That Was the Week That Wasn't Seven days became three this week when bokoshoko found themselves travelling across the sea to the land...
That Was the Week That Wasn't
Seven days became three this week when bokoshoko found themselves travelling across the sea to the land of fall colour, "can I get" and food portions of improbable size. There's much to like about the US but it's unfortunate that both entry and exit, certainly at Newark, consists of barely concealed hostility which are sad bookends to, despite the circumstances, a generally great experience.
New Month, New Magazines
Trying to keep up to date with current trends, searching for inspiration, identifying suppliers and getting a handle on who's who in the world of interiors is a constant background task. Most of us subscribe to at least a couple of magazines (this is an old fashioned concept where a physical collection of pictures and words are delivered at a regular interval).
We're fully "engaged" in the digital generation (this blog should be at least some evidence for that) BUT it's hard to beat sitting down, away from noise and distraction, leafing through well edited and photographed material. It's also much easier to cut out and keep pages from a magazine than from a computer screen.
If you can only choose two we'd struggle to recommend anything better than Elle Decoration and Wallpaper. We dip into others, we grab Living Etc every now and then but these are the two we'd not be without.
 |
| We only look at the pictures |
Selfie on my Selphy
We had occasion to print some images last week in the course of preparing some content for this blog (Doing the Vintage, Industrial, Warehouse light thing) and also some proof of concept work for an upcoming wallhanging.
There's lots of choice out there but really we wanted simple, simple. We don't need large print sizes; we contract that sort of work out. We don't need fast printing or printing on to weird media. Our ideal printer would be small, relatively cheap, be WiFi capable and print 6 by 4 or thereabouts.
Fortunately Canon have read our minds and as a result we find ourselves in possession of the rather fantastic Selphy CP910. This is a slightly unusual printer in a market crowded by multi-function devices using inkjet or laser technology. This does one thing (prints) and it does it using dye sublimation technology giving bright, vibrant prints that are resilient.
The only disappointment is that the printer is supplied with absolutely no media whatsoever BUT that's a small disappointment in what has already proved an excellent addition to the digital toolbox.
 |
| Sublime dye printing! |
This Week's Obsession: Size Does Matter
We're avid watchers (as we believe we mentioned before) of Grand Designs. We enjoy Kevin's presenting style and whilst the show has become inevitably formulaic over it's many years it's still capable of keeping us focused for it's one hour duration.
What it has done though has shown how, as a nation, we do seem to be terribly obsessed with the size of our houses. For the majority of the Grand Designers the formula is; build as big as possible, push to the edge of the plot, create vast open plan spaces complete with 250ms reverb.
We've plucked the example image from Lincoln Miles Architects site. We're fans of Mr. Miles and his work, with fond memories of the episode following his own personal build (which featured a burnt larch cladding we're determined to use ourselves one day).
The issue here is not his design it's the size of the thing which was driven by the clients. They wanted, no scratch that, needed it to be big. In fact big would not be good enough - very big, commercial office space size even better.
The result was a beautifully designed building which even with a 3.3 million budget exhibited some worrying detailing and what appeared to be a compromised interior fit out as the enormous size of the building consumed money at an alarming rate.
So what is this obsession with big? Is it that very English thing of our home(s) indicating some kind of social status (the Queen after all has not one but several very large properties). We're not sure we know the answer, we hear upsizing and downsizing mentioned frequently BUT isn't the real goal to "rightsize"? Perhaps for some the rightsize is a hulking great mass of house requiring intercoms to talk to ones partner whereas for others the rightsize is an Airstream caravan.
We believe the right size is the size which allows you to build a comfortable home (not the use of home rather than house) and to achieve a consistency of finish inside and outside - remember you live inside not outside.
 |
| A very big house |
- [message]
- Seven Days? You What? I mean, pardon?
- These posts give us a chance to recap on the last week at Bokoshoko and give you a glimpse of what's happening. Many of our projects take time to come to fruition or our customers would prefer we did not share so these posts also show we're not just sitting around!
