Soho Chocolate Jewelry Shop

Dedicated to the concept of de-speculation, their design for a shop in Soho for chocolate brand Xocolatti (that’s Aztec for chocolate) is a case in point. In collaboration with art director Damian Kaufman of Exit Creative, created a 150-square-foot storefront prototype for a company that’s counting on expansion in the future. A family jewelry business presents chocolate that looks like jewelry.

The 10-foot by 15-foot flagship on Prince Street grew out of a search for a solution to building a monolithic kind of space – out of chocolate boxes. A floor-to-ceiling, custom shelving system that displays 2,500 boxes designed to hold 4, 9, 16, or 24 chocolates. Some are pre-packaged, while others are empty, waiting to be filled by shoppers or owners. By stacking the containers and the boxes, the designers have sought to transform the storage component, turning the space into a display grid of graphics and patterns that change as boxes are removed. It’s a practical solution for a practical problem so they needed to make use of the entire space as a storage device. Chocolates and truffles are arranged on top of protruding boxes, like light boxes with labels, all designed by Kaufman and Exit Creative. True to the De-Spec mission, the project defines the polar opposite of generic.












Domenique Mora has established herself as a leader in the industry through innovative designs and creative solutions. Her notable skills in conceptual designs has earned her a reputation as one of the premier Interior Architectural Designers. Her work has been featured in many residential showcases and industry publications.

POPULAR POSTS

Hans Silvester Natural Fashion

Image
This magnificently produced book provides a priceless record of a unique and increasingly fragile way of life, one threatened by conflict, climate change and tourism.
The lower valley of the Omo, at the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, remains one of the wildest places in Africa. Over the course of numerous voyages to this forgotten land, Hans Silvester became fascinated by the beauty of the Surma and Mursi tribes, who share a taste for body painting and extravagant decorations borrowed from nature.
In this region of East Africa, the rivers that run through the dry savannahs are home to abundant flowers, papyrus and wild fruit trees, and this luxuriance becomes an invitation to creativity and spectacle. Within hand’s reach, a multitude of plants inspire fanciful and ephemeral self-decoration, and the Omo tribes react spontaneously: a leaf, root, seed pod or flower is quickly transformed into an accessory.
People create caps from tufts of grass or they ornament themselves with ba…
READ MORE »

Malene Birger Move and Work

Image
To redesign, rearrange and restyle favorite furniture or décor items into new spaces or even into a new room with a new purpose you will recognize some of Malene Birger pieces from life and work. Their strength is in their styling versatility and the ease with which she reinvents her space as she moves them from the desk to the bedroom, the bedside to the bathroom, the kitchen to the lounge, or a sympathetically renovated Finca to an Edwardian London flat, her favorite furniture travels everywhere like a faithful friend: From Denmark to Mallorca to London, some of the biggest pieces have now safely been returned to their roots in Copenhagen like treasured explorers to be reveled again another day. 
Malene Birger is the epitome of creativity, timelessness, and eclectic style. Whether as a fashion designer and founder of her brands, or as an interior designer, Birger's love for uncompromising design and traditional craftsmanship is in evidence everywhere. In her newest book, Move a…
READ MORE »

Aldo Rossi Architecture

Image
Aldo Rossi (born 1931), one of the most influential architects during the period 1972-1988, has accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. In 1966 Aldo Rossi published the book The Architecture of the City, which subsequently was translated into several languages and enjoyed enormous international success. Spurning the then fashionable debates on style, Aldo Rossi instead criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that with-stand the passage of time. Despite the modern movement polemics against monuments, for example. Aldo Rossi held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city.






















READ MORE »

Art Smith Jewelry

Image
Cuban-born, Brooklyn-raised Art Smith was one of the major modernist jewelers of the mid-twentieth century.  He attended Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from 1942 to 1946 where he first pursued architectural studies but eventually abandoned them to concentrate on sculpture and the manipulation of three-dimensional forms. During the early 1940's he learned jewelry making while working part-time as a crafts supervisor at the Children’s Aid Society, and through a night course at New York University. He also worked for and was influenced by Winifred Mason, an African-American jewelry designer with a store in Greenwich Village.

