The new Design Within Reach Tools for Living store opened today on Wooster Street in SoHo. Since my office is a few short blocks away, I decided to check it out at lunch. The purpose of the mission was actually get a flask that I saw the previous day on 10engines. You see, the flask wasn’t available online at the time and when I called DWR they said, “the new Tools for Living store, which opens tomorrow, will have this in stock.” Perfect. Upon arrival to the neatly organized bi-level shop, my jaw hit the newly installed floor. The upper section of the store offers home, kitchen, office goods, so I headed directly to the lower level for the more brutish “tools” section.

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Imagine my delight when I discovered pages and pages of workwear and canvas bags at the Japanese shop Utility Coop. The Japanese really do know their stuff when it comes to American inspired design. Hopefully, some of these brands will make their way to U.S. stores soon. In the meantime we will just have to gaze longingly from the other side of the internets. Makes you thankful that Estex, Filson, Billykirk, Klein Tools and LL Bean are here, keeping us together.

Superior Labor: Paint Tote Bag

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Kit homes and mail order architecture is a different sort of homogenization than what is happening in suburban America today. During the period of the early 1900s to the 1960s, America was a beautiful hodgepodge of architecture styles, from the midwest’s Prairie school to the beautiful American Craftsman homes of the west coast. The era was also influenced by a series of different mail order architecture from companies like Sears, Bilt-Well Homes, Bennett Better Built, Aladdin and a variety of others. While I am not an architectural expert, I am a known seeker of nostalgia and it is easy to appreciate the American residential landscape from a simpler time.

An interesting and informative reference of 20th century American residential architecture can be seen at Antique Home.

Below: A 1920s Bennett Kit Bungalow, The Lancaster Model near Buffalo, NY.

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If you were to start an online store, what would you sell? How about a pair of beautiful leather white-on-white sneakers for $245 (available only in the designer’s shoe size of 44), American Optical plastic and metal framed eyeglasses for $164 and a bottle of Pledge furniture wax? That is exactly what the Sweden based designer Erik Schedin has just launched, and somehow, strangely, it works for me. The 29-year-old designer told me that in the coming months he plans to add a baseball cap, a canvas bag and “some other stuff.” Judging from Mr. Schedin’s classically designed footwear, the canvas bag should prove to be terrific and go perfectly with a nice can of Comet.

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Flickr Find is a weekly column of interesting things found on the amazing and inspiring photo sharing website Flickr.

Living in New York City we are blessed with the privilege of rail travel. While Metro North is not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the old timey trains pictured below, it still creates a connection to an older time. The typographic elements exemplified on these trains are easily recognizable, but still new and fresh. The disappearance of this type of great American design is what leads patriotic gentlemen like Aaron Draplin to declare “America fucked“…at least from a design perspective.

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Flickr Find is a weekly column of interesting things found on the amazing and inspiring photo sharing website Flickr.

I have had an interest in the Airstream caravans for a long time. They are one of the most iconic American designed products of all time and they are made in good old Jackson Center, Ohio. The company has recently become so popular with the upwardly-mobile and design conscience that Airstream saw it fit to collaborate with Design Within Reach. Although, I don’t know that I would need to go so far as to buy the crazy (crazy awesome), DWR version but the simple International Ocean Breeze being towed by a GMC Sierra Denali would do the trick. Ha!

Keep in mind, I live in New York City and gas is $4+ a gallon, so this isn’t happening anytime soon. The good news is, the Airstream design will be just as iconic by the time I get around to buying one of them.

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Much has been said recently about The Kaufmann Desert house. Portfolio wrote about it in the May Issue as did Men’s Vogue (sorry, can’t find that story online). J. Crew even got in on the action. The house was designed by Richard Neutra in 1946, as commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store owner. The beautiful modernist home has an amazing story and in my mind is the epitome of fashionable Palm Springs living. I believe the property is still for sale through Christie’s, If you are looking for a good place to party at next year’s Coachella.

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From the Desk of… is a window into the world and workspace of some of ACL’s most stylish friends.

In addition to being a talented filmmaker, designer, artist and bespoke clipboard maker, Alexander Olch is the subject of this week’s From the Desk of… column.

Mr. Olch’s description

This is the first studio I ever rented – and have been working here now for seven years. It was proudly furnished at low-budget: Desk – 1 inch thick MDF board on 2 steel sawhorses, chair from the old Chelsea flea market, long pine wood shelves with two coats of Red Devil glossy white enamel paint, Steel shelves at right from B & Z Steel Shelving in SoHo, with the same paint. Computer is still the same – Mac OS 9.2.2. Electronics all old and borrowed – Pioneer SX-737 tuner, Panasonic Easa-Phone, pro VHS deck, and speakers all from 1990. Black framed photograph (center top) is the first I ever took – in 1983 of the waves in Ogunquit, Maine.

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I have been thinking for a long time about getting a place upstate. Maybe something in a sleepy town in Sullivan County. I’ll get myself a nice old pickup truck to haul stuff around. I know just what I want the place to look like — a classic Saltbox. My mother grew up in one in Ledyard, Conn. It was this amazing old house in the woods that has since become a historic site called the Nathan Lester House. I was always enchanted when my mom would tell me stories about the “Indian room” which was a secret windowless room in the house that the original inhabitants had installed (around 1795) to protect themselves from the Native Americans in the area. Obviously, the concept of an “Indian room” is a derogatory holdover from a bygone era, but as a kid the idea of a secret room is beyond amazing. Some great Saltbox homes and farms are pictured below.

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From the Desk of… is a window into the world and workspace of some of ACL’s most stylish friends.

The second entry in the series is Ben Ferencz, the founder and creative director of The Design Cooperative and the man behind Freeman Transport. Born and raised in New York, the saying holds true, you can take the kid out of the city but you can’t take the city out of the kid. Ben now lives on a 70 acre organic farm outside Missoula, Montana with his wife Julie and daughter Evelyn. Details after the jump.

Click to enlarge.

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Sometimes you don’t see the things that are right under your nose. That is definitely the case with the Columbus, Ohio based American Furnishings. It is a good thing that In(side) Loop down in Texas has her eyes open. The company manufactures and sells beautiful furniture like this Post Office Organizer from their shop in middle Ohio or as they say “where the grain belt and the rust belt embrace”. It is good to see that all of the offerings are made in the United States. The stuff that really caught my eye is the Vintage Industrial collection – which is made from reclaimed parts from abandoned factories all over the Midwest. Images below and after the jump.

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From the Desk of… is a window into the world and workspace of some of ACL’s most stylish friends.

First up in the series is Michael Macko, Saks Fifth Avenue vice president and all around good guy. Details after the jump.

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