Beyond the Pale

by internanatomydesign

Have a look at the July edition of House and Garden, our Justine lamp is featured

amongst some beautiful nude and charcoal objects for this season’s softer spaces.

Andrea is on holiday

by meghesse

 

Andrea is with her wonderful  family in Italy, on a well deserved break. I wish I had hidden a camera in her handbag to see what they get up to (you have no idea how ridiculously entertaining this family is)!

I’ve recently come back from a holiday and already can’t wait for the next one (46 days, 12 hours to go). Thank goodness Christmas is around the corner…

Winter is here.

by ak

If I wasn’t scared of some no-swearing-on-the-big-scary-internet authority, or my mom reading this, I would use far more colourful language in describing just how cold it has been.

Which brings me to posting some items I wish I was cuddling up to this winter. I wish our very temperate South African Climate, and my less than temperate income allowed for the Purchase of 1 x Jil Sander Coat.

(Fashion people, excuse my terrible lateness of season – but I don’t care if its from last season, or the one before )

Jil Sander Winter in Beige

Jil Sander Winter in Navy

Introducing The Muse

by ak

 

The Muse

The Muse's motto

I am adding a Comrade. I will be doing so as my army of Comrades grows.

 

The Muse, is in fact, The Muse for a lot of people. She does however feel that it needs to be acknowledged that all creativity around her, is and must be as a result of her Muse-like-qualities.

You will see her surreptitiously appearing in my posts, but the reality is that all creativity stems from her, and therefore, she is my post.

The Smell of Coffee

by ak

Bean There - Interior

Spoon/ Clip contraption in my fridge

It’s just too difficult to resist. And I must give The Benefactor credit for this discovery. He was waxing lyrical about the coffee at this new little spot on 44 Stanley Ave. And I clearly recall thinking to myself “how good can it really be? It’s just coffee?”. Oh how silly I can be.

It is that good. And as the first post in My Happy Places, it damn well should be.

Ok, so the main business is actually selling coffee – Bean There is about beans and roasting them. They just happen to sell some heavenly coffees while they are at it. I like this about the whole place – “we make really good coffee, but better beans.”

This has also led me to become the biggest giver of bean related gifts around – nothing beats the feeling of handing over a bag of freshly ground coffee to an overworked comrade. The delicious smell escapes through the ventilation panel- but only enough to get your mouth watering.

Bean There is one of my happy places, because it’s well put together without being overly precious. It’s exposed industrial detailing (which pretty much comes with the territory at 44 Stanley) is not too ‘edgy’- so that you feel you need to only wear black skinny jeans with heavy set, black rimmed glasses to fit in. Unfinished timber, slick white sections, colonial timber shutters and awesome vintage pewter sugar bowls.

Some parts are new (shelving), and some parts are old (antique filing cabinets that the coffee rests on). Opposite the neatly fitted out service counters, is what looks like a vintage roaster to me – but as a bean roasting amateur’s perception, I could be very wrong. And the smell from this contraption?? It’s truly an olfactory acid trip.

And then there are the pictures of the Bean There Team’s trips to Ethiopia,Ghana and Tanzania where they organically and fairly source their beans. Which gives you just another reason to feel good about the stuff.

They also sell a small variety of coffee related gifts – I don’t really know how to operate any of those silver funny looking things. But one of the most life enhancing gifts from The Benefactor must be the spoon/clip to seal my beloved bags of hedonism.

Scale and photos in the background

Cup of coffee and accompanying bag for the week

Meeting room for rent. Pretty urban concept.

Pink Zombies

by ak

Pink Zombies in Lilliput

I am doing a series of cast bronze lights for netherwood chapel (www.netherwood.co.za) and took a trip to the foundry to check on the progress.

My items were unfortunately in a terribly unimpressive state – just the raw white moulds.

However, there were some items that were in the casting section – where the mould gets coated in this pink silicone rubber – to make the mould that will be cast. The rubber picks up all the surface details – which will be all the detailing made my the artist onto the beeswax model. Bronze casting is pretty much about positive and negative shapes – you make a negative with the silicone rubber, then you make a positive of that in wax. Then you coat that positive in a specific type of ceramic – that gives you a negative again. You fill that ceramic shell with the molten bronze. Let cool, and you have a bronze cast of the wax model, and a ceramic cast that you can use for any further additions. And i hope i got that the right way round?

Anyway, i thought these pink rubber silicone moulds looked like something out of ‘Day of the Dead’? But the pink makes them look like silly zombies.

Silicone rubber mould

Fruits of Labour

by ak

Biblical skies

Now, i am no photographer.

But I do kind of wish I was. I am, however, a pretty determined little bugger.

I needed some shots to update blueberry hill’s online catalogue – so sat in the coffee shop with Liza’s camera, and fiddled with all the buttons. Not only did i realise that cameras are amazing instruments, but that i was in a particularly lucky spot. The view changed from pretty boring and overcast, to something biblical. Then two little buck ran straight into my view finder (whilst i was squinting and complaining about the fact that i couldn’t keep one eye closed for extended periods of time).

I also got to eat everything I was busy with.

All in all, quite an idyllic afternoon.

Visitors

Blueberry Cheesecake

Blueberry goo

Blogging is for cool kids.

by ak

The coolest picture i could muster. taken by my sister.

I have been staring at my screen… which was about as blank as my brain pattern. No-one warns you about the pressures of blogging. And the possibility of worldwide ridicule!

I know blogging is a cool thing to do.  And i am, sadly, not particularly cool. But i figured that i do some cool stuff – which would ultimately culminate in a cool blog (despite my latent personal un-coolness). I also get to find cool stuff on a day to day basis. The thought of daily website updates (www.anatomydesign.co.za) is just too tedious to bear. Again – the benefits of blogging are becoming apparent. Perhaps then, not only are the cool kids cool, but they are brim-full of wisdom.

I am working on a couple of really fun projects – which i will keep you (literally) posted on. And i will attempt to prepare some deep and meaningful thoughts for tomorrow. (They take preparation).