon dédié...
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November 23, 2011

Three Of These Folky Things Belong Together

People in New Jersey collected the darnedest things sometimes. Though this bedroom set is apparently from Southampton, so go figure. Here are a couple of standout [sic] lots from Rago Arts' upcoming Estates auction: Lot: 566: a whimsical bedroom furniture...
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November 18, 2011

The Peregrine White Cradle

While searching for historical photos of feather beds [long story, another time], I stumbled across this, the Peregrine White Cradle, a woven willow cradle brought from Holland by Susanna and William White, who were expecting their first child when...
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November 12, 2011

Star Wars Nursery Mayhem

Frankly, if your kid is actually named Rocky III, I don't see how you could not give him a Mr. T-themed nursery, but Star Wars is an evergreen alternative. Ohdeedoh has a nice tour of Rocky's Rebel Alliance setup,...
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October 26, 2011

Please Send Your Baby Bentwood To Wary Meyers

If you have some of these kid-sized bentwood chairs from c.1968 Design Research, please send them to Wary Meyers. It'll save him he trouble of inventing a time machine. Bentwood Baby Chair at Design Research, 1968 [warymeyers]...
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October 17, 2011

Workman Twins Ikea Hack

Twins, whatryagonnado, right? Well, if you're Jared and Krystal Workman of somewhere DC area, the answer's simple: you jigsaw out a couple of holes in the free Ikea tabletop and drop in some plastic seats from a daycare activity...
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October 8, 2011

DTQ: Supergraphic Play Cubes In A Modernist Maine Cabin?

Alright, let's figure this one out. Here's a LIFE magazine picture of an otherwise unidentified "Modern Home" in Maine, circa 1969, shot by longtime staff photographer Mark Kauffman. There are a few other images in the set, but no...
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Eames Planking

It's the little metadata differences. Somehow, Andrew from an ambitious project collapsing found this sweet 1948 photo from Google's LIFE Magazine photo archive and sent it along. Maybe if, instead of Rocky Stensrud, Jr., using children's chairs in a...
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September 19, 2011

Is It Any Wonda I've Got Too Much Gear On My Hands?

Wow, a whole stroller/kid furniture world of the past just opened up to me, like seeing color photos of World War II after a lifetime of black & white. Seriously, the Wonda Chair? Who's been keeping this a secret...
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September 8, 2011

$26,283 Worth Of Rocking Chairs

You know what's been missing around here lately? four- and five-figure rocking chairs. Not so the New York Times, where ducduc's Brady Wilcox curates a fine array of chairs to rock the hedgies and scare the cats. Does that even...
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September 1, 2011

DTQ: What Makes A Horrible Restaurant High Chair?

Thanks to the SEO spammer who responded to the 4-year-old question about what makes a nice restaurant high chair with the highly unbelievable answer: more polypropylene, horrible design, krazy spelling, and pretending your kids love the colors! In other words,...
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August 22, 2011

Depressing Caption, Meet Awesome Chairs

The photo blog on The Atlantic has been running extended looks back at images from World War II. Today's theme: Japanese-Americans forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and shipped to internment camps in the middle of the freakin'...
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August 20, 2011

Eames Adjacent! Can You ID This Kid-Size, Mid-Century Mystery Chair?

From awaiting the future to decoding the past: Soon after super-collector Jim Linderman moved to the Zeeland metropolitan area, he snapped up this rather sweet, sculptural, handmade, kid-size mystery chair at a local vintage store. And then he sent pictures...
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The Future Will Be Kickstarted

Someday in The Future, an idealistic English teacher in Beijing with some furniture sketches and a translator friend will commission a giant furniture manufacturer like Beijing Jiangshan Country Home Decoration Company, Ltd., to make desks for the classroom in...
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August 15, 2011

A Baby Pallet Chair By Studiomama In Every Playroom!

Nina Tolstrup and her design practice Studiomama have been on DT before, for the awesome Kids' House she created in 2008, the one with the Lego and chalkboard walls. Now pieces her breakout Pallet Project [2006] are available at...
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August 10, 2011

What, Because FugBath™ Was Taken? FunBath™

You know, I always thought the point of spending several thousand dollars on a bathtub was that you only did it once a generation. Or once a housing bubble, or once a refi. Whatever it was, you weren't supposed...
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August 2, 2011

Piet Hein Eek Bunk Bed

Have we talked about this? This awesome Piet Hein Eek bunk bed? Done on commission for [I assume] some lucky little Dutch moppets? I don't think we have. Because we're in a semi-perpetual discussion of bunk beds around DTHQ,...
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July 15, 2011

Luxembourg Kid Chairs By Fermob

The original garden chairs in the Jardin du Luxembourg were designed in 1923 and made of enameled steel. In 2000, 2002, or 2004, by the invitation? authorization? laissez-faire attitude? of the French Senat, which owns the Jardin, Fermob began...
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July 11, 2011

The Ornament As Crime Nursery

Austro-hungarian modernist architect Adolf Loos is probably most famous for his manifesto, "Ornament as Crime." Unfortunately, Loos had trouble finding a publisher for his sequel, "Non-ornament is Loony Bin." As we can see in the two children's rooms--a nursery...
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June 30, 2011

Hyperchouette Bambou Bassinet de Mort

There really are never enough bamboo cribs and bassinets out there. Maybe because until lamination technology progressed it was so hard to make bamboo crib that didn't look like it escaped from a tiki bar, or was left over...
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June 27, 2011

Sweet Ado Play Table & Chairs

It's one of the perks of being just a few kilometers up the road from the old sanatorium at Apeldoorn: you get probably the highest concentration of vintage Ado toys and furniture in the world. There may be some...
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June 25, 2011

This Vintage Prop Crib Of Death Is Fantastic

What better way to advertise a beautifully crafted, obsolete, and probably unsafe product like quilted crib bumpers, than with an awesome, vintage crib with exactly the kind of deadly-wide gaps that crib bumpers were invented to protect from? It's...
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June 1, 2011

The BabyBjorn High Chair Trilogy

When it came to launching their new high chair the marketing folks at BabyBjorn knew two things: they wanted the chair's designer, Jakob Wikner, a new dad himself, to be involved, perhaps as a way to enhance the brand's association...
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May 26, 2011

Fem* One2Stay? Really? Why Not 'Dutch Folding High Chair'?

The Dutch designers of the Fem* [Fem-Star] One2Stay portable, indoor/outdoor, tent-like, aluminum, folding high chair expended so much brain power on the product, they didnt have any left for the name. One2Stay? What does that even mean? How about...
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May 18, 2011

Home Court D-Bag Kids Furniture By Lebron James

As you can imagine, the only reason getting Lebron James to design kids furniture makes any sense is if you're a furniture licensing guy who really loves Lebron James. So I guess it follows that the promo site for...
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Kodomo Bako By Miha Design

In the gut renovation of an older [1977] 71 sq-m condo for a Tokyo family, Naoto Mitsumoto and Naoko Hamana of Miha Design created two sleeping boxes with loft tops for the kids to study and play. While it...
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Sweet Kalon Echo Toddler Crib, Sweetest Nymph!

Now that everyone's quiet and in the frame of mind to discuss high-design, thousand-dollar children's beds... HOLY SMOKES, PEOPLE, THE KALON ECHO TODDLER BED! Every penny you were thinking of dropping on an Aino Aalto should now go into...
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May 17, 2011

Mrs. Aalto's Crib

Do not adjust your monitors, this is not a rendering. It is an honest-to-goodness crib, designed in the 1940s by Aino Aalto, the Finnish architect and designer, who you may know from such roles as the first Mrs. Alvar...
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May 16, 2011

Youpla-do 2000 Lit Parapluie, How You Say Umbrella Crib?

Tres interessant, look what DT reader Gilles found at French vintage design shop the Hiving Room: it's a folding crib from the 60s/early 70s called the Youpla-do 2000 Lit Valise Parapluie, or Suitcase Umbrella Bed. I guess it's the...
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May 11, 2011

Oeuf Sparrow Crib Probably Still 20% Off At ModernSeed

Modern Seed is having a 20% off sale on its current stock of sweet, birch Oeuf Sparrow cribs. Though I love the $730 Sparrow in its original grey finish, for $146 off, I could certainly learn to love the...
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May 7, 2011

Phil&Teds: Metoo High Chair? I Don't Recall. CPSC: And That's Gonna Be A Problem

From the Department of Whoa That's Never Happened Before, So I got a personal email request from the CPSC yesterday. Not some mailing list alert, or even a "Dear Momblogger," pitch. A straight up, "Hi Greg, I know that you...
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May 3, 2011

Le Clochard Homeless-Lookin' Cardboard-Printed Sheets

Cardbird I, Robert Rauschenberg, 1971, ed. 75, image baeditions Oh, man, welcome to this installment of Dutch Conceptual Beddengoed. I've been looking at a lot of Robert Rauschenberg sculptures lately for the other blog, and so while I was...
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May 2, 2011

Ikea Lack Chalk Hack

I tried it once and ended up with a disastrous mess, with chalk paint sloughing off all over me, the kid, and the house. But it looks like someone has figured out how to successfully make an Ikea Lack...
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April 29, 2011

ducduc Announces A Very Exclusive Crib Recall

The CPSC and Ducduc have announced what may be the most exclusive crib recall ever, even more exclusive than the Netto Collection Recall of 2007. Five crib models [AJ, Austin, Parker, Cabana, and my favorite, Campaign, above] have been...
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April 28, 2011

Anthroposophical Kids Furniture, Also Coniferous

It really is the little differences. The Vienna auction house Dorotheum is selling this c.1930 Erwin Behr kids furniture made from "oiled coniferous wood" as an "anthroposophical child's chair and table," because similar styles were knocked together in the...
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April 21, 2011

Bunky Beds: Fatpack Polyurethane Bunk Beds By Marc Newson For Magis

Wow, awesome chunky bunk beds, Marc Newson! Do they come in green? HAHA, trick question! Bunk beds made from giant, single pieces of rotationally spun polyurethane that will ship across the world in a box the size of an...
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April 6, 2011

Greentime For Stokke At Magic Beans

If you've been holding off on getting a Stokke Xplory because you thought the green fabric was just a little too dark, well, spring has sprung, my stroller-shopping friend. Stokke is launching the Xplory in light green, and it's...
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April 3, 2011

And Then There Was One! Piet Zwart Montessori Chair

Rarity is not something you think of when it comes to Piet Zwart's designs. His modular kitchens have been in production for like 75 years. He designed both the post office AND the telephone company in the Netherlands. And...
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March 25, 2011

Do You Know Me? The Flat-Sided Mystery Crib

DT reader David still has a few months left to figure out who makes this crib and where he can buy one. Or at least one like it. The folks modeling the bedding have no idea who the manufacturer...
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March 14, 2011

Whoa, Pierre Berge!

You may remember Pierre Berge & Associes from such insane auctions as his partner Yves Saint Laurent's, and that out-of-nowhere Designs for Kids sale last winter. Next up, toward the end of the month, is the deceptively titled Shabby...
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Kid City: Silkscreened Ply Storyge Furniture

You may know Richard Shed from such designblog-ogenic creations as screwhead tape and Keith's console. But it turns out he's now got some kids somewhere, because he and Noel Bramley have been collaborating on an investigation of "the interaction...
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March 6, 2011

Josef Hoffmann Kids Furniture

I think Vienna textile manufacturer Max Biach's daughter Katharina was a teenager in 1902 when Josef Hoffmann designed this bedroom for her, but it's still sweet enough to stare at. The Neue Galerie included Biach's reassembled bedroom in their...
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February 25, 2011

Promemoria Kids: For The Most Aristocratic And Visionary Collectors Among Us

Finally master ebenista-turned furniture designer Romeo Sozzi has thought of the children. "My clients asked me for small versions of the furniture," he revealed, modestly, to the New York Times, who somehow found out about the opening next month...
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February 11, 2011

DT Friday Freakout

it's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned round-up of freakouts from the worlds of safety, science, and parenting to ruin your weekend, so here goes: You might as well let the kid drink Coke, because diet soda...
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February 9, 2011

There Is An Awesome Plywood Play Cube In A Barn In Europe Somewhere?

Alright, Internet, we have a job to do. In the NY Times, Berkeley feng shui master Liu Ming talked about the inspiration for the multi-function plywood cube-on-wheels his architect Toshi Kasai made for his loft. And it's not Ken Isaacs,...
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February 6, 2011

O-House: People, Kids Actually Living In Japanese Modernist House

The annoying thing about architecture porn goes triple for Japanese houses: they're always photographed completely empty, or with like one chair, as if they weren't in the land of the manga-hoarding otaku; there's never a trace of kids or...
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January 22, 2011

Trendy Canada Has Own Breastfeeding Laws, Haters

This just in from Canada's City of The Future: an op-ed writer for the Vancouver Sun has had it up to HERE with self-absorbed lactivists who go around jiggling their "human rights" in innocent furniture store owners' faces by breastfeeding...
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January 19, 2011

The Schachter Shack

For a brief, shining moment at the turn of the century, art dealer Kenny Schachter and I shared an architect. It was not, however, Ab Rogers, son of Sir Richard, who would build these sweet little nomadic, origami-like, bed/play...
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January 7, 2011

Maybe Call It The Time Out Bunk Bed

Good googly moogly, this is the sweetest-looking bunk bed I've seen all year. I wonder if a safety rail might make it feel too confining, though. "from the Winter 2004 catalog from ATD-American Co.: 'Official Headquarters For All Of...
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January 3, 2011

The Auction Of Misfit Toys

There are a few interesting kid-related things in Rago's schedule-filling, warehouse-clearing auction next weekend: Lot 130 is a kid-sized Thonet rocking chair with a couple of reeds sticking up from the woven seat and a random side table thrown...
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December 21, 2010

Rip + Tatter Cardboard Chair By Pete Oyler

This may be the coolest cardboard kid chair I've seen since the disposable car seat in Papanek & Hennessey's Nomadic Furniture. Which is, I'm sure, exactly what SaferCar.gov wanted to advertise next to ["Safer than a cardboard box!"] Anyway,...
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December 20, 2010

Enzo Mari Children's Table & Chairs?

Dear Internet, please tell me more about these plastic chairs, which our correspondent in Paris saw at the Musee d'Art Decoratif, and which are apparently by Enzo Mari? Because when I try to dig up info on them, I...
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December 14, 2010

Dust Me! La Quadra Cradle By Mario Ceroli

I feel like I could blog off of this Pierre Bergé Design for Kids auction for weeks. [Actually, I feel like I've already blogged about 3/4 of it over the last six years.] But this jumped out at me:...
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December 13, 2010

Hidden Hazard? Hidden From Whom? CPSC Finally Launching A Crib Bumper Investigation

Crib bumpers were invented by ace salesman Leo Koltun because after selling every returning GI's knocked up wife a playpen pad made from WWII surplus padding, he still had a shitload of padding left over. The company he founded, Kolcraft,...
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November 26, 2010

Kenny Scharf's Awesome Baby Bouncer & Crib Of Death

It took two-and-a-half years, but I finally found a picture of the crazy crib downtown artist Kenny Scharf made in the early 1980s for his daughter Zena. It's a snap of a book of Scharf's work posted on Art...
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November 22, 2010

But Your High Chair Ain't Got No Legs, Gunnar Daan

While we were in Amsterdam, we spent a lot of time in de Pijp, the neighborhood around the several blocks-long Albert Cuyp Markt which, once past the Heineken Museum, feels pretty normal and tourist-free. It's where we stumbled upon...
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November 15, 2010

Steampunk-Lite: Ironwork High Chair

Still trying to identify the manufacturer or designer of this awesome-if-deadly, vintage bent steel high chair. Take a look and take a guess! But while researching online, I did find this rather cool-looking early 20th century, twisted steel rod &...
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November 2, 2010

'Short Rest': Kid-Size Shopping Cart Chair By Stiletto

Though he got the idea of making chairs out of shopping carts from his mother in 1983, Berlin-based designer Frank Schreiner didn't start cranking out the actual merch until 1990. The kid-sized model, called the "Short Rest," originally sold...
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October 28, 2010

Baby, Remember My Name? Unknown Bent Metal High Chair

Just today, Michael from Stopping Off Place confirmed that the unidentified lithograph I'd helped a friend move out of his childhood home this summer was, in fact, by Ezra Jack Keats. [Vintage Children's Books My Kid Loves just posted...
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October 25, 2010

Less Is More Applies To Plexi, Too

Just the fleeting impression of a guy who knows a thing or two about inordinately severe crib design and plexi... And in completely unrelated news, Nurseryworks previewed their new all-acrylic Hollis crib at the ABC Kids Expo in Las...
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Amazing Wood Artist Alma Pearce Tossing A Baby

Amazing Joshua Tree-by-way-of-Heber-Utah wood artist Alma Pearce carved a containerload of biomorphic reclaimed wood stools for Japan, built a house by hand, and tossed his kid into the air 100 times before you even made your first pot of...
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No Via Boxes Were Harmed In The Making Of This Promotional Video

Here at DTHQ, we've been inundated with stinkbugs, so I've been climbing on our Via Boxes a lot lately to squash them on the ceiling. Even so, I'm a bit surprised that John, chief Via Boxer, drove his car...
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October 20, 2010

Ozoo, Par Le Maître De Plastic Kids Furniture, Marc Berthier

Ozoo 0600 desk, 1971, image via form.de We've seen some of designer Marc Berthier's kids furniture before, and we'd probably see more of it if the mid-70s oil crisis didn't wreak havoc on the economics of plastic. Or if...
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October 18, 2010

Expressionist Slot-Together Kids Chair

Sweet, unattributed, vintage, slot-together ply kids chair goodness this weekend at Mondo Blogo's favorite dealer, Jere Barnard. There are a couple of other kid design oddities in MB's post, so check it out. My Favorite Dealer, Jere Barnard [mondo-blogo]...
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October 14, 2010

Luigi Colani, The Designer Of The MONOBLOC Would Like To See You Outside.

