Recycle, reuse, refine

I have surfed the net and stumbled upon some fantastic art made of waste.

Like these sculptures made of broken CD's made by the Australian artist Sean Avery, found on the website Demilked.com.

And lots of amazing insects made from old electronic components, by Julie Alice Chapell, presented on her Facebook-page and on Etsy.

Electric wire is also recycled into art, like these little trees by BarbaraCCreations on Etsy

More pictures here. 

Be well, everybody!

Sighs for the technological wonders

Someone said that if cars worked like computers, nobody would ever buy a car that randomly crashes, do not always start, have weird unexplained problems, can get viruses and other bad things that live inside it (and I am not talking about mice chewing on things under the hood of the car), or have parts that refuses to work with each other.  But that is what we get with computers.  These days, we are all also supposed to be able to figure it out ourselves, know HTML, command line code, a billion settings and options, and be able to find buttons that are hidden or staring us straight in the face but not associated with any description or text.

I have just spent more than one hour trying to fix why our little icons for 'mail this', 'recommend this', etc., wasn't showing up on our blog. This blog.  It was added by me a few years ago to the template through the 'click this button and you get it on your blog' in the Blogger settings.  But they never showed up.  So now, a few years later, I decided to see if I could fix it.  Some googling, lots of testing with suggested html code in new places, and now finally it works. 

The Blogger Help Forum didn't solve it, I found the solution in a post on another blog that had had the same issue. Such a simple thing, and just imagine how many of us that are trying to solve similar issues in our daily lives, including our daily work. 
"Why can't I import this file?" 
"Where is that command again to fix the white balance on my photo?" 
"Why did Word do THAT?" 
"How do I get rid of that?" 
"Help, I can't sign into gmail!"
"Why do I have to sign in everyday even if I click 'remember me'?"
"Why is Firefox so slow?"
"Why isn't Netflix working (again)?"
 And on and on...   Ever heard anybody complain about their cars like this?  No, me neither.

How in H*LL is anybody that knows nothing about html supposed to be able to fix something like this by themselves?  Why aren't these things foolproof?  If computers could be insured, and cause bodily harm, like cars are and can, then I bet we would have a lot better working computers.  It is pretty amazing how sensitive and breakable this system is, and I am not talking about silly buttons at the bottom of blog posts, but in general. We are pouring our work and private lives into these machines, and they are totally non-dependable.  Sure, they work most of the time.

But if you have a broken car you take it to a mechanic and he/she fixes it.   For computers, having them fixed by an expert would mean 1) at least weekly visits to a computer mechanic, 2) immense costs, and 3) sometimes things can't be fixed because of bad hardware or software.  For a car, you can usually choose not to fix something because it would not be worth the cost, but many times for computer you simply can't fix it, you are simply not given any options. 
"Sorry, you laptop monitor is broken, can't be fixed, better get a new laptop." 
"Sorry, I can't recover your harddrive data". 
And still, we have so much invested in these undependable units - photos, memories, letters, work data (a lot in my case), finances, and so on.

So, gals and guys, here is my advice:

• Back up your data. 
• Keep a data backup in a different house or building (or the computing cloud)
• Realize that everything on your computer can be gone. Anytime. 
• See the computer as a tool, not as your life.  Your life is what is going on when you eat, breath, walk, see, think... not what is stored on the computer. 

Do I follow this advice?  Yes, partly, but not well enough.  So I need to follow my advice better too. And now, you can all e-mail, Facebook, like, or tweet this post because I fixed the buttons at the bottom. (she says smiling... ).

Two lovely hotels... on either side of the Atlantic pond

I have two hotels that are my absolute favorites, and they are both alike and so dissimilar that you wonder what do these really have in common.  Neither is cheap, so save up first for a fantastic experience. So, on to the reviews and reminiscences:

