Now it’s time for home design to follow suit. At first this was just a personal obsession on my part: I had geodes as a kid, I had been missing them, and then this summer I ran into some amazing ones at a Parisian flea market that were too heavy to take home. One thing led to another, and I had trips to the Astro Gallery of Gems and obsessive eBay searches in full swing. I began seeing geodes everywhere I looked, like inside the hip new San Francisco restaurant the Corner, on a lamp by up-and-coming local designers Rich Brilliant Willing, and in the home of interior designer Ryan Korban, as shot by The Selby. I recently visited the ultra-luxe Nolita furnishings store Craig Van Den Brulle, which happened to be peppered with massive decorative mineral clusters, and I found out that a brand new in-house series of quartz crystal–adorned lamp bases have been selling out faster than the owners can make them. Finally, I sighted this lamp in the window of West Elm, which made me realize I wasn’t imagining things—crystals are where it’s at. So put a big, sparkly geode atop your Paul McCobb sideboard, or secure your row of oversized art books with cut-stone bookends. You might just feel the magic. —Monica Khemsurov

Photo by Lee Nachtigal

It’s wedged into a tiny gallery space just past the museum’s first set of ramps, and it can be viewed only from three vantage points: A narrow staircase offers a glimpse of a nose, an antechamber off the second set of galleries allows a peek at its rump, and, through an aperture in the wall, visitors can gaze into its still, vaguely menacing interior void. The piece can never be perceived as a whole and therefore must be constructed by the viewer from an accumulation of memories.

The whole effect is impressive, and if you can experience it firsthand before its de-installation on March 28, I recommend you do. (Senior curator of Asian Art Alexandra Munroe rightly calls it “psychologically weird and wonderful.”) I wondered for a moment, however, what effect the piece would have had if it had been rendered in another material. Kapoor says he considered fiberglass and other alloys before settling on self-supporting weathered steel, and the rusty finish certainly adds to the mystery of the piece. It looks like a shipping container from outer space that for years sat baking in the Martian sun before touching down this week at 89th Street and 5th Avenue.

Cor-Ten tends to do that. Its burnished glow imbues pieces with a sense of history right off the shelf, which is perhaps why it’s proved so popular with sculptors for so many years. That readymade vintage quality is also what makes it feel like a material for our times, like it ought to soon start showing up in the haunts and homes of the New Antiquarians. And who knows? Maybe it will. Until then, here is a small sampling of its best recent applications.

1. Of all the Richard Serra Cor-Ten masterpieces—the 400-ton waves in the gravelly basin of Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the rolled-steel ellipses inside Dia:Beacon—I confess my preference for the one that has stood in the downtown of my hometown, St. Louis, since 2000. Named Joe for Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Serra’s late friend and supporter, the massive spiraling structure stands vying for attention in a courtyard shared by Tadao Ando’s Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Brad Cloepfil’s Contemporary Art Museum. Serra wins.

2. Conceived for 2007’s London Design Festival by Brit design duo BarberOsgerby, the 1.3-ton Fluke was installed in the courtyard of the Old Royal Naval College in London’s Greenwich neighborhood. The shape was meant to recall the lobe of a whale’s tail, and the rusty old anchor look of the steel pays homage to Greenwich’s nautical past.

3. Not to be outdone by fellow London-based eponymous duos, Fredrikson Stallard created Portrait, a temporary installation in the front yard of London’s Somerset House during 2008’s London Design Festival. Thin cuts in the metal are meant to mimic woodgrain; at night, the structure was lit from within, making the steel structure seem to vanish.

4. When wedding guests go off-registry, the results can be disastrous. In my case, coworkers chipped in and delivered a table-sized version of Alexander Taylor’s bent-steel Fold lamp for Established & Sons, in the happiest shade of yellow. The only thing that might have pleased me more is this limited—and very expensive—patinated edition, released in 2006.

