Boca chairs: spotted in LA

My friend Ulrika sent this photo from her recent trip to Los Angeles. So my chairs are on sale at the LA Anthropologie store, I wonder where else? and if any have sold yet...

Bicentenary blues

Well, it seems the design world in Buenos Aires has cottoned onto seasonal selling and everyone is putting out their best blue products and selling them as bicentenary specials. Good for them! These circular rugs from Puerta al Sur are fun.

More designs on their wesbite: www.puertaalsur.com

Bicentenary pins

Maria McCormick, whose beautiful recycled button necklaces I sell, has cute pins that are the perfect accessory to wear to Argentina's Bicentenary celebrations on 25th May. Sky blue and white beads are threaded onto a safety pin (some also have one yellow bead in the middle, like the sun in the centre of the national flag). On the other side of the pin there's a blue and white striped ribbon with Maria's Rescate stamp. Nationalistic and chic! Beats waving a cheap plastic flag.

The pins are on sale at Elementos Argentinos on Godoy Cruz 1720, Palermo, and also from Maria directly. See her website for details: www.rescateonline.com.ar

Coming soon: Dos Minas wine label

My American friend Heather Willens who I used to share a work space with (in a beautiful PH in Palermo Hollywood owned by Maria Sol Mirabel of Amor Latino) is launching a wine label. Heather works in wine industry, exporting small production Argentine wines to the US. She has teamed up with a female wine-maker friend in Cafayate, Salta to create the 'Dos Minas' label. Mina is old-school Argentina slang for chick, so as two girls are behind this project they've named it Dos Minas - two chicks.  

Cafayate is one of my favourite places in Argentina. I have been there five times! It's a wild desert landscape at a high altitude (1700 metres above sea level) that produces unique wines. Dos Minas are making two wines Malbec and Torrontes - the stars of Argentine wines.

Although most of the 12,000 bottles of Malbec and 6000 ofTorrontes are being sold to the US, doble M design will be exclusively selling Dos Minas in Buenos Aires. Please contact me if you'd like to place an order, or would like to be added to the invitation list the Buenos Aires tasting event in September.
To find out about availability in the US, email Heather.

Galeria Mar Dulce - more photos

More photos of the cute little gallery recently opened by my friends Lilian and Alfonso. It's located at Uriarte 1490, near the corner of Gorriti in Palermo Soho. Contact phone number: 15 5319 3597. Blog: http://galeriamardulce.blogspot.com/

Design map of Palermo Viejo

Quite a few of my favorite places are missed off this map, but on the whole it's a great design map of Palermo Viejo. Thanks to Min Agostini for posting this on Facebook.

Faded glory for hire

This 1200sqm old mansion house on the San Telmo/Barracas border in Buenos Aires is available for hire for film, TV and photo productions, while renovation of the building takes place. For more photos see the flickr of the different interior and exterior spaces in the flickr album here.

Email me at dobleMdesign@gmail.com for enquiries.

Photos taken by Esteban Lobo.

doble M design @ design*sponge

Thanks to Grace Bonney at design*sponge for a very sweet post about my Boca chairs for Anthropologie. She also recently featured my friend Ismay's guide to Cornwall. Is and I met in Buenos Aires where she was living in a sprawling house in Palermo Hollywood and we bonded over an incident with a mouse which turned out to be a cockroach, and a love of '70s furniture. She's now back in her home county of Cornwall (my second favourite English county, after Yorkshire of course) blogging at Pasties and Cream.

Illustration from Design*Sponge guide to Cornwall

Places: Almacen Secreto

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I took these photos months ago and have been meaning to do a post about Almacen Secreto in Villa Crespo. It's one of several great puertas cerradas (closed doors) restaurants in Buenos Aires. They're either in private homes, or just informal kitchens with tables, like Almacen Secreto. It's probably my favourite as I like the setting of a traditional Palermo house around a patio, I love the informal kitchen, the metal mask sculptures on the wall and cheerful paintings on planks of wood, and that it's cosy setting to enjoy yummy comfort food. The dishes are grouped into the regions they hail from (in the previous location a few blocks away all the dishes were typical of the northern province of Salta). They have a nice selection of wines from small family run wineries in Argentina.

I went there for lunch on this particular occasion with my friend Justina, little Seth, and Jamie Crawford, a friend who was visiting from England and wrote a piece for The Guardian on puertas cerradas. You can read the article here.

Decoupage chair for client

News: Teatro Colon reopens 25 May

The Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires is widely considered to be in the top five opera houses in the world. Since 2006 it has been closed for renovations. The hope was that it would be reopened 100 years after it opened on 25 May 2008. There were many delays, but finally the work is complete and the grand reopening is scheduled for 25 May this year, exactly 200 years after Argentine independence.

My friends Macu and Carla worked on the restoration of the Teatro Colon (Macu was working on the gargoyles and the frescoes by Soldi) and they sent me these photos.

This last photo is of the web of scaffolding that was constructed inside the main theatre during the restoration. A work of art in itself!

News: La Mersa launch bicentenary collection

To tie in with the bicentenary celebrations of the Republic of Argentina, La Mersa are promoting their collection where 'every object tells a story'. I really like their sandblasted soda siphons, shown in the flyer above, but their collection is always interesting and most unique in Buenos Aires. Their shop is on Honduras, on the Barrio Norte side of Scalabrini Ortiz, a short walk from Palermo Soho. Look out for the turquoise awning.

www.lamersa.com

News: Design your own rug

My great friends over at Elementos Argentinos announced this week a new line of rugs that can be personally designed for your home - by you!

Options include more that 60 colours and different textures to create a unique piece that will be made entirely by hand.

Just some of the gorgeous colours in Fernando & Pablo's colour swatch

You can choose from handspun pure sheep or llama wool, which will be carefully washed and dyed by hand with fire-heated water. The wool they use is handloomed using traditional pre-Hispanic and colonial techniques to guarantee that each rug is unique, as owner Fernando Bach explains 'not only because the design is yours, but also because the conditions of the processes of spinning, dyeing and looming are unrepeatable'.

www.elementosargentinos.com.ar

Buenos Aires to Chelsea: shipping to New York

The chairs were shipped from Buenos Aires to New York where Anthropologie received them. I assumed they would just be sold there.  So I was delighted when they emailed to say they were shipping some from New York to London to be on sale in the new Anthropologie store on the Kings Road in Chelsea. It got even better when they were chosen for the launch window display (scroll down quite a few posts back to see photos). Apparently they're going for £200 a chair!

Buenos Aires to Chelsea: loading the truck

Buenos Aires to Chelsea: quality controller

Buenos Aires to Chelsea: The Boca Collection