The first is Sigtuna Stads Hotell in Sweden,just northwest of Stockholm, where I stayed maybe 10 years ago with PP.  It is a hotel from 1909 that has been immaculately renovated, cared for, and preserved while being updated to modern standards.  It mixes old white and unpainted wood with modern chrome and clean lines.  It is a blessing for tired eyes, and tired bodies.
      It also helps that they have the best Swedish breakfast buffet I have had in a long time.  It really impressed my husband-to-be at the time, he still talks about it. Take a visitor here from another country and they will really 'get' what Swedish breakfast is about.  Hardboiled eggs, many kinds of cold cuts, cheeses, Kalles kaviar, musli, yoghurt (several kinds), homebaked bread, real butter, jams, and on and on.  It might be changed now but I doubt it.
     Their dinners are also amazing, and all based on local, sustainable food. I have no memory of what we ate for dinner only that it was exuberant, memorable, and plainly amazing.  You sit in the old dining room and look out over Lake Mälaren, not far from the island Björkö that was one of the first Viking cities and trading places (named Birka by the vikings). In these areas history goes deep, as does the sense of nature and responsibility.
     The early 1900s components melds here effortlessly with 1950s,. 1960s, and 2010s both in design and food traditions. (Note how I left out 1970s and 1980s?  That was totally on purpose.)  I love this place and want to go back. (More photos via Google of this hotel here.  Worth googling and oogling and longing for. )


(Images borrowed from Sigtuna Stads Hotell website)


The second place is a recent discovery - Hotel Vermont, in the city of Burlington in the state of Vermont in the United States of America. Burlington sits on the eastern shore on Lake Champlain, and on the other side of the large lake is the Adirondack Mountains, blue shades in the distance on a clear day.

(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)
 Hotel Vermont is only a year or two old, so brand-new really and they have incorporated sustainable, beautiful and functional design throughout.  As much as possible they try to promote local food, local artists, and local artisans.  The soap is made locally, the mugs are from a local pottery, the artwork is local, and even if the glasses with cows on them are Italian, they are imported and sold locally in Bennington.  We know because we bought the same glasses in Vermont a few years ago, and I think they are gorgeous.
 
(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

The artwork behind the check-in desk in the lobby, a large wooden collage of reclaimed wood, has a very special story.  It was designed and constructed by Duncan Johnson by wooden pieces from destroyed houses after hurricane Irene which destroyed large parts of Vermont villages in 2011 through massive, and I mean MASSIVE, flooding.  Hundred-year-old covered bridges were washed away, people were disconnected from the world by non-existent roads for weeks, and houses filled with mud and water and fell apart. Hurricanes don't always have the worst effect along the coast, which Irene showed.
 
 (Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

But back to the hotel - our room had understated art, a very smart bathroom solution where one person can have privacy on the toilet and the other can take a shower - all arranged through frosted sliding glass doors.  There is free sparkling and mineral water in the hallways (which are very quiet!), as well as many kinds of coffee and tea.  The bed, oh the bed.  It is alike a dream sleeping in that bed.  Just perfectly soft.  Amazing pillows too.  A hotel with bad mattresses kills a good visit.  (OK, worst mattresses ever?  OTS research station in Palo Verde, Costa Rica, takes the price.  Then there is a big gap, and unfortunately Hotel Latchis in Brattleboro comes in second.  If they changed their mattresses their hotel would suddenly get 4 stars in my book - I love that art deco hotel but the hard old mattresses are killing me...).  Someone at Hotel Vermont really cares about sleep quality. Thank you!
 
(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

The breakfast is served at Juniper, a small restaurant near the well-designed bar, which in itself is a great treat.  Many local beers and other liquids there too (at the bar).  Back to breakfast, which was amazing and not too expensive.  Mushroom ragout on homebaked bread with a soft-poached egg on top, and I was in heaven.  PP had grits with a sunny-side up egg and young pea shoots, and he was in heaven too.
    A few days earlier we had paid $11 for breakfast at an inn in southern Vermont, for food that was about 5% of the value and experience of this food (moldy, uncooked, tasteless), and this food was not much more expensive.  How can that be?  "Could it be a whistlepig?" [That latter quote is a somewhat internal Vermont story, which involve groundhogs, a bike, and Whistlepig whisky, and now is a family quote here at home. Sorry, couldn't help myself. ]

(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

So, we stayed at this hotel and I failed to take any photos.  How is that possible?  I don't know. Whistlepig, maybe? :)  Actually, I didn't have any whisky, but I did have an amazing elderflower drink.  Vermont knows their elderflowers, it goes in their lemonade, beer, and even rum.

