apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Fall colors in ceramic. Edith Heath began throwing her simple, modernist bowls, cups and plates in 1948, before Sausalito became the land of cheap trinkets and stunning, tourist-obscured views. Now, Heath Ceramics have become a "Hot Product" but we love seeing them creep back into design stores, where they rightfully belong...

Patrick McKeon is the Tibor Kalman of thrift shops... Ever since Housing Works introduced the concept of "Salvation Armani" in the mid-1990s, NYC thrift shops have been drifting upmarket. At Angel Street Thrift Shop, McKeon, a soft-spoken man who did his "display" training at Bonwit Teller, has turned the merchandising of used clothes, furniture, and odd domestic artifacts into a small art form.

"I put stories together," says McKeon, who redoes the windows every two weeks and turns over the entire store inventory seasonally. Thanks to McKeon and his staff -- and a wonderful, bright location on 17th Street, a.k.a. Thrift Shop Alley -- Angel Street is perhaps the most sophisticated thrift shop in town.

Update: Angel Street Thrift Store has added a new location at 67 Guernsey Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The hours are Wed-Sat 11:00-6:00 pm and Sunday 12:00-5:00 pm.

Don't ask why, but we were in the County Clerk's office last week. Locked the bike up in front of 1 Center Street, proceeded past the security guards, into the basement, and there we were in a wonderful world of enormous leather bound books, high ceilings, and obscure, old school filing systems.

But it was Eileen McAleavey in room 109B who reminded us about the nearby Municipal Archives. "You can get old pictures of your block there," she said, and we remembered the pictures hanging on the brick wall of our mother's kitchen.

Schrager Home is closing and putting everything on sale. As a result, we are retiring their posting and replacing it with this one sans comments. If you have any more news about Schrager, please email us directly.

Schrager is selling off everything at discounts aroud 50%, with floor samples going for even great discounts. They've got modern and contemporary sofas, armoires, lighting, floor mirrors and more:

Chelsea sofa, was $1,695, now $745; Soho sectional , was $2840, now $1499; dining table with 4 chairs was $1395: now $499; Gus sectional was $2750; now $1499; Spring Street sofa was $1785:now $885.

All sales are by cash or check only. The sale starts today and runs throught the end of the month.

By conservative estimate, I've visited 30 sofa stores in the last week. It's kind of embarrassing that I only discovered Carlyle yesterday. Part of the reason is that I was steering clear of sofa beds. The weight. The metal bar. The agony. So, I was somewhat unprepared for how much I liked their stuff. Many good looking couches, all available in every possible permutation.

Carlyle, it seems, would be the Cadillac to Jennifer Convertibles Chevy.

(Note: This is an update review for DWR. First reviewed on 3.3.04)

Company chooses friendly name to soften just-out-of-reach prices. Started by the San Francisco modern furniture mafia in the late nineties, DWR is an easy modern antidote to Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel when you need one.

Specializing in classic modern designs, the once strictly-catalogue vendor now has three SIX stores in New York and is the local place to go for modern furniture staples -- sofas, beds, and an impressive selection of "seating solutions."

A typical DWR sofa will run you between $2,000 to $3,000. Look also for their handsome mirrors & the famous Eames plywood chair (pic above).

Problems? DWR is rapidly expanding to become one stop shopping for the modern design world and it has three effects:

Nostalgia has a place in home furnishing. The Apt. Therapist generally looks dimly on vintage electronics. Technology doesn't age well, and however giddy you may get as you eye the 8-track tape player at the thrift shop ("Wouldn't that be a laugh? Wouldn't I be cool?") he says it's best to move on. Clutter is your enemy.

But we propose there are exceptions to the rule, and some of them can be found at Wave L.L.C., a first rate "antique" electronics boutique on West 30th street.

This is not exactly the Deep Throat exclusive but...the web is all aflutter this morning at the upcoming Vanity Fair cover story in which Martha tells all about being on the Inside and how the uber homemaker finds house arrest "hideous." What's she been up to in her spare time? Apparently Googling up ways to lose the security bracelet. C'mon, this is a woman who can make Christmas tree ornaments out of Campbells soup cans, did they really think they could keep her down?

Another reason to move promptly to Brazil. Thanks to Todd Jatras at Wired for pointing out what is apparently the world's only rotating skyskraper. Get this: 11 floors, eleven 3,000 square foot condos, and each condo spins independently 360 degrees. Fast or slow, clockwise or counterclockwise. We're really not sure about the feng shui on this one, and worry about families bickering over the remote as it were, not to mention the possibly traumatic implications for late night trips to the bathroom. But it's refreshing to see such a willingness to take risks, such playfulness, such grand engineering style. (Dare we pray that The Donald would be so inspired before our West Side has been further wounded?) Ahem, anyway, the real story here may be the lovely Brazilian city of Curitiba, where urban planners go to samba. OHR
Photo: Nelson Kon

ApartmentTherapy.com winner goes straight to the top: Budget Living magazine announced this morning that it has hired Angela Matusik as its new Editor. Loyal readers will recall the triumph of Angela's Bright Orange Crush last March. If the woman can do that to a kitchen, imagine what she'll do to a periodical.... Matusik replaces founding editor Sarah Gray Miller who left in April. Naturally, we're re-upping our subscription. -OHR

Simply Red. Among other reasons to wish we owned a building in Manhattan is that we would be able to put a flowerbox on every window sill. The folks at 462 Sixth Avenue have done it. This week we spotted this striking display of red geraniums and couldn't stop staring.

