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Placewords - Our Blog
Bitten by the Vintage Bug
For every collector, there is the moment when things get serious. Maybe you start out going to yard and garage sales on Saturday mornings for fun, picking up the occasional tchotchke or household item for a great price. Then you start haunting thrift stores, becoming more and more enamored of the “hunt.” Suddenly, you are scouring eBay on a daily basis and spending entire days going from antique mall to antique mall when away for the weekend. At least, this is how it developed for us. We got bitten by the vintage bug, and hard. We don’t mind, though. We’ve...
Spring Fever!
Spring Has Sprung at Placewares! This is one of our favorite times on the North Coast. The whales are running, the seals are pupping, and the wildflowers are blooming. We also love the longer days and the warming (and drying) weather, which means more outdoor time: beachcombing, hiking, maybe a return to the tennis court, sunset watching and definitely gardening for the green thumbs among us. If you’ve got one, we recommend our Smart Scissors Pruner, sourced for our Made in Japan show last year and now a mainstay in the shop. The rust-proof blade makes it easy to trim...
Our Love Affair with Iittala
Through a strange series of events in 2000, we two then-San Franciscans ended up with a house in Palm Springs. In between taking in the strange concept of sunshine (we were living in the notoriously foggy Sunset district of SF) and dips in the pool, we began haunting the city's thrift stores and vintage shops. In one of these, we came across our first piece of Iittala. As the years went by, we continued to add to our Iittala collection - both via Palm Springs shopping and eBay. Sometimes we knew exactly what we were buying. Other times we'd find...
Placewares Exclusives: Ceramics by Morihiro Onodera
When we lived at the Avenel Housing Cooperative by architect Gregory Ain in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, we were fortunate enough to meet and become friends with Ilana Gafni, an architectural preservationist and realtor with Crosby Doe Associates, which specializes in working with preservation-minded clients. Photo Credit: Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times Through Ilana, we met her partner, Mori Onodera. Mori is a Michelin-starred sushi chef who owned famed sushi restaurant Mori Sushi in West Los Angeles. Not only is he an incredible chef, but he is also a rice maker and ceramicist. Checkout Mori’s...