To recap
In case you missed them, here are a few things published this year on Ground Condition:
#15: Derelict MCM masterpiece in Berkeley, a coven of Ted Meuhling earrings
#16: RIP Pee-Wee, International Style houses in [redacted], the best dish towel
#17: Plywood storage, a trip to Oaxaca, aluminum light fixtures
#18: THE Marimekko dress, a Sheila Hicks story, Herman Miller vintage
#19: Why red-orange is everywhere, Jasper Morrison stools
#20: Reader-requested wedding registry, three NorCal design treasures
#21: TheAnti-Beige Lifestyle™️, a lost flatware pattern
#22: Guidelines for gift-giving, plastic bags, infinite visual ephemera
#23: The internet’s favorite house, love letter to High-Tech, elusive sink
Grab bag!
A few odds and ends before moving on to 2024:
Best things to search for secondhand, ongoing
Marimekko Dan River | “vintage Halston bean shaped soap dish” | “Bieffeplast desk Joe Colombo” | Fuji X-T100 | Jade Snow Wong enamel | Roland Garros vintage poster | Boda Nova dinnerware | Crylicord | Claudia Reese | Jessie Oonark lithograph | Rainer Schell stacking chair | Ikea Hestra | Nike AF-1 tote | Williwear | Pentagram Yale architecture Charles Moore poster*
Best secondhand score of 2023
Found on Noihsaf, a drop-dead gorgeous Dries Van Noten wool coat with faux fur lining… The cost to me was little more than a new COS coat, or what H&M is charging for its “Premium Selection,” aka clothing made out of actual, not-totally-synthetic materials. 😭
Highly regional vintage rabbithole
In late fall, we shot a Herman Miller campaign at the home of Steve Cabella, who owns a 1935 William Wurster house in Point Richmond. Aside from a decades-long business collecting and selling midcentury American furniture, Steve has a robust collection of ceramics, paintings, and sculpture from women artists working around the Second World War. I used on of Steve’s circa-1939 Margaret Bruton (one of Monterey’s three Bruton sisters) mosaic side tables to style one living room arrangement, but you won’t see much in the photos so I’m telling you about it now.
Best gift received
An entire run of Dwell magazine issues from my tenure there, to replace the clips that had gotten damaged last year in a garage flood (from my husband)
Best gift given
A waterproof paper tote bag… wrapped with brown Kraft paper inside… an exact simulacrum of the platonic ideal of a tote… Naoto Fukasawa is a genius.
Best furniture silhouette
Bobbin furniture is irresistible to me. For an edgier take on the bobbin—and I do mean that literally—refer to Hardwares LLC, this stool in particular.
Best party trick
Festoon everything in highly reflective metallic foil.
Brightest idea
Someone finally did it: warm and dimmable LED bulbs (first read this New York mag investigation into why LED lighting is generally so bad)
Books for kids with discerning parents
Leo Lioni’s Pezzettino (if you like artfully rendered marble and abstract identity motifs) or the Chirri & Chirra series (if you are a Japanese snack obsessive or the phrase “dring dring” sends you into childhood bike-riding ecstasy)
Best critical film analysis
Camille Okhio on the British estate in Saltburn. (For actual film analysis, I don’t read reviews, I just ask my friend Hannah.)
Best old photographer
Imogen Cunningham, whose estate has one of the best Instagram accounts around. She’s so good you might even be inspired to name your child after her! (Ahem.)
A few things to read that I like enough to pay for
A Tiny Apt | Feed Me | Puck | FOR SCALE | The Life and Errors of Molly Young | Shop Rat | Concorde—BBSP | 5 Things | In Moda Veritas | Living Small | Scope of Work
Reading
I’ve gotten through pitifully few actual books in the last few months. Not sure I’ll have any more brain capacity come January but wish me luck.
The cubicle is dead, long live the cubicle.
I dare you to find a more satisfying genre than “excellent writer pens a food diary.” Not to spoil anything, but the food diary part is really just a masquerade for a weeklong society novella.
To one-up that statement, the most satisfying genre might actually be “architecture criticism in The Paris Review.” In this case: the Sphere in Las Vegas.
If you’ve been to Kauai in the past five years, you’ve probably heard the gossip about Mark Zuckerberg’s billionaire land grab and hush-hush construction projects (or at least spied the estate’s immaculate rows of palms along the Kuhio Highway, an anomaly in the famously lush, unspoiled landscape). WIRED got into the public planning documents and you can read all about his very expensive bunker here.
Thanks for reading! May this be the only email you open before the new year.
Kelsey
Clicked about 17 things in this one...the Great Jones apartment gave me goosebumps😬. Honored to be in your reading/second-hand orbit...here’s to more beautiful plywood things in 2024!