Ad Categories: Home and Garden

We were sad to see Modernica close its showroom in River North earlier this year. So imagine how happy we were to hear that the store’s fiberglass chairs, bubble lights, Noguchi tables and chairs, and other modern furniture has found a home at I.D., one of our favorite home accessories stores. A manager at I.D. tells us they have a sampling of Modernica’s most popular items, but that any item can be ordered through I.D.

—JAN PARR

I got a sneak peek at the Merchandise Mart’s DreamRooms the other day. I was there to be interviewed for a video that will play on a loop at the Mart promoting the show. (Chicago Home + Garden is the media sponsor of the event.) Some of the Mart’s biggest showrooms—Holly Hunt, Donghia, Henredon—had designers showcase their wares in lovely living spaces. DreamRooms doesn’t feel as personal and eccentric as DreamHome (which features the work of individual designers who source from all over the Mart), but there’s a lot to like here. The mood of the rooms is overwhelmingly glam and sexy: rich, touchable fabrics (love the unfinished drapes in the Green room), gold- and metallic-toned colors, curvy furniture. It’s not ’til you get to the last room, an outdoor space designed by Holly Hunt, that straight, modern lines come into play. I really liked the luxe drapery fabric that gets carried over as wallcovering in the Donghia room. My favorite? The C.A.I. bedroom designed by Christopher Guy Harrison—really sexy. Check out this vanity and chair. See it April 25 through July 12.

—JAN PARR

In all my excitement over new things at the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show, I nearly forgot to mention the new Walker Zanger tile I fell for. This is Sonja’s La Fluer.

—JAN PARR

I was a bit nervous to go the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show at McCormick Place last weekend. A few years ago, I came home from the expo obsessed with a space-saving microwave/toaster by LG Electronics. I bought it, and it became a sticking point in a subsequent kitchen remodel (I wanted to save it and the designer had to jump through hoops to accommodate it). In the end, it went. I still miss it.
    This year’s show had more to love.
•I guess I have a thing for space savers. This one is a water saver, too: Caravelle’s Caroma toilet with a small sink built on top. I asked a contractor looking at it with me if he’d ever seen such a thing. “Only in prisons,” he said. (A representative for the company said only his and one other company makes them.) But the contractor loved the idea of it for a very small powder room. The water used to wash hands gets re-used to flush the toilet.
•American Range’s French door oven. With one hand both doors open, allowing the user to get up close and personal with her roast, instead of having to lean over an open door. Why didn’t someone think of this before?
•Smeg’s retrofabulous refrigerators in tons of fun colors.
•Element Design’s Eluma illuminated backsplash. It’s backsplash and undercabinet lighting in one; LED lights are hidden inside an aluminum-framed glass or acrylic backsplash.
•i.Formz by Design Studio which is made with Corian and bent, shaped, molded, and punched out any way you can imagine. The booth at K/BIS displayed some lacy cutout panels that were fantastic.

Things that scared me:
•Liquid stainless steel that you spray on an old appliance to make it look like stainless.
•The “Bloomin’ Bidet.” I refused even to get close enough to it to find out more.
•ProSun’s Sunshower, which allows you to tan as you bathe.

—JAN PARR

It was a Willy Wonka moment at the New York International Gift Fair in February that got me going. Not just my usual craving for Kookaburra licorice (have you had?) and Swedish fish, but for the delicious candy-colored glass that spotted and dotted the football fields full of new products, gadgets, and gizmos launched there. The Urchin vases and lighting from Union Street Glass, available locally at Material Possessions, stopped me cold. The “nubs” resemble vintage milk glasses, clearly gone far down the lane from any grandmotherly roots—much more modern, almost edgy. Lemon yellow…yum.  Tangerine…wow. Raspberry red…pow. Always eager to see where trends land moments and months later, a spin around Barneys New York a few weeks ago, showed me that a craving for colored glass was not missed by its buyers. (Check out the floor to ceiling celebration of the stuff!)  Then I spotted the 1930s Argentine seltzer bottles ($150 each) at Jayson Home & Garden, and I’m sold again. Feels right now to add a splash.

-BARRI LEINER

Vase photo courtesy Union Street Glass

I just got an invitation to attend a party in Milan on April 16 celebrating the launch of Diesel’s new home collection. Too bad I won’t be able to make it. I think I have lunch plans at Potbelly in the Nordstrom building that day. But, as a proud wearer of Diesel jeans (the same pair from like 1995 or something!), I thought other Diesel fans might want to know that the company is jumping on the interiors wagon. OK, now don’t rush into Diesel tomorrow expecting to buy a perfectly distressed premium-denim sofa—they’re starting with linens this fall and will gradually move into furniture, accessories, and lighting, all of which are sure to embody that company’s devastatingly hip je ne sais quoi.

—GINA BAZER

Photo courtesy Diesel

In our May/June issue you will read about one of my favorite shops, Asrai Garden in Wicker Park. But here’s a little something that landed in my InBox after we went to press. These totes from Patch NYC, available exclusively at Asrai in Chicago, will make as fun a statement thrown over your shoulder on a Sunday afternoon at the flea market as they will hanging from a hook or storing magazines in your house.

—GINA BAZER

Photo courtesy of Asrai Garden

I was over at interior designer Todd Haley’s house/design lab to interview him for a story for Chicago Home + Garden, and he showed me a terrific wall treatment he came up with for a hallway. I hesitate to call it a “treatment” because it’s more of just a novel approach to hanging artwork, but it reads almost like paneling, or wallpaper. He framed a portfolio of antique prints in identical black frames and put them up with plain-old carpet tape, butting them against each other to cover the whole wall. It’ll involve some measuring angst, but I think it’s a sharp, tailored look that freshens up what could easily seem too Merchant-Ivory drawing room.

—BRADLEY LINCOLN