industrial design | Life is Balance

black & blum's Flower Loop flower vase.

I recently went to the Gift Show at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City. I like to go and get inspired by some of the innovative designs that I come across. Having recently finished re-doing my apartment, I walked the show looking, not only for designs to inspire my own business, but also for ideas for those small finishing touches that might add that finish to my apartment. I found one such finishing touch from a team of two London-based designers, black & blum. Their simple philosophy is that ‘designed’ products can be made affordable without compromising quality. The products that I saw showcased were original, sometimes humorous and really beautifully designed. I bought a flower vase (see photo) that looks terrific on top of my wall unit. A perfect finishing touch to my newly designed space!

An elegant yet minimal flower vase made from free flowing steel wire. The form looks appealingly simple and unique from every angle. It can be used individually or interlinked to create a cluster. Flower Loop is inspired by the Fibonacci curve that is seen throughout nature and looks correct and balanced to the human eye.

Salad Plant

A removable water tube for easy refilling and a very high quality artificial cala lily which complements the design are included.

Another whimsical, yet functional product design of theirs that I loved is their “salad plant.” This is a pair of salad serving spoon and fork, designed to look like large blades of grass which sit in a salad dressing mixing bowl that looks like a flower pot! What fun!

These leafy salad servers stand upright in their own pot and will give life to any table setting. The pot can also be used for mixing (and serving) your salad dressing. They are also the ultimate salad decoration when stuck into the salad upright!

– melamine salad servers and pot

– 44 x 11 x 6.5cm

I have this wall clock that has hung on the wall of my kitchen for more years than I can remember. It was designed by Dietrich Lubs and made by Braun, and is so well designed in it’s simplicity, that I never even thought of replacing it. That is until one day I noticed that it was 5:00 all day long. I tried changing the batteries. But 5:00 never became 5:30. I thought maybe new batteries were bad, since they came from the fridge (I heard somewhere that they last longer in there), but I swapped out several others and still no time change. I even tried taking the clock apart to see whether there was some easy fix (yeah right, like it would be that easy!). I noticed that there are some very tiny wires that go into what must be the clock mechanism and that one of the wires seemed to be attached to nothing in particular. Ah ha! Now that I could see what was wrong, I tried to see if I could get the wire to go where I thought it should. No luck!

I really like this clock and would love to see it back up on my wall working. I can’t tell you how many times I look for the time on the blank wall where it should be. I miss my clock and would love to find a service center or someone handy who could fix it!