This is a truly amazing table!
It is round, and at the press of a button, amazingly doubles its seating capacity yet remains truly circular. It stores its expansion leaves within itself so no more logging around bits of table like with many original expansion tables. Existing tables can seat six persons when small, and twelve or more when expanded. DB Fletcher is responsible for the design. Check their website for more details.
FlexibleLove™
FlexibleLove is a seat designed by Taiwanese designer Chishen Chiu. He created a patent-pending accordian-like honeycomb structure which allows the single seat to be stretched to seat up to 16 people! The seat is made from recycled paper and wood and is manufactured using existing production processes to reduce the impact for the environment.
Check the video below for the endless uses of the seat.
Posted in See how others live
Tagged FlexibleLove, green design, Honeycomb, recycled paper, recycled wood
We all have seen it, a painting of a crying (gypsy) boy. The late nineties saw a revival or at least trend of over the top kitsch and pre-gangster rap bling with religious statuettes, Alpine landscape pictures with backlighting, knitted bed spreads with gold and rose ornamented applications, fake gold chandeliers shaped like cherubs and to top it all, a picture of a gypsy woman or a crying boy.
There are several different paintings around of crying boys. Pretty much reproductions only, printed on hardboard and put in a simple wooden frame. The most common ones are portraits of boys with a morose expression and mostly a single tear running down their cheek. Often looking straight into the eyes of whoever is looking at the painting. There is no certainty that these boys were Gypsy children, but they are often linked to Romani Gypsies.
Bragolin's crying boys
The creator of this much disputed series of art was Italian painter Bruno Amadio(1911-1981), popularly known as Bragolin. Bragolin was a painter by trade and profession. Reportedly he produced the paintings in Spain after the war, selling the originals and reproductions to tourists in Venice to make a bit of extra cash. He likely sold several thousands and many more reproductions were made from the originals. This means that the boys can be found in pretty much all corners of the world, adding to the mystery of the creator. A group of fanatic fans and art enthusiasts tracked him don in the 1979 and found him to be alive and well-to-do and still painting in the city of Padova.
Bruno Amadio in 1979
The crying boys are the lead in a notorious urban legend. Bragolin was an enthusiastic fascist and socialist and made a lot of money in the 1930 painting propaganda images. He reportedly fled to Spain in the 1940’s. It was here where he first realized the commercial value of grieving children. He found his models in a local orphanage and painted around 27 different boys. Legend has it that the orphanage burned down and all 27 boys lost their lives in the fire. Their saddened souls lived on in the images of their mortal appearances. In the 1980’s, again, this is according to legend, England was shocked by a sudden increase in domestic fires. Often, the only thing surviving the flames was a painting of one of Bragolin’s crying boys. In other cases, owners would get ill, victims of bankruptcy, floods or whatever bad luck one can encounter. In Spain they even did a series of TV shows where people would demonstrate recordings of their copies sobbing and crying for their mothers often enough with drops of water dripping down the painting.
With this in mind, I might consider myself a bit of a danger seeker. Just a few weeks ago, on an evening stroll with my dog Lola, I stumbled across one of Bragolin’s boys put outside with the trash a few streets down, to be picked up the next day. Well chuffed with such a great find, I took it home, cleaned it and put it up in my upstairs loo.
I am expecting nothing, but often, at night, I hear a faint muffled cry of what seems to be a Spanish kid calling out that I forgot to flush, again.
One of Bragolin's boys in my upstairs loo
Posted in General living and fun stuff
Tagged Bragolin, Bruno Amadio, Crying Boy, Gypsy Boy, Urban Legend
LaLaland, aka Los Angeles, might strike most as a pit hole of concrete, cars, faux boobs and Chihuahuas with diamond necklaces…. Well, this pretty much is true, but Los Angeles is also home to quite a few historical and architectural landmarks. Not to mention the many natural preserves surrounding the city, and some even to be found within the city limits. The Hollywood hills for one is an area that resembles Andalusiawith lush green shrubs on dry sandy rocks in sweltering sun and a cooling ocean breeze coming in from the ocean shore a few miles away. It’s only the fog drenched views of downtown LA that give its true location away. Here, on top of a hill, risesthe majestic facade of one of Los Angeles’ main architectural gems; Castillo del Lago. If you have $15.000.000 hidden in a sock under your mattress, you might be in luck; the Castillo is reportedly going to be on the market soon……
Castillo del Lago
The legendary fortress like estate sits perched atop a hill in the Hollywood hills, overlooking Griffith Park and Lake Hollywood. The mansion was designed and built by John DeLario. This is the same guy hired in the 1920 to design the new 500-acre real estate development known as Hollywoodland. This is what the Hollywood sign spelled originally. The Castillo has views of this other Los Angeles landmark still today.
Castillo del Lago with the Hollywood sign in the back
The house reportedly boasts a mere 9 bedrooms, and 7 bathrooms. Surprisingly few for the nine stories the structure houses. It was Bugsy Siegel’s hideaway and gambling parlor in the 1930’s (there are rumored to be bullet holes in the woodwork) until police conducted a raid entering from a neighbor’s house. In the 1950s, the house was left abandoned and in a sad state of disrepair. At one point it caught fire which was believed to have been the works of vandals. After a few years, a French aristocrat with the romantic name Baron Patrick de Selys-Longchamps, dared to take a risk and bought the property. However, it was the people that bought it next that restored the house in its original glory. The owners after that sold it to Kabbalah Queen Esther aka Madonna in 1993. She made sure that is original glory was soon a distant memory turning the majestic Andalusian manor into a Barbie-on-acid fake Italian Mansion. With her decorator-turned-sister bashing book writerbrother Christopher, the house was redone to fit her needs and peculiar taste. Parts of the exterior were painted in bright red and yellow horizontal stripes and the original roof tiles were replaced with new ones. This mortified her neighbours, in particular architecture writer, real estate king and next door neighbour Crosby Doe. In a 2004 Times Online article he is quoted saying: “She wrecked it. They took the historic tiles off the roof, threw them in a dumpster and put on these Taco Bell tiles. It was one desecration after another.”
Mister Doe and his neighbours must have been pleased when Madge decided to move on and sell the place in 1996. This was not long after one of her security staff shot a deranged man trying to climb through one of the windows on the large towering walls of the property. That is maybe a catch if there is one; there’s a hiking trail directly next to the house. Seems like Madge has a thing with properties accessible by hikers actually. Her English manor Ashcombe House is haunted my not only ghosts but hikers too as it is right next to hiking trail too….
Madonna didn’t hit it large with flipping Castillo del Lago. Having bought it for about $3m, she sold it three years later for the same amount despite having spent about $500,000 on it. Joe Pytka, an advertising director, bought it from her and has owned it since.
Wonder if the current crisis has anything to do with it. I have felt more sorry for people than for mister Pytka. I think with $15.000.000 in his account he can sit out this financial hick-up very comfortably.
Home voyeurs.... a peek into homes 