And if you make it back alive, will you please tell me his name? This desk/closet/loft bed combination called the MONOBLOC was exhibited at the 7th International Furniture Expo in Paris in 1973. It is credited in Form Magazine...
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Nanna Ditzel Designed A Crib In 1962.

We all know about Nanna Ditzel's Toadstool tables and chairs. And her high chair. And her cradle. [Right? We do?] But how is it possible that I can't find any reference besides an 1963 issue of Form Magazine to...
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October 12, 2010

Chaises Anonymes Des Puces

An anonymous tipster traveling undercover in Paris shares wisdom from les puces:The flea markets are insanely expensive. In many cases, the vendors have no idea what they have/value, but they are just pulling insane numbers from the air. I...
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From Womb To Cradle, By Jack Rogers Hopkins

If all you knew about Calfornia craftsmaster Jack Rogers Hopkins was his Vulcantastic rocking chair ["Live Long and Rocker"], sit down, because Hippie Woodworking Christmas has come early. Mondo Blogo has posted more incredible images from his seemingly endless...
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October 8, 2010

Warhol Brillo Box End Tables For Everyone!

In my other blog/life, I've been researching the slightly absurd, increasingly high stakes saga of Andy Warhol's iconic Brillo Box sculptures. In a nutshell, it turns out that Pontus Hulten, one of the major museum directors in the world--he...
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October 4, 2010

Aawesome: Alvar Aalto Kids Chair

A nice-looking vintage example of Alvar Aalto's Child's Chair No. 103 is coming up for auction at Chicago's Wright20 next week. They list the date as 1930, but that's when Aalto made his first, related, bent ply and metal...
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October 3, 2010

There's More To Renate Mueller Than Jute Hippos

All the stuff I wrote 2.5 years ago about the New Hotness of eastern German toymaking legend Renate Mueller still stands: the only things different are that R 20th Century has finally amassed enough vintage Mueller to put on...
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September 28, 2010

Trick Contour Rocking Chair By Vladimir Kagan

It's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned rockerlusting around here. So thanks Wright20 for putting this sweet, c1955 Contour rocking chair by Vladimir Kagan up for sale next month. Kagan's very welcome 'round these parts, and...
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September 22, 2010

Pop Space: Perpetually Convertible Kids' Loft Bed Structure By Matali Crasset

A couple of years ago, Matali Crasset built a loft-cabana and library space with a bed underneath it for her young daughter Popline. And wouldn't it be even better, she thought, if such a structure could evolve and adapt...
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September 19, 2010

Gerrit Rietveld The Impaler? What's Up With This de Stijlin' Playpen?

Alright, every time I think I've exhausted the Gerrit Rietveld kids' furniture, something else pops up. We already knew that Rietveld basically had his furnituremaking breakthrough by designing stuff for his own kid and his friends' kids. But somehow...
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September 18, 2010

OG Slot-Together Ply Shelves By Harry Davis, Editor

Andy found this this summer, and then after talking to the folks at Modern Times to learn more about it, I promptly lost the link. In any case, there's really not much more to say at this point besides...
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September 17, 2010

Holy Moley, Billi Bolli 'Adventure Bed' System

Yes, now that we've successfully taken the plexi front off K2's Juddy bed, I've been thinking about bunk beds more. But no, I did not plan to make it Awesome & Unobtainable Bunk Bed Week around here. And yet,...
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September 16, 2010

Toobspotting: Whatchootalkingbout, Willis?

Holy smokes, and I'm not kidding. DT commenter MikeM thought he *might* have seen the H.U.D.D.L.E. Toobline Cornerbunk, the L-shaped bunkbed setup somewhere before... where was that? Oh, right, in Willis and Arnold Drummond's bedroom. And after some surfing...
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Alright, Southern California, Show Me Your H.U.D.D.L.E. Toobs

Four years ago, Daddy Types was the only Internet mention of Toobs, the awesome modular/homebrew/adaptive reuse children's furniture collection by Los Angeles designers Penny and Jim Hull. The Hulls and their new company, Hull Urban Design, Development, Etc., or...
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September 10, 2010

De Stijl-Style Slot-Together Ply Chair At Mid Mod

How does he find these things? Etienne at Mid Mod Design in the Netherlands has this awesome-looking, de Stijl-inspired beech ply high chair c.1950 on hold right now. I hope he keeps the pictures online after it sells, though;...
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September 2, 2010

Bwahahalvar Aalto Children's Playset

So what did we discover in the upcoming Rago Arts Discovery auction scheduled for Sept. 11? That even with "(Attr.)" and "unmarked" in the lot description, it still takes a pretty big set of stones to sell this pile...
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August 31, 2010

Ceci N'est Pas Un Crate Changing Table--Yet

Andy just sent this over, and he's right, it'd make an awesome changing table. This happens to be in Atelier Solarshop's pop-up store in Antwerp, which is up through Oct. 9, if you want to go scout it out...
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August 11, 2010

Prahawesome Crib In A Ramp House

Yes, that is what you think it is: an Ikea Gulliver crib on a little homemade platform on a big old ramp floor in a polyurethane-coated house outside Prague that was built for a psychiatrist who wanted a movie...
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August 10, 2010

Lost 90s Kids Furniture By Anthologie Quartett

Look, I'm not happy either about posting a vintage kids furniture story from 1991, a year I happen to remember myself quite well, thankyouverymuch, and it was not that long ago. Though I guess technically, it's just long enough...
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August 4, 2010

Really? Angelo Mangiarotti Plywood Bunk Beds?

They're long gone from Swedish designshop Jacksons, but last year, kiddesignblog Handmade Charlotte posted this awesome, if somewhat treacherous-looking, slot-together plywood bunkbed, and said it was from the 1960s by Angelo Mangiarotti. [Actually they said it's be Angelo Manglarotti,...
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July 31, 2010

Erich Dieckmann Ur-Bauhaus Kinderstuhl

You may know furniture designer Erich Dieckmann from such carpentry workshops as the Bauhaus and the Staatliche Bauhochschule in Weimar. Which covers the 1920s, the time frame attributed to this little painted pine kid's chair. It has that Dieckmann...
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July 28, 2010

Leon Meyer Rocking Chair Is Patented, Awesome

What a beautiful rocking chair, architect Leon Meyer! It makes me want to fold it right up and slide it away somewhere. This sweet chair looks like it can fold, but alas, it cannot, if only because Objects USA...
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July 23, 2010

German Kinderauktionen Round-Up

Seriously, if you're anything like me, you'd think Munich's OG delights began with McRibs and ended with fried, bubbly apple pies at the McDonald's in front of the airport. Turns out there's an awesome design auction house at every...
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July 20, 2010

FriendsWithYou: Mr. TTT Bench

That's the price you pay for getting your FriendsWithYou X kidrobot 34-inch fiberglass Mr. TTT bench colabo news from the site which lets BoingBoing read High Snobiety for it: you have to go hunt it down at actual stores,...
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July 15, 2010

Alright, We Get It. The CPSC's Gonna Ban Dropside Cribs.

Big news from the CPSC today: they are making a couple of procedural changes to the safety testing protocols for both full-size and compact cribs! Actually, I think this huge announcement--accompanied as it is by statements from each of the...
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July 14, 2010

Plexibub! Australian Cribs From Ubabub

Ubabub is an Australian baby furniture start-up, just out of the renderings-only stage, with a strong mid-century modernist aesthetic and up-to-the-minute manufacturing and materials. Which means the Nifty Clear crib, with its awesome angled legs, perforated plexi sides, and walnut...
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July 13, 2010

Damn, Baby, That Is One Plexi Crib!

As shoppers for mid-range plexiglass cribs know all too well, there is no such thing as a mid-range plexiglass crib. On the value end, there is an awesome, truly inspired, $300 maple & plexi crib from Community Playthings. And...
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July 1, 2010

I Give Up, Where's The Retractable Baby Bed?

I was so keyed up to the a custom Korean playroom in the NY Times' Home Section slideshow today, that I completely missed this photo, which purports to show "a retractable shelf" which "could be used as a baby...
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June 26, 2010

Woodworkers' Kids Always Have The Nicest Hand-Carved Rocking Toys

Holy smokes. Master California studio furnituremaker Rick Pohlers created this rocking toy for his own kids in the 1970s. It's carved cherry with a leather seat, and features Northwest Coast Indian-style detailing on both sides. It's not huge, either,...
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June 24, 2010

Cribocalypse Now Redux: CPSC Recalls TWO MILLION Cheap Cribs

Wow, does this mean the CPSC has finally cleared their Bush-era Cribs Of Death cold case file? The CPSC issued recalls for over two million cribs, mostly dropside but also fixed-side models, from seven manufacturers. The recalls are based on...
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June 23, 2010

In Competition Blue & Yellow: Ikea Sniglar Co-Sleeper

As someone who made his kid's own sleeping situation, I will remind everyone that the first, middle, and last step of any crib hacking project is studying the CPSC's safety and testing requirements, and then assuring that your design...
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June 21, 2010

Hi, Koo!

Spring furniture fair Industrial designers hype their prototypes Time flies, work piles up, Browser tabs linger for weeks... Will I ever post? Bassinet/rocker?? Co-sleep-tivist contraption? It's Koo by Lunar. Auto-rocking, lights, LED motion sensors? Gizmo overkill "Genius maneuver!" "Minimize[d]...
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June 11, 2010

High, Higher, Highest Chairs

While looking at something else in their inventory, I realized Modern One may just have the high-designiest high chairs in all of Los Angeles, with vintage high chairs for every budget [that includes at least $1,100 for a high chair]:...
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June 10, 2010

Feeling Good, Louis!

The modern baroque Louis crib is out from David Netto, the guy who gave us white lacquered modernist nursery furniture in the first place. Not sure which is more surprising: how well it works, or that they managed to bring...
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May 26, 2010

Point Chair, By Sally And Peter Nencini

Wow, I can't get over how awesome this is. British designer/artist Peter Nencini and his needle-wielding wife Sally were commissioned to make a chair for a one-year-old boy based on Harry Nilsson's 1971 album/story The Point. [Which was also...
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Holy Smokes, The Nook Pebble Mattress!

So a couple of weeks ago a publicist friend--and seriously, while they're probably the most professionally hyperfriendly population on earth, I can count on one Simpsons hand the number of publicists I'd actually consider calling a friend--a publicist friend...
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May 5, 2010

DT Antique Mall Roundup

Over the weekend we took a kidfree road trip to Lancaster County, and on Sunday morning, when everyone else was at worship, we went to the heathen haven of Adamstown, which is chock full of antique markets, which is Pennsylvania...
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April 29, 2010

Stokke @ MoMA

I've posted about the rainbow of Stokke Tripp-Trapp high chairs in MoMA's cafe before, but never with such a great photo. Ahem....
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April 21, 2010

They Shoot Horses And Turn Their Rib Cages Into Cradles, Don't They?

Mamma mia, che fatto? Hungarian master woodmangler Laszlo Lapp exhibited this gut-busting, choke-hazarding, barber shop chair base-stealing cradle at the Milan Furniture Fair. At the Roberto Cavalli store, which I think means "dead horse" in Italian. The Most Hideous...
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April 19, 2010

OG Jean Prouvé Kids Desk

After you get over the excitement of finding a vintage Prouvé children's desk--in this case, at the Swiss modern design shop Quintessentia--you can start thinking about who the ungrateful little rugrats were who beat this table down were. Or...
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The Fifth Axis: Hut-Hut Rocker By Kalon Studios

Coochicoos seems to have been taken in by Kalon Studio's email last week that their new Hut Hut rocker is optimally-milled on a 5-axis CNC machine from your choice of five FSC-certified woods, and that the name means Giddyup...
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April 18, 2010

No. 4115 Kindergarten Chair By Kai Hoeffer Larsen

When we last left our hero Kaj Høffer Larsen, he was saving fragments of Kaj Bojesen wallpaper from behind the cabinets of his father's just-closed furniture and toy factory in Langeskov. Now we find him with "40 Years of...
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April 7, 2010

Mansfield Dad Still Working Out The Details Of His Cradle Of The Future

Despite neither being for sale at Christmas 2009 for £160 nor actually existing in the physical world, the Babycotpod's pod-shaped baby cot, the Cascara was awarded three stars for durability by Baby Hampshire Magazine. Working backwards from their editors'...
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April 5, 2010

Unicorno Pillowcase

Yeah yeah, I know tokidoki's a massive colabo licensing empire now, but seriously, when you're faced with unrelenting demand for unicorns and rainbows, it's nice to have a kawaii manga juggernaut in your corner. The kid's aunt bought her...
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April 1, 2010

Karin Mobring Ikea Playtable & Chairs On German eBay

Now, nothing against Mid-Mod Design, which is awesome, but this is how I like to buy my vintage 1960s Ikea kids furniture: just sitzin' in a gruppe on the side of the Straße for one shiny euro. Of course,...
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March 7, 2010

Vintage Ikea Kids Table & Chairs By Karin Mobring

I've been low-grade fixated on the idea of vintage Ikea kids furniture ever since I found the "Kid Size" exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum. I've been keeping an eye out for any pieces to turn up for...
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March 3, 2010

Why Not... A Robert Gober Nursery?

I've always loved the cute-but-unsettling evocations of vestigial childhood memories that adhere to the incredible, hand-made sculptures of Robert Gober. And it continues to surprise me that no one has ever licensed Gober baby furniture--actually, that doesn't surprise me...
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February 25, 2010

There Is A Perfect Age To Buy DMFD's Awesome Cork Kid's Chairs

Ever since the Cub chair, Brooklyn designer Daniel Michalik has been refining the technology for molding furniture from eco-awesome cork waste. His most recent kid-sized design, the Tilter chair, debuted at ICFF last year, and is currently available at...
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February 23, 2010

Kid-Sized Lambing Chair

This boxy kind of chair is apparently called a lambing chair, on account of all the lambs they have up there in Lancashire and Yorkshire from whence the design came. This particular boxy chair is kid-sized, and it rocks,...
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February 18, 2010

Good Price, Bad Karma: Richard Neutra Bunk Beds

How many ways can a bunk bed kick you in the nuts? These incredible, pared down, cantilevered beds were designed by Richard Neutra--excuse me, Richard FREAKIN' Neutra, in 1959. For the Singleton House, a masterpiece of modernist simplicity set...
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February 17, 2010

Sherrie Levine's Shiny, Rocking Playthings

I don't quite follow how these sculptures of vintage children's objects cast in bronze fit in with Sherrie Levine's ongoing questioning of authorship and originality. They're not quite as iconic as, say, Marcel Duchamp's urinal, which Levine had previously...
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February 9, 2010

CPSC Goes Through The Archives, Recalls 500,000 More Dropside Cribs

Just when you thought you'd heard every possible CPSC recall of 500,000 cheap dropside cribs, they spring a new one on us. Today the agency recalled all dropside cribs made by Generation 2 Kids and branded either Generation 2...
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February 8, 2010

Interlocking Stool Cube, This Time By Habitat

Every few years since the invention of lumber, someone invents a pair of interlocking cube stool/chairs for kids. This year, it's the UK design store Habitat, and the twist is, this one's made of molded ply, to give it...
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February 3, 2010

Jerry, Erik, Nanna & Bear

That kid there is Erik Ross, I met him once with his mother Lillian, at a party I helped organize for Sofia Coppola. Nice folks. And of course, that's a Nanna Ditzel high chair, which looks pretty fantastic. Never...
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February 1, 2010

Abitacolo Spectacolo! Robots Is Still Producing Bruno Munari's Kid's Bed

When I first posted about Abitacolo, the incredible powder-coated steel children's bed/storage/play contraption Bruno Munari designed in the early 1970s, I couldn't find it for sale anywhere. Robots, the Milanese retail fixture manufacturer Munari worked with, had non-vintage promotional...
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January 28, 2010

Wherein We Try To Figure Out Why Dorel Calls JPMA Certification 'Redundant'

OK, getting some clarification on why Dorel, one of the biggest crib makers in the country, and probably the most prominent member of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, doesn't JPMA-Certify their cribs, and what that means about the safety...
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January 26, 2010

So Why Weren't Dorel Asia's Recalled Cribs JPMA-Certified?

