It’s Friday at Design Boston… which means it’s time to get distracted by shiny objects!

Shiny object number one? The sun. Which is high in the sky as I type. It’s a GORGEOUS day in Boston, and I’m terribly sorry for anyone who doesn’t live here. Mind you, when the wind starts to blow rain horizontally at my face, I may find myself booking a ticket to come to wherever you are… but for now? Boston is perfection.

Shiny object number two (three, four, five, six…)? Well, I found much to fall in love with at Cocoa and Chia’s shop on Etsy.

Wait… I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m still new around here, so I should probably continue to introduce myself for a little while.

In case you didn’t read my inaugural post last week — and why didn’t you? WHY? — let me fill you in: my mandate as the Queen of Friday Finery is to point you to the best of Boston’s local makers of jewelry, accessories, shoes, hats… you name it.

If you can put it on your body and it was made in Boston? I’m your girl.

Of course, I have my own taste in finery… so that’ll be the other filter, besides location.

BUT! Cocoa and Chia.

No, no… wait. A bit more backstory.

I fell in love with Jennifer Meyer Maguire’s jewelry AGES ago — I love her organic, clean shapes and elegant use of color-popping gemstones. And what I really love? Are her stackable rings.

Unfortunately, she’s married to Tobey Maguire of “Spiderman” fame, and I really thought the sequels were lacking. And I’m also really scared of Willem Dafoe, who also stars in those movies.

Someone had to take a stand.

So when I was on the hunt for stackable sparklies on Etsy, the rings at Boston’s Cocoa and Chia IMMEDIATELY caught my eye.

And then everything else did. So I knew I had a good candidate in my sights.

Here are the lovely rings in question:

Gorgeous, no? I love the light-catching texture of the hammered gold, and the clean, almost architectural lines of the sterling ones.

And while we’re talking rings, here’s where I REALLY fell in love…

A big ol’ hunk of vintage turquoise, delicately set in gold. Could there be a more perfect ring to slip on tanned summer fingers? Now picture those fingers resting in your lap against the skirt of your favorite pure-white or pop-of-color sundress.

I know. And the best part? It’s UNIQUE. You’re the only person who has it. Huzzah!

Continuing on the aquatic blue theme, here’s a gorgeous blue opal pendant practically made to lurk from within the collar of a crisp white shirt, or add a simple, but posh touch to a white tank and jeans:

It’s like a spoonful of blue sky, or a tiny square-round lagoon. If you can’t be at the beach, you can wear it around your neck, right?

And finally, a delicate little pair of coral flower earrings:

Coral works beautifully against any skin tone you can find a person in — for ivory girls, it adds a glow (whether you load up on SPF 230 or freckle like the Coppertone kid.) For olive, mocha and cocoa-skinned girls, it adds a flash of warm, pretty light against your cheek.

And that’s just a FEW of the pretty things I found there — they’ve even got tiny ring boxes that would be at home on any vanity, modern or classic alike.

To see more, head to Cocoa and Chia’s shop at Etsy… and have a fantastic, finery-filled weekend.

Just like last year, ICFF fell on the same weekend as the SoWa Art Walk. Lucky for me, VenuView’s Crystal J. Silva went and offered her thoughts on the happenings in the South End. Thanks Crystal!

It couldn’t have been a better day for the opening of the 2010 season of SoWa Open Market and the SoWA Art Walk! The occasional gusts of wind were no match for the excitement in the air from both vendors and attendees alike.

The nearby galleries were inviting and unintimidating making it a relaxed atmosphere and great for first-timers. This event was definitely the time to take advantage of the special discounts offered if you had your eyes on something for a while or just wanted to indulge in a spontaneous purchase that wouldn’t make you feel guilty! The local bands and music played were entertaining and provided a great way to pass the time when needing to take a break from walking in the sun. Parking was easy, free and close by which was a pleasant surprise to all.

The Open Market had some certain stand-outs representing — like Catalina Delatorre, Hijacked Ceramics, F Rock Bags, and Margo Petitti — although many of the booths offered mom & pop-like crafts or artisans that were mediocre at best. After speaking to others attending the event, it was evident that they would like to see the event management draw more fine or “high craft” items and vendors than what was presented, to bring about a more balanced offering to the public and to be in keeping with their surrounding neighbors.

My NICHE Award nominee would go to the lovely young lady Sarah Anne Dinardo. She shared with us that her interesting designs came about while sitting in art class. Instead of doodling in her notebook, she started to roll the nearby masking tape. Sara’s three dimensional rolled tape sculptures were both unique and eye catching. I look forward to seeing her new designs in upcoming events.

The SoWa Open Market and the SoWA Art Walk was a lovely way to spend part of your day and well worth the leisurely stroll!

Crystal J. Silva
VENU, LLC.
www.venuview.com

Did you make it to the SoWa Art Walk this past weekend? What’d you think?

Well, hello!

My name is Meg, and I’m the most recent addition to the team here at Design Boston.

I’ve been a reader since I met the founder, and now — after my two week old move to this fine city — I’m a contributor!

If you’ve been reading DB for very long, you already know this blog provides an authoritative and appreciative voice about the design scene in Boston and beyond. And when I say design scene, I mean everything from architecture to furniture design to product design to eco-conscious design. Gradon, Christopher and Joyce know their stuff.

So why am I here?

Well, my scope of interest falls more toward fashion, jewelry and accessories — and that’s what I’m going to be covering. If someone in Boston is making something fantastic I can wear, I’ll be all over it. I’ll even be touching on cosmetic and beauty lines created by independent producers in the Boston area — as long as they look as fantastic as they feel and smell.

(This is probably a good time to mention that Joyce DEFINITELY knows her stuff when it comes to beautiful accessories. Click. Enjoy.)

So, without further ado, a quick hit on some Friday finery:

Twigs and Heather is a locally run, green-focused Etsy shop full of magical goodness.

Heather and Kerry Alice have a beautiful eye for turning small bits of metal into evocative, whimsical pieces that are as unique as they are wearable. I particularly love how they use a safety pin — or their own lovely version of the same — as a motif, which references everything from nursery life to black-clad Misfits style in a simple, evocative shape.

My favorite piece? This lone punk rock safety pin on a delicate chain:

Deceptively simple, but perfect in scale and adaptation.

I also dig their natural element pieces, like this tiny organic hydrangea necklace:

They’ve also got gorgeous silvered maple seeds and tiny acorns, hanging from silver twigs — enough nature for any neck.

And I can’t forget to mention their nod to this season’s nautical trend:

It’s more subtle and special than brass buttons on a navy blazer, or a striped boat-neck top with sailor-front trousers, I’d say.

But if I had to choose one piece that my significant other could pick up to dazzle me, I think it would be this fantastic little black sheep necklace:

While I am not, in fact, the black sheep of my family, I would love to have this as the black sheep of my necklace wardrobe (get it? Get it?)

Be sure to take a look around Twigs and Heather — my first pick for Boston-based Friday finery!

While scouring the interwebs for this week’s Handmade Monday designer, Meg pointed at my monitor and exclaimed, “That’s GORGEOUS!” So, this week’s pick is not only beautiful, it’s girlfriend-approved.

Ripegoods the brainchild of mother-daughter team Kathie and Lindsey Fieldman, who had the original concept in 2007. “What began as inspiration from a simple desire to share beautiful photographic images and to find varied applications for them grew into a mother daughter partnership and business venture. For over two years we honed our ideas and our skills to create our first collection, officially launching ripegoods in the spring of 2009.” The result is a line of well-curated items, all handmade and using locally sourced, recycled, and sustainable materials.

Beyond how beautiful the pieces are — and they are beautiful — the real story is the story of Kathie and Lindsey.

Kathie is stylist extraordinaire and mom. She manages all aspects of our displays for our design/craft and trunk shows, photographs product, and creates our unique packaging along with fresh design ideas for our new collections. Always the trendsetter, she is constantly scouting for new inspirations. Kathie is a self-taught jewelry designer, currently working with lots of leather, metal, and wirewrapping. With a background as a professional stylist, floral designer, and antique dealer (check out her bakelite colorway collections) ripegoods is an
exciting new venture.

Aside from the Ripegoods Etsy shop, you can connect with Kathie and Lindsey on Facebook and Twitter. Great to find another example of unique and creative handmade goods in the Boston area!

I’ve mentioned Jill Rosenwald in various posts before, but I have yet to give her the proper attention her work deserves.

A native New Yorker that slowly moved her way northeast, Jill Rosenwald designs and makes a wide array of glazed lamps and pottery out of her Fort Point District studio. All of her designs “were chosen to cross the bridge between classic and contemporary to complement a variety of room settings.”

She offers her pieces in a variety of color schemes, available on a all of her pieces, and with a handful of corresponding patterns. In the Swan Cool line (above), I really like the mod accents in the Fetching (tall vase in front) and Disco (tall vase in back, and cocktail tray & ramakin) pieces, and love how I can pair them with more floral designs for a corresponding style — without being too matchy-matchy.

Aside from selling her pieces on her site, on her Etsy site, and at local open studio events, Jill’s pieces have been sold at a number of premier retailers, including Barneys New York and Nieman Marcus. Her pieces were featured in “Sex and the City” — one of the more stylish shows in recent history.

Jill also licenses designs for furniture, bedding, wall decor, rugs and decorative accessories through a selection of manufacturers. She really is an inspiration for an independent, handmade designer!

Want to connect with Jill around the internet? Check her out on her blog, on her Facebook Page and on Twitter!

In last Sunday’s Boston Globe, Dushko Petrovich explored how Boston could find itself as the home of a new art revolution. In his essay, Dushko cites all that Boston has going for it: “several great museums, a superabundance of universities, many galleries, a highly educated and increasingly sophisticated audience, and a density that allows for the most important element in cultural life: interaction between creative people.” Dushko makes a pretty convincing job that this revolution is right around the corner, and he’s right. Kind of.

Kind of, because it’s not an art revolution that’s coming, but a design one. It’s been brewing for a while.

In 2006, the public was just starting to educate itself on design. ApartmentTherapy, DesignSponge, sfgirlbybay and others were showcasing creations coming out of New York and San Francisco. Boston had a large, energetic design scene, but people outside of the city thought it was a quaint, stodgy old town, not giving it the attention it deserved. I started DesignBoston to help get that conversation going. Three and a half years later — whether its architecture, interior-, product-, graphic deisgn or more — if you’re offering unique, thoughtful, innovative creations, we want to share it.

A year later, the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA) was formed as “an initiative of the statewide design industries to organize and promote the Massachusetts design cluster as integral to the state’s economy. ” DIGMA unites the various design industries and promotes them to business, government, and the public. In the most recent Boston Home Magazine, DIGMA director Beate Becker shared an interesting fact:

Our impressive numbers may surprise people who think the city is strictly a science and technology powerhouse; in fact, more than 45,000 people work in design-related jobs in Massachusetts, from architecture and advertising to product design for New Balance and Reebok. Boston-area companies actually support the second-largest industrial-design population in the country, behind San Francisco.

The same year, the pinkcomma gallery opened. The introduction on pinkcomma’s website says it all:

This gallery aims to foster and recognize a more creative and experimental scene that has grown out of one of the world’s most significant capitals of architectural education. For all the city’s stodginess, Boston’s six architecture schools and their instructors have unleashed some of the most provocative figures on the world scene.

Through exhibits like “Rethinking City Hall” and “Heroic“, directors Chris Grimley and Mark Pasnik ask us to reconsider our built spaces. The upcoming Design Biennial Boston will “showcase emerging design voices through an exhibition and publication of innovative professional design works.”

This year, Design Museum Boston was formed to “educate the public on the role of design in their lives and the contributions of design within the creative economy.” It’s planned network of physical — galleries, storefronts and malls — and online exhibits will expose audiences “to the design process from a social, economic, and environmental point of view.”

Whether you’re a creative professional or not, design shapes your world. Look around, and you’ll see a world full of buildings, graphics, products and experiences that were all originally visualized by designers. The clothes you wear, the car you drive, the building you work in, even your favorite website; all are the products of designers’ efforts. Each is more usable and inspiring because of designers’ involvement.

DIGMA, Design Museum Boston, pinkcomma gallery, and DesignBoston are trying to achieve the same thing, but from different angles: DIGMA from an institutional level; DesignMuseumBoston in our places of commerce; pinkcomma gallery from the (literally and figuratively) underground, and DesignBoston from a grassroots level.

These are of course just four examples of the connectors bringing attention to the design industry around Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. As more connections are made, as newer, evermore innovative work gets produced, and as more people — in Boston and beyond — recognize the contributions of Boston’s design industry, Boston will truly be a hub of design.

Talk about fashionable pillows.

Carlos Santiago was born and raised in Caguas, Puerto Rico. He studied fashion design at Savannah College of Art & Design, then moved to New York to intern and work at such marquee brands as Anna Sui, Marc Jacobs, LaROK and Isaac Mizrahi Couture. Now in Boston, Carlos brings this knowledge of fashion design to PARK, the line of decorative pillows he makes by hand.

The fabrics in my living room are all solids, so I add texture through the accent pillows and the like. I particularly like the Satellite Dot pillow (top) for its mod funkiness, and the Abstract Love pillow (above) for being floral without being floral.

Aside from handmade pillows, Carlos is developing a line of home accessories, and has his own line of women’s eveningwear. That’s one busy, fashion-minded man!

From a consortium of handmade designers, to a single designer — handmade Monday has a dramatic range of scale.

Albertine Press is a Somerville-based, letterpress print shop run by Shelley Barande, “a sometime-architect who just loved paper more.”

Albertine Press’s first specialty is as a custom design and print studio. Shelley designs and creates custom save the date, wedding, baby, and other special and social events stationery.  But since the shop’s inception in 2007, her work has spread to a collection of greeting cards, note cards, and coasters.

I particularly like the graphic quality of her work. And I have a very Patrick Bateman-esque love of the way Shelley’s pieces reflect the texture of the press against the paper.

Do you like handmade design? If so, you need to know about Boston Handmade.

Boston Handmade, founded by local photographic mixed-media artist Jessica Burko in 2007, is a consortium of handmade designers “who support one another in the pursuit of creativity made by hand.” There are currently over 25 member of Boston Handmade, from fields as diverse as photography, clothing, jewelry-making, books and paper goods, and more. All members are registered Etsy sellers and based in Massachusetts.

The members do a lot of cross-promotion online. Aside from each artist’s site, there is a Boston Handmade blog they maintain as a group, as well as profiles on Twitter,Facebook and Flickr.

Want to see what they make firsthand? As a group, Boston Handmade puts on shows, like the Boston Handmade Downtown gallery over the holidays. They also take part in shows around the city, such as the Bazaar Bizarre Boston and various open studio and art walk events.

The members support each other one other way, too. With every piece they sell, each artist encloses information about all of the other artists in the shipping packaging.

Many designers I speak to admit that they don’t often think about the marketing end of their businesses. If that’s you, take note: Boston Handmade is a great example of the collaborative ability of small, independent designers to work together to improve their marketing message and visibility. It’s also a great way to meet and interact with other like-minded people, something that is great for all creative people.