Decor
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When her son was born eight years ago, Vancouver-based designer Marja Koskela welcomed him with an owl-shaped, music-playing crib hanger. She wanted a way to serenade him with Braham’s lullaby that was a bit less girly than the pink music box she had growing up. Koskela knew it was a hit when her son didn’t…
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For devout foodies, scavenging through public parks and roadside ditches to pick wild, esoteric ingredients is an almost sacred ritual. Although the yields are small, the thistles, berries and greens they collect are nutrient-packed, deeply flavourful and, perhaps most importantly, not what the neighbours are eating. But gourmands aren’t the only ones out foraging. Pioneering…
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When friends and industrial designers Ian Murchison and Rohan Thakar left their jobs at Research in Motion a few years ago, they wanted to work on projects that had a more organic quality. So the Carleton grads started the Federal, an Ottawa-based studio that makes tactile, nature-friendly products such as sheep’s wool earmuffs and plywood…
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Seven years ago, Christopher Solar gave up a career as a software developer and began teaching himself the art of furniture making. After he mastered the classics, the Ottawa-based designer got creative. His Strap Bench is strung with a colourful, almost chaotic top made from seat-belt webbing (the brightly hued kind used in custom hot…
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Felt is old school. The cloth – usually made of matted, compressed wool or rayon fibres – is the stuff of granddads’ fedoras and grannies’ crafting kits. But its roots go deeper, back thousands of years, when Asiatic tribes developed the textile for clothing, blankets and to insulate their yurts. Today, many of us use…
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As a movement, surrealism is most often associated with highbrow arts like painting, literature and film (the macabre image of ants pouring out of a wounded hand, from Luis Buñuel’s seminal movie Un Chien Andalou, is as unsettling today as it would have been when it was first shown in 1929). But it also lends…
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After graduating from Sheridan College’s furniture design program this year, Tomas Rojcik has been living and working in Toronto’s slowly gentrifying Junction neighbourhood. But the rugged beauty of northern Ontario, where his family camped when he was growing up, is what captivates his imagination. His first major production piece, Pendant 45, is minimal and modern,…
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Similar to the many other ultra-buzzy, independent restaurants that have opened in Toronto over the past couple of years, Yours Truly (229 Ossington Ave.) is a closet-small room run by a 28-year-old chef and a wait staff that was all born in the ’90s. And the decor is full of salvage and not terribly practical.…
Matthew Hague 