3 Videos: Celebrating Hand-Crafted Home Goods

Irwin Weiner ASID - Whenever I decorate a client's home, I always like to see one or more hand-crafted items included in a room. Handmade goods add texture and rich layering to the rest of the decor, and there's always an interesting story to tell about each piece - who made it, where it was made, what it means, and so on. I also love how no two items are exactly alike, a nice contrast to machine-made, mass-produced items.

We selected three videos today to help illustrate that there are real people behind hand-crafted goods: Mogck Pottery, RMIT Textile Design program (a weaving demonstration of technique used to make articles like the beautiful pillows shown in the top photo), and CMM Framing (custom framing work as in the second photo).

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.  

If Real Isn't an Option: Our 5 Favorite Artificial Christmas Trees

Irwin Weiner ASID - It's a blessing to support Christmas tree farmers this time of year. If you live in a part of the world outside big cities where there are local tree farms, please support them; they plant a sustainable crop and deserve to make a good living, as do we all - and there's nothing like the smell of a fresh-cut tree in the home, using the proper watering and safety precautions, of course. 

But for the many of us who live in large cities, it's increasingly dubious (I think) to support the habit of transporting cut trees into the city, and you're not buying something really fresh when you get around to making the purchase. (And they're very overpriced.)

For the past ten years, we've had a Martha Stewart Christmas Tree from K-mart, and although we feel guilty that it's a vision of plastic and petroleum-based products instead of a real farmed tree, it's held up very well and we've saved time and money over the longrun - and this tree will last for eons.

Today's featured Young House Love video shows the decorating of a Christmas tree that's exactly like ours (although ours is a bit taller). And the photos in this post show some of our favorite alternative (read: fake) Christmas trees, if that happens to be your thing. Click on each photo for more product information.

I'd love to know what your family does for a tree around the holidays; add a comment to this post and tell me how you stand in the Real vs. Fake Tree issue. Thanks, and I hope you're having a fun season!

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.  

Video Tour - Luxury Japanese Vacation Ski Home for Sale

Irwin Weiner ASID - With snow falling throughout Canada and the Midwest, my thoughts turned to skiing - which I don't do! - for some bizarre reason. And I found the perfect home tour video to go with my extreme winter sports musings. Take a tour of this lovely (inside, at least; not sure where to begin discussing that forbidding roofline) Japanese contemporary ski home in Minakami.

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.  

Modern Furniture Design with Fashion Vision from STUA

Irwin Weiner ASID - I was very taken by STUA's founder Jesus Gasca and the story he relates about his mother working for Balenciaga - "The most important element of the design is in the back." Hence, Gasca makes certain that the back of furniture items are importantly designed, particularly with chairs that are meant to be seen from all angles, as when dining or desk chairs are pushed in and viewed completely from the back.

I also like their unique take on design, being Scandinavian furniture with a Mediterranean twist, evoked by the company's headquarters in the Spanish resort town of San Sebastían. Today's video showcases STUA and Gasca's vision for the company, the thought that goes into individual furniture designs, his manufacturing process, and the all-important details that are part of successful design - part function, part beautiful sculpture. Click on each image for further product information.

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.