[Note: see the update at the bottom of the post.] Last week's crib recall was 635,000 fixed and dropside cribs made by Dorel Asia SRL, and were sold at "K-Mart, Sears and Wal-Mart stores nationwide from January 2005 through...
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January 25, 2010

Highlights From The US House Hearing On Crib Safety

You know what the US House Committee On Energy And Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations needs? Publicists. The Committee held a hearing last Thursday titled, "Crib Safety: Assessing the Need for Better Oversight," and so far, I've only found...
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Punch'n Cuddle Emotional Furniture Sounds Kind Of Conflicted

Some things, you hear them, and you can tell they are just meant to go together: Cookies'n Cream. Shock'n Awe. Duck'n Cover. Hookers'n Blow. Punch'n Cuddle:Punch'n Cuddle Emotional Furniture for Kids and Kidults Punch'n'Cuddle is what you get when...
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January 19, 2010

Another Day, Another 635,000 Dorel Cribs Recalled

The CPSC and Dorel Asia--they're based in Barbados!--announced the recall of over 600,000 cribs sold at Wal-mart, K-mart, and Sears between January 2005 and December 2009, last month. The cribs pose a strangulation and suffocation hazard because of faulty dropside...
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Lipstick On A Headless Pig: El Ultimo Grito Mico

High-design Italian or not, I've spent my years as a dad trying to avoid giant hunks of kid-targeted plastic. So even though it's from 2006, it's in MoMA's collection now, and it's in an upcoming exhibit of seating for...
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January 18, 2010

Das Gutenkinderauktionblogposten

The German auction house Quittenbaum has a design sale coming up in a couple of weeks, February 9th, which includes some classic pieces of vintage kids design and a couple of oddities: Lot 90: First up, the classic Schaukelwagen convertible...
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January 15, 2010

Awesome Triple Throne For Emperor Haile Selassie

Wow, Joey from Anonymous Works just snagged this beat-but-incredible little painting on eBay. It's apparently from an unrealized 1944 US Government proposal to build a "triple throne" for His Freshly Re-installed Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Signed...
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January 4, 2010

All Amby Baby Hammocks Recalled After Two Suffocation Deaths

As a designer/owner/parent of an atypical crib, I have always wondered what safety tests standards or tests are used for baby hammocks. They all seem so squishy soft and slingy, not qualities I'd associate with lowered suffocation or SIDS...
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While A Party, This Ain't, In Fact, No Disco

Congratulations to the Wary Meyerses whose kid finally arrived--11 pounds! While they were waiting, the DIY design gurubloggers whipped up a little outfit for him out of leftover hospital gowns, and they turned the standard-issue plexi hospital bassinet into...
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December 22, 2009

Whoops, Never Mind! IKEA Issues Worldwide Recall For Weird, New Leopard High Chair

Congratulations to IKEA for what may be the fastest baby product recall ever. The CPSC announced that the Swedish furniture giant has recalled the brand new--and freaky-looking--Leopard high chair worldwide barely two months after its release. Apparenty, the little...
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December 15, 2009

50 Million Roman Shades Recalled In A Day

Wow, and I thought the crib recall was epic. The CPSC has issued the biggest recall ever. Basically every Roman and roll-up blind and shade on the market, 50 million units at least, are being recalled because they pose a...
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December 1, 2009

Behold, Then Bid! The Edcom Systems E001 Hexagonal Cognition Crib

It's always the same: you think you're gonna have Crazy Stroller Week, and then suddenly an Absolutely Insane Crib crosses your path. Hold your horses and clear your loading dock, because an Edcom E001 Hexagonal Cognition Crib is for...
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Designers We Ripped-off, D'oh! We're Repentant!

Haha, in the middle of the reporting for Fast Company's long, devastating takedown of Design Within Reach, their screwed up CEO--the one who opened all the unprofitable stores and began proudly and systematically knocking off designers in pursuit of a...
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November 30, 2009

Changing The Changing Table: Kalon Studios Changing Trunk

First things first: I love Kalon Studios. They came up with beautifully made bamboo cribs with excellent detailing a couple of years ago, and they're still at it. And they've expanded. The IoLine Changing Trunk. Not a table, a...
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Whatever Floats Your CLC Cradle Boat

After hearing that several customers were scaling down the plans for the Eastport Pram to make little rowboat cradles, the fine boat kit builders at Chesapeake Light Craft decided to make an actual cradle kit available. Should take you...
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November 28, 2009

Sleepin' With The Grizzlies

Not only do bears drive our cars and come into our kitchens to make themselves a sandwich, now they are officially certified by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association as an infant sleeping device! Z Recs has the scoop:The Juvenile...
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November 23, 2009

Stork-Craft Recalls 2.1 Million Drop-Side Cribs Of Doom In US & Canada

DT's favorite crib guru Scott said it would be big, and now we know just how big the biggest crib recall in history really is: it's as big as the whole freakin' North America, that's how big. The CPSC and...
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November 21, 2009

Shrimp Shop Blog Bait: High Chair By Ramsey Conder

I think Ramsey is a brother type to South Willard shopkeep Ryan Conder. I also think this high chair is totally awesome. Shrimp Shop: South Willard X Reference Library, kicking off this very second at 8038 W. Third St.,...
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November 20, 2009

Whoa, The Awesome Leander Crib Is Available In The US!

I was just surfing through Inhabitots, thinking to myself, "Day-um, I sure don't cover the emergence of every single piece of shiny, new eco-blahblahblah baby gear like I used to," when I saw that the Leander Crib/ Toddler Bed/...
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November 17, 2009

Hey You! Go To Shrimp Shop This Saturday In Los Angeles

Andy from Stork Bites Man and Ryan from The South Willard are having a colabo joint for kids starting this weekend. It's called the Shrimp Shop. Here's just a taste of what to expect:Boro Pants Ceramic Mobiles Creative Playthings...
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Doris Duke's Leftover Thai

Doesn't this pile of Thai lounging pillows look like it belongs in a playroom? Except that you'd always be having to dig your keys, half-eaten apple slices, and Cheerios out of all those little nooks, they'd be awesome. The...
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November 9, 2009

Parenting Echo Park-Style

"People tell you you need all this stuff for a baby. All you really need is diapers, a place to change him and boobs." --mom/ceramicist Kelly Breslin, who shares a tricked out, 380-sf, converted bachelor pad in Echo Park with...
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And An Etsy Tumbled By, With A Private Boat Cradle For Max...

...or whoever's parents shell out $2,200-3,200 for the incredible cypress and mahogany masterpiece by Warren Jordan of Beaver Boatworks, which converts into a rocker or a wagon, which is good, because your kid will sail in and out of...
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November 7, 2009

T Is For The Tiniest Shoppers

Wow, who at the NY Times T Magazine offices is having a baby? Because almost the entire Winter Design & Living issue is devoted to kid- and family-related design. Some highlights: Fred Bernstein's got a piece about how it's alright...
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November 2, 2009

Moss Kids T-Shirts

"Small children must be held": It sounds so sweet and loving, the saying on this little t-shirt. It's only when you learn it's from the front door of the self-important SoHo design emporium Moss that you realize they left...
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October 29, 2009

Ouch. Kristian Vedel See-Saw

If you were wondering why it's so hard to find vintage Kristian Vedel's molded ply kids desk-chair-cradles in good condition, now you know: see-sawing Swiss urchins. Kristian Vedel children's chair wins Silver Medal at Triennale di Milano, Form 028,...
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October 28, 2009

Socialist Canadian Hospital Bassinet Impresses Some

DT reader and comrade to the North Cameron and his wife just welcomed their second kid--mazeltov/omedetou!--and all are doing well. Or as well as can be expected for people trapped in the socialized medical hell of Canada, where Cam...
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October 27, 2009

There's More'n One Way To Make A Plywood Crib

Steve is an excited dad-to-be who wanted to design a crib or changing table that fixed "the one tangible thing about motherhood you [ladies] wish could be changed?" The answer he got back seemed clear enough: "I hate lifting...
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October 26, 2009

I Am The Errol Morris Of Jenny Lind Cribs

We got a Jenny Lind crib. At the time, it was the only simple crib we could find that wasn't Ikea or David Netto. We got it from Schneider's when they were still in Alphabet City. He said that it...
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October 19, 2009

Yes, Please, Thanks: Lego Kitchen By Simon Pillard & Philippe Rosetti

Damn, but I love/hate the Internet. How a simple idea, beautifully executed, can race around the world in serendipitous hops and jumps, shedding facts and context along the way. I don't know who Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti or...
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October 14, 2009

Conran Nursery At Heathrow Is New To Me, Anyway

When we were flying to Japan with the kid, we'd sometimes stop into the nursery in the Kansai airport. It was the sole pinprick of enjoyment in that desolate, soulless disaster of an airport. [Seriously, Renzo, W. T. F.?] It's...
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October 13, 2009

From The Mixed Up Archives Of Mrs British D. Sign Council: Play Rocker Prototype By John Millns

No sooner is one vintage kids design mystery solved than another takes its place. The British Design Council has published its slide collection online, including this rather awesome-looking "child's rocking play fixture," which uses the same special, NASA-designed bend-into-shape...
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October 10, 2009

Ordering Off The Secret Menu: The Ikea Leopard High Chair

Double Double protein style, with well-done, animal style fries, please! The curator of the Pram Museum emailed the other day with news of a freaky high chair sighting at her local Ikea in Conshohocken, PA: curvy plastic base in...
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October 5, 2009

Fresco Fiamma Di Bloom: Un Seggiolone Rosso Molto Fantastico

I know that since the rather spectacular limited edition, red-enameled Fresco Fiamma high chair was introduced like three weeks ago at ABC Kids in Las Vegas, I'm a bit late to the Bloom game. To make up for it,...
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October 1, 2009

Dutch Plywood Awesomeness By Gerrit Van Bakel

Whether it was the name of his collection or it's just Dutch for "plywood furniture," Gerrit van Bakel's "meubel multiplex" phase lasted from 1966 until the around 1981. During that time, the artist cranked out nearly 80 different rounded-edge...
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September 28, 2009

Cradles Of Yesteryear From Auctions Of Yesterday

I love this great, old timey rolling cradle. I can put up with a lot of wicker to get close to those awesome wooden wheels. Meanwhile, I like the existence of this 100-year-old, wind-up rocking cradle more than the...
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September 25, 2009

OG Flintstones High Chair

You don't have to be Todd Oldham to appreciate the classic kitsch of Bedrock City; he's just the only one who photographed Bam Bam's or Pebble's painted concrete high chair for his new book. There are actually two Bedrock...
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September 22, 2009

The Second Awesomest Sam Maloof Cradle

Master woodworker Sam Maloof died in May at the age of 93. He made his first cradle in 1949 for his son Soliman. Back in 2004, when he was just 88, he told the Daily Star [Lebanon, the country]...
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K+J09: German Princess Furniture, 100% Child Labor-Free!

From what I can tell, Maja Prinzessin von Hohenzollern is the Sarah Ferguson of Germany, only [obviously] hotter, and luckier to be rid of her prince. Maja was the third wife of a Royal jackass named Ferfried Maximilian Pius...
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Mima + Alma Win K+J 2009 Innovation Awards

Well, the huge Kind + Jugend kid gear expo is finished in Cologne [stay tuned for a quick photo roundup]. A couple of the Innovation Award winners stood out--actually, Maxi Cosi's Innovation Award for its line of car seats...
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September 18, 2009

Prisunic Fiberglass Kid Furniture? Peut Etre!

There's apparently no marking on any of them, and I can't find any identical models in any catalogues, but the seller of these three pieces of vintage fiberglass kids furniture sourced from a local preschool says they are "surement...
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September 17, 2009

Those Dutch Again: Table With A Marble Run Routed Into It

That is pretty sweet. A couple of Eindhoven design students working under the name Ontwerpduo created this table where a marble run runs through the base and legs. It's part of a hotel for kids concept that also includes...
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September 16, 2009

Made From Cribs: Residue Chair By Huib Muilwijk

You know the saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Well, this is exactly like that. Except that instead of life, it's a business designing and making cribs on a CNC router. And instead of you, it's Dutch...
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September 15, 2009

Mid-Century Kids Rooms As Photographed By Maynard Parker

Maynard Parker was a prolific architecture and design photographer based in Los Angeles who shot for House Beautiful, Sunset Magazine, Architectural Digest, for decades. Though he died way back in 1976, his massive archive was donated to the Huntington Library...
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September 10, 2009

Buy The Set And Save! Not Really. Kids' Noguchi & Bertoia At Auction

They're not technically a set, but Lot 472 in this weekend's Rago Arts auction in New Jersey proves that Knoll has been pushing the kid-sized Bertoia chair/ Noguchi Cyclone side table combo on design-y families for years. I don't...
[read the full post...]

September 1, 2009

Pluunk: I. Am. Canadian Bunk Bed.

It's Zed, not Zee, Zed. A sofa IS a Davenport. And this is NOT an Argington Uffizi Bunk Bed, it's a Pluunk. Canada is the second fastest renderer of two-tone, modernist bunk beds in North America, and the first...
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August 30, 2009

Seriously, What IS Up With Crib Mattresses?

Now that you mention it, Mark, what's up with all those impossible-to-comparison-shop crib mattresses? I'm a newly expecting father and I'm usually pretty good at cutting through the myriad of choices and identifying preference when it comes to most babies...
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August 27, 2009

Bam!

And that, my friends, is how you sell a bassinet in a depression. Argington just announced their newest, greenest, and cheapest nursery furniture ever, and I think it might just rock. The Bam Collection is available in birch or solid...
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August 26, 2009

CPSC Does Windows: 5.4 Million Blinds & Shades Recalled For Strangulation Danger

Whoa, now that's a recall. Six of them, actually. The CPSC has issued a sweeping set of recalls of window blinds, Roman shades, and roller shades sold at a whole bunch of major retailers and manufacturers, including Target, Ikea, Pottery...
[read the full post...]

August 19, 2009

Larger-Than-Average Mickey Mouse Merchandise

1st Dibs: Come for the odd 1950's Mickey Mouse see-saw salvaged from a Miami Beach drive-in theater [$2,500 at Pierre Anthony Galleries in West Palm Beach, via anonymous works] Stay for the even more distended Mickey dresser, a head-scratching,...
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August 11, 2009

Huibert van Muilwijk Rolls Out New Q4 Crib

You know what, it's been too long since we had a good, old-fashioned crib rendering around here. So thanks to Huib for sending along these images of his next/new crib design, dubbed the Q4, which will debut at Dutch...
[read the full post...]

August 9, 2009

Moonstruck: Fornasetti Luna Cradle

I've never quite been able to pin down Piero Fornasetti. Sometimes the slightly modern, slightly surrealist, slightly neo-classical Milanese designer's graphically intensive work feels crisp and fresh and great. And sometimes it feels like hopeless kitsch. I'm going to...
[read the full post...]

Yes We Cane! Rattan Kids Furniture By Kay Bojesen [?!]

Is there anything that Kay Bojesen didn't make? In 1949, he created an export collection of rattan [spanskrør] kids and doll furniture for R. Wengler, basketmakers to HKH Frederic IX, King of Denmark. And the awesome pram above--sorry, doll-size...
[read the full post...]

August 5, 2009

Men Shop At Mars, Parents Shop At Venus

Well, it's taken me a few years, but I think I finally have it all figured out: parenting, the difference between moms and dads, between quality and crap, between magazines and blogs, how to fluff an advertiser. And it's...
[read the full post...]

Indian Bamboo For Kids By MP Ranjan

Prof. MP Ranjan sounds like the Eames and Enzo Mari of Indian design. Or at least Indian bamboo design. He's the head of the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, where...
[read the full post...]

July 24, 2009

Red Hookalypse Is Nigh! IKEA Banishes Breastfeeding Mom To Bathroom

Pull up a POÄNG chair, folks, and have a seat. It's gonna be nothing but breast milk and meatballs for the rest of the summer. Of all the furniture joints in all the towns in all the world, a security...
[read the full post...]

The AT-AT Imperial Loft Bed

If you have never found yourself cheering for a slideshow before, you haven't seen Bykmandan's making of his son's AT-AT Imperial Loft Bed. Duude. Star Wars Imperial Walker Loft Bed [youtube via dt readers rolf, sara, eric, david, geoff,...
[read the full post...]

July 20, 2009

They Giveaway So Fast: Magic Beans 5th Birthday Daily Drawings

It feels like just yesterday when a couple of new parents emailed to say they were opening a cool baby store near Boston. And whaddya know, they're five and giving away amazing stuff every single day to celebrate Magic...
[read the full post...]

July 18, 2009

Creative Stranglings: CP Indoor Gym House [Of Strangulation] On eBay

Wow, you don't see these on eBay very often. Nowadays, the company known as Creative Playthings makes nothing but slides and playground sets. But back when Creative Playthings was Creative Playthings, this was about it. The Indoor Gym House...
[read the full post...]

July 16, 2009

Changing Table Americaine, Années 60!

The off-kilter photo is giving me a headache, but otherwise, this vintage table a langer, or how you say, changing table, which DT reader Catherine [sweet blog here] just spotted on Belgian eBay, is pretty sweet. The seller thinks...
[read the full post...]

July 15, 2009

Birdspotting: Oeuf Robin $565 Crib Spotted In The Wild

Wait, Oeuf WHAT? DT reader Geoff sends along a head-scratching find: the Oeuf Robin, an all-FSC birch and pine, "made in Europe," "eco-friendly", full-size convertible crib that comes in at a rather remarkable $565. It's on the website for...
[read the full post...]

July 12, 2009

Ninetonine Kids Furniture Son Grande y Mas Blanco

Ninetonine is a Madrid-based kids furniture company launched by Alberto Marcos and Sacha Bancroft Cooke. Their designs were floating around last year, but it seems like they've actually gone into production and heavy press releaseification this past spring. All...
[read the full post...]

July 10, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Beach Edition

How about some alarming studies and news reports to fill your sunny parenting weekend with freakout and doom? Fat and lazy, true, but not dumb: child obesity researchers in East London found out some of their lazier test subjects were...
[read the full post...]

July 2, 2009

Why Not...Use A Tool Cart For A Changing Table?

