Design on a Dime: Interview with David Cafiero

by Doug Black

Particularly relevant in the current economic climate, Housing Works Thrift Shops' fifth annual Design on a Dime benefit takes over 40 of the world's top interior designers and challenges them to create inspiring room vignettes using donated materials. (Sills Huniford's 2008 vignette pictured at right.) Visitors can then buy the merchandise at 60 to 80 percent off the retail price. And as with all the Housing Works locations throughout the city, proceeds go to health care, housing and other services for homeless and low-income people living with HIV and AIDS.

This year's event kicks off tomorrow at the Metropolitan Pavilion with an opening-night reception with actress Parker Posey. Guests will get a first look at the room vignettes with cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and live entertainment. (Tickets are still available.) For everyone else, the free public sale goes from 10 am to 6 pm on Friday and Saturday.

The crop of 2009 designers spans the globe as well as the style spectrum. One of this year's first-time participants is David Cafiero of Cafiero Select design firm and antique shop. His eclectic mix of vintage and contemporary elements spans decades and can be seen everywhere from rustic beach homes to Chloë Sevigny's East Village apartment (pictured). We were able to talk to David about about his ongoing partnership with Miss Sevigny, tips for decorating on a budget and his previous life as a scallop fisherman.

You've been designing professional for five years and this is your first time participating in the Design on a Dime benefit. How did you first get connected with Housing Works?

Well, I've always gone there to shop for myself. I just love the turnover, so for years I always just went to Housing Works first. Back then, we weren't far from the 17th street one, so I'd go almost every day.

What was the inspiration behind your Design on a Dime vignette?

We're doing a psychiatrist's room.

Where did that concept come from?

Some of the things we had donated were from a psychiatrist, so I started thinking about the first psychiatrist's office i started going to as a kid, which was actually in my grandfather's house. He had sold the house and then my shrink bought it, so I ended up going back to my grandfather's house for treatment. Basically, I just recreated that shrink's office from when I was 10.

What are some tricks you use to decorate an interior on a budget?

You should always move things around. You should never be married to one furniture plan or one set-up because you can freshen things up by just pushing the furniture around. Another thing I find useful is swapping out art work all the time, and having a reserve of different art works. Mirrors, of course, are a big trick. And I love small rugs. I love putting rugs on top of rugs on top of rugs. You can really create an alternating cold weather look and warm weather look that way.

In your design work, what makes a great client?

Someone who comes to the table knowing what they want. But also being flexible enough to understand that maybe we need to steer it in that direction, but bring other things to the table as well.

You designed Chloë Sevigny's apartment, how was that experience memorable?

Well, she was our first published client. It was a great experience, and we're continuing to work with her. You never really finish a project. We're constantly going back there and adding new things and taking things out, switching stuff around. It's an on-going process. An evolution.

Before interior design, you worked as a commercial scallop fisherman. Which do you find more challenging, catching scallops or designing an interior?

They both have their challenges, believe me. They're equally challenging. The great thing is, the boating aesthetic is actually a great influence on what I do now with interiors.

Design on a Dime Opening Night Reception
Thursday 7 May 2009
6:00 PM
The Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th Street
New York, NY map

Athas! Pens

by Karen Day

An ultra-classy reinterpretation of the iconic Bic pen (and a functional version of Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid's pendant), Athas! steel, brass, silver and gold pens are a stylish configuration of the original plastic design.

Each of the high-meets-low pens are signed and numbered and available for engraving, making them the perfect gift for any writer or ballpoint fanatic. Ever the homage, Athas! even kept the Bic pen base, so refilling the ink is a cinch.

The culmination of skilled craftsmanship and adoration for an ubiquitous product found in our daily lives, Athas! pens are as pleasing to the hand as they are to your eye.

The pens are available for purchase on the Athas! website . Prices vary from R$260-411 (about $122-193).

