Search:
| View
By Designer |
 |
| View
By Manufacturer |
|
|
|
TOTEM CONTINUES TO SHAPE THE FUTURE OF
NEW DESIGN AT NEW YORK GIFT FAIR
Totem Design Group, New York's leading showcase
for contemporary furniture design, is pleased to announce the release
of several new products at the New York Gift Fair on January 23, 2000.
These new designs advance Totem's mission to spread the appeal of contemporary
design through education and by making the work of promising young
designers and architects available and affordable.
Following the success of its desktop landscape series - the vinyl-dipped
desktop accessories designed by Karim
Rashid - Totem is expanding
the line's color
options. Rashid's designs first breached the bleak, gray world of the computer
desk last summer with pragmatic, but suggestive shapes - the "cube," the "infinity," the
plus-shaped "soul," and the trifurcated "ribbon" - in four
bold color schemes. The rubbery, but sturdy accessories exemplify what Rashid
calls his "sensually minimalistic" design sensibility as well as
Totem's desire to aestheticize quotidian experience through affordable, well-designed
objects for everyday use. The desktop accessories will now also be available
in "midnight," a black and purple color scheme that offers a sleek,
but gentle look. The desktop landscape line ranges in price form $9-$12.
With Genesi-Stella a softly illuminated sea urchin with flexible, brightly
colored spiked-Japanese designer and architect Masayo Ave sums up a prominent
trend in lighting design: advancing technology in the service of more poetically
designed fixtures. The Genesi-Stella brings the long-standing conflict
between high technology and mood creation one step closer to resolution. The
lamp is made from a new industrial material called open-celled foam, whose
qualities were closely studied for the Genesi project. Through the interaction
of light and material, Ave says, Genesi-Stella lamp will win people's
affection.
Totem is further pleased to announce that it has obtained exclusive
rights to retail products by BooKan-which
means noise in French slang. BooKan manufactures
accessories that eschew pure functionality, and bring new interpretations
to everyday objects, aiming for what they call a "smiley and
elegant design."
Totem will initially offer designs in white enameled ceramic feldspath
by BooKan designer Valérie Windeck. The PIL'UP vase collection
was created from stacked dessert pots, with no end to the variety
of shapes possible. The four
PIL'IP vases are to be interpreted as the viewer sees them - from "bamboo
shoot to totem pole, from Pisa Tower to cat's tail." The PCUP not only
abandons the conventional circular shape of cups and saucers - its saucer
also uniquely doubles as an ashtray. "It's a good example of the direction
of contemporary design in that it offers dual functionality, "says David
Shearer, Totem's founder. BooKan's ASH AWAY is a new take on the spinning
ashtray, where the ash conveniently falls out of sight through a trap door.
This makes
it advantageous for outdoor use: no flying ash at the slightest bit of wind.
|
|
