Friday Favorites 6/10/2011

Paula M. Bodah, Senior Editor
A little whimsy works even with the most serious furniture, as these pieces by artist Brad Reed Nelson of Board by Design attest. Nelson’s designs appeal to me because they blend traditional forms with a clean, contemporary look.

Nelson collaborated with Garner Lee Britt on the Windsorrondack rocking chair, made of walnut and powder-coated steel. Love the periwinkle-blue trim!

Photo by Tony Prikryl, courtesy of Board by Design

Nelson’s settee rocker would add a great splash of color to the porch with its bright red powder-coated steel. The seat and back are North Carolina walnut.

Photo by Tony Prikryl, courtesy of Board by Design

Cheryl Katz, Contributing Editor
Leave it to Susan Corcoran, the owner of Black Ink in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., and the website, Museum of Useful Things, to come up with the perfect gift to bring to your weekend host. The Keep Your House in Order Journal is more than just another pretty writing pad, though with its crenellated edge and refined graphics it is quite good looking. The fourteen-month, undated planner has plenty of room for lists of projects to do, books to read, movies to see and, of course, daydreams. Come to think of it, consider one for your host and one for yourself–who would give a gift they wouldn’t want to get?

Kyle Hoepner, Editor-in-Chief
Seen and coveted recently at the JMW Gallery in Boston’s Leather District: this studio pottery vase with applied designs, signed and dated 1966, by William Wyman. Wyman (1922–1980) founded Herring Run Pottery in East Weymouth, Mass., in 1953; he also taught ceramics at Drake University, the University of Maryland, and Massachusetts College of Art. JMW proprietors Mike Witt and Jim Messineo, ably assisted by Christen Goguen, preside over an assortment of evocative American Arts & Crafts furniture, woodblock prints and art pottery. I like to stop in periodically just for a whiff of that turn-of-the-previous-century air.