To look at my furniture it’s obvious that I like Danish Modern.  When we create we can’t help but let our influences show.  Our work is a compilation of what we see and our imaginations.  Certainly as a furniture maker I’m going to be influenced by the aesthetics of the styles of the past but I’m also going to draw upon why these furniture styles can to be.

I went to The College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program, in Mendocino, CA.  The school is known for teaching a high attention to detail and balance and symmetry in design based on the work of James Krenov, Jim, as he’s known to the students.  The program is set up like a European apprentice system where students start with the basics and then make pieces under the watchful eye of the instructors.  Students must have their designs approved by Jim.  Any deviation from his design sense may be dealt with by his sharp criticism.  Rebellion is mild but highly noticed.  It’s funny to look at the pieces I made during school to know that they were controversial at the time.

Before school my influences varied from Art Nouveau to factory made mid-century modern.  I was taking in everything that caught my eye.  I was looking into the origins of Jim’s work and his teacher, Carl Malmsten.  This began my interest in the work that had been coming out of Scandinavia. Especially Danish Modern as expressed by Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl.

Early Modernism had embraced the factory as the way of the future and highlighted the status of the designer.  The founders of Danish Modern eschewed this and began building modern furniture with local craftspeople and local materials.  Being modernists they wanted the furniture to be simple and function based but made to a high level of craftsmanship.  This resonated with me and I began building my furniture with these ideas and continue to build on them.

Today, I’m looking into the work that influenced the Danish masters that I admire as they also looked to the past for inspiration.  Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese were strong influences on them.  Lately I’ve been looking at Japanese stuff and it’s making itself shown with my use of sliding doors and increased use of woven elements.  Japanese make joinery an art form.  While I like to expose my joinery I’ve been keeping it subtle.  This might change as I’m experimenting with Japanese joinery techniques.

I see my work as building on what the makers before me have done.  As I look at my current work compared to my earliest pieces I’m also building on what I have done.

When I first started to focus strictly on sustainable design five years ago, the pickings were thin when it came to green interior design books..  As in, there were exactly two books, only one of which was really any use.

Even as I watched the list of available books grow, I still considered writing one of my own, because I didn’t find anyone addressing the subject of green residential interior design the way I thought it should be.  Luckily, I never got around to it because Sunset Design Guides has just released the book I probably would have written (if I had the talent!).

Taking full advantage of Sunset Magazine’s wealth of images, author Bridget Biscotti Bradley has created an inspiring collection of sustainable design ideas and arranged them in her easy to understand book, The Green Home.  Assisted by a “design panel” made up of such green design luminaries as Eric Corey Freed, Kelly LaPlante, and Michelle Kaufman, Bradley makes a compelling case for the ease with which green design principles can be woven into any remodeling project.

Photography by Frank Gaglione

“Living green may seem difficult, expensive, and out of reach.  But when you break it down into simple solutions for each room of the house, you’ll see that it’s really not”  – Bridget Biscotti Bradley

One aspect of the book that I find particularly refreshing is the amazing array of styles and materials shown in the images.  Everything from chic and modern…

to rough and rustic.

Using the knowledge she has gained as the owner of Reclaim, an eco-home store in Menlo Park, CA, Bradley guides us through the various pros and cons of different materials and green design solutions.  The book is well organized into sections such as “Getting Started”, “Bedrooms and Nurseries”, and “Light and Comfort”.  Instead of presenting a long to-do list of changes that homeowners need to make right away, Bradley encourages the reader not to rip everything out and start over, but rather to make more conscientious choices going forward.  Almost invariably, the book hits the nail on the head when it comes to why we can, and should, design green.

This isn’t to say I didn’t have my occasional disagreement with her advice, including her recommendation to use “pure cotton” bedding because it’s sustainable, when in fact, unless cotton is organic, the amount of pesticides used to grow it are fundamentally unsustainable.  (Note: It’s been brought to my attention that the reference to “pure cotton” appears in a sidebar, and may not have been written by the author.  Bradley does go on to describe the benefits of organic cotton bedding on page 113). However, these small quibbles rarely came up, and overall the book is by far the best I’ve seen on the market.  In fact, I was GOING to give up my copy to some lucky reader, but I’ve decided to be selfish and keep it for myself.  It’s that good!

Giveaway

So here’s what I’m going to do,… I think this book is such a worthy addition to any designer or homeowner’s library, I’ve procured two additional copies to giveaway to you, dear readers.  The ways to enter are simple:

1.  Leave a comment after this post, saying what your dream green remodeling project would be.

2.  Post a link to this giveaway on your Facebook account, and then come back and leave a comment telling us you’ve done so.

3.  Find @TIRevolution on Twitter, follow us, and say hi!  Then come back and leave a comment telling us you’ve done so.

Each one is a separate entry, so don’t forget to enter them as separate comments!  That way everyone has three different ways to win!

Entries will be taken until midnight PST, Thursday, March 11th, with the winners via random selection, to be announced the following Friday.  Good luck!