Painter Amy Crehore

by Lost At E Minor

Artist Amy Crehore's work feels like a Gauguin version of "Where The Wild Things Are," with her nudes hanging out in the jungle alongside monkeys, cats, lions and little kids dressed like clowns.

Her paintings on ukuleles sing a softer tune than her work on canvas, which seems to be making a comment about the male gaze—the women in the Oregon-based artist's work appear to be both aware of and indifferent to the masculine lust they inspire.

Minimal Design Tea Accessories

by Karen Day

Design firm Minimal is adding modern style to the tea industry with their sleek kettle and gadgets, which the World Kitchen recently honored at their Tea-Off! design competition.

Created to promote innovative thinking and critical problem solving, the competition focuses on the role of design as a fundamental value for the kitchen and housewares industry—the perfect challenge for Minimal, a studio that balances high design with industry leading user experiences. Led by Scott Wilson, former design leader at Ideo and one of Time Magazine's Style+Design 100, Minimal's impressive crop of products designed for the Tea Off! include a Hot-T Wand, Tea2Go, Tea Sleeve, Pyrex Glass Induction Tea Kettle (pictured above) and Magnalite Aluminum Kettle.

Finding ourselves on the go more often than not, we particularly appreciate Minimal's microwave options, Tea2Go and Tea Sleeve (pictured below), which allow users to seamlessly go from boiling to drinking thanks to their combination of materials and all-in-one design.

The Minimal team took home a Special Citation, two Honorable Mentions and a patent-pending design for their quality work and effective use of materials, proving once again their true talent for creating iconic, brand-building products.

Black Garlic

by Evan Orensten

Asian cuisines have long incorporated Black Garlic, but only more recently has this fermented version of the bulb been commercially available in the U.S. and Britain. Eaten as a snack or used as an ingredient in cooking, it boasts a vinegary sweet flavor and health benefits.

After fermenting in clay containers for a month—with no additional ingredients added—the result is a mellower-tasting clove with ten times the antioxidants of raw garlic. The aging process also creates S-Arylcysteine, which has purported health benefits as a cancer- and cholesterol-fighter, and increases polyphenol content. While this sounds like something that would make the garlic smell like a hundred year egg, the smell is actually quite pleasant and not intense at all.

A quick search shows that black garlic is showing up on menus at Bix, Charlie Trotter, Monarch and Le Bernadin, as well as on shows like Top Chef.

Black Garlic is currently available from some retail locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, online from Mondo Food (starting at about $4 per bulb) and from the Black Garlic site directly in the U.K., which also carries black garlic paste and juice.

Read more about Black Garlic on Wikipedia.

SwitchGames

by Josh Teixeira

For those who've ever tried to sell back a used game to Game Stop, you know the feeling when they give you your measly cash back or slightly-less-measly store credit and you have to swallow it. Unfortunately they've long been the only place to reliably buy and sell used games until now, with the creation of SwitchGames.

Turning all of this costly swapping on its ear, SwitchGames is a clever new website that serves as a free social marketplace for gamers looking for used titles. Every user gets a unique profile, allowing them to swap games online with other avid gamers and creating a strong sense of community at the same time. Much like Xbox Live captured the gaming world's strong bend towards social gaming, SwitchGames uses that to create a thriving, communal marketplace. And it does so with a keen eye towards safety and security—premium services, including verified accounts, guaranteed trades and more, are coming soon that will further secure the process.

To top it all off for the ultra-nerds out there, the design of the site is completely unique. Needing to optimize for browser performance and load times, Flash was not suitable. The SwitchGames team turned to Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) and built virtually the entire interface using it. Founder Jason Crawford explains, “most web development tasks are cleanly split between designers and developers but with high level AJAX development the line between art and code is very much blurred. Getting our developers to think like designers and coaxing our designers to think like developers allowed us to accomplish many things that even experienced web technologists said could not be done.“

Get your swap on now at the SwitchGames site.