(For the record, all reviews on this blog are voluntary, and do not include ANY kind of marketing or money from any commercial companies.  It is just my own personal opinions of places where I have paid to eat, sleep, walk, think, shower, and be for a little while. Just so we are clear on that. If I win a million dollars on a lottery someday, you'll find me at either of these hotels for a little while :)   )

Shaker patterns

In 2011 we visited Hancock Shaker Museum Farm in Massachusetts, and despite it being a somewhat dreary day, we had a great time among the old-fashioned uildings and their tools and utensils.  What striked me was how in the simplicity of all their handmade things was the beauty of patterns, repeats, and just a tiny bit randomness.  Here are some examples (and more photos here):

What if.... Ponderings over technology

At work we have a copy machine that you have to sign out of when you are done, by clicking buttons on the Touch screen THREE (3) times.  First, click your name in the upper right corner, then select Log Out from the menu, then a new menu comes up asking: Are you sure you want to Log Out? and then you have to hit yes.   Isn't it amazing that something as simple as logging out is made so convoluted?  They can't blame it on safety. 
     When you drive a car and turn left, nobody stops you and wait for you to confirm once or twice that YES, INDEED, I want to turn left.  Imaging the number of accidents that would happen if you had to confirm every little action while driving a car... and response times would increase as would frustration and road rage.  What a waste of time in front of the printer.

At home we have a printer that stops working as soon as one of the colors is finished, even if there is black ink left and you only want to print in black and white.  It just won't print.  It is on strike until you have bought new, expensive color ink (or photo gloss, or whatever it might be), that you don't need for that particular print job. 
    When you drive a car, and the windshield washer fluid runs dry, the car just doesn't stop working and waiting for you to fill up more of it, regardless of where you are.  That would be inconceivable.

Sometimes when you surf the web and look at stuff, the network gets clogged, or the software slows down, and even sometimes, the program or even the computer just crashes, and you are forced to restart the computer.  
   When you drive a car, it suddenly just doesn't stop randomly or goes at tiny speed because of some outside force field or sluggish connection.  That would be pretty dangerous.

Many times you look around on the web and try to find a good restaurant so you browse their web pages, but when you go to their website you are met by 'the intro' - some awful music, slow things (usually photos) moving across the page, and you have to sit there and waste your time unless you can find the tiny semi-hidden text called 'Skip this intro'.  After that torture and time-waste is over, you can start to look for 1) opening hours, 2) address and directions, and 3) the menu.  You would think those three things are the most important information to get to your potential customers, and that at least 1 and 2 should be listed on the opening page of the home page. Oh no, you often have to guess where it is, maybe under 'Contact Us", or 'About Us', or some other non-direct heading.  And often you have to scroll down because the bottom of the page can't be seen at first sight.  For the menus, those are often under a tab, but many are hidden under headings that are tiny, and on extremely slow-loading pages (including the crashing pdf-format), or just small.
    If you drive a car, it doesn't play unwanted intro music when you start it.  It starts up, then it immediately shows you if anything is wrong with the car on the dashboard (any Check Engine light on? Doors open? No, good!).  All information is right there, ready to check out and react to.  Restaurant web pages are like Lego Men hidden in pizza dough, you can't find them or you find a little piece but you can't see the rest.

Who designs these things?  I thought designers' jobs were to make things that WORK WELL and LOOK GOOD.  The first of those things, i.e. practicality, user-friendliness, and usability is as important as that it looks great.  The funny thing is that often the companies insist that their way of doing things are for our convenience, when in reality these things cause us inconvenience, frustration, or just waste time.  Books never fail to open.  Compasses never run out of batteries. Simplicity and ease-of-use means just that, simplicity. 

Will it take 50-100 years to make the internet, printers, copiers, and computers as user-friendly and reliable as cars?  I hope not.  Of course cars break down at times, but they are far more reliable than most of our other home electronics.  I love things that work and that even if complicated, are easy to use. Don't get me started on the design of remote controls... you would think they get paid by the numbers of buttons they put on them.  How long did it take for cars to enter the phase of user-friendliness?  And maybe cars are now on their way to become less user-friendly again?  I haven't mastered the GPS in PP's car at all, because it is not at all intuitive. 

PS.  OK, you want examples of bad design offenders? Here is one...
Prune Restaurant, New York City   
You have to CLICK to enter their website.  What did they think, that you got to their website by accident and need to confirm with them that you actually want to be there?  And then click on Menu and see if you can see their partial tiny menu in a scrolling window... The prices on the lunch menu are about 4 mm tall on my screen.  That is about half as big as a black pepper corn.  Anybody that can read the ingredients on the Bloody Mary menu online ought to get a free drink, or two. Prune, shape up, and fix your website please...