Indeed. Congratulations to Cookie editor Meryl's friend Sara and her husband for this innovative use of an automotive tool cart for a smart, sleek and chic industrial-style changing table! The industrial changing table that launched Daddy Types, which I...
[read the full post...]

June 30, 2009

Finally, The DT Juddy Crib

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } I just posted some photos from a few months ago of the finished crib/toddler bed...
[read the full post...]

June 29, 2009

Reference Library, Max Lamb, Enzo Mari At The Selby

The homebrewed messy modernist snake has eaten its tail, and it looks awesome. Andy Beach's April retail colabo in Milan with Apartamento Magazine has now gotten the The Selby treatment. Which means you can see the full-color, reissued awesomeness...
[read the full post...]

June 25, 2009

Thonet Bologna! 1875 Bentwood Bassinet On eBay

Wow, there's something you don't see turn up on eBay every day. Or ever. A vintage modernist furniture dealer in Bologna, Italy has an original c 1875 Thonet bassinet for sale. He's done a full restoration on it, including...
[read the full post...]

June 24, 2009

Make Your Own Inaba-style Pool Noodle Rooftop Furniture

A bunch of art world non-profits [as if there were any other kind of organization in the art world at the moment] are holding a big love-in of some kind this week at X Initiative, the old Dia building...
[read the full post...]

June 22, 2009

Ride'em Panton! Flying Chair By Verner Panton

Verner Panton showed the Flying Chair at the 1964 Cologne Furniture Fair as part of a total Panton environment. It caused a sensation, but it was never put into production, and only a couple of installation photos survived. In...
[read the full post...]

June 18, 2009

Kid-Size Womb Chair, HAHA! knoll kids shrinks its greatest hits

Oh, wait, we already knew about the kid-size Saarinen Womb chair. And the baby-size Womb chair. AND the mini-Mies Barcelona chair, which were part of Knoll's 2007 attempt to keep up with the Genius Joneses. I guess that went...
[read the full post...]

June 15, 2009

Das Kreativische Spielthingen? 1960 Kibri 'Building Furniture'

If it's known at all outside Germany, it seems that Kibri is primarily a toy company specializing in dolls, models, and particularly model trains. So maybe this set of c. 1960 Kibri, Kindler & Briel modular play furniture that's...
[read the full post...]

June 13, 2009

Found: That DIY Plywood Bed Set-Up From The 70's

You remember that kind of awesome, Supergraphic-equipped plywood bed the American Plywood Association was propagating in 1975? The one with the optional boxes for TOYS, SHOES, and THINGS? Well, it truly was the Age of Free Plywood Love, because...
[read the full post...]

MacNetto! Maclaren Bought Netto Collection

I think that's called a scoop. I'm hearing from multiple parties that the deal for Maclaren to acquire Netto Collection was finalized Friday, and it will be announced publicly on Monday. After dabbling a bit with portable cribs, and high...
[read the full post...]

June 12, 2009

N Is For Nido? Gigantic Nest Sofa By Gianni Ruffi

You may know the Italian furniture company Poltronova as the one-time manufacturer of sofas shaped like giant baseball mitts. So you may not be as surprised as I was to find out that they produced Gianni Ruffi's La Cova,...
[read the full post...]

June 11, 2009

Mass Modern Auction @ W20: Thinking Of The Children

Part of me wants to shout out about all the interesting-looking kid stuff in Wright20's upcoming Mass Modern auction June 27, and part of me wants to shut my piehole, because there are lots of lots being sold no reserve,...
[read the full post...]

June 10, 2009

Hey Wha?? Vladimir Kagan Bassinet At Wright20

Holy smokes. I've been chasing a sweet, modernist plexiglass bassinet since literally the day the kid was born. How is it possible I haven't heard of this insane Lucite and oak model Vladimir Kagan designed in 1970 before it...
[read the full post...]

June 3, 2009

Slide Chair, By Evan Dublin

The kid most always has fun, but I inevitably find myself trying to fix playgrounds in my head. Not that I can even pinpoint what's wrong with them, of course, but Evan Dublin's awesome Slide Chair, made from 100%...
[read the full post...]

Late Model Rietveld High Chair At Sotheby's

After he finished the Schroder House in Utrecht in 1925, Gerrit Rietveld turned over his furniture business to his assistant Gerard van de Groenekan, who produced the designs until 1971, seven years after Rietveld's own death. Sotheby's Amsterdam is selling...
[read the full post...]

June 1, 2009

MacNetto?

How many people on how many sides of a rumor do you have to know personally before it becomes awkward to post about it? If what I'm hearing about Maclaren buying Netto Collection is true, then I guess I'm about...
[read the full post...]

J. Crew Plays Hide The Awesome Kids Chair

I see some drop ceiling tiles, super-smooth floor treatments, and non-original moldings, so I'm going to assume that Mister Mort's sneak peek of J. Crew's fall/winter 09 menswear collection went down in a showroom somewhere, not a store. Which...
[read the full post...]

May 31, 2009

Lord Have Murphy! ECS, Eames Contract Storage

"ECS we hope will help architects, designers and school administrators whose planning and maintenance requirements are extraordinary and multitudinous." In an attempt to expand their reach into the dorm and contract furniture market, Herman Miller launched the ECS, the Eames...
[read the full post...]

May 27, 2009

American Plywood Association Kids' Bed, c. 1975

Dave recently posted some scans on Grain Edit of awesome, vintage vacation house plans from the Douglas Fir Plywood Association . The DFPA changed its name to the American Plywood Association in 1964 when it brought in the new...
[read the full post...]

May 26, 2009

Actually, Someone Did Put Baby In The Corner

Miss Ann M. Coleman graciously donated this painted wood & iron baby tender, complete with seat, to the Nantucket Historical Association in 1895, baby tender being the olde fashioned term for "crate fo fmall it renders a child immobile...
[read the full post...]

May 24, 2009

Avril 68! To The Prisunic Furniture Catalogue, Citoyens!

Spectaculaire. Except for the launch date, which turned out to be a couple of weeks before France imploded in a massive wildcat strike and student revolt, the affordable furniture collection launched by the French department store Prisunic looks damn...
[read the full post...]

May 22, 2009

From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs Lif E. Magazine: Woodward Cradle By Fritz Goro

When the history of dramatically lit photographs of quirky 19th-century American inventions is finally written, February 9, 1945 will have its own chapter. That's the day LIFE magazine's legendary science photographer Fritz Goro unpacked his Klieg light at an...
[read the full post...]

May 19, 2009

A-S-S + Hole: Vito Acconci's Name Calling Chair

Name Calling Chair is a kind of alphabet of building. Name Calling Chair equates basic building with basic language with basic insults. What you see is what you get; what you read is what gets you. When he created his...
[read the full post...]

Wharton Esherick's Captain's Bed Was Sweeter Before

I know it was a little rough--OK, a lot rough--but seriously, this twin-sized captain's bed with built-in drawers that Wharton Esherick made for Julian Bloch in 1925 was much cooler before it was stripped clean and refinished. On the...
[read the full post...]

MasonGray: ducduc, Ethan. Ethan, ducduc

We were out of town, so I missed it, but I haven't seen much interesting kid-related news at all coming out of the ICFF expo in New York last weekend. And one of the bigger launches has barely registered...
[read the full post...]

25 Pedra De Sal: Portuguese Changing Table X Bicycle Mashup

Except for the linkless mention on Designboom, I can't find any information at all about Jacinta and Casimiro Costa, the parent/designer duo who apparently made this crazy contraption. Dubbed 25 pedra de sal [25 rock crystals], it's a mobile...
[read the full post...]

May 8, 2009

Insane Argington Bamboofest At BKLYN DESIGNS This Weekend

Alright, this is like five kinds of freakin' bamboo awesome all in one. Argington is one of the half dozen kid-related design outfits participating in the BKLYN DESIGNS festival this weekend in DUMBO. [The others are Boo-Coup, Casa Kids, Hugh...
[read the full post...]

What's Wrong With This Piet Hein Eek Picture?

If you ignore my sloppychoppy highlighting, nothing. But HOLY CRAP, DWELL MAGAZINE! If you're gonna have a fine interview with Piet Hein Eek, and then you add a 27 [!] slide slideshow, DON'T have the caption on the 27th...
[read the full post...]

May 7, 2009

Simplicity/SFCA Out Of Business, Into Trouble

First things first: IF YOU HAVE ANY SIMPLICITY CRIBS, CO-SLEEPERS, OR PLAYARDS, CHECK THE CPSC RECALL NOTICES. THEN STOP USING THEM NO MATTER WHAT. THEN DESTROY THEM. DON'T PUT THEM ON CRAIGSLIST OR WHATEVER. AND REPORT ANY SAFETY INCIDENTS...
[read the full post...]

May 6, 2009

Papi Culla: So What Else You Got, Riva?

As far as I can tell, Riva 1920, the maker of the Pininfarina Giulia, does not offer any cribs or cradles carved from solid blocks of cedar. Maybe in a couple of hundred years, when the hardwood trees in...
[read the full post...]

Pininfarina Giulia Rocking Horse Object For Riva 1920

The names Pininfarina and Giulia go together like, well, like Alfa and Romeo. So I was a little concerned that would Pininfarina blithely attach the name of one of its founder's last and greatest creations to anything, much less...
[read the full post...]

May 5, 2009

Molto Colani! The Limited Edition Luigi Colani Action [sic] Figure

Decked out as they are in remarkably detailed recreations of the butter yellow trenchcoats the Professor created for Swissair in 1990 and possessed of the maestro's intense, visionary gaze into the biomorphic future, the 1/6 scale collectible figures of...
[read the full post...]

May 1, 2009

Justice Dept. Turns Illegal Hardwood Crib Smuggler Every Which Way But Loose

So I had a call into the press office at the Department of Justice today--more on that later, definitely stay tuned--and their crib guy called me back. Only it wasn't the crib guy I was looking for; it was...
[read the full post...]

Cheap Crib Recalls R Us: Dorel x BRU Cribocalypse Tally Climbs To 472,450

The CPSC added another 96,000 Jardine cribs to its existing recall yesterday, bringing the total to at least 472,450. Jardine is a brand name used exclusively at Babies R Us and Toys R Us to sell low-end cribs [mostly...
[read the full post...]

April 23, 2009

Paper AND Plastic: Somewhat Compostable Children's Chair By Claesson Koivisto Rune

See, Magis? You can make plastic-looking furniture for kids without using ecologically damaging petrochemicals. At Milan 2009, the Swedish architecture and design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune is debuting a compostable [!?] plastic children's chair called Parupu, which is Japanese...
[read the full post...]

April 22, 2009

The Sofa Is A Series Of Tubes: Martino Gamper Per Il Bambini

Besides the obvious coolness of saying I have a piece in the Andy Beach-curated Everyday Living Objects Shop in Milan--I mean, Milano--is saying I'm in a show with Martino Gamper. Yeah yeah, Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari! Martino Gamper! I...
[read the full post...]

April 21, 2009

Tribeca Is Everyone's Suburb!

"Our Suburb" is an 11,000 sf townhouse conversion in Tribeca. The nickname was given by Curbed.com, which got it from an excited comment by one of the owners at a Landmarks Commission hearing. The owners, who used to have a...
[read the full post...]

April 17, 2009

Amber In The Sky With Felt-Covered Plywood

I'd lost track of Thomas Maitz's Amber In The Sky loft bed since first seeing the renderings in late 2007, but as Swiss Miss reports, the awesome bed is now in production and on sale, at least in Germany....
[read the full post...]

April 16, 2009

Oh, BTW, The Juddy Crib Is Done

I guess now that K2's been sleeping in it for a couple of months, it's safe and stable enough to mention that the juddy crib is done. Stay tuned for some more glamour shots and lessons learned. Besides the...
[read the full post...]

April 7, 2009

Atelier XT: Portuguese Indie Furniture

I've had this in my browser for weeks now, and I realized what was holding me back: I wanted to post just about everything in Atelier XT's 6,000+ flickr stream. Graca Paz and her husband Francisco are artists living...
[read the full post...]

April 1, 2009

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

The only thing I don't understand about this insanely awesome tauntaun sleeping bag--with guts printed on the inside, and a freakin' light saber zipper pull!--is why it took nineteen 29 [simple math!] years for them to make it. Seriously,...
[read the full post...]

March 31, 2009

There's A Sale At Jenny's!

It's true, I am constitutionally incapable of passing up a chance to make an Airplane! reference. It's also true that Jenn from Minor Details is doing some major Spring Cleaning, which means clearing out her private hoard of vintage children's...
[read the full post...]

Stokke, Chicco, Chicco, Stokke?

One of the many things I learned from Pamela Paul's book, Parenting, Inc.: Chicco's pronounced KEE-koh. Because it's Italian, obviously. Also, they're huge. The parent company Artsana has like EUR 1.6 billion in sales for three business lines, only one...
[read the full post...]

March 25, 2009

Richard Dattner's Habitot, The Ur-PlayCubes

Wow, awesome. While poking around a bit more on urban planner/architect/playground designer Richard Dattner's PlayCubes concept--which, according to the 2000 monograph of Dattner's work, seems to be doing just fine, thanks--I found this: Habitots. And this is what we...
[read the full post...]

March 24, 2009

Say What? Worapong Manupipatpong In Stockholm, Piet Hein Eek In America

Students from the Konstfack exhibited a "Garden Furniture" themed show at this year's Stockholm Furniture Fair. Which gives a bit of context for Worapong Manupipatpong's garden bench with roof and play loft, which he dubbed the White Tower. I...
[read the full post...]

March 19, 2009

Since Cheaper Ones Are Already Unsafe, Your Dropside Crib Will Probably Become Illegal

A tipster phoned this in yesterday, and I when I went to look up the Consumers' Union expert's phone number to get confirmation--hello!--it was already on their safety blog. The Baby Industrial Complex panel that works with the CPSC to...
[read the full post...]

March 17, 2009

Pinocchio Rug: Come Schnuggle On My Felty Balls

Two things we know for sure about the Pinocchio felted ball rug made for the Danish furniture shop Hay: the Nepalese felted wool ball industry is enjoying full employment, and that hair magnet is going to be a pain...
[read the full post...]

March 16, 2009

Heavy, Man: Tank Chair Two-Man [sic] Prefab Ply Rocker By Doug Michels & Bob Feild

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Tank Chair, 1968, Doug Michels & Bob Feild, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I found a...
[read the full post...]

March 9, 2009

Live Long And Rocker

To the Star Trek purists who will scoff at my Vulcan reference in the title and claim that clearly Jack Rogers Hopkins' carved and laminated wood rocking chair shares obvious design vocabulary with Imperial Klingon culture, most notably the...
[read the full post...]

March 4, 2009

Jesper K. Thomsen's Play Furniture Will Help You Keep Up Your Poor, Homemade Front

Flaunting one's wealth was always kind of tacky, but in this straitened times, it has become unseemly even to invest in quality. When one's investment banker neighbor has been laid off, it's impolite, not to mention inconsiderate, to be...
[read the full post...]

February 24, 2009

Has Huibert van Muilwijk Got A Shelving Idea For You

If you're like me, you're wondering what Dutch wunderkind designer Huibert van Muilwijk has working on since launching the M/V Crib in 2007. Well now we know: sweet wood modular shelving. HvM sent along photos of a prototype of...
[read the full post...]

Recession Is Over! (If You Want It) Netto Collection's Having A 40% Off Sale

After seeing retail performance the last quarter or two, my guess is that supplies are lasting longer and quantities are not as limited as many manufacturers would like. Thus, the "Fight the Recession! sale at Netto Collection The designer's...
[read the full post...]

February 23, 2009

Piet Hein Eek Tree Trunk Kids Furniture

"It's important for children to realize that wood comes from trees," said the Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to the New York Times in 2007. And the Piet Hein Eekiest way to do that? Kids furniture made from tree...
[read the full post...]

February 21, 2009

Well Done, Except For The Obvious: The Staypuff Crib-on-Wheels

Check out this spectacular crib, headsmacking for both its "why didn't I think of that?" practical ingenuity, and "what were they thinking?" name. The Staypuff Crib is a managed forest pine crib built on top of a utility wagon....
[read the full post...]

February 20, 2009

The Right Start, The Sudden Finish

Sounds like the Right Start is not going to make it to the finish line. DT reader Jay files this report from California:Just wanted to give you a heads up that Right Start retail stores are selling off their entire...
[read the full post...]

February 18, 2009

Can You Think Of Two Worse Things To Buy If You Have A Kid?

Seriously, worse than a ceramic remote control, and an indoor fire table? I dare you. [via dt reader eric]...
[read the full post...]

Mammut: The Ikea Plastic Crib For Closers

It's not on the website, and there's no NEW! tag, but I spotted this gigantic plastic crib, from Ikea's gigantic, plastic Mammut collection, yesterday. $219. I want to like the Mammut stuff. We have a few of the stools...
[read the full post...]

February 17, 2009

Fold The Rod And Spoling The Child

We made a ginger wafer run to Ikea this afternoon, and while the kid was playing in the ball pit, K2 and I went to check out... the newest additions to the children's furniture collection, which turns out to...
[read the full post...]

February 16, 2009

Elephant Chair with Lamp, 1928, by Alexander Calder

Though it's not clear to me whether he made it in Peekskill or Paris, the date [1928], size [about 8-in. high], and materials [scraps of steel, burlap, and paper] place Elephant Chair with Lamp squarely in Alexander Calder's early...
[read the full post...]

February 11, 2009

DTQ: Forget The Must-Haves. What Are The Won't-Misses?

