Product Picks: Furniture, Lighting, Fabric and Tile

So many cool products, so little time. For this month’s product picks, I got lots of lush inspiration last week when I attended the Design Bloggers Conference in Atlanta. Most notably, fashion designer Cynthia Rowley gave a keynote speech on the intersection of fashion and design. She’s just created her first line of furnishings for Hooker, which is expected to be out later this spring.

Several furniture dealers in the DC area carry the Hooker collection. Check here for the nearest one to you, and to Hooker’s blog post for more information on Cynthia’s line.

Next, we heard from Julianne Taylor, the founder of Taylor Burke Home. I first discovered her dramatic, color-drenched line of furniture, lighting and accessories at the High Point market, when I fell in love with an oversized, upholstered square ottoman in wild fabric atop a brass base. Last week, we visited her showroom at the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center to see more. Meanwhile, Julianne is KICKIN IT on Instagram, right here.

Taylor Burke doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar presence in DC, but you can purchase items from its website, right here.

When I got back from the conference, an email was waiting for me from a company called Anglepoise. Its products reminded me of Luxo Sr. and Jr., the hopping desk-lamp mascots for Pixar films. Only here, their new collection takes the desk-lamp idea and blows it all up, to forehead-slappingly cool effect:

The new collection is triple the size of the 1930’s lamp that beloved children’s author Roald Dahl used as he wrote. The Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre in England commissioned one in 2005 as a cheeky reference to the original, but demand grew to such an extent that the company is now offering the Giant series in its regular line. It will be introduced at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in May, and then will be available for purchase this June. Douglas Burton of Apartment Zero here in Arlington is a local dealer.

I’ve also been keeping an article I ripped out of my alumni magazine for The Potomac School in McLean, where I went through the ninth grade. It profiles a DC textile designer named Caryn Cramer—I was so happy to discover a fellow creative who went to my school, AND still lives locally!

Caryn paints her patterns in coffee (!) and ink before scanning them to create the repeat patterns on her textiles—that is what you see on the left, above. I adore her modern, constellation-like designs.

Moving right along, I’ve got kitchens on the brain these days as we begin an odyssey to overhaul our kitchen and make it one with our tiny dining room. Ann Sacks always has inspiring product lines, as you can see here with its latest introduction of the Modern Ribbed collection:

Continuing the kitchen theme, I was enamored with the new glass Bruk dishware by Kosta Boda. It’s a stylistic link to the village of Kosta in Smaland, Sweden, and its old glassworks factory:

We’ve got a kitchen design presentation tomorrow with Nadia Suburan of Aidan Design, who’s helping us re-imagine our new kitchen space. I can’t wait to see what she proposes for combining the kitchen and dining rooms with a contemporary, organic flair. I will keep you posted!