Apartment foo-nishing

[Fuuma]



Is Con-trad UHB?

Had to google this but no, UHB is basically upper middlebrow now and it is the best interior design can aspire to, let's face it this **** will never be highbrow, no matter how nice your ******* living room.

 

[Manton]

I was going by Charlie Black's definition. I think he would find the ConTrad aesthetic too nouveau and phony, insufficiently authentic and basically rootless, a failed attempt to copy and "update" the pure aesthetic.

 

[dopey]

lulz. I like the idea of assessing how a made up character would judge the aesthetic compatibility of a made-up genre with his made-up term. At least Foo is real.

Did Charlie use the Caulfield favorite "phony"? I don't recall, but he should have and I like how you (manton) did. I like your analysis, but think UHB was, ultimately, a much sadder, depressive aesthetic. The cheery bonhomie is what dooms Con-trad to NOKD.

 

[Manton]

I don't know that I agree that there was a sadness to the aesthetic. Certainly there was a sadness to Charlie's presentation, a lament about a world that he saw as dying.

 

[dopey]

I think UHB was meant to describe a culture or society (attributing an aesthetic to that culture is already a leap, but I suppose you could draw an analogue from the real world), and a key element of that culture was an awareness of its own demise and growing irrelevancy, even as it sought to preserve something of its existence. So I think the sadness is an integral part of what was being described, not just the presentation.


Yay!!! Finally, this thread can be interesting.

In any case, I think I will watch that movie again of it is still on Netflix on Demand.

 

[Bounder]



Did I ever tell you about this girl I know who was ********** of the backdoor persuasion in her parents Parisian apt and had an "accident" on the Persian rug then proceeded to blame the family dog when her parents came back and the poor beast got euthanized?

Better him than her, I suppose.

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

Who did they kill the second time around?

 

[The Thin Man]



Which? UHB dates to 1990 Con-trad dates to 2013, so I assume you mean Con-trad. But why can't UHB evolve?

While Metropolitan was filmed in 1990, Whitman has said that he was aiming for the feel of the late 1960s or early 1970s. He couldn't specify that it was set then because he didn't have the budget to afford correct period details.

 

[tove]

My husband and I actually own the rug gallery that was linked to above with "9 indicators of rug quality." Much of what's been written in this forum so far is absolutely correct. For instance, the idea that there are typically many levels of dealers in the transaction, meaning lots of opportunities for misrepresentations (out here in the midwest, we just call those "lies") is absolutely true. The closer you get to the source, the closer you're likely to get to the actual facts about origins, age, materials, etc etc.

It is also true that many commercial carpets and kilims are made by 10-year-olds and/or slaves and prisoners in sickening conditions around the world, but most notably in India, Pakistan and China. How can you know who made your carpet? Well, the fact of the matter is, you can't, unless you go to meet with your weavers personally (which we do). Most people aren't able to go QUITE that far in the pursuit of authenticity, which leaves one other option: investigate the dealers you are considering buying from. Ask hard questions. Ask for referrals. And for custom carpets, ask about HOW you would go about ordering a piece. If you've got stock numbers, and a color pallete of wools to choose from, you're a LONGGGG way from the village. There are very few of us who actually go in-country to do our buying, much less commission weavers to make our goods. When we take those trips, we go with pockets full of snippets of wool and cloth, and graph paper drawings that we've completed with our clients, that we carry to our ladies. There are no "design books" and "color palletes" to select from. Just our ideas, and the work of the artisan I hire to translate those ideas into a reality. And it is also true that, the further you get away from picking among small hanks of wool, drawing a design on graph paper, and taking a trip to the village, the worse your odds are of hiring adult women who know what they're doing and are paid a living wage, rather than slaves or children, with no idea of the craftsmanship that goes into a good carpet or kilim. Needless to say, the product an adult weaver produces is NOTHING like the garbage coming off child/slave labor looms , either. One-of-a-kind, beautiful works of art are made by artisans, not child or slave labor. And guess what? This kind of piece IS available within your price range, too. I'm not the only dealer who has them, but I can say this: I'm located a LONG way from any major metropolis, so that means when you're buying from me - or others situated like me - you're paying mostly for rug, not the overhead of running my business... which goes a long way towards explaining the fact that, though I'm located in SOuth Dakota, at least 1/2 of my clients are in New York and California. I've some interesting clients, too... at least one of whom would ring MAJOR bells for those interested i nthe world of menswear design!

Wow. Sorry to prattle on so. Obviously, you struck on a subject I care deeply about, both as a dealer and as a collector of carpets and kilims. If I can be of help in making your way through the craziness that is the rug world, please don't hesitate to contact me with any - and every - question you may have. We've made our reputation in this business by our willingness to teach as well as sell!

Best regards,

Tove Hoff Bormes

 

[dopey]



While Metropolitan was filmed in 1990, Whitman has said that he was aiming for the feel of the late 1960s or early 1970s. He couldn't specify that it was set then because he didn't have the budget to afford correct period details.

I hadn't heard that. I thought he had said he was aiming for a "no particular time at all" setting. What you say makes sense -- the look was very much what I remember from my exposure to that setting at that time (late 80s, and as a visitor rather than a native), even if the dialog was already old fashioned (e.g., Serena Slocum having 20 b.f.s sustained by letter).

 

[Manton]

Whitman has said that the idea from the film came from his first Christmas break from college when he lived that life, basically, a deb party or ball every night, then late night philsophy bull sessions. Then they all went back to school.

This would have been 1970 IIRC. it took him 20 years to make the movie.

 

[gomestar]

i love that movie

 

[Hayward]

So, is everything in a new Stickley catalog apart from the core Mission stuff ConTrad? I miss wood.

 

[dopey]



i love that movie

Still streaming on Netflix

 

[gomestar]

my parents have a ton of old Stickley stuff.