Elegant Animal Head Urns of Ceramic and Wood by Artist Lorien Stern

Lorien Stern comes from Ojai, a small town in Southern California. She recently received her BFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland, where she focused on ceramics, painting, claymation, screen printing, wood turning, piñatas, and egg batiking. Experimenting in various mediums, her animal urns are what caught my eye. They combine white ceramic animal heads with turned wood and are simultaneously whimsical and sophisticated. Whether used as actual cremation urns or merely objets'd'art, they are definitely unique.

“Penguin Urn” (10” x 3.5” x 3.5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2013)


“Alligator Urn” (8” x 3.5” x 3.5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2013)




“Bear Urn” (10” x 3.5” x 3.5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2013)


“Horse Urn” (10” x 3.5” x 3.5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2013)



“St. Bernard Urn” (9” x 5” x 5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2013)


“Bull Urn” (12.25” x 6.5” Ceramic and American Poplar 2010)




Lorien Stern (above) now lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. (image courtesy of Facebook)

Lorien works in has a fun series of large and small "animal heads" that you should check out at her website.

Shop her etsy store here

Temporary Monograms: IMPRINT Letter-Pressed Textiles.

IMPRINT is a collaborative concept by Sebastian Herkner and Zur Schwäbischen Jungfrau. As part of Passionswege 2013 during Vienna Design Week, German designer Sebastian Herkner found a more contemporary method of individualizing textiles and presented it in an installation: instead of needle and cotton, steam is used to stamp the initials on the fabric – which keep until the next wash.










project assistants: Robin Benito Schmid & Martin Hirth

photo at top of the post by Sam Dunne, courtesy of Core77.
all other images courtesy of Sebastian Herkner

Three New Tree Bookshelves Named Tess, Sam and Louane by Christophe Boulin.

Tess, Louane and Sam are three new open tree bookshelves and storage for children's rooms, libraries, playrooms or even offices. The Arbres Collection was designed by Christophe Boulin for MATHY BY BOLS, a Belgian company that makes adorable and functional furniture for children.



Consisting of three differently shaped and sized open tree bookshelves, the handmade MDF bookshelves are available in a variety of colors and offer a whimsical alternative to storage.

TESS:





LOUANE:




SAM:




above: Sam shown with dresser (available separately)


For more information, visit Mathy By Bols

Holiday Kaleidoscope Cards For The Luxe Project Are Both Beautiful and Beneficial.

The Luxe Project is a new initiative that teams brilliant creatives with Luxe by MOO – and helps good causes as well. Their designs will be showcased for a month, and 100% of net proceeds will go to the designer's charity of choice.




This month's design is Holiday Kaleidoscope, a collection of postcards or notecards that feature Christmas and winter iconography as stylized snowflakes or mandelas. There is a different design on every Postcard or Notecard in a pack and they are available in various colors.





Designer Armin Vit of UnderConsideration tells Mohawk Papers that "I had just finished doing this faux redesign for Brand New where I did these funny “moustache mandalas“. I really liked the process of doing them and the result, so when MOO.com asked us to do the holiday card I thought it would be a good opportunity to keep flexing that idea. I asked my wife Bryony, who does these great charming illustrations, to do as many holiday “thingies” as she could. In about eight hours she had done about 20 or 30 of these things, then I obsessively arranged them in 12 different radial configurations, which became 25 different cards."



The Holiday Kaleidoscope collections benefit Blink Now, an organization that aims to do more than just make ‘quick fix’ donations – it empowers young people to come up with and achieve lasting solutions to poverty issues in their communities.





About the Designers:


Holiday Kaleidoscope was designed by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit. Born and raised in Mexico City both are graphic designers and co-founders of UnderConsideration, each with a decade of experience in various disciplines including corporate and brand identity, annual reports, business collateral, web design and programming, packaging, as well as magazine and book design.


About Luxe Cards:


Luxe are the gold standard of paper quality at 600gsm/32pt, everyone who receives one will experience a quality and weight like no other card.

Luxe, available as Business Cards, MiniCards, and Postcards, was designed by Product Designer Paul Thorogood to be the ultimate conversation starter. With that in mind, they invented a technology called Quadplex, (entirely unique to MOO) so that Luxe cards could look as spectacular as they feel.

UnderConsideration's set of ready-made 25 Greeting Cards is on sale right now and with their quick turnaround (about three days), you can still get them in time for Christmas.

Shop The Luxe Project here