theothegrey

I tried out my mom’s vintage camera while I was back in San Diego. It’s a Leica M3. Leica is a name synonymous with innovation and quality in the camera world.

I recently learned that the Leitz family were Christians, and they ran a freedom train during the Holocaust. They smuggled Jews out of Germany as “employees,” sending them out with shiny new cameras.

In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, the M3 can help produce amazing images. The camera was fun for about a day, but I’m no vintage camera lover.

In between all of our traveling over the last few weeks, we’ve been shopping for furniture. It’s been fun but it’s also been frustrating. We’re trying to figure out how to organize our space so that it’s kid-friendly and good for guests. The fun part for me is imagining what kind of space a room will be. Our environment makes such a difference in the way we play, rest, interact with people, and more. Andy Stanely leads a church in Georgia called North Point that began with a vision for creating great enviornments. I love imagining what kind of feel a room will have. The frustrating side of our furniture search is the flow of our home design. Architects design with a sense of space flow in mind and I think we’re not quite gelling with our architect’s intentions. Not yet, anyway. (The other reason it’s been frustrating is the fact that I don’t like spending money on furniture. Media stuff, computers, cameras, no problem. Furniture falls into a different category for me. The good thing is that Amy knows how to work incredible deals. Check out her story.)

I came across an intersting article in Smart Money last week called “Pottery Barn Unstuffed.” The folks at Smart Money hired carpenters to take apart furniture from Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, and Restoration Hardware in order to inspect their quality. The pieces they examined each turned out to be poorly constructed. Basically, these companies have successfully learned how to create a great look and style. They sell a lifestyle and image. For quality stuff, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Personally, we’renot looking for great quality furniture. Most of our new furniture is from Target. But if you like Pottery Barn style, Smart Money recommend that you type “Pottery Barn style” in a web search and you’ll find the same stuff from other folks at significantly cheaper prices.

I found Smart Money’s descriptions of each of these three furniture stores amusing.

Pottery Barn
The Look: Middle of the center of hte road. Drawing on traditions you can’t quite place, the handsome fashions are vague, yet pleasingly familiar. Pieces like the Bedford modular desk simulataneously look like something a child would draw and the on esolution to every problem you ever had.
Marketing Strategy: Catalog bombing. Mails 100 million glossy books a year, instilling consumers with the powerful urge to buy rustic baskets. A marketing VP once told analysts, “Basically, we create needs for them they didn’t know they had.”

Crate and Barrel
The Look: Upscale grad student. Contemporary pieces are often scaled on the small side for apartment living. Items like the modern, $1200 Grace sofa look like they came form a cool, high-end designer boutique — or perhpas the local Ikea.
Marketing Strategy: Cheapskate bait. Lured in by the ubiquitous ads featuring $5 ornaments and adorable $30 gift glass sets, shoppers find themselves walking out with a $4000 sectional.

Restoration Hardware
The Look: 18th-century Whig. Ultratraditional, stately and alarmingly grand. If you can’t afford the imposing British Cane bedroom collection, you might spring for the $80 polished-nickel toilet plunger.
Marketing Strategy: Old-money snob appeal. Photos suggest you live in a plantation mansion; furniture is strategically distressed to look like hand-me-downs from Great Aunt Ernestine.

I felt kind of dumb after reading the article, like I’m just another mindless lemming falling prey to the slick image creators at Pottery Barn. I admit it. I like the look and feel of some of those Pottery Barn pictures, that furniture porn. But like I said, our environment plays a big role in how we live.

This past week Emi said that she likes the new house now. She’s been saying she wants to go back to our previous home for the last few weeks. Why the change? She said, “because the new house is clean now.” By that she meant that dad finally cleaned up the clutter in her bathroom and mom put away more of the boxes in the family room.

So this weekend, we went to The Dump. We spotted some furniture from Mongolia, Tibet, and China. It was the “freshest” thing I’ve seen after several weeks of furniture shopping, and supposedly the stuff is from the early 1900’s. It’s cool stuff. If you’re in the area, come by and check it out. we ended up with a Mongolian armoir and Chinese trunk.

We’ve been traveling a lot lately. We went to San Diego to see family. I organized a private retreat in Julian, CA with a couple of friends. We came back to Houston for a couple of days and then we went up to Dallas so that I could speak at a retreat in Lonestar, TX. It’s been fun being on the road, but I’m happy to be back home again.

Here’s a couple of portraits I’ve taken in the last few weeks. I’m calling these four pics, portraits of thought. I took the first two in a restaurant in LaJolla. The picture of Emi is in Gaylord, TX. Lillian is at Jessica’s pool party in Houston.