I think Steve Jobs got it right in this quote:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Art, art, art...... from the capital

A little less than a year ago I was visiting Washington DC and took a few hours to visit some of the amazing museums they have here.  Here is just some quick snapshots of some great art and design I saw, for your enjoyment:

Neil Jenney's 'Coat and Coated', Corcoran Gallery.  This is a self-referential piece of art.


 John Garret's 'Mixed media', Renwick Gallery.  Metal quilting...


Darryl and Karen Arawjo's 'Nest of Fifteen' handmade baskets, Renwick Gallery.


Larry Fuente's 'Game Fish', made from toy pieces mostly, Renwick Gallery. 


'Michael James' 'Quilt #150, Rehoboth Meander', Renwick Gallery.


Stairs inside the Museum of the American Indian.


The outside of the Museum of the American Indian, designed as a sedimentary rock wall.


Window into the courtyard of Freer Gallery.

Which one is your favorite?

Philadelphia Flower Show - expectations and omissions

Yesterday my friend JL and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show, this annual, glorious, giant event of artificially designed horticultural plants and gardens. This was probably my 5th visit, and I am getting used to the feel now.

The show is divided up into three parts, broadly speaking.  The first part, where you enter the show, are giant installations focused on some theme, this year it was 'Britain, Brilliant'.  Don't ask me how Britain is brilliant, I have no idea who came up with that non-brilliant slogan.  Anyway, there was a giant Big Ben clock, the gates to Kensington or Buckingham palace, things associated to London Fog, spring bulbs, royal crowns, and red and purple.



In my humble opinion, this year's theme was a total miss.  I don't think these designers even know much about Britain.  And Britain isn't just London and its vicinities.  Where were the rolling hills, the hedgerows, the fossil-rich cliffs along the English Channel, the little tiny front gardens, where were Kew Gardens and their greenhouses, where were the amazing British botanists of times past (Hooker, to name just one).  Instead it was gold, crowns, red, and some stone castles.


The throne from the War of the Roses?

The second part are smaller installations of gardens from invited groups and companies and also a large area where amateurs bring in their best and most fantastic specimens of plant cultivars, and then compete against each other in different classes.  For example: "Best cactus", "Cymbidium orchid", 'Hanging fern", or "Miniature plant". Each category is judged and they give out awards, 1st prize, 2nd prize, etc.  It is fun to see these plants, but it is just like a dog show.  People pamper their plants, brush the hairs on the cactus, and obviously treat their plants with lots of nutrients, hormones, light or darkness, to get them to behave and look their best on their big day.


The succulent winners. 


A basket case design.
In this area are also the floral arrangements and botanical art made with pressed plants.  This year all art had to do with royalty.  I wonder how school children in the Republic of the United States feel about making a royal crown out of pressed flowers for display at an American show?  Maybe I am the only one that finds this strange?  The total obsession with royalty in this republic, in this day and age? 

The Philadelphia Horticultural Society, who are the ones that arrange this show, seems to be stuck in a previous century where ladies that had nothing better to do tended their roses and potted their geraniums.  Ok, maybe that is a bit harsh, but that is a feeling I get.  Conspicuously absent from the show (except from the commercial booths) was any displays that focused on the whole home-gardening and home-growing trend that is huge in USA right now. How to grow your own veggies, how to make your own food, how to be more sustainable, how to have gardens that can manage climate stress, storms, heaps of heavy snow in the winter, invasive species, native species, wildlife habitats, and so on.


This species is classified as an invasive species.  I doubt many knew that. 

Instead there are exhibits that are empty when it comes to ideas and messages.  Many exhibits felt like (as usual) "OK, lets put something yellow over there, and some red here, and then some rocks, and then we need something whimsical and a blue light, and some funky garden chair".  Nothing really designed.  No plants that go together.  Sarracenia next to daffodils?  Give me a break!  They would NEVER survive together, nor flower at the same time.  Everything is planted in straight rows, equally distant from each other, and it is the same plants over and over. Totally unnatural.  Where are the true designers?  Where are the people that understand plants' requirements, understand that simplicity and clear lines and naturalities are better than rainbow mess of botanical chaos?  Oh, it is so depressing.  And then the old ladies say 'oh-ah', and love it, and I think - well, this would never work in real life.


Spraypainted plants, plastic fence ties, and shredded paper.  Why?  What is the idea?  What does this mean?  It just looks ugly. It looks like spraypainted plants with plastic fence ties and shredded paper strips.


The hodgepodge table.

I have this idea that artists first come up with an idea and then the thing is how you present this idea, this message to the world.  How to you communicate via your art, communicate feelings, needs, information, thoughts...  Landscapers and horticulturalists also like to see themselves as artists of living things, they design, 'paint with flower colors', create beauty.  But the message or idea in these exhibits were totally lacking.  I have no idea what they wanted to say.  Many times there were no statement or not even a sign on who had created an exhibit either.  It just turns into a giant hodgepodge (a name that was used for one exhibit, in fact, very appropriate).

And many florists and garden designers seem to think that just throwing some glitter, neon plastic, or metallic beads into something makes it instantaneously better.  It doesn't.  It makes it look cheap. It makes it look like the designer went to Michael's craft store during their sale.

One great exception to this disappointment was Bartram's garden by the students from The Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, who always have great exhibits. They put their exhibit, about 18th century plant exchanges between England and USA, in a great historical perspective and both educated and enjoyed the viewer.  Wonderful!


The final area, in the back, are hundreds of small booths from commercial sellers of horticultural products.  From jewelry to cut flowers, deck furniture to best cutter to cut up the tree that fell in the superstorm, seed packets and bulbs, and lots of items designed with garden themes.  This area was a lot of fun, and actually, this is where the modernization is taking place. 

OK, and now over to some interesting things we saw:

Michael Michaud's Botanical Jewelry


A lamp made by puzzle-piece shaped vinyl, by Infinity Lightning.  Really cool, and comes in many colors and shapes. 


Fantastic handmade clay tiles made by pressing live plants onto the surface.  Here is a fantastically beautiful weed, a thistle. The tiles are made by Symmetry Tile Works (Epping, NH)


This was probably the most beautiful thing, a simple line of birches.  

More things we saw will come in a later blogpost on new trends in the plant world...

PS.  My husband asked me yesterday 'since you are so upset and annoyed with this show, why do you keep on going?".  Well, because there are little gems here and there, and it is good to see bad stuff so you can identify the good stuff.  And also, so I can write about it, and hope that the Philadelphia Horticultural Society at some point decide to enter real time, with real world issues, and not just live in some romantic past with princesses, perfect lawns, and rich people's gardens. There is still hope!

Would I would like to see is a theme like 'Gardening and Climate Change - Plants under the weather', or 'Urban Gardening, plants for food and soul', or at least one little installation garden that is a little bit different and unexpected.  How about a garden just in blue or white, a garden just with dead plants, a garden based on Japan, a garden that looks real and is doable, a garden for tired parents and happy kids, a garden for touching plants and smelling them (there was one like that a few years back, it was great), or simply, 'McMansion gardens for sustainability and survival' (hehe!)).

So, dear PHS members, if you read this, please do something... try to shake the dinosaur skin and pearl necklaces off your bodies and do something different.  Just inviting school kids to grow geraniums is not really doing it...  even if it is a good first step.  Oh, and invite the person that made this garden to your show.  (Wij Gardens, a must-visit)

Click on a photo to get to the photo stream with more photos. 

American Craft Council Show in Baltimore, the good stuff

It all started with that I went to the Philadelphia Craft Show about two years ago and met the quilting artist Erin Wilson, whose work I love.  PP bought a little piece of her work for me (thanks) and from there it went down hill (which is a good thing!).  We saw her work again in May in Morven in Princeton, with several new pieces, including a quilt in green, browns, and reds that I am now the happy owner of!  I look at it every day. Here is a piece of it as a taste for you all.

And now Erin was exhibiting her new work again in Baltimore, at the American Craft Council Show.  I really have been pulled into the craft world through that first visit in Philadelphia. (Well, we also went to Baltimore to feed AREA who is in art school there :)

So, the American Craft Council Show is a giant thing, with maybe a thousand selected exhibitors. Everybody that is someone in the craft's world in the US is apparently there.   Everything is small-scale, handmade, and based on craft techniques.  Not everything has to be utilitarian, but I think the idea is that it has to be built on the idea of crafts in the past.  I am not sure, and I think the Craft Council isn't really sure either, because some things that I expected to see at this show are totally lacking.  More on that later some other time.  Now on to the good stuff.