Some friends are expecting their first kid in a couple of months, and when we had them over for dinner, the wives took the nursery tour while the men adjourned to the library to talk about important stuff, like US...
[read the full post...]

February 8, 2009

Flame By Tom Dixon, Heavy Machine For Sitting Baby

This is how Kenny Schacter described Tom Dixon's Flame Cut Series of steel furniture when he showed it at Design Basel Miami last December:An installation of unfeasibly heavyweight furniture where Dixon challenges our ideas of acceptable materials, processes and...
[read the full post...]

February 6, 2009

Modern Tots Gone Tots Up?

Ouch, it had to happen sometime, and it sucks when it does. But it appears that ModernTots has closed down. Back in 2005 when there were just a handful of modern kids' design shops, ModernTots opened online selling the new...
[read the full post...]

February 3, 2009

Suima: The Japanese Robocrib Of The Future/Past

The Suima robot crib by Maruki Development, a subsidiary of Tanigawa Kensetsu, a homebuilder in Nagasaki, is scientifically designed to detect a crying baby and rock him back to sleep. It is the product of four years of research...
[read the full post...]

January 30, 2009

UPDATE: Dwell Studio For Target Cribs NOT Part Of Stork Craft's Massive Recall After All

A reassuring piece of news to the folks who bought Dwell Studio cribs at Target: despite what Target may have told you, the Dwell cribs are not included in the massive recall of Stork Craft cribs. Here's an email I...
[read the full post...]

Plybrary Goodness: Borup & Becker's Puzzle Table & Chairs

Birgitte Borup and Carsten Nikolaj Becker designed the Puzzle table and chair set in 1997 for the Danish library outfitter BCI. The simple, curved birch ply design allows for multiple tables to be pushed together, and the stools nest...
[read the full post...]

January 29, 2009

Aqua Netto: Royal Blue Lacquer Nursery Furniture At Barney's

Remember when, after so many years of white MacBooks, Apple introduced the black model? And how it cost as much as a more powerful, but typical aluminum MacBook Pro? And how, for a while, certain Apple fanbois scoffed at...
[read the full post...]

January 28, 2009

Swing Low, Sweet Bassinet

In case you're like me, and you assumed that the Leander was the coolest bassinet ever to come out of Denmark, we can look together at Søren Ulrik Petersen's Swing Low Cradle and resolve to become more well-versed in...
[read the full post...]

January 26, 2009

Wow, Hella Jongerius' Porcupine Desk Is In Production, A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Hella Jongerius's Porcupine Desk which Vitra debuted at Milan in 2007 actually went into production. With a pricetag of EUR486, it's probably the most expensive marker holder your kid will have until he becomes the chairman of Merrill Lynch....
[read the full post...]

Eiermann Table For Kids

In 1953, architect Egon Eiermann designed some tables for his office out of angled, cross-braced, tubular steel and whatever the German equivalent of Formica was. A knock-down version followed in 1965. For about ten years Richard Lampert has been...
[read the full post...]

January 22, 2009

Hmm, Does The Stork Craft Crib Mega-Recall Include The Dwell For Target Cribs?

1/30 UPDATE: The short answer is NO. Totally different design and parts. Target's notification to Dwell buyers was a mistake. Details below Last week, the CPSC issued the first giant crib recall of the year [um, yeah?] covering over...
[read the full post...]

January 21, 2009

Netto Collection & Cub Kids Sample Sale, 1/22 - 24

I guess it's sale season all over the place. Netto Collection and Cub Kids are having a sample sale this week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with 10% off everything, 20% off sleepers and changers, and 60 whopping percent off...
[read the full post...]

Morgen Kinderbeds @ IMM Cologne

IMM, Die internationale Möbelmesse, is on this week in Cologne, and the Frankfurt furniture studio Morgen took the occasion to launch a kids line designed by the company's co-founder Sabine Mühlbauer. International economic downturn or no, I have a...
[read the full post...]

January 16, 2009

So I Finished The Juddy Crib

Long-time readers of Daddy Types might remember my grand plan to make a sweet, minimalist toddler bed for the kid out of thick slabs of plywood. The design was an adaptation of a Donald Judd daybed [which is visible...
[read the full post...]

January 15, 2009

Leander Cradle, Denmark's Most Popular Hanging Cradle, Now Rocking On US eBay

What's that, you say you'd love to let your kid rock to sleep in Denmark's favorite cradle, the egg-shaped, minimalist masterpiece that is the Leander Bassinet, but you don't want to hassle of schlepping or shipping the thing all...
[read the full post...]

Dude Made A Coffee Table From A Stroller!

And by dude, I mean Dutch artist Tina Pireira Filipe. And by stroller, I mean the chassis of a big old pram. And by coffee table, I mean glass-topped coffee table of death for any kid that gets near...
[read the full post...]

January 13, 2009

OTO Transportation Rugs By The Nought Collective

It's like I was telling you, nursery trendwatchers, grey is the new orange. And graphite-colored hand-knotted Nepalese wool rugs with awesome line drawings of various modes of transportation like diggers and choppers and school buses are the new graphite-colored,...
[read the full post...]

January 12, 2009

Mama Mia! That Is An Awesome Throwback Nursery

Just when you think you've seen all the awesome, old school nurseries the LIFE Magazine photo archive has to offer, Andy finds another one. How did he do it? I have no idea. There's no caption, no date, no...
[read the full post...]

January 9, 2009

DIY Pre-School & Playground, Topaz Internment Camp, Delta, Utah

The Central Utah Relocation Center near Delta was later renamed Topaz Camp, after Topaz Mountain, which loomed over it to the west. When it opened on Sept. 11, 1942, several rows of tarpaper barracks had been finished and outfitted...
[read the full post...]

January 7, 2009

Once You Have Black, You Best Take It Back: Muniré Black Cribs Recalled For Lead Paint

From the Muniré nursery furniture company website: You can have peace of mind that all Muniré products are coated with finishes that are in compliance with Federal Regulation 16CFR1303 for lead content and have been certified as such by Intertek,...
[read the full post...]

January 2, 2009

The Greatest Generation's Nurseries, Cont'd

I suppose I could write about how, now that K2 realizes we pick the food up from the floor and put it back on her tray, she's started refusing to eat in her chair, and would rather get down and...
[read the full post...]

January 1, 2009

Playing For Kepes

So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
[read the full post...]

December 31, 2008

Vedelesque: Creative Playthings Molded Ply Chair On eBay

Look what turned up in a basement in Hamilton Square, New Jersey. It's a sweet kid's chair from just up the road apiece in Princeton, the old stomping grounds of Creative Playthings. Though the design is from CP's Golden...
[read the full post...]

December 17, 2008

Straigh From BF Denmark: OG Peter Table & Chair By Hans Wegner

Hans Wegner made Peter's Chair and Table as a present for Borge Mogenson's new kid in 1944. Mogenson loved it, and he helped put it into production at FDB, the furnituremaker where he was lead designer. . This example...
[read the full post...]

December 15, 2008

New Crib Safety Standards [Finally] In The Works?

Am I missing something here, or is everyone? Or is this just the way discovering a couple million defective cribs in the market turns up the fire on a pre-existing but slow-simmering process? The CPSC Watchdog at the Chicago Tribune...
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December 11, 2008

Back When I Was A Boy, We Built Our Own Damn Cribs!

As you may know, Google has begun scanning magazine archives, something which was apparently completely impossible until this year. Among the first batch are the venerable DIY bibles, Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. If it doesn't give you an...
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December 8, 2008

In Soviet Union, The Catalog Orders You

Back up a minute, comrade. Can somebody explain how it is that we--the Americans--supposedly won the Cold War, and yet I'm the one who has to wrestl with a pile of catalogs as big as a bear cub and...
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December 5, 2008

Ooh La La, Check Out This Chaise d'Ecole de Charivari

I think you have to add Rouen to your French vintage children's furniture pilgrimage next summer. The kid's design store l'Atelier Charivari has a seemingly endless supply of awesome, 50's-era school chairs, desks, and tables, but so far, I've...
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DT Nursery Trendwatch: Grey Is The New Orange!

Or is it the new lime green? Either way, the French and/or Euros are loving the grey baby furniture. First [on my radar, anyway] was Oeuf's lower-priced Sparrow collection, which came in other colors, but which debuted in Spring 2007...
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December 4, 2008

Dutch Museums Pony Up For Rarest Rietveld High Chair Of Them All

Via the European chair blogger at chairblog.eu comes this, the latest development in Daddy Types' all-consuming mission to know the whereabouts of all of Gerrit Rietveld's many, many high chairs. It's a press release published at design.nl: The Centraal...
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Takashi Murakami's Giant, Furry Balls

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Artist Takashi Murakami with NYC designer Sebastian Errazuriz, originally uploaded by maayanpearl. We're not at...
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November 28, 2008

Thanks To Jamie Hayon, The Chicken Shape Is No Longer Unexplored

From Lladro hacker Jamie Hayon's website: The chicken, a rather unexplored shape, found its place amongst my green dreams. I wanted to portray this common bird as a sensational object by amplifying its characteristics and dimensions, turning it into...
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November 27, 2008

Eames Walker

Thanks to everyone for your advice, experience, questions, tips, comments, support, suggestions, complaints, and generosity. I hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving....
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November 25, 2008

Fantastique! Papa Built His Kids A Birds Nest In 70's France

Readers of the previous Ikea post may have the mistaken impression that I disapprove of the "shipping palette aesthetic." Pas de tout. I mean, just check out this insane kids room built by a dad somewhere in France sometime in...
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Ikea Store Ikeahack? Play Kitchen Made From Something Else

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Ikea play kitchen in the Elizabeth City, NJ store, originally uploaded by daddytypes. When I...
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November 21, 2008

Before MTV, There Was Life Cribs

Here's a short thematic post from the archives of Life featuring some of the cribs of our parents' generation which serves as a roundabout tribute to the CPSC: I'm guessing that after Leonard Mccombe's 1957 photo of "Babysitter Judy...
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November 20, 2008

Morigeauing, Geauing, Gone. Canadian Baby Industrial Complex Just Got Smaller

Morigeau Lepine is--whoops, make that was. Morigeau Lepine was an old-line baby furniture manufacturer in Quebec, which had been in business for over sixty years. The family-owned company suddenly closed its factory doors last Friday and laid off its...
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November 14, 2008

Sweet Slot-Together Rocker/Chair From Master Woodcraft [?]

If it becomes as useless as "Eames Era," I'm sure I'll come to hate it, but for now, I count it as progress that an eBay seller tries to rope in business by calling something "Creative Playthings Era." It...
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November 11, 2008

Hey, Little Buddy! Mingei Bamboo Stool/High Chair

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a shopping trip Involving Euro Modernists and architects--so hip. The greatest: Charlotte Perriand, Designed Corb's furniture. Bruno Taut also sailed that way For an East Asian tour,...
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November 9, 2008

DTQ&A: Gary Panter On His Classic Paramount Hotel Playroom

Gary Panter was creative director of one of the most groundbreaking children's TV shows in a generation PeeWee's Playhouse. On the heels of that success, he also designed a children's playroom for Ian Schrager & Philippe Starck's Paramount Hotel...
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November 7, 2008

Lou Lou La La! Tiny Little Philippe Starck Chairs--And Other Designblok Sightings

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Designblok Prague 2008, originally uploaded by WallisPhotos. Rolf with 2 fake labs, originally uploaded by...
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November 6, 2008

Thonet 511 Rocker At Christie's

Thonet was the pioneer of bentwood furniture at the end of the 19th century. This rocking chair is a variant on the Model No. 511, which is made from molded beech. The flat edges make it feel a little...
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November 3, 2008

Lost New York: Gary Panter's Paramount Hotel Playroom

Uh, Campana Brothers, can I see you outside for a minute? When Ian Schrager reopened the dumpy Paramount Hotel in Times Square in 1990, it had been redesigned by Philippe Starck. The rooms were still tiny, but the lobby...
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November 2, 2008

Whoops, Missed The [OG Milk Crate] Potty

There's milk crates, and then there's Milk Crates. The brands branded [is that where that term comes from?] on the sides of some of the crates used to make this old potty chair date to the turn of the...
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Greg Lynn, For One, Welcomes Our Plastic Toy-Recycling Robot Overlords

Ho. Lee. Smokes. Mister Jalopy posted the making of video for Greg Lynn's giant plastic riding toy recycling project. I previously criticized Lynn's project, but I clearly had incomplete information. Lynn is not only off the hook, he is off...
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October 30, 2008

Gregslist: Blobby Architect Wants To Recycle Your Toys Into Furniture

Remember last month how I mocked the Venice Biennale-winning installation, Recycled Toy Furniture by blob-loving architect Greg Lynn for being neither recycled, nor toy, nor furniture? I mean, seriously, you expect me to believe there are giant, plastic ride-on eggplants??...
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October 24, 2008

Mary Heilmann's Clubchairs, Kid-Size, At The New Museum

I first came to know Mary Heilmann's pop-infused minimalist paintings after collecting the work of Ruth Root, a friend who took inspiration from them for her own colorful abstractions. The retrospective of Heilmann's work which just opened at the...
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October 22, 2008

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Kristian Vedel

Sure, Kristian Vedel's molded plywood chair/desk is an elegant classic. But could your kid stand on it? Or ride it around the house? Gablenz is a German woodworking firm that makes traditional furniture, toys, those little whirligig things with...
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October 19, 2008

Crewel Kids: Vladimir Kagan X Erica Wilson Mashup Rocking Chair

So swoopy furniture designer Vladimir Kagan and pre-eminent needlework artist Erica Wilson are married? Who knew? Besides, that is, the folks who bought this Kagan Contour Rocking Chair covered in Wilson's crewel forest scene back in the day? Rago,...
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October 18, 2008

Tarantino X Frank Lloyd Wright Mashup, Of Sorts

It's a small New Jerseymodern design world after all. Did you know that architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, whose EVA Foam kids furniture [above] is produced by Offi, are experts in renovating and modernizing Frank Lloyd Wright's postwar buildings?...
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October 13, 2008

But Does The Netto Crib Convey?

Ahh, remember the real estate travails of young families in Manhattan? Curbed has the lowdown on a 2-3BR, 3,200 sf loft that's been customed out in true bubbly style--and which has been pricechopped from $3.5 million to $2.5 million...
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October 11, 2008

Rubber BetterBaby Cages

It kills me to think of the vast trove of historical information that's been dumped by eBay over the last decade. If nothing else, I'd think it'd be valuable to have the price history of certain types and categories...
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October 10, 2008

KidsLab Successful Belgian Experiments For Wall And Floor

I was not really aware that kids had lifestyles, but that's just one of the little differences revealed by the happy existence of KidsLab, a Belgian lifestyle brand for children and their imaginations. KidsLab encourages children to be themselves...
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October 8, 2008

Remember That One Kid With The Prouvé Bed?

The one in Paris, whose mom is an antique dealer? And he had that dog lamp on the pull-out night table attachment? Yeah, well, there may be another one. One of those 1953 Antony daybeds by Jean Prouvé &...
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E15 Children's Tafel For The Glorious People's Revolution

When the revolution comes--and at this rate, we'll all be citoyening each other by Thanksgiving--I hope the mob will go easy on Belgian designer Hans de Pelsmacker. Sure, the child-sized version of the HP01 table/bench he designed in 2000...
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October 7, 2008

xO Skool Desk, Or I Know What Philippe Starck's Intern Did Last Summer

Last spring, Philippe Starck said design was dead, the materialist culture he wallowed in was superficial, and he was quitting in two years. By which time he will have put SKU numbers on all the random renderings his interns have...
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October 6, 2008

Plexi Hospital Bassinet's A Plexi Hospital Bassinet, Except We Call It The Plexi Hospital Bassinet

When you don't know the answer to something, it's always a buzzkill when your own site comes up in the Google results. It happened to me last night when I was trying to find the manufacturer of those awesome...
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You Take A Seat, I'll Take That Sweet Berceau De Maternité

No, the other one. Let's face facts: France is a nation in love with crazy bassinets, so it's no wonder that French "families who demand design" would choose a shagadelic, egg-shaped bassinet that matches their Seat Altea XL over...
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October 5, 2008

Bet Your Kid Don't Have A Hitler Chair This Fancy

Yeah, his Hitler chair is probably from Wal-Mart, made outta plastic. It ain't handcarved and handpainted by Dow Pugh. Why, he's the finest children's Hitler chairmaker in all a Cumberland County. Lot 656: Dow Pugh, Hitler Child's Chair, est....
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October 1, 2008

Classic Cosco Chair In Rare, Sweet Rocker Format

These molded plastic Cosco chairs from the early 1970's are kid design classics, [don't they look nice in Swiss-Miss's living room?] though I always look at them funny when I remember they were originally intended to be used as...
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Childsform: So Far, We Know There's A Spool Stool By Michael Marriott

Looks like it's one-off, mushroom-shaped stool day around here this morning. DT readers from a few months back might remember Childsply, the 1999 children's design challenge sponsored by the London design/vintage dealer twentytwentyone. The concept was to see what children's...
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Tony, Nanna. Nanna, Tony: Marble-top Trissen Stool On eBay

Now this next item, it's a really immaculate piece. Exquisite workmanship, pure class. A gentleman--really, he's an artist--right here in Staten Island--really, he's like a father to me, a true inspiration, what he does--he took a plain little wooden...
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September 30, 2008

They Reissued Kristian Vedel's Kid's Chair! Wait, Who's They?