In 1946, Smith opened his first store, also in Greenwich Village. Inspired by surrealism, biomorphism, and primitivism, Smith’s jewelry included large scale, asymmetrical forms made from hand-hammered elements of silver, copper, or brass, sometimes combined with quartz or other colorful stones.  His jewelry explored organic shapes and both p…
READ MORE »

Ṗhotographer Helmut Newton

Image
Helmut Newton, a feckless, un-scholarly boy grew up to transform fashion photography.  Probably the most imitated and controversial fashion photographer of his time, Newton earned the nickname King of Kink as well as a fortune. “If a photographer says he is not a voyeur, he is an idiot,”  Newton once said.  His erotic and dream like images were like a peep through a key hole, spied moments of a heightened reality.
As a person, Newton was unsurprisingly complex. A bohemian and yet very pragmatic, he insisted that he was not an intellectual and did not stand for much. His sardonic humor, delight in mischief, and nonchalant sense of irony are obvious in his work. He considered America weird, exotic, and outrageous.  Though a slave to his own imagination, Newton claimed that his photographs were entirely based in reality.  He  was inspired by Film Noir, Expressionist Cinema, S & M and Surrealism. His many obsessions were rooted in his childhood, in the decadent, avant-garde capital t…
READ MORE »

Photographer Ellen Von Unwerth

Image
Ellen Von Unwerth began her career in the fashion industry as a model herself before deciding to get on the other side of the lens. She gained credibility as a photographer in the '90s when her work for GUESS jeans became popular, shooting famous models like Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova, and the late Anna Nicole Smith. von Unwerth has continued building her reputation throughout the past two decades, doing work both for top publications and independently, while also creating album art and doing private shoots for many celebrities. Her name is now one of the largest in the fashion industry and synonymous with the photographic beauty of women. The following 100 are our favorite from her vast collection.






















READ MORE »

Architect Josef Hoffmann

Image
Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian designer, architect, founder of the Vienna Secession and creator of jaw dropping marbleized jewelry that was unique and unmatched. His vintage brooches are works of art, encrusted with fabulous gems and metal. Hoffmann’s geometric forms in furniture, stone, glass and other media inspire us daily.







READ MORE »

Sculptor Henry Moore

Image
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He is best known for his abstract bronze sculptures which are located in various prominent public places. Moore is the most influential and famous sculptures of his generation.
"I really make the little idea from clay and i hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control, almost like God creating something." - Henry Moore












READ MORE »

Jean Louis Deniot Doheny Drive

Image
Jean Louis Deniot brings his inherent refinement to the interiors of the Paul R.Williams house. Deniot spent over a year restoring and renovating the 1938 house, improving and enhancing every corner of the house, located on Doheny Drive, Los Angeles. His goal was to reveal the elegant Thirties Hollywood style of the house, and not to ‘modernize’ it or reinvent it. Keeping true to the homes European aesthetic, Denoit shows off in a very subtle way that the house is located in Beverly hills and not anywhere else.



















READ MORE »

Tate Dining Room and Bar.

Image
Vicky Lau is a remarkable chef.  She was named Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2015.  The Tate Dining Room and Bar is the place where she blends her passion for the culinary arts, her design sensibilities and her inspirations created Edible Stories.  
Lau was born in Hong Kong, she came to the US when she was 15, and attended  a boarding school in Connecticut.  Afterwards, she graduated in Graphic Communications from New York and worked in an agency as a creative director.   Lau went back to Hong Kong to start up a project with her sister but it didn’t quite work out.  At that time two of her friends were applying to the Cordon Bleu in Bangkok, she joined them and stayed for nine months finishing up her grand diploma.  This set her on a path to pursuing her fascination with food as a platform for her artistic expression and creativity.  Curious about how a fine dining restaurant worked, Lau went to Cépage where she gained a strong reputation as one of Hong Kong’s rising chefs.
Lau  combin…
READ MORE »

SEARCH THIS BLOG