Last night I couldn't sleep. Per usual?
Friday, April 15, 2011
Lady Ox Ponders: How can Furniture Learn from the Foodie?
Last night I couldn't sleep. Per usual?
Food Raves, or Street Meat Gussied Up For Hipsters, Is A Thing Now
So it seems that because the mainstream has continually embraced the cool things in the food industry, the cool kids have resorted to starting underground food raves. Yup, it’s come to this. The underground food raves are essentially hush-hush late-night food markets, the kind of things one would normally only see when Anthony Bourdain traipses through the late-night food markets of Southeast Asia.
Members of the gathering have few qualms about the sampling. “I want something savory and awesome,” said David McDonald, who works with Ms. Corpuz and estimates that he spends 40 percent of his income on dinners. “I want food that will put me in a coma before I go to sleep.”
Fueled by Twitter and Facebook, the phenomenon, which began in San Francisco, has now spread to other parts of the country, including Atlanta and Washington.
“When I was their age I was doing drugs and going to rock shows,” Novella Carpenter, an urban farmer and author, told the New York Times. She recently got into a spat with the City of Oakland for selling chard and other produce at a pop-up farm stand without a permit. “That’s not their culture. Their culture is food — incredible yummy-tasting food.”
All of this would be easier to stomach (har har) if these underground food markets were less about DIY cultural capital for foodies and more honest about their intentions, which essentially amounts to not wanting to pay the rising costs associated with traditional farmer’s markets.
“The small-batch economics just don’t work,” said Iso Rabins, 30, who started the San Francisco food rave back in 2009, according to the New York Times. He cites the costs for renting commercial kitchen space ($45 to $75 an hour), as well as the farmer’s market fees — business and product liability insurance (around $250), space rental ($40 to $55 a day), yearly member fees (around $110), and a health and safety permit (about $500) – as his reasons for starting this movement.
Amateur cooks around the country are pushing to have the right to sell unlicensed goods directly to consumers. So-called “cottage food” laws that allow products considered nonhazardous, like pies and cookies, exist in 18 states, with five more considering similar legislation.
It’s hard not to escape the feeling that yes, this is cool. It’s incredibly cool. It’s amateur chefs doing what they love to do in a way that’s on their own terms — even if it’s late at night when most people are asleep.
When you watch Anthony Bourdain snake his way through an over-crowded tent city of food, it’s hard not to feel like we’re missing out on that in America. The scents, the smells, the excitement, the pleasure of discovery! But it’s also hard not to get upset at the branding of this new American movement — street meat gussied up for hipster foodies — as something “underground” or “cool,” when it’s really just capitalist in nature, even if the participants refuse to acknowledge that.
[Article reposted from: http://hypervocal.com/culture/2011/food-raves-or-street-meat-gussied-up-for-hipsters-is-a-thing-now/]
Saturday, April 2, 2011
High Point Spring Market
PRESS RELEASE: April 1, 2011
Clayton Oxford Designs, a premier manufacturer and designer of sustainable home furnishings, introduces the Spring 2011 Natural Slice Collection at the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C. This collection features live-edge slab tables and desks saddled on hand-melded, custom-designed metal bases. One-of-kind cocktail, console and end tables materialize from the inventive construction of reclaimed materials like acacia, mahogany and teak. Each piece is designed by nature and crafted by hand, highlighting the distinctive organic styles and natural elements in the wood grains, knots and holes from the natural root.
With the convenience of a new 19,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown Durham, NC, Clayton Oxford Designs is bringing it all back home. Forging new relationships with local suppliers and artisans, they have increased production in North Carolina while significantly decreasing lead times, even on custom pieces.
“We’re increasing our control over the process by owning the production here in North Carolina,” says Clayton Oxford, the designer and founder. “We can make the most fantastic furniture in the world with materials right here in North Carolina in two weeks from start to finish.”
Lauren Reynolds joined our team in February 2011 as our new Director of Operations & Sales. She has breathed a fresh air of professionalism and organization into a small company of artists. With her extensive experience in event management and accounting, which she honed at New York's Bowery Presents, Lauren has built an infrastructure upon which the business can grow. Her creativity and outsider-mentality breed innovation in the furniture industry.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Clayton Oxford Designs get New Director of Operations & Sales - Lauren Reynolds
Lauren Reynolds joined our team in February 2011 and breathed a fresh air of professionalism and organization into a small company of artists.
With her extensive experience in event management and accounting, which she honed at New York's Bowery Presents, Lauren has built an infrastructure upon which the business can grow. Her creativity and outsider-mentality breed innovation in the furniture industry.
Lauren Reynolds is from Lewisville, NC. A graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in Creative Writing, Lauren's interests have led her to study screenwriting in Paris, to ski in Colorado, to surf in Nicaragua, and to follow music all over the United States.
She has spent the last three years living in New York's East Village and recently returned to her home state, North Carolina, to the town of Durham (http://www.bullcityrising.com/). She is truly music-obsessed and beautiful. Be careful! Her charm is infectious.
A warm-welcome to Lauren Reynolds, our new Director of Operations & Sales.
Meet Lauren at High Point Furniture Market (http://www.highpointmarket.org/) at our booth in Showplace (http://www.showplace-highpoint.com/) on the first floor to the right!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
HIGH POINT FURNITURE MARKET, "Welcome to My Backyard"
Hight Point Furniture Market is a market that designers can - every take a deep breath and marinate on this - AFFORD! A boot-strapping young business can pull up their lil' pick up to the dock and make it happen. New design, new faces...fresh.
Thank you High Point!
Come see Clayton Oxford Designs in the Salon in Suites at Market Square, G-7008!
Friday, April 9, 2010
JUST COOL DESKS - Marc Fish and Clayton Oxford
British furniture designer/maker Marc Fish has sent us Le Orchidee Desk he has created for the Millinery Works 21st Century Furniture exhibition in London, where nearly 100 pieces of furniture from UK designer/makers will be on display for the month of April.
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Now check out Clayton Oxford's Modern Acacia Wood Desk:
Modern Acacia Wood Dining Table
ITEM #: CO09-055
DESCRIPTION: Natural Sliced Acacia Wood Slab, mounted atop steel legs forms this organic formed Modern Dining Table / Desk.
Available in different sizes and forms, each modern teak wood table has individual characteristics, and natural style.
Each Sustainable Acacia Wood Accent Design is unique given the high quality natural materials used.
The materials are not prefabricated, but rather designed by nature, and crafted by hand. The images shown are for similar product references.
Custom designs, and sizes also available.
MEASUREMENTS:
SMALL - 41"w x 35.5"d x 29.5"h
MEDIUM - 63"w x 41"d x 29.5"h
LARGE - 75"w x 35.5"d x 29.5"
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Milan Preview: ‘RR chair’ by For Use / Numen (AT) and Clayton Oxford's Acacia Wood and Iron Chair
Posted by Nora Schmidt
The Vienna based design studio For Use / Numen will present the ‘RR chair’ one of their newest projects during this year’s Milan Design Week.
Here is what the designers explain:
“Three variations are based on Richard Riemerschmid’s ‘Musikstuhl’ from year 1899. Beside the fact that the chair is an icon of German Jugendstil, it’s construction with bold diagonal bar presents an almost perfect solution for the basic static problem of a chair. This characteristic was taken as a concept for constructional and formal exploration. Seemingly identical, each of variations has a specific form derived from the starting dominant diagonal. The final derivation is a tripod chair of a typographical level of graphic definition.”