Two new amazing quilts by Erin Wilson.  The white one reminds me of winter and fog...  What do you see?

I love the felt art by Danielle Gori-Montanelli. She cuts and glues felt together as legos, licorice pieces, flowers, rocks, and all kinds of other fantastic things.  Chocolate too!

Gayla Lee's glass pieces were fascinating. 

And this photo is for EH, look a bowl with painted geraniums! The bowls are made by Sherwood Forest Design. I think this was the only painted wooden bowls I saw there.  There was plenty of turned bowls in plain wood, but not much in this 'old-country' style.

This I like!  Michael Michaud takes nature's designs, mostly botanical, and cast jewelry pieces out of them.  I own several and love them!  Actually, right now when I write this I am wearing his lilac flower ear rings.

And here is my new find!  Andrea Haffner's designs, jewelry with natural twists and turns.  She collects natural objects, mostly plants, dries them them embeddes them in resin inside small metal boxes.  It is all handmade, unique, fantastic and gorgeous.I bought one of her small pendants, a darkblue box with a tiny mussel and three pearls inside, like a piece of a moonlit beach. [images from Andrea Haffner, used with permission]

There were many more interesting things to see, but I was running out of battery in my camera.  If you want to explore some more things we liked, check out: 

 Bryan Hopkins, Functional and Dysfunctional Porcelain

Robert Woldow, glass

Deborah and Richard Bloom, obsidian windchimes

Holly Tornheim, wood carvings

Liz Alpert Fay, hooked rugs and much more

Wendy Stevens, metal handbags

Laura Baring-Gould Studios, bronze sculptures

JAK designs and their tulip scarves

The not so great stuff gets a separate blog post at some other time, maybe, maybe not.  We will see.

Stamp of the Day: Zip codes! (postnummer)

This stamp oozes 1970s in its bubbly, rainbow-colored design, don't you think?  And it is celebrating the zipcode (or reminding people to add it to their letters, or both).  I love its happiness...

A trip to nostalgia land

The Swedish Museum of Art (Nationalmuseum) in Stockholm is now closed for a several year long renovation, but we visited it one of the last weekends when it was open and I was in Stockholm.  One of the most fun exhibits was the one on functional and industrial design.  It was filled with so many items I know so well from my upbringing in Sweden, and some of them have even made it over to the US.  Here is a selection, with annotations:


When I grew up we had a Lamino chair at home, covered with gray woolskin, and it was wonderful.  I had no idea then that it was a classic bent-wood design.  The chair and its footstool is still in my mom's apartment and I sat in it just a month ago.


Swedish dishbrushes!  Once I went to a summer camp with a girl whose father had the patent on the straight line on the front that you use to scrape off hard pieces from your plates if you turn the brush around.  I bet he got a lot of money from all the dishbrushes that have been made in the last many decades.


This kind of very plastic and cheap-looking lamp was common in youth hostels and rented cabins.  I think we had one too, orange maybe, and I have a vague memory that it nearly caught on fire once, but I could be wrong.  They weren't very good lamps, but popular.


The very practical Swedish queue-system.  Used at every postoffice, bank, police station, you name it. I actually like this a lot better than standing in lines.


A classic telephone, of the type that was provided by the phone company.  Back then you couldn't buy your phone, it was provided and owned by the phone company.  I think this one was made by Ericsson for the state-owned telephone company (which is no more, it is now privatized).  These were still in use in the 2000s, but I think they are gone now, since the outlets are different now.  Oh all the times I sat and dialed the numbers on the turning dial.... You couldn't hurry it, it took its time.


This line of china is one of my favorites, and we had some at home when I grew up.  Blå eld means Blue Fire, and my sister collects this brand.


This is probably the most common object in the whole exhibit.  IKEA's table LACK, which is still being sold.  We have several here at home in the US.  IKEA furnished so many homes in Sweden, it saved our budgets and book collections (thanks for Billy!).  I didn't realize that the LACK design was over 40 years old by now.


I don't know the year of this collection of dairy containers, maybe late 1980s?  Featured here are: regular milk (3% fat), 'middle milk' (1.5% fat), light milk (0.5% fat - too watery for me), mini milk (0% fat or nearly so),  'vispgrädde' heavy cream (40% fat), and 'gräddfil' (sour creme, but runnier, 12% fat).  The containers are Tetrapak, paper with plastic on the inside.  Oh, the memories....  :)