Relax and Enjoy the Soft Caress of the Fun Fur

...1970s equivalent of today’s ubiquitous live edge river table. Driftwood was mandatory prior to 1980. At the very least you had a driftwood coffee table. Only the upper crust had a driftwood throne like this one. Who knew you could make a kid burrito with 70s fiber art? I do like the idea of sleepable art. This kid, however, looks terrified and/or trapped in her 70s sculptural play environment. Someone please suggest the right prog rock concept al...

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Make Your Own Furniture

...h! Now for some more advanced manuals that will require a proper woodshop: Arts and Crafts The ugly truth is that, while I admire 70s furniture manuals from afar, I much prefer Arts and Crafts era furniture which, unfortunately, requires a more substantial investment in tools and training. But there’s one thing this style of furniture has in common with the 70s stuff above. Gustav Stickley encouraged his readers in his magazine The Craftsman to ro...

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William Morris is the Marie Kondo We Need

...my mind her more thoughtful predecessor, the Victorian poet, designer and artist William Morris. An address Morris delivered in 1884, entitled Art and Socialism has a hint of Kondo’s decluttering impulse but a much deeper and less individualized understanding of the meanings of the objects that clutter our lives. Kondo asks us to consider if an object “sparks joy.” Morris, on the other hand, asks more systemic questions: Who are the workers behin...

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