Friday Favorites 12/30/2011

Stacy Kunstel, Homes Editor
Nothing rings in the New Year like some great table bling. I spied this Pampaloni “Troia†champagne bucket on the Bergdorf Goodman blog just before the holidays and imagined how it would add to the festive atmosphere of the evening. Of course a gorgeous champagne bucket couldn’t be enough to keep you in on New Year’s Eve–unless it was filled with the right bottles.

Photo courtesy of Bergdorf Goodman

Debbie Hagan, Managing Editor
I’m crossing my fingers that next week we’ll have snow…and that snow will turn to ice. Then we will finally hear the Ice Chimes on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Photos courtesy of Moskow Linn Architects

Keith Moskow and Robert Linn, principals in Boston’s firm Moskow Linn Architects, designed the twenty-foot sculpture and unveiled it on a blustery night in early December that promised snow. No such luck. In fact, the weather has been rather balmy until the past day or so, and it takes actual snow to make this giant music box work.

Inspired by the Big Hammock, a gigantic woven swing installed in 2010 on the Greenway, the architects pondered just what they could do that would be fun, interactive and showcase an infamous and yet beautiful side of Boston: its snow and ice.

Thus, the architects worked with builders Payne Bouchier and structural engineers Siegel Associates to create a large wooden kinetic structure that would use Boston’s snow (usually quite plentiful this time of year) and convert it into chimes made of ice.

The mechanics are simple, but fascinating. The wide canopy along the top collects snow. Nuheat cables heat the snow, causing it to melt and drip onto long copper rods, where the water refreezes and forms icicles. The wind blows, causing the icicles to strike other icicles and copper rods, then they fall onto a metal sheet below, creating a symphony of sound…of sorts. But no music plays until the snow hits the canopy.

Though New Englanders aren’t known to pray for snow, there are a few of us doing just that, looking to sky and waiting for this sleek, well-crafted instrument to launch into its winter serenade. Ice Chimes is located near Rowes Wharf,  between East India Row and High Street, on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. It will remain up through April.

Jared Ainscough, Assistant Art Director
My post this week got me to thinking about furniture design and where inspiration comes from. A few weeks back Karin Lidbeck Brent posted about the launch of Mar Silver’s Plunk Collection of furniture. Reading the post and looking over her work prompted me to consider an old concept: if you can’t find it, make it. It’s funny, but most people don’t think that way. Luckily Mar Silver isn’t most people. If she can’t find the perfect piece, she simply dreams it up and has it fabricated. This process of designing furniture might also have been born from necessity: Mar’s taste and style is so precise and striking, I doubt she could ever find any pieces quite like the ones she makes. The piece that particularly caught my attention was this gray wooden tabletop, floating on smoky glass panes–another great example of an amazing concept, perfectly articulated.

Photo courtesy of Mar Silver