Sure enough, there it is, staring right up at me from the front page of Modern Child [a shop which has advertised on Daddy Types before, btw]. Kristian Vedel's 1952 plywood chair/table/desk/stool has always been a tough buy; the...
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September 29, 2008

Cubi-Q: German Play Furniture Is Awesome, Cubic

Looking at the traditional-to-slightly-boring children's furniture designs on the German wood furniture firm Zwergraum, I would never have imagined they'd come up with something as awesome as the Cubi-Q. With four boxes, two table-like pieces, cutouts, and optional wheels,...
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September 27, 2008

Yet Another Rietveld Kids Chair [And Table!]

Just got my copy of the 2001 edition of Peter Drijver and Johannes Niemeijer's How to construct Rietveld Furniture; it's pretty sweet. There are designs and plans for 38 pieces, including four kid-specific designs: two high chairs and two toys,...
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September 23, 2008

Il Ritorno!! Corraini Reissues Enzo Mari's Play Wall

In 1967 Danese debuted Enzo Mari's Il Posto dei Giochi, The Place of Games, otherwise known as "Wall." Kids could use the ten-panel corrugated cardboard play structure printed and perforated with Mari's designs to create various kid-sized spaces. The...
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September 22, 2008

Starting to Build the Crib

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Starting to Build the Crib, originally uploaded by BenSpark. Prolific photographer Ben Spark would not...
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September 19, 2008

And So Comfortable! Dad Builds Awesome, Kid-Sized Rietveld Chair

First, let me apologize to all the people who love nothing more than curling up in their Rietveld chairs; they apparently only look unsittable. As little Hugo above demonstrates, they are the height of seated comfort. After mulling it...
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September 18, 2008

Good Morning, West Hollywood Craigslist! Nurseryworks Nursery Workin' It At 80% Off

Wow, a $3,000 Nurseryworks bedroom set, with a twin bed, nightstand [note: image not to scale] and a 6-drawer dresser are on Craiglist LA for just $600? I know there are like twenty hundred different wood finish and panel...
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Fleurville Calla: Still Coming Soon, Now With Pricing!

Wait, the Fleurville Calla by Yves Behar still exists? The Audi S8 Avant, the Bugaboo two-seater, the eight weeks paid paternity leave of high chairs is not a myth? Or even a one-off prototype that popped up at ICFF...
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September 17, 2008

Two High Chairs, Both Alike In Uncomfortableness: Piet Klaarhamer's Rietveldian High Chair

In fair Utrecht where we lay our scene... I'm trying to clear the deck of reproductions of painful-looking De Stijl high chairs here. In 2005, Treadway-Toomey sold this high chair for $1,200. It's by Piet Klaarhamer, a "later production of...
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The Awesomely Unsittable High Chairs Of Gerrit Rietveld

The world--if I may speak for the world for a moment--may have Gerrit Rietveld all backwards. The world sees Rietveld as a leading furniture designer and architect of the geometric purity-obsessed De Stijl movement who just happened to make...
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September 15, 2008

Crate Chair Junior By Gerrit Rietveld, Reissued By Other Rietvelds

In 1934, the Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld sought to combine the utopian geometric elementalism of de Stijl with an economics and authenticity of material by--look, everyone was broke, so he made furniture out of wood from...
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Wait, I Didn't Even Know There Was A Jens Risom High Chair

Made in 1941 as part of Knoll's introductory collection, with Risom's trademark woven web seat? And it sold yesterday for just $275?? My only consolation is that it caught Andy off guard, too. Seriously, people, there oughta be a...
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September 14, 2008

In 1970, Arthur Espenet Carpenter Created The Coolest Rocker In The Entire Alpha Quadrant

Fascinating. Arthur Espenet Carpenter was like the fifth Beatle of American woodworking. In 1972, he was in "Woodenworks," the genre-defining show at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, along with George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, Wharton Esherick, and Wendell Castle. By that...
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September 13, 2008

Hey Internet! Günter Beltzig Made This Molded Fiberglass Slide In 1966!

It turns out not to be so easy to identify the maker of a random piece of play equipment using just a captionless photo from a 1968 craft magazine, and not just because I didn't know how to say...
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September 12, 2008

Behold, The Ur-Leather High Chair

After seeing Monte Design's new Tavo, I thought I'd research the vast, untold history of leather high chairs, and here it is: one chair. One, Masterpiece Theatre-ready, wingback leather high chair/low chair/potty chair submitted to some author's website by...
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Welcome Back To School, Children! Our First Lesson: The Baby Box

Apparently, the annoyances of blogs in the 2000's--hyperbole, lack of context, not linking back, acting like you're the first to discover everything--is merely a speeded up re-enactment of magazine stories in the 1940's. Take, for example, this March 1947...
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September 11, 2008

Lipstick On A Deadly Pig: 200,000 Graco Bassinets Are Actually Simplicity

WTF CPSC?? The Chicago Tribune's Patricia Callahan is reporting that even as it was expanding a consumer warning last week about 300,000 deadly Simplicity bassinets, the Consumer Products Safety Commission and Graco stayed quiet about 200,000 more bassinets of the...
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September 10, 2008

Monte Tavo High Chair Debuts At ABC Kids Expo

I'm not seeing a lot of reporting or imagery coming out of the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas, but even if I did, this sweet high chair would stand out. It's called the Tavo, and it's by Monte...
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Real Estate Market Sinks, Mint Netto Nursery Floats To Surface

Wow. A real estate staging company in Las Vegas is liquidating and just put a brand new, never been opened, $4000 Cabine crib and dresser/changing table by David Netto on eBay with no reserve. Opening bid is just $499....
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Sami Rintala's Luoto Changing Table I Could've Believed In

Mister Jalopy guest-blogging on BoingBoing? That's a combination we can believe in. Featureless computer renderings of sleek modular furniture by Finnish architect Sami Rintala that looks like it'd make a sweet changing table and dimensions given in the ever-mysterious...
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September 8, 2008

Alexander Girard Carpet Tiles By Flor

Some day, you and the kid will be sitting on the Alexander Girard La Fonda del Sol carpet, building a fort out of his Alexander Girard blocks for the reissued Alexander Girard folk dolls. Your elbow will be propped...
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September 6, 2008

Toys R Us Imports Sweet Crib Safety Standards, Demands Its Cribmakers Share Them

What else can I say? The CPSC's investigative function has been replaced by the Chicago Tribune, and now the agency's safety standard-setting responsibilities are apparently being taken over by freakin' big box retailers. The Chicago Tribune reports that Toys R...
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September 2, 2008

Timkid Mio: Giant German Crib Bumper Comes With Wooden Frame, Converts To Desk

It's probably easier to list what the German-made Timkid Mio crib doesn't convert to. The simple canvas-sided crib designed by Tim Schinkel begins its useful life as a bassinet, thanks to the popout center that turns the mattress into...
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Heckuva Job, SFCA! Simplicity Bassinets Of Death Still On Sale--From The "New" Simplicity

The scale of the danger posed by Simplicity's 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 bassinets is becoming clearer: over 900,000 bassinets have been sold with a dangerous design flaw that has led to at least two strangulation deaths in the last year. And...
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August 31, 2008

Aha, Bloom's New Flat Furniture Is Stephen Procter's Old Flat Furniture

Or should I say Duh? I can't believe it's taken me this long to connect the dots. I swear I'd written about Stephen Procter's fold-flat baby furniture and stroller when he debuted it at Milano in 2007. I mean,...
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August 29, 2008

Did Muji Have Kids Furniture Before? Because They Have It Now

Maybe I just didn't notice Muji's kids furniture when we were in Japan because it was so plain-looking. The plain, square-legged pine table sure is plain-looking. And the most notable thing to be said about the rounded leg table...
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August 28, 2008

After Two Strangulations And Corporate Shrugging, CPSC Orders Retailers Pull Simplicity Co-Sleepers Off Market

Normally when a product is found to cause injury or death, the Consumer Product Safety Commission works with the manufacturer to issue a recall and provide either a fix or a replacement product. But when two kids in the...
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Kinda Eamesy Kid's Chairs Put The Phen Back Into Phenolic

Welcome to slightly lazy children's antique blogging week here at Daddy Types. But no sooner do I think that all this time, I'd had the wrong impression of all these antique dealers, than I come across a description like...
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August 27, 2008

Don't Sit On That! Kids Chairs In Fancy Pairs, Via 1st Dibs

I remember when 1st Dibs was just an email blast back to the States of one designer's weekly finds at the Paris flea market. But after signing up hundreds of shops around the world, it has long since turned into...
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Have You Seen My Dog, Monsieur? Ja, At Der Auktionhaus

So we're driving along one day and out of the blue, the kid goes, "Did you know dogs are hunters by nature?" It took us a while to figure out where she picked it up: Zoboomafoo, the animal TV...
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August 24, 2008

Got Too Many Euros? Kidstuff Roundup From German eBay Auction

You know how The Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, to show how over- or underpriced certain currencies are for the exact same thing? Well, the price estimates the Munich-based auction house Quittenbaum has placed on US vintage auction staples...
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August 21, 2008

One Ikea Antilop, Two Ikea Antilop, Red Ikea Antilop, Blue Ikea Antilop

We were at the Big Blue Box last night looking for some kitchen shelves, and I stopped off to buy my in-laws the greatest high chair bargain in the world, an Ikea Antilop, to replace the horrible, plaid, ruffled...
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August 14, 2008

Das Boot Mit Zwei Kinder

The NY Times has a nice-but-crazy story about artist Brad Hwang and his family who live aboard the Odin, a 98-foot barge in Berlin. Hwang built out most of the spaces himself, starting with the playroom for the two...
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August 8, 2008

Luigi Colani High Chair Concept

Alright, let's clear the Luigi Colani deck around here. Last winter, while poking around on Colani's own site, I spotted this undated sketch for what looks like a futuristic, biomorphic high chair. At least it looks like a high...
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Luigi Colani's Rappelkiste Kid Unit, Just For Compleatness

Last winter, I had sort of a designcrush on the wacky futurist Luigi Colani. So when Andy posted about this awesome piece of lots-in-one kids furniture, the Rappelkistein, in January, I just assumed I'd linked to it. So since...
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August 4, 2008

Mamas & Papas Knocks Off Bloom Fresco For A Loop

Because they don't have Target in the UK, the task of knocking off the innovative kids products of young start-ups falls to the local industry giant, Mamas and Papas. In this case, the Bloom Fresco high chair seems to...
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August 3, 2008

Big, Black Mimesis: Chaise Morphogenesis

To really be of use for new parents, Timothy Schreiber's Morphogenesis chaise lounge, developed in an "intensive research process of natural structural systems," needs to be a straight-up rocking chair, easier to get in and out of with a...
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July 22, 2008

This Here Faux-lar Bear Rug Made From Sheepskin By Crazy Icelander

Because global warming isn't forcing enough polar bears to swim hundreds of miles across open ocean to Iceland, where the local redneck cops can gun them down and turn them into rugs, they are forced to make polar bear-looking...
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July 16, 2008

F-Raise Has A Great Crate Chair There

F-Raise is a Japanese concept store, with the concept being, "All things wooden, simple, and natural." It's simultaneously more precious and more homebody than J. Peterman; a Non-Urban Outfitters, with plywood and safety glass replaced by chicken wire and...
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July 15, 2008

Whew! Kids And California Modern Houses DO Mix

The nursery in a fastidiously restored, mid-century modernist California tract home. It's the space that launched a thousand trips to Ikea. CA Modern magazine has a story about how kids are not actually incompatible with your Eichler house's modernist lifestyle....
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July 13, 2008

From Ortho, Makers Of America's Favorite Herbicide, Comes America's Favorite DIY PoMo Cradle

When you're a dad-to-be with a nursery to outfit, the most important thing is to go with a name you can trust. That's why Ortho, a division of the Chevron Chemical Corporation, and the maker of Round-Up, America's favorite herbicide,...
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July 10, 2008

OG Torendo! Japanese Wooden Kindergarten Chairs

[via] [other nice pics here] The love of post-war design in Japan isn't only for Eames chairs and the homegrown 60's Danish knockoffs. There's also the simple, rustic, functional furniture that had to be made locally from whatever wood...
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July 8, 2008

The Difference Between Campana And Country

So about this chair: I always keep my eyes out for a good base that I could use to make a kid-size Campana Brothers-style stuffed animal chair. I'd imagined using either Takashi Murakami plush dolls or Ugly Dolls, but...
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June 30, 2008

Wal-Mart Seeks To Destroy Our Milk Crate Way Of Life

The milk crate's days are numbered. Record collectors, bodega-haunting codgers, and playroom shelf-building dads of the future will curse the name of Greg Soehnlen, the Robert Oppenheimer of milk packaging design, whose square milk jug stacks tighter and four...
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June 27, 2008

Antiques Backroadshow: Vintage Vinyl In Goldsboro

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Olde Country Store, Goldsboro, NC, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Full of Wilber's barbecue and looking...
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June 24, 2008

Hey Denver Minimalists! Craig's Got Your Changing Table!

If your top four criteria for a changing table are [in no particular order]: minimalist/industrial-style sweet maple ply construction cheap, maybe $40 or so, and at least a mile high DT reader Ariel has found the Craigslisting for you: Very...
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June 16, 2008

Sweet Gilbert Rohde Playpen Now A CPSC-Certified Objet

When he persuaded D. J. de Pree on the moral imperative of his streamlined designs, Gilbert Rohde brought modernism to the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Though he apparently didn't bring an urgency to produce modern children's furniture. Because even...
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You Can't Make Money Flipping Ikea In New Zealand

In the country of the Ikea-less, the guy reselling Ikea basics with like a five-dollar markup is king. New Zealand is such a country, and Mocka is such a king. Seriously, how weird is this? Mocka offers free shipping...
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June 13, 2008

Jean Prouvé Nursery School Chair

I guess I haven't followed the development of the Jean Prouvé market as closely as I'd thought; otherwise I might have known that TECTA, the German manufacturer of some early Prouvé furniture--and the contemporary re-issuer of others--also produced a...
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June 11, 2008

Prouve/Corbu/Perriand Kid's Room? But Where'd That Dog Come From?

Though the picture's from Elle Decor, not Interior Design, I think this is Florence Lopez's son's "lacquered Jean Prouvé bed" with "a cork bulletin board that Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand designed for two French universities" over it. I...
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Mathieu Mategot Kids Chairs, S'il Vous Plait

Mathier Mategot was the other mid-century designer, the one who wasn't Corbusier, Perriand, or Prouve. Left Bank interior designer Florence Lopez put these sweet 1950's painted iron kids chairs ["inspired by Mathieu Mategot"] in the window of Luco, her...
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Rad Mod Play Table & Stools At Hi+Lo Modern

Here's where I'd normally suggest that buying this sweet, vintage table and stool set for just $80, and installing it in your kid's room. But they're only 1 1/2 inches high, so you'd probably store them in your kid's...
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June 7, 2008

Plastastic! Puur BabyC Cradle And/Or Something By Dripta Roy

It's not clear to me if Dripta Roy's babyC is as big as a cradle or as small as a car seat. Puur Design Studio's website describes it as both an "alcove-shaped environment" and a "light and versatile" product...
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Kid's Wall Unit From Shipping Pallets

As this awesome wall-mounted shelving/desk structure demonstrates, Wouter's "palletsized research" is really paying off. I just hope he reclaims some sandpaper while he's at it. Pallet-based construction and design by Wouter, featured on The Raw Foundation [rawprojects.org, via andy]...
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June 6, 2008

There's A Rocker Sale At Modernica!

If you're not going to Genius Jones' big Bugaboo Event in Miami tomorrow, you can make the one-day-only Warehouse Sale at Modernica in LA instead! Or join in online, where a Fiberglass Rocker made from Eames and Herman Miller's...
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June 4, 2008

Itay Ohaly's Papa Chair

Israeli industrial designer/woodworker/far east culture researcher Itay Ohaly calls this piece, "Papa Chair/happy family." And it is, at least until Papa stands up. Itay Ohaly's portfolio site [ohaly.com via mocoloco] Previously, and in inspiring shades of green: PS Trivas...
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June 3, 2008

Nuna High Chair From Holland, Not Ork

Nuna is a new Dutch kids' product company that just debuted its first product, the Nuna High Chair. As befits a £195 high chair, it adjusts and adapts to remain useful, if not necessary, through age 6. From the...
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June 1, 2008

Peter Simensky's Plywood Milk Crates For Artware

I forgot another great find from ICFF, but then catching up with the latest from the premier milkcrate lifestyle blog, Milkcrate Digest, reminded me. Pittsburgh artist Lacey Volk had made a plywood version of a milkcrate, which was nice....
[read the full post...]

May 29, 2008

Duluth Trading: Plan Station Could Also Be World's Manliest Fold-Down Changing Table

Damn, surfing around Duluth Trading's website, makes me want a job-site. They sell this awesome, portable plan station as a time-saving alternative to building your own temporary table: "Simply pound 2 nails into the wall, and slip 2, 24”...
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Interesting Kids Stuff Coming At Wright20

I start wondering what's the point of pointing this stuff out. But then I think, if I can touch just one heart, change just one life, by helping someone find the $3,000 stool shaped like an Andy Warhol soup can,...
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Filmmaker x Beavers Colabo Chair For Grey Rabbit

"The chair, created from beaver-gnawed wood, was made by Bruce Gundersen, a filmmaker and furniture designer, to mark the birth of Ms. Puett’s son, Grey Rabbit." Ms Puett is J. Morgan Puett, and her baby daddy is the artist...
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May 27, 2008

By The Felt Rugs Of Grey Skull!

