Friday, August 31, 2007

Spotlight On Lighting

We received some lighting tips from Julie Johnson at Lux Lighting. There's some great information here about lighting your home interior:

To Make A Room Appear larger
  • Use wall washers on a large expanse of light colored wall
  • Use up lighting to bounce light onto the ceilings and walls
  • Create panels of light at one end of the room - your eye will be pulled toward it, making the room appear larger.
To Make Your Room Appear Taller
  • Use vertical light beams
  • Hang pendent lighting low
To Make Your Room Appear Cozy
  • Use several table lamps to create low pools of light
  • Don't allow light onto the ceiling
Julie has many more tips to share and she's in the Pearl.

Lux Lighting
1333 NW Glisan Portland, OR 97209
503-299-6754 X110 or julie@luxlights.com

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

New Products at Las Vegas

Home Furnishings Business has photos of new products at the Las Vegas show in late July.

A small Arabesque table from Global Views offers an airy feel with a hand-tooled leather top.

Hand-decorated wooden vases from Bard International appear to float on black pedestal bases. Suggested retail is $229 for the set of three.

Part of the Candice Olson collection at AF Lighting, this clever lamp features natural horn on a square base.

Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery, located in the Pearl Design Center, offers accessories from the vendors and much more!

Bev & Mike

Monday, August 27, 2007

SALI Interview Of Bev & Mike


Kathy Long of Passionate Interiors just lit up her MySpace page with an interview of Bev & Mike for Cascade Artisans Guild which is part of SALI.
Founded in 1984, the Stencil Artisans League (SALI) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the art of stenciling
Stencils include decorative painting, e.g.: faux finishes, murals and trompe l’oeil, stenciling, business and more.

We are pleased to be singled out for an interview and hope that interior designers and contractors will contact Kathy Long and her organization for some wonderful ways to decorate the walls of a home.

Passionate Interiors, LLC
11965 Northwest Kearney Street
Portland, OR 97229

(503)819-6758

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Friday, August 24, 2007

Hammary to roll out first retail display format

Thomas Russell at Furniture Today, writes that Hammary will show new contemporary collection.
Hammary Furniture is rolling out a new retail display format for a contemporary style occasional and casual dining collection.

The 40-piece Modern Hammary collection includes cocktail, end and accent tables as well as dining pieces, a low profile room divider and a sofa, chair and ottoman. Finishes are black, ash and merlot.

The group features a variety of items and price points ranging from a $179 glass top cocktail to a $1,400 two-piece home entertainment console with wine storage.

Other signature pieces include a $249 cocktail and a short profile room divider on casters that retails for $399.

Many of the items are sized to fit into smaller homes. For instance, one cocktail is 44 inches long compared with the usual 50 inches. The group also has a 36-inch round cocktail, compared to the normal 38- to 40-inch range.

“There is a real premium here on scale, function and price point,” Huff said, noting that this is the first time Hammary has launched such a merchandising concept for retailers.
Landfair Furniture is proud to carry Hammary Furniture. Come see Hammary and more at our new location in the Pearl Design Center.

Bev & Mike

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Mondrian Art

What do you make of coincidences or are there such things?

Beverly and I were talking and she used the word "Mondrian" to describe a design she had seen. I asked her for a definition because it was a totally new word to me.

From Wikipedia:
Piet Mondriaan (March 7, 1872 — d. New York City, February 1, 1944) was a Dutch painter.
His paintings exhibit a complexity that belies their apparent simplicity. He is best known for his non-representational paintings that he called "compositions", consisting of rectangular forms of red, yellow, blue, white or black, separated by black rectilinear lines. They are the result of a stylistic evolution that occurred over the course of nearly 30 years and continued beyond that point to the end of his life.
Some examples of his art:



A couple of days later, a book I'd ordered, Spook Country by William Gibson, arrived in the mail. I sat down to read it and the second paragraph of the first chapter reads in part, "They'd had one previous conversation, the one which had resulted in her flying to L.A. and checking into the Mondrian." How weird is that?

I Googled Mondrian and found pictures of this fabulous new hotel.

Morgans Hotel Group arrived in Los Angeles in 1996, with the opening of Mondrian, located on the world-famous Sunset Boulevard. Mondrian presents the consummate expression of a balancing act between apparent contradictions – entertainment and spirituality, cutting-edge style and simplicity, fantasy and reality. The hotel perfectly captures the quintessential California lifestyle by uniting its deeply rooted appreciation of the outdoors and relaxed, casual living with a pervasive sense of magic, glamour and excitement.


After drooling over the L.A. hotel, and this Scottsdale Mondrian,



I found another example of this painter's influence. Contemporary Furniture.com has this cocktail table:



Is that it or will the word "Mondrian" lead me to some other unexpected places?

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Duralee Acquires Cavalier Furniture

FURNITUREToday announces
High-end fabric source Duralee has acquired Cavalier Furniture, a 40-year-old upholstery manufacturer in Cerritos, Calif.
According to Cavalier's website, "Cavalier produces upholstered hand-tied furniture in fine fabrics and leathers of the absolute highest quality. Owned and operated by the Button family since 1964, Cavalier not only offers exceptional products, but prides itself on providing its customers with the best service in the industry."

Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery in the Pearl Design Center is proud to carry Duralee fine fabrics and furniture and look forward to having additional designs from which to choose.

Bev & Mike


Monday, August 20, 2007

Sei Amici

Six friends had dinner Wednesday night at Iorio Restaurant - Southern Italian Cuisine.

What a lovely little space on 912 SE Hawthorne Blvd. in Portland, Oregon 97214.

Michael started off with caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil and hand pulled mozzarella. Two of us had the beet salad with dolce gorgonzola and three shared organic greens and candied walnuts. We loved the salads. We brought three different red wines and corkage was $12 per bottle.

Mike and Gerry had Tagliatelle with oven roasted tomato sauce and our choice of meatballs or spicy Italian sausage. Mike preferred the meatballs and Gerry wished the tagliatelle, wide flat pasta, had a little more sauce, but the taste was wonderful. Darryl had the Duck comfit and the three ladies had grilled Alaskan Halibut, on a bed of roasted vegetables. It was like homemade goodness. Like the best chef in the world cooked it specially for us. Crispy bread was served with a summer squash spread. Delicious.

For dessert we ordered one flourless chocolate cake with crema gelato, two apple tarts with vanilla bean gelato and three old fashioned sundaes. Fine Illy coffee was served and it was hot and thick, just as if we were sitting in an outdoor cafe in Napoli.

That was one of the best dinners we've had in Portland for some time. Chef Christopher R. Thompson's signature style of southern Italian-influenced cooking is very tasty and the staff is very good. Iorio voted:

Best Italian
Audience Winner 2006

Best Date Spot
Editorial Winner 2006
Voted by Portland Citysearch

Best Romantic Restaurant 2007
Voted by AOL Cityguide

Iorio (E-Oreo) is open Tuesday through Saturday 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Call for reservations at (503) 445-4716

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

What is Blog Cabin?



Blog Cabin is DIY Network’s newest hit series, featuring popular expert hosts who pitch in to bring the Kinzel Springs retreat to life. Watch us build the cabin one blog at a time, then enter daily for a chance to win it!

From February until early April, 2007, DIY Network.com invited visitors to vote each day on 13 design areas for a future cabin to be built in the Great Smoky Mountains. Thousands decided on such areas as the floor plan, roof, countertops, even the front door. The results are here, and don’t miss a minute of the entire Blog Cabin television series, airing Thursdays at 9 pm on DIY.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Monday, August 13, 2007

High Point Market revamps Web site

The High Point Market’s Web site, highpointmarket.org, has been redesigned to improve its functionality and ease of use.
The site will include guest columns by leaders from throughout the home furnishings industry, as well as clips from the weekly “High Point Market Live” video-cast.

The market’s weekly e-newsletters will also be archived there under the “Industry Insights” tab. Site visitors can register on the home page to receive weekly updates.
If you go to the front page of The High Point Market, you will see an a column entitled Encouraging Eco-Friendly Lifestyles by Sarah Barnard ASID, an interior designer specializing in sustainable design. She and Mike are both writing about "green" furniture. See his blog at Home Accents Today entitled Is Your Furniture "Green?"

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture & Design Gallery

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Landfair Retail Focus Debuts!

Mike is excited! He has been hired to post to a blog, The Landfair Retail Focus, on the Home Accents Today website. They have asked him to post to the blog at least three times a week. They rolled out a new website and his handsome face.

appears on the front page along with his first post, Establishing My Credentials. Down girls! He is happily married for 15 years..

He invites you to surf by occasionally and grade his efforts.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture & Design Gallery





Adam Kalkin's Housing Solution

If you follow the trade deficit numbers as Mike does, you might know that the U.S. receives those big shipping containers full with consumer goods from all parts of the world, but especially Asia. The problem is, we tend to send them back empty.

Now, hat tip to by Jennifer Chait at Off Beat Homes, one architect may have found a solution. Adam Kalkin has designed the Push Button House.


The Push Button House is exactly that: it starts as a shipping container until a button is pushed, and it turns into a house. Motorized walls unfold like a flower, revealing a fully functional house, complete with refined, understated furnishings.
Take a look at Kalkins website and watch the short video: http://www.architectureandhygiene.com/main.html

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

How To Light A Room For Reading



This is sure to cause discussion at home.

Elizabeth Bettendorf has written an article entitled Bookworms, illuminate yourselves on right light.

Mike complains that there are few places in our home to read. He says it is too dark, too filled with ambience. His favorite place is the den with the TV off, but then that excludes me if I want to watch some Tivo'ed program. If he moves to the bed in the bedroom, he falls asleep. So now we have Ms Bettendorf to the rescue.
There's nothing better than a good book, and nothing worse than not enough light by which to read comfortably.
She quotes Michael Berman, a lighting designer for the California-based Lamps Plus. He says a good reading lamp should do three things:
1. Reduce peripheral shadow around the reading area to reduce eye fatigue. "You don't want shadows around the reading area because as the eye wanders off the page as you read, the eye has to adjust," he says.

2. Provide good illumination, but not too much. Never consider any bulb less than 100 watts for reading, he advises, with 150 watts being ideal.

3. Eliminate squinting. "When reading, you want a light that helps you focus on the task at hand
There are so many sizes, materials and styles of lamps. In our home we are still searching for the perfect lamps that will meet both our objectives.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery