Bunny Love

Rabbit with color fade, by Perch

White Rabbit Necklace, by Georgia Varidakis Jewelry

Screen Printed Organic Cotton Rabbit Cloth Napkins, by Oh, Little Rabbit

Rabbit Jumps the Laurel Necklace, by Christine Domanic Jewelry

White Rabbit Ring, by Georgia Varidakis Jewelry

It's the Year of the Rabbit, and I just love those little clover mowers! Yesterday, at Artists & Fleas, jewelry designer Georgia Varidakis was babysitting a sweet little black bunny, and I just wanted one right then and there! My two kittehs would probably not approve, so I've assembled a collection of cute bunny inspired designs instead.

Images courtesy of Perch, Georgia Varidakis Jewelry, Oh, Little Rabbit, Christine Domanic Jewelry.

Take A Chance On Me

Once and a while you fall quite madly in love. With a new fashion and design collection you've stumbled upon. It happened so suddenly, I was simply smitten by Chance. What could be better than entire women's collection dedicated to the pattern I love most in life, stripes?

And the Chance Essentials. Don't get me started on this curated collection of year round nautical and beachy items. My picks are the 2-Stripe Stocking Cap for right now, Vintage Vera Scarves (so necessary for boating), The denim Skipper Sun Hat, a Cotton Knot Necklace, and can't live without sweet Turtle Necklace!

Don't miss the cool extras, like a clever illustrated time line of French sailor stripes and the célébrités who wore them (so very well).

Images courtesy of Chance.

Glittering Conscience

Wade Watson of Ruff&Cut, Danny Bitran of Nahui Ollin, Kate Harrison of The Green Bride Guide and Nina Valenti of NatureVsFuture are popping up a shop in SoHo...

Join them on Thursday, Dec 2nd, from 6-11pm, for the grand opening of Glittering Conscience! Enjoy an evening of drinks, hors d’oeurves, music, and mingling with other eco-conscious minded enthusiasts, while shopping green for the holidays with a variety of earth-friendly products, including green process photographic prints and scarves, and recycled paper note cards by Handmade On Peconic Bay.

A percentage of proceeds will go to funding a well in Tanzania, a place where clean drinking water is much needed.

Thank you for taking an interest in sustainability!

(¯`*·. glittering conscience…

…socially responsible luxury.·*´¯)

Table Talk

What does your coffee table say about you? Modern coffee tables are more than just accent pieces for your living space. They are the focal point in a seating arrangement, so it's wise to consider all your needs before taking the plunge!

Are you an uber modern sophisticated type? My father was, which is why he purchased the Knoll Platner table back in the late 60's. Growing up, I was both in awe and somewhat horrified by my father's taste in furnishings. Particularly, the pink-red-orange geometric jacquard couch, and hideous cork and glass bead curtain that separated our living room from the dining room.

Are you confident in your mix of color? I prefer to keep things neutral, yet I can't help but love the laser cut birds taking flight across the Orange 22 Botanist Flight cocktail table. The bright pop of color reminds me of a NYC couple that decorated a deceptively traditional looking East Hampton summer cottage, with orange modular shelving, parson tables and Hellerware dishes. Ah, the 70's.

Do you demand form with function? In our apartment, the coffee table is a work horse. We chose a minimalist glass and steel table table, with a bottom shelf and casters, so we could re-arrange our space instantaneously. We eat on it, pile books and magazines, and use it for our design work. I love the functionality and mod Scandinavian bent wood design of the Function Works Tre table. And it's perfect for small spaces, where the furniture needs to multitask.

Post sponsored by All Coffee Tables.com.

Wired

I simply adore the brightly hued quirky wire furniture in the June Anthropologie catalog. What do you suppose is the mysterious purpose of the umbrella top on this cheerful green Tudor Garden Bench? I have no idea, but I want one!

I do like the idea of suspending chairs, but where is everyone going to sit when they arrive for the party?

This rustic meets chic interior design slash art project makes me yearn for a drab little cottage to colorize, on a lake in upstate New York!

Images courtesy of Anthropologie.

Heartfelt

I’ve just launched my Spring 2010 card collection for Handmade On Peconic Bay, my husband’s line of unique art prints and paper goods. The un-retouched photo of a spectacular sunset over Peconic Bay, used in my Sunset Love design above, was created with Valentine’s Day in mind but is perfect for sending a heartfelt note to someone special on any occasion.

New this season are botanical blank note cards in a range of hothouse colors like Chive Flowers, shown above in Iris. Based on a scan of dried and pressed edible wild flowers from Matt’s Long Island chef’s garden, I’ve taken some liberties with modern software in creating a 2D graphic photo illustration of the original. We print and fold our cards by hand, using a high end Epson ink jet printer with archival inks on fine quality Strathmore paper. Each card comes with an eco-friendly recycled paper envelope and contains a little bit of our Peconic Bay.

Cynthia Rybakoff for Handmade On Peconic Bay Valentine’s Day cards, $3.50 each at Supermarket and Etsy.

Blue Is Universal

Matt and I just launched our new mini-collection of Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday art print cards, which was challenging because we don’t love the crass commercialization of the holiday season. Today is Black Friday, the late Autumn festival of competitive discount shopping, in case you missed the Christmas-crazed housewife in the Target television ads during your Thanksgiving reruns. And yet the Winter Solstice is inevitable in the northern hemisphere, so we participate in our own possibly pagan way.

For instance, when designing our holiday greeting cards, lengths were taken to avoid referencing candy canes and Christmas trees, and certain colors were immediately eliminated, including stocking red and forest green. Instead, we created a palette of subtle organic colors with names like Ocean, Earth, Marine, Grass, and Soil. In order to avoid images that seemed too kitsch, we axed the Christmas wreaths, angels, reindeer and Santa Claus caps in favor of botanicals, bird’s nests and dancing snowflakes (well, the snowflakes are kind of kitsch, but in a cool way). Then, in a perhaps misguided attempt to fit in and not completely alienate the folks who prefer that nostalgic holiday feeling, some traditional festive slogans were added in a vintage font.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that blue is perhaps a more universal color to represent the myriad of multicultural Winter festivals that take place this time of year. We happen to celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, so a few years ago Matt brought home a snow white fiber optic techno-tree with filament branches that twinkle with the cool blue glow of pre-programmed energy saving LED's. We’ll decorate it with a variety of white abstract ornaments and have ourselves a merry little Festivus.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday Cards, $18.00 for a set of 8 cards with coordinating envelopes, are available online at Supermarket and Etsy, and Mascot Studio in NYC.

Harvest Home

My husband, Matt Shapoff loves to cook. He picked up the habit, a few years into our marriage, when I suggested he expand his cooking repertoire from deep fried potatoes into other food groups. I’m somewhat of an amateur chef myself, having sweated away a few thousand hours in professional kitchens as a low level chef de partie, including a mediocre Hamptons fish palace and a charmingly upscale Swedish bistro. I even spent a Summer season being abused by a grumpy chef at the old Amagansett Farmer’s Market, who disliked my dicing skills intensely but taught me how to make a wonderful cold ziti pasta salad marinated in roasted garlic oil and flecked with fresh dill.

Most nights Matt and I prefer to stay home and throw together tasty meals made with local seasonal ingredients readily available at NYC’s many farmers markets and specialty food shops. In late summer, and throughout the fall, we enjoy the bounty of the harvest, marveling at the sweetness of the corn and the abundance of good tomatoes after months of sensory deprivation. We also keep a good supply of fresh herbs on hand from Matt’s Southampton chef’s garden, which grows a little bigger each year. Herbs do better than vegetables in the sandy bay soil and salty air and we end up with copious amounts of parsley, basil, rosemary, sage, lavender and chives, most of which gets pressed and dried for Matt’s Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown botanical prints.

This past summer, in between cooking experiments with Native American ingredients and the re-working of an old recipe for squash, corn and beans we named Pilgrim Stew in honor of the first Thanksgiving, Matt created a new Cyanotype series using only pressed herbs and edible flowers from his chef’s garden. We mounted the prints in one of a kind upcycled frames assembled from reclaimed wood paneling complete with original beadboard details and peeling paint. Choosing modern vintage frames made from weathered wood seemed a perfect compliment to the pale cyan botanicals, which give the appearance of being faded from the sun with age. A selection from Matt’s Chef’s Garden Series is now available at Mascot Studio in New York’s East Village.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Cyanotype Chef’s Garden Series by Matt Shapoff, on cream colored Rives paper in Antique White frames, $175-$250 at Mascot Studio.

Art Of Nature

“Numbskull” Cyanotype and Van Dyke prints by Matt Shapoff

Our home is a museum of not necessarily rare and precious objects. Just stuff we’ve stumbled upon and really liked for one reason or another. We’re not talking exotic wood carvings or colorful woven baskets from far away places, although I once dragged home from Stockholm a suitcase full of mid century modern Swedish ceramics and glassware. We collect things: a pair of vintage Boy Scout bookends, an incomplete set of worn wood type, a polychrome bird’s nest made of tangled sewing thread, a vintage microphone and whatnot.

Cyanotype fragment from Kunstformen der Natur, by Matt Shapoff

Natural wonders play an important role in our curatorial efforts and in Matt’s art. Each oddly shaped piece of driftwood, slice of agate or spiral seashell is examined for it’s unique potential to join our little cabinet of curiosities or perhaps become the subject of a new Handmade On Peconic Bay print series. Found feathers are of particular interest, as are dead bumblebees, lovely banded snail shells and tiny intact crabs in a ready stance, frozen in time on our shelf.

Van Dyke Brown fragment from Kunstformen der Natur, by Matt Shapoff

Call us new antiquarians living in a sepia toned world. We are modern collectors with Renaissance style. The 16th century Wunderkammer movement, defined as an explosion of interest in snapping up natural curiosities throughout Europe and Asia, then hoarding them in dedicated rooms and obsessively recording them in lavish botanical encyclopedias, was the original cult of collecting. Back then it was strictly wealthy patrons who traveled far and wide in search of animal and mineral specimens for their extensive curio cabinets. But the specimens were also of great interest to Northern European artists who started the trend for realistic still life paintings of newly discovered insects, vegetables and flowers. It’s an entirely human fascination with the art of nature that has not diminished in the last 500 years.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Wunderkammer collection of modern vintage Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints by Matt Shapoff, $12.50 to $48.00 on Supermarket and Etsy.

Do You Upcycle?

If you haven't been living under a rock, you are probably making an effort to recycle, which will reduce your waste into lesser quality, but highly usable component materials and maybe even save the environment! It's also known as downcycling. As a designer, I tend to think a lot about the upcycle as well, that is to create great looking new products from used stuff. To upcycle is to take salvaged parts and create a new object of greater value. It's nothing new, but using reclaimed or vintage components inbues designs with the spirit of their unique history. Not only is mixing things up more interesting aesthetically, it's also good for us. With our fragile biosphere increasingly in peril, supporting artisans who make upcycled goods is a socially conscious way to share our global commitment to good planetary housekeeping.

"Whoops-A-Daisy" by Matt Shapoff for Handmade On Peconic Bay, one-of-a-kind Cyanotype print in upcycled barnwood frame, $68 at Supermarket.

Jewel Box Gallery

Announcing Handmade On Peconic Bay limited edition Cyanotye and Van Dyke Brown prints, by Matt Shapoff, at Mascot Studio, a jewel box of a gallery located in Manhattan's East Village. Proprietor and artist, Peter McCaffrey hand picks eye catching art and objects for his impeccably styled shop, with a decidedly cabinet of curiosities aesthetic, and will also whip up the perfect custom frame for your own artwork. An influential resource for fine art and decorative objects since 1982, Mascot studio is really the prototype for the kind of design made popoular today by West Elm and other mass market retailers.


Handmade On Peconic Bay Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints $25-$145, at Mascot Studio 328 East 9th Street, NYC, 212-228-9090.

A Tangled Web

It’s been a problem, telling folks where they can find me online. I am based at 8 sites I actively use and update. LOOK at my portfolio site, Cynthia Rybakoff, where items are mostly available by inquiry. SHOP at my boutique at Supermarket, showcasing my newest jewelry and gift items. READ my blog if you love jewelry. FOLLOW me on Twitter, where inspiration is instantaneous.

My new web card is a neat solution to the inconvenience of having to awkwardly write out all this information on the back of my business card, so proper in it’s 3.5 x 2 format delineating name, title, address, phone/fax and email with nary a pixel of space for Web 2.0!

What URL's didn’t make the cut? My husband Matt Shapoff’s Handmade On Peconic Bay shops on Etsy and Supermarket, where you can COLLECT affordable indie art by a rising talent. My Facebook group, which anyone can JOIN for news, product updates and invitations to sale events (my sample sales are a huge bargain, if you know when and where!) and Flickr, where you can PERUSE the flotsam and jetsam of my career in tidy photo gallery format.

Whoops-A-Daisy!

Matt and I were thrilled to find my tablescape featured on Apartment Therapy! Pictured are objects from our own apartment I styled for this shoot: vintage Steelmaster file drawers with (from left to right) Gunnar Nylund for Rörstrand ceramic bowls, Tiffany white art glass vase, Jonathan Adler ceramic owl and West Elm ceramic vase with some great pheasant feathers. Above it all, Whoops-A-Daisy Cyanotype print by Matt Shapoff for Handmade On Peconic Bay at Supermarket.

Fresh Direct

So what new business models, readily available to the aspiring designer/entrepreneur, will emerge victorious from this economic tsunami? My money is on the direct sale approach. Whether online, or at your local flea, fresh design is cropping up everywhere and it’s affordable.

One of the best examples of the new DIY sales model is Supermarket, a digital storefront platform where you buy products directly from the independent designers who make them, and guess what? The savings are passed on to you, the design hunter. Developed by co-founders Randy J. Hunt and Ryan Deussing of elsewares.com, Supermarket is a well-curated and designed shopping experience that “makes it easy to buy great design”, as boldly stated in the uber-accessible language of Mr. Hunt’s intuitive aesthetic.

Rosie The Riveter via Design*Sponge

Ryan was a guest blogger yesterday on Grace Bonney's heavily bookmarked design*sponge, with the important task of interviewing independent designers on what’s helping them get through this new era of careful-consumption. The resulting 15 “ideas for making upturns in a downtime” is a candid and informative look into what seems like optimism on the design front. Ryan included some of my own philosophy, under the heading "Good Idea: Adapt to new realities". Read the entire post NOW. And buy a copy of “Who Moved My Cheese?”, a motivational parable about dealing with change in your work and in your life, by Spencer Johnson.

Last year, the demand for my pricier goods dropped off to the point where I needed to make a big change (my cheese was moved). A couple of weeks ago, I opened a shop at Supermarket, for super cool sterling silver jewelry that’s mostly priced under $100 (I found some new cheese!). My sterling silver Collection pieces run as high as $2,500, but at Supermarket I’ve created a collection that tops off at $300. Happy hunting!

Love Notes

It seems that pink is having another Spring moment, as it does every few years or so in the not so unrelated worlds of fashion and design. For Valentine's day, I've created a botanical photo illustration in geranium pink on smooth bright white stock and paired it with a grey textured envelope.

Love Notes, a blank note card, is part of our Handmade On Peconic Bay paper collection I design and produce with my husband Matt Shapoff, who is a photographer and printmaker. Our flagship store is a humble Etsy shop, where we sell my art print cards and Matt's Cyanotype prints and cards.

Handmade On Peconic Bay paper goods are also sold at The Parrish Art Musuem gift shop, and will be available on Supermarket in the near future. Be sure to check out Matt's stunning "Peconic Curiosities" series on CynthiaRybakoff.com, which is currently available wholesale only. If you have a shop and are interested in picking up the collection, contact me via Etsy or my website.

Handmade On Peconic Bay "Love Notes" Valentine's card, $3.50 on etsy.com.

Moody Blues

So far 2009 has me feeling blue. A muted grey-ish blue, more like the color of an overcast sky. My color forecast for Spring is infused with moody colors - faded cornfower, stormy grey, dusty violet, aging ballet pink, polar white. It's a soft and quiet mood, perhaps a reflection of a more global feeling of anticipation and the need to be surrounded by soothing things. I'll be wearing a lot of jewelry, scarves and handbags in these colors for the next few months against a backdrop of black denim, grey cashmere and tweed with a tropical punch of color here and there, like geranium, lime and mimosa.

Above is a palette of stones from my Spring 2009 jewelry collection, arranged by color family. There are pale pinks (morganite or pink aquamarine, rose quartz and pink Peruvian opal), translucent purples (ametrine and amethyst), violet-blues (iolite, chalcedony, blue opal, Umba sapphire), iridescent greys (labradorite) and icy whites (moonstone, rock crystal and snowy rock crystal druzy).

I started my career as a painter, at the age of seven and attained degrees in fine art and art history before dropping everything to design jewelry for a living. Along the way, I took a color theory class based on the work of Joseph Albers, the Bauhaus artist and professor who wrote a seminal book called "Interaction of Color", which changed my point of view forever. I have become savant like in the pursuit of a color story for my own jewelry and graphic design work and for the creative direction I do for other companies.

The reigning precious metal color of choice for the new mood is sterling silver. The more aged the patina, the better. If I'm not using vintage silver findings, which i never NEVER polish, I'll do a light oxidation treatment on new silver to give it a darker tone and worn feeling. I am also playing with the idea of tension between the romance and feminity of the stone colors and the hard edged masculinity of darkened silver, and have added some lovely soft ribbon details to soften the mix. The mint satin ribbon tie necklace above is made from organic tumbled green quartz stones with sterling silver accents.

Cynthia Rybakoff sterling silver and green quartz 24" necklace with mint ribbon ties, $700, by request at CynthiaRybakoff.com.