So, I know it’s shades of every Academy Award nominee interview you’ve read over the last month or so, but honestly, we’re just happy to be nominated!  However, if you feel so inclined, and you love this blog, and you hope to see us do even more and cooler things with the blog – VOTE!  And tell all your friends!  Everyone who finds out about this blog and starts to read it is another person we can bring into the dialog about sustainable design.

Thanks!!!

But I really think Farrow & Ball has done a beautiful job with their new Wisteria wallpaper.  Block printing and their own eco-friendly paints are what give the paper it’s sense of depth and quality.

If pastels don’t suit your taste, no worries.  Farrow & Ball offers this paper in 20 different colorways, including this stunner…

Wisteria is part of the new Chelsea Collection, which has two other lovely prints.  All in all, Farrow & Ball has over 25 different designs, in a multitude of colorways, all made to coordinate with their full line of low and no VOC paints.

So what do you think?  A great way to dress your home in sartorial splendor, or too great grandma’s bedroom?

David: Being an independent furniture designer/maker is no easy job. Comparing artisan or locally made furniture to IKEA or the Pottery Barn is like comparing apples and oranges. I often encounter people who question and often frown upon my time consuming methods and prices. We are so used to seeing and buying furniture made by big manufacturers that it becomes hard for one to appreciate quality, hand crafted, heirloom furniture. Rather than reading a blog entry about me defending myself and my craft, I decided to have my wife write a blog about her love of artisan furniture from the perspective of an outsider who is now a big fan of artisan made furniture.

Helen: Before I met David, I had a rudimentary understanding and appreciation for furniture. To me, furniture was something you get at IKEA (if I wanted something new) or from the local thrift store (where I scavenged for 50’s style vintage furniture). Even after I met David, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the time spent on making a piece of custom furniture or the price. I would tell him that the price he charged for a beautiful, handmade chair could be used to furnish a one bedroom apartment with furniture from the local thrift store or IKEA.

After being with him for 9 years, I’ve managed to learn a great deal of information about wood and furniture. More information than I ever thought I would come to know. I now have a great appreciation for artisan made furniture and want to share with you a few reasons why I think artisan furniture is so worth it.

1. Furniture designers/makers are artists. It takes time, vision and great efforts to design and create a custom piece of furniture. I have come to admire the hard work these artisan furniture designers/makers put into the furniture they create. The subtle details, signature design elements and customization of a piece of artisan furniture is what makes them so special. These are the mark of the artist. Artisan made furniture is unique and different from mass produced furniture. Owning a piece of artisan made furniture is like owning a piece of fine art.

1. Artisan made furniture can be sustainable and locally made. Many furniture designers/makers are now creating furniture that supports the local economy and environment through sustainable practices. Artisan made furniture is also built to last.  Furniture makers expect their pieces to survive for multiple generations and to be passed down like the antiques we have today. Furniture that supports the local economy and has a low impact on the environment is ideal in today’s eco conscious world.

1. As an owner of a piece of artisan made furniture, you can actually say you know the person who made it. From the beginning of the design process to the very end of having the piece of furniture delivered to you, you have established a relationship with the furniture designer/maker. You actually know where the piece of furniture came from. It was actually hand made by someone and not a machine. Each piece is different and often has a story behind its creation. This is the beauty of custom made artisan furniture.

Now on to business…

image via Green Your Decor

First up, GreenYourDecor found some pretty pillows from Gianna that are not only organic, but Fair Trade too!

Next, some new mod wallpaper from Mod Green Pod, an old-fashioned folding bathtub, and a bed made of plumbing parts…

Image via design*sponge

Like most designers, I love perusing design*sponge, and I’m always delighted to see when they promote something green.  This week they highlighted a brand new wallpaper design from one of the first hip and trendy green design companies to hit the market, Mod Green Pod.

Image via The Steampunk Home

This turn of the century, folding bathtub seen on The Steampunk Home really amazed me.  Apparently there were once 18 different versions of this concept, complete with self-contained water heater.  My only question,… how on earth do you drain the thing?

Image via Craftzine

And speaking of steampunk, how’s this for a DIY project?  An easy to assemble, easy to disassemble bed frame made of pipe and fittings, seen on Craftzine.

Well, that’s it for this week.  Next week we welcome guest blogger David Johnson of Sidecar Furniture, review a great new green design book, look at a bunch of new products, and muse on the meaning of it all.  I can’t wait!

Some homes just blow and other just suck.

After reading your Home Performance Energy Audit Report you found your home was built too tight. Meaning, there are not enough holes in the home and there is not enough fresh air entering.

The goal of any general contractor should be to build the tightest house possible to stop air infiltration and provide the most durable and sustainable product for his or her client. On existing or traditional homes, built before energy code, it is difficult and costly to tighten a home to the point that it is too tight. (I didn’t say it can’t be done.)

The problem with a home built too tight is that now the materials, plants, showers and other things off-gassing and releasing moisture in the air have nowhere to go. This can greatly affect your health and the durability of a home. There are lawsuits currently in place because of the VOC’s found in tight Katrina FEMA trailers that were making the occupants sick. So congratulations on your new home Mr. and Mrs. Smith! I hope you don’t mind breathing toxic levels of formaldehyde and you don’t have a carbon monoxide leak.