John Pour Home is a Swedish outfit that hand-cuts 5mm felt into the eye-catching, fuzzy, customized rug of your choice. The skull rug shown here in grey or cream [and available in a dozen other colors] is just 128...
[read the full post...]

May 22, 2008

Kunigi Unu: Mom, Dad, I'm A Polyurethane Foam Pouf

These were at ICFF, but I must have blocked them from my mind like a drunken experimental incident at college. Brent White tells the New York Times about the inspiration for his Kunigi Unu stools:I like the idea that...
[read the full post...]

May 21, 2008

What I'm Thinking About Nurseryworks' New Neo-Traditional Collection

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DT@ICFF: Nurseryworks, originally uploaded by daddytypes. So I've been thinking about the Lawson-Fenning collection Nurseryworks...
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DT@ICFF: Baby Furniture Swagdown

I hate getting stuff at industry events; it feels very wasteful to me. At a gig like ICFF, most companies are just giving out tote bags anyway, tote bags designed to swallow all the folders and discs and stuff...
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May 19, 2008

DT@ICFF: The Leander Bed Finally Comes To The US. Sorta

One of my all-time favorite crib designs [alright, huge nerd alert for having a list of favorite crib designs. whatryagonnado?] is Denmark's hometown favorite, the Leander Bed, from Stig Leander Nielsen. The molded birch beauty converts from a crib...
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DT@ICFF, Or Should I Say ICNCFF?

The ICFF was hopping on the first day, Saturday, but for all the buzz, I couldn't help wondering how it compared to the blowouts last year at CNC Router Expo '07 and Laminated PlyFair. And it wasn't just the...
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May 18, 2008

DT@ICFF: Kids Design Roundup

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DT@ICFF, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I've gotta run out the door, but I wanted to...
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DT@ICFF: Enzo Mari Kids Furniture

So I went to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair yesterday in NYC, and there was a whole bunch of interesting kid-related designs. While my photos are loading up, though, there's an awesome design that wasn't at the Fair. At...
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May 15, 2008

And Meanwhile, Sparkability's Having A Sale Today

I was just factchecking myself on those P'kolino cubes, and I see that another DT advertiser's having a sale right now, too. Sparkability's running a 15% off spring sale, just use the code "spring08" at checkout. It ends today, so...
[read the full post...]

Nice. Via Toy Box Is Having A Sale Right. Now.

Even though the company was only founded a couple of years ago, I've been a fan of Via Toy Box's modular plywood storage cubes since the 1940's. They make a great version of a classic, flexible, and modern solution for...
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May 14, 2008

DTQ: Anyone Going To ICFF? Anything I Should See?

I'll be at the ICFF this weekend. If you're there, or if you know of something I should check out, definitely let me know, either in the comments or via email. thanks and see you and/or your product or event!...
[read the full post...]

May 13, 2008

Totally Tubular: Japanese Hospital Bassinet

DT reader Goemon sends along this shot of a sweet, plexi hospital bassinet from Tokyo. That tubular steel is pretty nice as-is. Those dainty-colored wheel covers could use some reworking, though. Previously: Sweet plexi hospital bassinets I have loved...
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May 12, 2008

Serious/Silly Nursery Chairs At Wright20

In case you haven't found the right low five-figure chair for the kid's room yet, there are two possibilities from the upcoming design auction at Wright20 to consider: There's a pretty early example (1975) of Wendell Castle's Crescent Rocker done...
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May 10, 2008

Fantastique! Bronze Bassinet By Philippe Hiquily

After debuting as an organic modernist sculptor in the 1950's, Philippe Hiquily became the Surrealist Metal Furnituremaker To The Stars [of the French aristo jet set] in the 1960's and 1970's. For example, the limited edition coffee table, "Poupouce,"...
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May 9, 2008

Niice. More Wall-Mounted Via Toy Boxes, Please

They're pitching it as a bedside table, but I wonder if this wall-mounted Via Toy Box couldn't be paired with others to make a row of them along a wall, or maybe stick them in a checkerboard pattern or...
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May 8, 2008

Hey! Modernist Furniture Made By A Mom!

DT reader Jason spotted this article in the LA Times today. Apparently, there's a mom in town who taught herself woodworking so she could make her own modernist-style furniture for her kids' rooms. So she built some prototypes for family...
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Little Red Stuga Keeps Making Toy Versions Of Landscape

If you were wondering what features of the Swedish landscape the design team at Little Red Stuga has been turning into kid-sized play furniture lately, now you know: a folding screen house with mirrors on one side; and a...
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May 7, 2008

DTQ: What Do You Think Of Your Dozuki?

So I'm still kicking around the idea of building a dining table using a design by Enzo Mari [see some longwinded discussion of it here.] It's supposed to be made out of plain, unfinished pine lumber, which you can...
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May 4, 2008

Hey-o, Julianne Moore's Tripp Trapp Is On eBay

Seriously. Moore and her husband Bart Freundlich have donated a "gently used" Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair to Johnson's Celebrity Hand-Me-Down Auction. All proceeds go to some dizzying constellation of kid-related charities. [And all goodwill goes straight to Johnson's....
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April 28, 2008

Sweet Vintage Ply: Childcraft Nesting Chair Blocks

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Childcraft Nesting Chair Blocks, circa 1974, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I just got a fat...
[read the full post...]

April 26, 2008

Well, There's ONE Maarten Baas Clay High Chair

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } tv set Maarten Baas, originally uploaded by ibowoman. In 2006, Dutch designer Maarten Baas debuted...
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April 24, 2008

Truck Kids Room Wins Kips Bay Decorator Showdown

When you're filling a modernist landmark, more is not more after all. The Kips Bay Decorator Show House is an Upper East Side institution: a select handful of society decorators each get a room in some townhouse, which they inevitably...
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April 23, 2008

Boon Has A Flair For Customer Service

Here's a nice report from a dad and satisfied Boon customer:We've had a Boon Flair high chair for a few months now, which we really like. A couple weeks ago one of the male clips on the harness broke. I...
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DT Retail Scoutabout: NY Bed Edition

Here's the deal: DwellStudio is having an overstock sale, 60-80% off on current and discontinued designs. And it sounds like they're replenishing daily, so there's less of that "line up & fight for it" sample sale frenzy. When: Apr. 24-May...
[read the full post...]

April 21, 2008

Abitacolo: Bruno Munari's Kid Space Machine

It's not nearly enough to know that "abitacolo" is where the pilot sits on a plane, or where the humans ride in a car. No, to Bruno Munari, the Abitacolo he designed in 1971 for the Italian furniture company...
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I'm Kenny Scharf's Kid-Sized Gumby Chair, Dammit!

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Keith Haring, originally uploaded by mario.mc. So obviously, I found this photo of Keith Haring...
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Thanks, Uncle Keith! The Haring Crib

In the downtown New York art world of the early 1980's, Keith Haring was a rising star, but he was only one of a number of artists who took drawing more seriously than Art, and who insisted on breaking...
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April 20, 2008

Nice Raacke!

Ah, 1968, the Golden Age of Cardboard Children's Furniture, which was ushered in by Peter Raacke's Papp collection, the world's first cardboard furniture. And by first, I mean third, after the Those Things stool from the British designer Peter...
[read the full post...]

April 19, 2008

Interdependent Children's Furniture By Eiry Rock

The images and reports from the furniture-palooza in Milan are starting to turn up. One of the first kid-related designs to show up: the children's chairs of Eiry Rock, a young designer and maker from Leicestershire, smack in the...
[read the full post...]

April 18, 2008

Papst Red Ribbon: Vintage Fiberglass Kid Furniture Goes 1 For 2 In Vienna

Last we heard of Walter Papst, the German pioneer in the design of fiberglass furniture, his Rocking Sculpture was being reissued in a limited edition by Wilkhahn. [Also, he was hunting aliens.] After the Rocking Sculpture won an award...
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April 16, 2008

DT Clearance Sale Scoutabout

If sales are what interest you, here are some interesting sales I've heard about in New York, Miami, and around the whole world on the Internet: Sweet Dutch Designers Sample Sale, Apr 17 (9-6) & Apr 18 (9-3): "SPRING 2008...
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New Dad-Designed Edo Rocker At Thos. Moser

Wow, David Moser's Edo Rocker looks like a Mission Style classic that came home all Art Nouveau after going on study abroad to Belgium. And in a good way. It's substantial and lyrical at the same time. Apparently, Moser,...
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April 15, 2008

Now That's A Hackable Wall-Mounted Metal Changing Table

At EUR650, this very changing table-esque, modular shelving unit, made in Holland in the 1950's by Pilastro, is approximately 25 times the cost of the modern, lawn chair-like Ikea alternatives. Then again, Ikea has 25 million Google results; Pilastro...
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Bookhou Felt Kids Chair, From Canada

I am a sucker for industrial felt. Spread last week's pad thai onto a giant sheet of inch-thick, grey felt, and I'd eat it with my hands tied behind my back. [Actually, I think that's actually a Joseph Beuys...
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April 14, 2008

Hmm, But Ikea Already Has Wall-Mounted Changing Tables

Why go to the trouble of hacking together a wall-mounted Ikea changing table from the office furniture section, when Ikea already offers a perfectly fine-looking wall-mounted changing table in the changing table department? The Antilop changing table is supposedly...
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Ikeahackable? Laptop Workstation-Into-Diaper Workstation?

I know what you were thinking--or at least I know you know what I was thinking--when you saw that new Ikea PS series Laptop Workstation on minor details last week: sweet, but could you make a wall-mounted changing table...
[read the full post...]

April 6, 2008

Dad The Builder: Can You Fix This?

Clive Thompson, who just wrote an article for Wired about the resurgence of DIY culture, points to an excellent essay by Matthew B. Crawford, "Shop Class As Soulcraft," which ran in 2006 in The New Atlantis, A Journal on Technology...
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April 3, 2008

Mr. Jalopy's Vintage Kid Chairs of Wonder

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Mr. Jalopy's Vintage Kid Chairs of Wonder, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I made a pilgrimage...
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April 1, 2008

From Germany To Silverlake With Love: Flototto Kids Chair

So we went poking around Silverlake today, the girls and I. Yolk is nice. But hey-o, Monkeyhouse Toys?? Awesome. The hyper-indie toy store has more than a few kidult-oriented toys, but first and foremost, it's a toy store for...
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Childsply: Filling In The Pieces

I've been slowly hearing back from various designers in the Childsply Project that UK design gallery/store twentytwentyone organized in 1999. [13 designers and firms created twelve pieces of kid furniture out of a single sheet of plywood. The originals...
[read the full post...]

March 31, 2008

Noted Control Freaks Flaunt $6 Million Crib Of Death

Cribs stuffed with suffocating amounts of pillows, animals, and blankets? Dangly canopies and ribbons posing a strangulation risk? For bravely pointing out the safety hazards in J.Lo and M.An's People Magazine-styled Twin Cribs Of Death, the editors of Parents deserve...
[read the full post...]

Restoration Hardware Baby & Child Will Try To Out-Crate & Barrel Pottery Barn Kids

Whatever happened to Restoration Hardware's Baby? Patty and the trades reported it last Spring, and DT reader Mark wondered aloud about it a couple of days ago. Now according to Chris, Daddy Types' mall correspondent, Restoration Hardware is indeed...
[read the full post...]

March 28, 2008

Finnish Government Handouts Totally Killed Local Cardboard Baby Box Market

Finland: it's the little differences. I didn't know it was going to be Finland week around here, but DT commenter hfb ties the whole thing together and brings it all home with by pointing out that cardboard box cradles...
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Whoa, Get Ready For The Launch Of BabyGap Home

And where six babystyles close, more than a dozen BabyGap Home stores take their place. Fourteen, actually, starting with existing BabyGap stores in CA, NY, Chicago, and Dallas. Seems The Gap is getting ready to launch BabyGap Home, a...
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Finnish, Not Finished: Jocular High Chair Concept

Another find from the kids at Turku University in Finland, one that makes me go, "Yhteydenottoihin!" This is the Jocular high chair/stool by Taina Ollikkala and Teea Jäske, which is beautifully crafted out of chromed steel and elm. [No...
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Hotrod Finnish Walker And Crazy Ball Pit Chair From Helsinki Design Week '07

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Hotrod walker, originally uploaded by jyri. It took me a while to track down this...
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It's My Kid In A Baby Box By Andrew Stafford

In 2001, British designer Andrew Stafford created the Baby Box, Archive and Crib, mk.3, which I assume pertains to the third version. [James Goggin is credited with graphic design on mk3, while Paul Elliman and Alex Rich did mk1 and...
[read the full post...]

March 27, 2008

Where's Childsply When You Need It?

Robin Day's Rocking Bird Childpsly Chair, 1999, for twentytwentyone, via For an extremely awesome-sounding collection of affordable, sustainable, kid-related design that's not even ten years old, Childsply is pretty-near invisible on the web. Childsply was the name of a...
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March 26, 2008

Sweet Kidshouse From Studiomama

More sweet loft modules cribbed from magazines. I was really digging the Lego wall, so grabbed this shot of Nina Tolstrup's painted MDF kidshouse from her profile in the latest issue of Dwell. Only when I got home did...
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Built-In And/Or Wheeled Nursery By Merge Architects

Judging by her firm's online porfolio, Merge Architects principal Elizabeth Whittaker has never designed a plywood loft built-in she didn't like. And that apparently goes for her own kid's nursery, too. The April issue of Boston Magazine features awesome...
[read the full post...]

March 21, 2008

WooHoo! DIY Crib Of Death Takes Design*Sponge Bronze

Let's all celebrate with mom-to-be Melissa, whose hand-painted, death-slat-equipped, fallout-optimized, mini-crib won 3rd Prize in Design*Sponge's recent DIY Project Contest. I'm sure she'll use the $300 prize money to buy some infill slats. I think we've all learned an...
[read the full post...]

March 20, 2008

Ghodiyu: Think This Indian Baby Hammock Will Scratch My Hardwood Floor?

The NY Times Home Section has a feature on Suchitra Van and Nette Gaastra, two artsy, West Villagers who decided to remodel when their son Sebbe was born rather than give up their 1BR apartment. Think of it as...
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Alright, Bloom Otto Table, I'll Bite: What Is "Stylewood"?

I first spotted this design yesterday on, uh, Designspotter. As you can guess from the shape, Bloom Baby's new Otto chairs slide right in under the new Otto playtable, for a nice, clean look. It's designed by Hakan Gürsu,...
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March 19, 2008

House For Sale. Giant, Foam Blocks House For Sale

With a name like Studio Papas, I think I'd love whatever Koen Crommentuijn and Marjan Verboeket put out. The fact that it's House for Sale, or Speelhuis, a set of twelve, giant cold-foam blocks shaped like classic wooden blocks...
[read the full post...]

March 14, 2008

The Other Cradle Of The King Of Rome

Of the over 14,000 vintage color slides donated by Charles W. Cushman to the Indiana University library, this 1960 photo of a cradle at Fontainebleau is the only one with a "children's furniture" tag. I did some searching, and...
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Average Weight Of Ineke Hans Furniture Drops Dramatically

Dutch designer Ineke Hans' Black Beauties collection, begun in 2000, was one of the first significant attempts to make cool, contemporary furniture for kids. The chairs, tables, and rocking toys are made out of heavy-duty, black, recycled plastic--which weighs...
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March 13, 2008

Wow. Shagtastic Lucite Rocker

If you'd given up on your groovy Halston-themed nursery and were about to return that silver metallic op art wallpaper, STOP. Your rocker just turned up on eBay. MODERN LUCITE ROCKING CHAIR 1970'S, $475 bid or $500 Buy It...
[read the full post...]

Sweet, That Molded Ply Fold-down Changing Table Is By Bo Ekstrom

It's a molded ply world out there--in Scandinavia, anyway. Thanks to DT reader Anouschka, who ID'd that molded ply changing table as the work of Swedish designer Bo Ekstrom. The byBo Nursing Table is, in fact, molded birch laminate,...
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March 12, 2008

Two's A Trend! Another Stylish Crib Of Death Photoshoot

Wow, you know what? Celebrities are just like us. If by "celebrities," you mean Brooke Burke [1], and by "us," you mean people whose wildly unsafe-but-photogenic nursery furniture causes online comment riots. Before the whole DIY crib of death...
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Ooh, Will Homemade Crib Of Death Win Design*Sponge's DIY Contest??

Killer crib, dude! Vote now, and help turn Design*Sponge's DIY contest into a potentially lifesaving learning opportunity for everyone about the safety hazards posed by crib slats that are more than the government-mandated 2 3/8 inches apart [head gets...
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Ombelico: Sweet, Belted, Modular Storage By Marc Sadler

Oh, awesome, modular cube-shaped retail fixtures, where were you when I needed you? Milan-based industrial designer Marc Sadler is developing Ombelico, a [presumably] low-cost, flatpack storage and display system, with the Italian manufacturer Alu. It's made from WPC, wood...
[read the full post...]

March 7, 2008

Ausgezeichnet! Phidibus Bassinet Converts To Rocker, Bench, Desk

"Aus 1 mach 4" is right! When it comes to children's furniture, the German penchant for convertibility uber alles is well known. [uh, citation needed] So let's just point out the obvious about the Phidibus 4-in-1 bassinet/rocking bench/bench/desk made...
[read the full post...]