5. The use of Cor-Ten steel in architecture dates as far back as 1964, when Eero Saarinen completed his John Deere World Headquarters in Moline, Illinois. This February, Ron Arad will continue the tradition when his first architectural build, the Design Museum Holon, opens in Tel Aviv. Arad created a hollow spiral from five ribbons of Cor-Ten steel, each aged to a different patina.

To continue geeking out over Cor-Ten steel, check out this Flickr feed!

Kapoor photo by Mathias Schormann

This kind of lament—that things are too over-designed, that no typology can ever leave well enough alone—is nothing new. Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa’s traveling Super Normal exhibition has made a point of celebrating those products that don’t work too hard to be noticed, and yet perform their functions in a rather spectacular way. And yet retail shelves continue to be filled with products that clearly have some other agenda.

For me, the tipping point was toothbrushes. At a preview for Design Within Reach’s Tools for Living collection this spring, I had an epiphany in the bathroom. Resting serenely on a Hinoki soap dish was a plain black toothbrush. There was no rubberized grip, no angled head, no disappearing pigment to let you know your bristles might be ready for the bin. I wondered if it was some obscure brand DWR’s buyers had sourced from Tokyo. In fact, the brush was from Rite Aid.

I became obsessed with finding this toothbrush. In some ways, it was my attempt to get away from those overly fussy, souped-up housewares, just as I’ve abandoned foldable colanders with gussets and seams in favor of the perforated aluminum ones I remember from my childhood. But something else occurred to me as I browsed the oral-care section—that one trait designers often focus on to the exclusion of all other design considerations is whether or not a product is ergonomic. As I thought about it, I became outraged that those ugly Oral-Bs had inched out my perfectly designed Rite-Aids in the public favor. Had there really been cases of nerve damage reported from gripping a brush incorrectly? I already had seven cavities. Would I incur more from not having an angled head? Is “ergonomic” always better, or is the trend experiencing something like greenwashing? Was it actually okay to say no to ergonomics?

There are really two problems here. One is that for many products, ergonomics have become less of a design solution than an aesthetic. Yes, Oxo’s Good Grips were initially intended to help the elderly and the disabled, but copycat products abound, sporting those same thick handles—but minus the human-centered research that backed the originals. Oxo itself has deployed the look across a whole range of products that don’t really need it. As with the Oral-Bs, consumers buy into the look without questioning whether they themselves need it and whether there was anything wrong with the products they knew and loved until now.

The second problem is that ergonomics are often an excuse for really bad design.

Which brings us back to the kettles. Rawsthorn was so dispirited by the selection that she opted to take her old Dualit in for a refurbish. With toothbrushes, the answer is a bit easier if you just know where to look, and if you know when to say no.—Jill Singer

We swooned over Barber Osgerby’s stunning Lanterne Marine vases for the Italian glassmaker Venini (top right), handmade in the company’s Murano workshops and inspired by the lamps hanging from boats in that island’s lagoon. But luckily, because their $7,900 price tags were kind of stratospheric, we discovered a budget version of sorts.

Diesel’s Cage lamps, designed in partnership with Foscarini (below right), come in table, floor, and suspended versions and will only set you back $472 to $1,378. Of course, there’s more to love than the price; we’re impressed in general with how nice Diesel’s first go at making furniture has turned out, and the lamps are no exception. They’re now for sale in the U.S., though if you’re really on a budget, you may just want to head to CB2 instead.
— Monica Khemsurov

Last fall, during our trip to the Habitat furniture fair in Valencia, Spain, Jill and I had the honor of having tea with the Valencia-born graphic designer Javier Mariscal—for no less than three hours. While we sipped chamomile in the lobby of the Westin, he regaled us with long, detailed stories from his past: of hedonistic drug use, of summering with Ron Arad’s family, of staying in Spain after the fall of Franco to help rebuild the creative scene, of how he’d always dreamed of being a rock star. The two of us couldn’t get a word in edgewise, but in our minds we declared him the Spanish Woody Allen—rumpled, eccentric, charmingly self-deprecating—and we wondered whether he volunteered the seemingly intimate details of his private life to just anyone, or if it was something about the reverent twinkle in our eyes.

