Monday, November 29, 2010

Really Good Miniatures out of Mexico

These two guys in Mexico that do excellent work.  Their company is called Ulus Miniatures.  They have a great reputation for doing detailed, intricate work, replicating (often vintage) ordinary objects like a hair dryer, an exacto knife or a can of soup.  I like their use of metal, and also the complexity of some of the pieces, like the syringe, which is made up of three separate parts.




Working architect's lamp







Microscope



Syringes













Curling iron






Blender









Apple lap top




Not a Diorama

Kind of looks like one though.

Ji Loy is a prefabricated housing module by designer Nikita Kolbovskiy that  has been designed to provide a viable solution to the housing needs of people in distress as a result of natural calamity or those seeking emergent shelter in urban setup. 


Read more on: The Design Blog


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Sunday, November 28, 2010

What do you get when you cross a refrigerator and a BMW?

This comes under the Clever Things part of this blog.  



click photos to enlarge


The base is from Gibson Frost-Clear Deluxe, and the leather seats are from a 1984 BMW 325.











Friday, November 26, 2010

My Apartment Model (used in this blog's banner)

Several people have asked about the model used in the banner for this blog.  It's a scale model (1 inch = 1 foot) of my studio apartment.  I did it set design style, without walls or a ceiling.  I started by laying down over 500 cherry wood tiles to simulate the original, old parquet floor.   I built most of the components from scratch, but some were made for me by experts in their various fields (like the leather chair, the keyboard, and the working lamps).  The model isn't finished yet - it's sort of always work in progress.

  (Photos: Tom Casesa)


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Some details:

The chair (and the guitar in the other pictures) came courtesy of a Kurt Cobain action figure set.






The iMac was challenging.   After experimenting a bit, I used foam board for the main  piece, and clay for the metal base. 









Bed frame: made with mahoghany and bass wood.


I'm pretty proud of  having made these miniature books.  They are the two volumes of the  New Annotated Sherlock Holmes  (by Klinger).  The two books (whose spines, when side by side, form a silhouette of Holmes) slide out of the case.  The real books are  must-haves for Holmes fans and they are good follow-ups to the original Annotated Sherlock Holmes by William Baring Gould.





This is for anyone who thinks toy clowns aren't creepy

Red diorama with bird cages and ventriloquist dummy

Source: unkown


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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Wooden vessels that inspire

Source: unkown

Beautifully built and photogrpahed models 


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Monday, November 22, 2010

Nikon cameras - Do not eat.

The makers of Glico candy, of Japan, include a small gift in each package.  In this version the omake (small gifts) are Nikon cameras and lenses.

I found them on this site.









The birds of the West Village have cool digs.

Saw these in the little park off of Seventh Avenue and Perry Street (New York City).  One is a model of the high rise across the street from the park, which houses the restaurant Morandi.  A sign says they were built by Vincent Mele.   The birds of the West Village have good digs.







































Saturday, November 20, 2010

So much for thinking out of the box

I was up at Dartmouth College, in Hanover New Hampshire this week, and saw this paper weight... I like how it looks in the box more than out of the box.  With the packaging it kind of looks like a theater or a little diorama.