March 6, 2008

Oof! BabyMod Olivia Crib At Wal-Mart Looks Familiar

Wal-Mart's got another set of modern-style nursery furniture. The first Modern Nursery collection they stocked from BabyMod wasn't really modern; the manufacturer, Million Dollar Baby [which also makes Da Vinci furniture], just went for a a Netto-in-a-fog look by...
[read the full post...]

March 3, 2008

Morigeau Lepine, Meet JC Le Penney

Sometimes you're the whacker, and sometimes you're the weed. The last time we saw the Quebecois crib powerhouse Morigeau Lepine mentioned on Daddy Types, they were hiding a flatout David Netto knockoff crib in the walled booth at the...
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This Is Not The Bloom Baby Bassinet You Were Looking For

Note to recent graduates of industrial design programs: When you present a concept for a co-sleeper/bassinet made from molded EVA foam and molded ply, check to see that the name is not already being used by an existing baby...
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Hit Or Miss? First-hand Accounts Of Dwell For Target

So the Dwell for Target [oops, make that DwellStudio for Target] bedding collection has been in stores for a few weeks now, and it looks fine; it has nice, Dwell-y design with get-what-you-pay-for quality. But the nursery furniture is...
[read the full post...]

February 29, 2008

Mini-Eames Made By Eames, Shot By Eames

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } DSC08026.JPG, originally uploaded by eamesd. Andy just posted this photo from Eames Demetrios' flickr stream....
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Do You Know Who Makes This Molded Ply, Fold-Down Changing Table?

Someone emailed me recently asking if there were any cool fold-down changing tables. The Man On The Television says you should just make one yourself. [Frankly, after seeing the results, I'm not convinced. "Wasted Spaces"?? You could dock an aircraft...
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February 28, 2008

I'd Like To Thank The Crib Bumper Industrial Complex: CPSC Warns Of Crib Threat From 'Soft Bedding'

Is there someone at the JPMA who gets a bonus every time crib bumpers aren't mentioned in a CPSC alert about the dangers of "soft bedding" in cribs? From the AP: Parents are putting their babies at risk when they...
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February 24, 2008

DIY Dad-To-Be Loses Study, Gains Sweet Oeuf-like Built-in Crib

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes someone losing his home office to the new baby. This time, it's a dad-to-be and hardcore DIY'er named Jason, who is filling flickr with updates on the transformation of a narrow...
[read the full post...]

February 22, 2008

FOUND! That Sweet Plexi Hospital Bassinet UNFORTUNATELY SMALL!

In his burgeoning collection of dad-and-newborn-related Playmobil pieces, Mr. Stinkhead features this tableau: a new dad videotaping a baby in one of those sweet, plexiglass and steel bassinets from the hospital. It's like Playmobil is jacked into my head,...
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February 21, 2008

Whoa, Bold Move: Kid-Sized "Mini Eames" Chairs From Park Life

Now there is a bold, trademarky move. Anyone can make a scaled-down kid's version of classic Eames designs like the molded ply DCM chair and the fiberglass shell rockers; in fact, I'd argue that it's a crime no one--*cough...
[read the full post...]

February 20, 2008

A Long Time Ago In A Star Wars Tie-In Pitch To Pepsi Far, Far Away

I think we can all agree that, in retrospect, a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair would have sold far more Pepsi than a life-size mannequin of Jar Jar Binks, even though Jabba wasn't even in Episode One [d'oh, I've...
[read the full post...]

February 14, 2008

NYT: BREAKING Having A Kid Changes Glass Coffee Tables, Things

So I read in the newspaper tha having both a kid and nice furniture can be a challenge. Has anyone else heard of this? For example, these new-fangled Noguchi coffee tables have glass tops, and "Barcelona chairs" are like "razor...
[read the full post...]

February 13, 2008

4-yo Rokke Stingray Rocking Chair Wins Innovation Award

Thomas Pedersen's Stingray rocking chair was designed in 2004, and has been for sale for at least two years. So when I saw it described on Dwell.com as "NEW" and a winner of the Interior Innovation Award at this...
[read the full post...]

February 7, 2008

Great Moments In Marketing: The Story of Hushamok

The boardbook comes down from the Hushamok tribe, In the big game I call, "Pitch it to me." The PRs, it's said, try to get in my head, And since I find the press kits quite gloomy... I was gonna...
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They Sure Don't Make'em Like They Used To: c1946 Cardboard Bassinet

It's my kid in a box, baby! From the 1946 advice book, Mother and Baby Care In Pictures, comes this cardboard box done up as a crib:An improvised bed made from a corrugated carton by an ingenious father. Not...
[read the full post...]

February 6, 2008

Buckminster Fuller's Kiddie Koop Crib Revealed! Or, Uh, Someone's

Yeah, so I bought the book the Buckminster Fuller Master Index credits Bucky's crib design to: the all-new 1946 edition of Louise Zabriskie's parenting handbook, Mother & Baby Care in Pictures. Sure enough, there's the Kiddie Koop in all...
[read the full post...]

February 4, 2008

Bring Out Your Bed! Bring Out Your Bed! Argington & ODA Launch Mod, Wheeled Bassinet

The first thing I thought when I saw the renderings for the new bassinet and easel from Argington and ODA, the Office for Design & Architecture: a pushcart. This thing would be perfect for a family moving into one of...
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Lolita Midsleeper Combi Kid's Bed Light Of A Fire, Fire Of Online

What could you write about at your Lolita bed/desk? In the United Kingdom of the aliterate, the Wikipedia reader is king. Woolworth's has pulled the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a writing desk/loft bed for young girls, after a heated, if...
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January 28, 2008

Did Buckminster Fuller Really Design A Crib Called The Kiddie Koop?

Kut the krazy krap; you've got to be kidding: Buckminster Fuller, the father of the geodesic dome, was also the creator [kreator?] of the Kiddie Koop crib? The Kiddie Koop made by the Trimble Nurseryland Furniture Co. of Rochester, NY?...
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January 24, 2008

The Baby Zebra Skin Rug Is Just The Beginning

So I'm looking at Dwell's new baby zebraskin rug [coming to Target next month, just $180!] and wondering "Seriously, is that somehow not supposed to be a reference to the skin of a baby zebra?" I worried if I...
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Whoa. Dwell Baby Didn't Make Their Own Oeuf Crib [For Target]

The launch of Dwell Studio's new collection for Target is coming up any day now, and I've been stoked to see what the furniture looks like. [I'm sure the bedding is all nice and stylish; honestly, Quilting Frenzy Week...
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January 23, 2008

Whoa, Dad Made His Own Oeuf Crib

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } The Crib, originally uploaded by Burton F.. I'm slow to the game, obviously, but I'm...
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January 21, 2008

DT eBay Scoutabout: Fire Sale Edition

Watching the live auctions today has wrought havoc on the ol' browser. In the time since I started trying to post about it, this sweet, vintage Creative Playthings fire station jumped from 99 cents to $21.50, which is more...
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January 18, 2008

Get It For You Wholesale? eBayer Selling Mod Kid Gear At Unusually Low Prices

Yeah, I could just email Hillsborough, CA eBay seller Noodledoodle.home to see how they're offering new, high-end toys and kids furniture on eBay for seemingly crazylow, non-MSRP prices. But with the new kid-related caps on my daily typing quota,...
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January 16, 2008

The Moral Of The Story: Don't Turn Your Back On The eBay

Seriously, do you need any starker proof that you can't let your eyes off the eBay even for one second? Even if it's Christmas?? Even if your wife just gave birth??? Check this out: eBay seller id.london had a truly...
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Aftermarket Tray For Stokke Tripp Trapp: "Worth Every Kroner"

One of the reasons we love the Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair was because it doesn't have a tray; the kid sits right at the table and eats and plays along with the family. It's a dynamic that works...
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Optimistic CPSC Chairwoman Pronounces Recall Glass "Not 95.5% Empty, 4.5% Full!"

Looks like we missed CPSC Chairwoman Nancy Nord's speech last week at the National Press Club, the one where she criticized the media for its "near-hysteria" and "hoopla" over the record-setting number of product recalls in 2007. In fact, Nord...
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January 14, 2008

Elle, Yeah! Vik Muniz Knows From Jennifer Delonge

So I was waiting at the 24-hr pharmacy last night filling a codeine prescription [interesting crowd, a lot of people with empty bottles, who apparently believe "no-refill" means "no refill without asking for a refill 600 times"], where I...
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January 11, 2008

So About That Juddy Plywood Crib...

When we last saw the Donald Judd daybed-inspired plywood toddler bed I was trying to get made, it looked like this: Just out of sight to the left is the meter, ticking away as I contemplated the invisibility of various...
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DT Retail Scoutabout: January Is Baby Sale Season

Who'd have thought that January would be a big sale season for baby gear? Don't we have babies and need stuff at a pretty even clip year-round? Whatever, hop to, there's sales afoot: I assume you already know about Modern...
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January 10, 2008

Sweet Piet Hein Eek Nursery Set, Sweet Price, Uh, Ready To Pick Up

In suburban Haarlem, The Netherlands. Still, EUR845 Euros for a really nice Eek reclaimed wood crib and changing tabletop dresser? That's a pretty good deal. Too bad Mr. intelligent reuse hasn't figured out a knockdown, flatpack model for these...
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All The Furniture That's Fit To Knock Off: Kid-Sized O-Zone Looks A Lot Like Aarnio's Bubble Chair

O-Zone knockoff chair, daughter The NYT Style section has a slideshow of funky kids chairs, including the Happy Cat beanbag chair [or as mfr Roommate calls it, the Fat Cat], that one shoehorn chair that's been hanging in the...
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January 9, 2008

Suh-Weet Plexi-less Plexi Hospital Bassinet On eBay

It needs a plexiglass baby bucket and maybe a bit of scrubbing, but there's one of those awesome hospital bassinet's on eBay right now. With an opening bid of $125 and to-the-Greyhound-station shipping of $50, that's definitely retail price,...
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January 4, 2008

Hospitalspotting: Cambro Coffee Cart/Changing Table

If I had a big enough truck and a suitable distraction for the guards, the stainless/plexi bassinet isn't the only piece of potential nursery furniture I'd load up and take home tomorrow. This rather sweet cart is molded from...
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January 3, 2008

Una Bassinet Maravillosa, Uno Aluminum I-Beam Like-A-Bike From Barcelona

Traveling to Europe for the holidays sans car seat apparently frees up your hands to take sweet photos for random blogs. That's the lesson we learn from DT CARES testing correspondent Darren. Here's an awesome-looking wood-and-plexi box-on-sticks bassinet he...
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January 1, 2008

Revisiting The DT Checklist: Milk Crate Wall - DONE

Well, the ol' DT checklist is pretty much complete, or at least the kids' room is in ready-to-receive shape. [The kid, not so much, she's been kind of a stressed out, wigged out basket case the last couple of...
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Via Toy Box, Now Available In Chalkboard Black

L: before, R: after I had decided to repaint the red doors on the kids' Via Toy Box cube tower, and though I had some glossy Ralph Lauren black paint left over after refinishing all the doors in the...
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December 31, 2007

Did You Know The Juno Bed?

During a regular check of the website for Danish auction house Bruun-Rasmussen, I came across this old hyper-convertible bed called the Juno Bed [ends 8 Jan., est EUR405]. Ever heard of it? I hadn't, though the creators of Denmark's...
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Hmm, I Love The Smell Of Dutch Mahogany Modular Kid's Furniture In The Morning

Hmm, the subtly carved chair legs in beautiful mahogany; the matching mahogany connector system on the stool corners; the seemingly interchangeable chair seat and stool top; the four bolt holes on the side that could be for attaching another...
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December 30, 2007

Awesome Ndebele Cardboard House From Driade

The men of the south Ndebele tribe of South Africa are responsible for building dried mud house compounds for their families, while the women are charged with decorating it with the tribe's distinctive, bold geometric patterns. Inspired by this...
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December 28, 2007

Words Of Wisdom, Rugs From Mark Mothersbaugh

Archinect did a pretty fanboyish interview with Mark Mothersbaugh on the occasion of his rug exhibition at the Scion Gallery, and though there's no mention his Yo Gabba Gabba! appearances, Mothersbaugh shared this profound insight on the preference for subversion...
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December 27, 2007

Babyhome Aluminum Baby Gear From Barthelona

Via the blog of minor details, a newish "children's interior consulting firm" and "imagination agent" based in Brooklyn, comes word of Babyhome, a slick, euro-looking line of aluminum and tech fabric baby gear. Babyhome is the creation of Barcelona-based...
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December 25, 2007

Iremonya Faiver Box Storage & Awesome, Elmer-ish Nappy Chair

I held the door for the FedEx guy when he delivered our 200+ pounds of Via Toy Box, which, he knew, meant he couldn't get away with leaving them in our building office. The two Korean brothers who brought our...
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December 22, 2007

Via Toy Box Unboxing, Building, Stacking, Stuffing

So the Via Toy Box cubes came Thursday, about 200 pounds worth. They look great in person and went together very nicely. They're not quite slick or deluxe, which may explain the differences in price for otherwise identical-looking cube...
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December 17, 2007

Achtung, Baby! Sweet Bauhaussy High Chair

Note to self: add "hochstuhl" to my list of saved eBay searches. Andy sent along this rather awesome-looking vintage high chair from Germany. It's made of painted bent wood and some kind of thigh boots-and-riding crop-friendly pleather. Sehr Gut....
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December 14, 2007

Ilo Modular Kid Furniture System Still Vaporware At This Point

Now I love me some modernist, modular, flexible kids furniture. But I also love me some info, such as when I should be putting a hold on my ducduc order and checking the Swiss franc conversion rate and when...
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Little Red Stuga, Baby You're Much Too Cute

I guess I shoulda known by the way you propped your flower two ways that it would last. Swedes: they're not all the kinda person that believes in makin' furniture cheap, love 'em and leave 'em fast. I guess...
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What Chair Is This Bubkin-Wearing Kid Sitting On?

A Bubkin? What is it? It's a napkin with buttons that a kid can wear as a bigger bib, made by an Australian outfit named Third Drawer Down, but that's not important now. Tell me more about these plastic...
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December 13, 2007

Nanny Rockers Not Just In Wicker Anymore, Before

Master craftsman Scott Morrison describes his awesome Rocker Cradle this way: Here I updated a 1700's stlye Windsor Nanny Rocker using Sam Maloof's Classic Rocking Chair design as a basis. I wanted to add interest by creating different shapes...
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December 12, 2007

Wait, So Did He Build The Plexiglass Playhouse?

From a photo tour of a Massachusetts family's loft, which is in a converted elementary school, Apartment Therapy, March 2005:That huge cardboard tube is going to be an access route through which the kids will crawl to reach a...
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December 9, 2007

Microdorm 2: Ken Isaacs' Living Structure For Kids

In 1963, Isaacs was contacted by a University of Chicago child psychiatrist, who wanted to provide individual work/play/living/storage spaces for handicapped and disabled children in state institutions. The resulting design was two 35 5/8" plywood cubes with storage spaces...
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December 6, 2007

The Casalino Chair Is Back In Production

Susanne is reporting at Kidsmodern that Alexander Begge's awesome 1970 design for a plastic non-Panton kid's chair, the Casalino, is back in production. The Dutch manufacturer Casala is introducing it in two sizes, for kids and toddlers. Apparently, Casala...
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December 4, 2007

DT Checklist: Stuck On Some Juddy Wall Shelves

So the other kid's crib, which was originally going to be the kid's toddler bed, is inching toward conversion, and you must admit, it is rather Juddish. Given the crib and the overall minimalist [as in art] vibe, I...
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December 3, 2007

It's My Hippie Kid In A Box! Ken Isaacs' Living Structures

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Where are all the hippie visionaries when you need'em? In the 50's and 60's, designer...
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Takashi Shinozaki's Rebis Rocker And Plant's Kasten Shelves

During the Tokyo Design Week festivities, Takashi Shinozaki of Asterisk Studio debuted his Rebis Rocker, along with his 270-Degree Series of wraparound shelf and table units, at a joint exhibition called Prototypes in Minami Aoyama. The show included works...
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December 2, 2007

Is That A Cardboard Doll House I See Before Me?

I've had this 1969 Form Magazine photo of cardboard kid's furniture on my desktop all week, but I just noticed the dollhouse to the right. Ilse-Werke KG, the German company behind the furniture, leaves no trace that I can...
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December 1, 2007

Ellinor Rocking Sofa Has Heirloom Right In The Name

The Ellinor rocker is made in Sweden by Heirloom, and from the sound of it, it lives up to its name and its $1500-2000 price tag. The spare, Scandinavian modern styling is built to last for generations using dovetailed...
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November 29, 2007

Is The Ikea Trofast From Changing Table Heaven?

Erika Pekkari's Trofast cradle/crib/kid-sized sofa is one of those examples of Ikean plain pine brilliance which, because it went out of production before we ever set foot in the kid's department, was not available to those of us who...
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November 28, 2007

Tobifant: Luigi Colani's Knock-Together Activity Table

I am familiar with the work of Pablo Neruda. The work of Luigi Colani, not so much. I did think I'd ferreted out most all of the kid-related design from the online archives of the incomparable German design magazine,...
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While You Were Watching Sesame Street, Luigi Colani Reinvented The Plastic Stacking Chair Several Times

I don't know what you were up to, but somehow I doubt your 1970's were as full of design revolutionizing as Luigi Colani's. If only the 1973 oil embargo hadn't thrown the polyethylene f