When I was a little girl, my mom and went to Spain and were inspired by the patios filled with pots of geranium. When we returned to L.A., we covered a wall in our patio with little terra-cotta pots of red geraniums.

The first step is admitting
you have a problem. So, okay, I admit I may have the tiniest little compulsive
shopping problem. I'm not nearly as bad as, say, my dad, who visits a minimum
of three thrift stores daily and whose bedroom is so entirely invaded by terrible
fifty-cent neckties that he's taken to sleeping on the living room floor. Be
careful what you wish for: I once expressed admiration for old manual typewriters,
and he bought me thirty-six of the things. To fit in a New York apartment! But
I don't blame Dad for my problem: I blame Craig
and that
scavenger Maxwell. With all those goodies right in my browser, how can I
help but window-shop?

The trouble is, my tastes
run toward things that fit squarely in the bigger-than-a-breadbox category,
like mid-century furniture, compression pole shelving, and 72-drawer library
card catalogs. As my dear Erica
is fond of pointing out, The apartment is full. And yet I can't seem
to pass by a beautiful bargain. So I've taken to bringing bookshelves to dinner
parties in lieu of flowers, and I will befriend you if you look at all
under-furnished.

It isn't that I'm particularly
avaricious: my deadliest sin is Sloth. Besides, the root of all evil is the
love of money, not the love of vintage rosewood, right? I wonder
if the root of my craigslist compulsion isn't so much that I want to gobble
things up as that I'm pretty lousy at letting things go. The
cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe
itself--if it'll all dissolve, shouldn't we hold on and steward these
things while we still can?

For instance, though I know
a coffeepot is not a dog--I'm not that far gone yet--I want my old Krupps coffeepot
to go to a good home. He can't compete with the flashy new model we got as a
gift--it has a timer, God bless it--but he's served us faithfully for two years
now, well worth the $1 stoop sale price. Good old Mr. Krupps should go to someone
who'll respect him instead of to some Sheol of a landfill.

Aside from what is evidently
a deeply neurotic love of objects, the other main propellant of my shopping
compulsion is the odd sort of intimacy afforded by a craiglist fix. Take last
week's purchase of a pretty--and practical!--telephone table from Sunny of Crown
Heights. It couldn't have been longer than four
minutes thirty three seconds from the time I entered her crazily stuccoed
lobby to the time of my triumphant exit, table in hand, but in that time, nosy
parker that I am, I learned a lot about Sunny, enough to bet that in other circumstances
we might've been friends. I know where she works, and how much rent she pays,
and that she once had an unfortunate string of bad parking luck (as evidenced
by a festive string of red tickets pinned to the wall). She had a long low mid-century
credenza, and the sort of fiberglass shell chairs I love, and a cool light-up
globe, and some giant neon letters she'd found on the street. And a wonderful
little table with attached seat, which she no longer has a place for. But I
do.

We may come to New York
for the freedom of anonymity, but we stay for the hard-won ties of recognition.
You know you belong when the deli guy knows how you take your coffee, when the
bus driver knows your stop, when you know the best place for a bagel and the
best way to get from A to W. Sometimes the city is just a few square blocks,
but when it's enormous, we take what connections we're given, even when they're
as tenuous as wanting what someone else once wanted. So, Sunny, a toast: To
a good home. (SGH)

The safron gates are coming, and everyone is looking for a view. The top of the Met, a friend's roof, or a tenement window with you stretching through it -- feet hooked under the sofa, cold air on cheek. New York is a city of vertigo and views, and Monday is Valentine's day. We discover on NewYorkology.com that a select few will get married Monday at the top of the Empire State Building. Lovely: butterflies in the stomach, the world spreading out in front, and someone to hold your hand by the rail...

Neon art by Pacifico A. Palumbo

Repent, forgive, and file a brief.... She may be on the Inside, but Martha has figured out a way to send word during the holidays -- a post to her personal web site. "When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard to be selfish at Christmas," she says. No, the post does not contain a cassoulet recipe for 100 or instructions on how to use a jeweler's drill to transform nuts into Christmas tree ornaments, but, well, could there be something kinder and gentler going on here? "I beseech you to think about these women," she writes. "Many of them are devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family." Recipes? No. The Christmas spirit? Sure enough. So what if she also points us to her latest legal filing? A girl's got to fight for herself. Ref. Roxie Hart....

photo - reuters/shannon stapleton