Now you may have thought I was bashing green building materials in my earlier posts. Not the case. Recycled countertops, zero VOC products, and materials that don’t off-gas are important, but only part of the solution. They do play a large role in a healthy home, especially if the home is built tight, but still only part of the solution. A whole-house approach has to be taken to understand how the building is operating like a system and that one change in the structure can greatly affect the next.

If your home is built too tight there is a solution. In fact the new California code recently changed to address this (only for new homes). The solution is to control the amount and source of the air before it enters the building. This way it can as be filtered first. This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most common is a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) or Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV). They attach to your forced air unit and are climate specific in which type should be used. There are stand alone systems that can be installed if you have an existing home and want to do some preventative measures for IAQ.

It is better to have your home blow than suck. No pun intended. Wouldn’t you rather have your house blowing the air out of the small holes from a source you control then sucking the air from the interstitial cavities in which only the bravest contractor will venture.

Whether it’s due to a backlash against the cold, shiny surface of the ubiquitous granite countertop, or a desire for something with an old-fashioned, great-grandma’s kitchen feel, wood is really seeing a comeback as a countertop surface.

One beautiful option to achieve this look is teak.  Because of it’s density, durability and natural oil content, teak has long been the wood of choice for boats, buildings and outdoor furniture, all of which get a great deal of exposure to the elements.  It’s those same characteristics that are giving it a foothold in the modern kitchen.

Many, many years ago, teak was almost entirely harvested from old growth forests.  Nowadays, the majority of teak is grown on plantations, which is seen as a more commercially viable and environmentally preferable source.  However, not all plantation grown teak is truly eco-friendly, and it can, in some cases, cause damage to surrounding forest.

Down on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, one company has found a way to grow teak AND save the forest.  Over the last six years, Proteak has planted over 8,000 acres of reclaimed ranch land with fast growing teak, all while saving 2,000 acres of adjacent rainforest.  Overall, they estimate that every day the plantation captures the carbon emissions equivalent of 20,000 cars.  Best of all, their teak is FSC certified, which means they have met rigorous standards of forest management.

The end results are lovely to look at, like their end grain kitchen countertop above.

For those not looking to replace their entire countertop, Proteak also makes cutting boards and butcher block carts.

Do you have a wood countertop in your kitchen?  Is it teak, or some other wood?  What do you think are the pros and cons?  Please let us know in the comments below.

A home has to have good indoor air quality and be energy efficient to be green. As previously discussed, air movement plays a large role in any home. There are many signs of air movement. Some are obvious, for example we can feel a draft and we can smell unusual odors. Some are not so easy to detect unless you know what to look for, such as dust at electrical outlets, dust where the wall meets the baseboard, dust on the carpet under a closed door, dirty insulation in the attic or crawlspace, and dirty heating and cooling registers. Air carries dust, allergens, and contaminants from outside (hopefully you don’t live on a busy street), your crawlspace and your attic. All of these holes in your home can effect how comfortable you may feel, how much you spend on heating and cooling, and your health.

Don’t worry, if you’re not sure where the holes are in your home, there are trained professionals that can help.

An Energy Star Home Performance Contractor can perform an energy audit on your home and provide you with a report and solutions to your problems. One of the primary tools a Home Performance contractor uses in testing for air movement is a blower door, smoke device, and infrared camera.

The blower door works by sucking or blowing air into your home. The blower door measures how much air is passing through the fan and through the holes in your home. If you remember our balloon example, this would be the same as measuring the amount of air that is leaking through the pin holes. As the blower door is operating a HP Contractor will walk around with a device that creates non-toxic smoke and visually detect for air leakage.

Once the Home Performance Energy Audit is complete the contractor will crunch numbers to measure how leaky or tight your home is. He or she will also calculate the correct amount of air changes for your home and provide a solution to tighten the building.

Typically, an existing home built prior to 1978 is about 2 to 3 times as leaky as it should be. Most often, a HP contractor will correct the problem by air sealing all the holes in the attic, the ductwork, wall cavities, and crawlspace.

So what happens if your house is too tight, meaning there are not enough holes? Should you be worried? You betcha. Stay tuned for tomorrows post.

Judging from the colors for their EMU Re-Trouve line, I’d say so does Coalesse!  Aren’t these seats adorable?  There’s no other word for them.  With their tongue in cheek retro style, these would look at home in just about any setting.

Coalesse also has a handsome, if ghostly, take on classic living room furniture, in the EMU Ivy collection.  Created out of powder coated steel mesh, these pieces are certified SCS Indoor Advantage Gold, and use a minimum of materials in their construction.  The steel is also a minimum 31% recycled content, and is 100% recyclable.

The, ahem, “brightest” idea has to be these great EMU Ivy footstools.  They are designed with a photovoltaic panel in the top that powers 5 LEDs underneath.  With a convenient carrying strap at the side, they can be moved around anywhere you need a little light.  Brilliant!

So are you ready for Spring yet?