Mariscal is by no means a household name in America, and yet we felt very acutely that we were in the presence of a legend. He designed Cobi, the massively profitable 1992 Olympics mascot, and the graphic identity for Barcelona. In 1973 he helped create Spain’s first underground comic, which was promptly confiscated by the regime, and in 1981 he was part of the legendary Memphis exhibition in Milan. When we arrived for our meeting with him in Valencia and found no one was there to greet us (the 59-year-old designer hadn’t yet roused himself from bed), we asked the nondescript young woman at the front desk to ring Mariscal’s room. She broke into a shy smile: I know who this Mariscal is, she said. What American designer would cause a hotel employee to swoon like that? (And please don’t say Karim Rashid.)

Considering the renaissance Mariscal is in the midst of, his mainstream recognition may soon spread well beyond the borders of his home country. Following the opening of his first H&M store interior last fall, he has a monograph coming out from Phaidon and an animated feature film in the works. And last week, London’s Design Museum opened the major Mariscal retrospective “Drawing Life,” replete with his signature 2-D doodles, messy illustrated typography, New Yorker covers, Camper collabs, goofy kids furniture for Magis, and a custom mural on the exterior of the museum.

Granted, if you’re not already a fan and/or haven’t experienced his raffish charm in person, there’s a chance you might find his aesthetic a wee bit dated. But still, know that the man is a genius. And after all, one could say the same for Annie Hall, right? — Monica Khemsurov

It’s hard to judge the merits of Modern, Brant’s new design and decorative arts launch, now that the extent to which the company is floundering has been laid bare. On the other hand, the current scandal does wonders to clarify why Modern is such an odd little magazine. The magazine’s mission, as put forth by Gregory Cerio in his editor’s letter, is “to approach vintage and contemporary decorative arts from a variety of vantage points” and “to speak to both those who are well versed in design and those who are newcomers to it.” The magazine does the former quite ably, and the latter a bit less so, but for all the forward thinking its name implies, Modern seems in spirit and in form fastidiously retro.

Starting with the logo. Imagine if someone took Fortune magazine’s masthead, rounded the serifs, and over-kerned it within an inch of its life. Add superfluous drop shadow. Lop off the top bits. The result? Fussy, and not at all “modern”. (The problem with titling your publication with an adjective? The resulting magazine has the burden of proving its claim in a way that, say, Wallpaper never will.)

Inside the design is similarly dated (a whole section of the feature well, devoted to “Modernism in the Motor City,” could actually pass for a 1950s auto pamphlet). Such details detract from some good content—a dissection of particularly high-selling lots from recent auctions, a gallery of favorite items by leading decorative arts collectors—though there are snoozers to be sure.

The main problem with Modern is that it doesn’t feel rooted in the here and now the way that sister mag Art in America—or even competitor Art + Auction—does. There’s no news to speak of nor any indication that the magazine would launch during—and be widely distributed at—Design Miami Basel, one of the year’s most important fairs. The magazine is a quarterly, so the omission of news is understandable, but combined with some not-so-fresh content, this unidentifiable place in time drags the magazine down.

The best articles, and the ones that should inform future issues, are the ones that actually dip into design and the 21th century. (A look at downtown New York gallery R 20th Century’s move from purely vintage into 21st century dealing and artist relations is the best of the lot). If Modern intends to stake its claim in an already crowded publishing landscape, it would do well to serve its core while also reaching out to a new generation of design lovers like myself, who—albeit with a major and unexpected cash influx—could become the next generation of collectors. To create more of a balance between those articles and the “this is why French antiques are super-hot now” pieces that are a dime a dozen in these types of magazines would give the magazine a stronger point of view—and a much-needed injection of “modern.” — Jill Singer