Weird and Ugly animals on Planet.

Weird Collection of Furniture

Haillard brings the design and the baroque ideas together with astonishing mastery of inspiration. The elements that compose Haillard’s furniture have been collecting for years, the fruits of his exploration and research, his own “Tribal Pursuit” as he likes to call it. Haillard combines the naturalness of his raw materials, horns or teeth of various origins, leopard, crocodile and zebra skins having already delighted several generations of hunters, with an unfettered imagination and an obvious nostalgia for pomp and irony. His “pursuit” is both coherent creation, deliberately sustained, of the unexpected and the strange, whilst being tribal through its haughtily aristocratic character and at the same time keeping an unavowed and underlying conscious sense of excess. Haillard is without doubt a great and amazing artist. By his highly personal way of transmuting the natural objects which he comes across, by the way he makes them perform new functions and, instead of bowing to the dictates of his raw materials, makes them obey the searching inspiration of his creative mind

Clever Constellation Cards

Stumbled upon these wonderful Astronomy cards from 1830 on ebay ~ aren't these gorgeous? Not only are they beautifully engraved and hand-colored, but they are cleverly designed to instruct as well. The 32 cards came packaged in the box shown above ~ I wonder how much they sold for when they were first produced?

According to the description, these 'hold-to-light' cards were "designed by a “young lady” to make the study of Astronomy “familiar and amusing”. Each card is pricked through with holes of different sizes relative to the apparent magnitude of each star within a given constellation. This rare find can be yours for a mere $2500 obo ~ available for 23 more days here.

I am also curious as to why each illustration has a loose thin outline. Were the illustrations supposed to be cut out and used separately? Or perhaps hung mobile style? Anyone have any ideas or conjectures?

I Spy. . .

While leafing through my newly arrived Pottery Barn catalog, I came upon the image above and noticed the wire laundry basket in the corner! I have had my eye out for these for a year or two and they aren't that easy to come by ~ now that I see this new one for sale for $129, I am thinking that the $55 - $75 price I usually see is quite the bargain! Here (scroll down a little) is one of the vintage baskets I got a year ago ~ you can see what it looks like collapsed ~ it really is a nicely designed item!

{all images from Pottery Barn}