It’s been a long process, but finally all of the floors in our apartment are painted! We left the hallway for last, because it is by far the most inconvenient to paint. Every morning before work I would paint myself out of the apartment, and by the time we came home the paint would be dry and be alright to walk on. We attempted to barricade our cat in the living room by moving the piano to block the hallway, but after the first day she found a way out. Juli came upstairs and heard paws on the keys of the piano, a thunk and a pitter-patter down the hallway. This obviously wasn’t the first time that happened.

Our front entrance now has light coming from both ends of the hallway.

Check out how it looked before.

Not the smoothest transition into the black floors.

Sometimes things arrive damaged, and sometimes those damaged pieces go in our apartment.

Case in point: Naoto Fukasawa dining chair.

We also moved the wishbone chairs and replaced them with a pair of floor models from the store. The wishbone chairs although beautiful, just weren’t very comfortable. They have been replaced with the Naoto Fukasawa lounge chair, which has been sitting in our showroom for 10 months.

We’re entering dangerous territory.

Definitely no way to run a business.

But how could we resist the smooth sexy curves of this very beautiful piece? We always secretly wanted them for ourselves (still available to purchase new though!).

For everyone that had a chance to see the exhibition on Thursday and Friday, thank you for your support. The front gallery is back to a retail space, but we’ve kept the exhibition going and plan to do so for the rest of the week.

Hope to see you soon!

Above: Poster by Sali Tabacchi

The gallery was curated by Masanori Oji, but he asked if I would display a collection of objects on the riser in the window. I decided to go up to our apartment and grab all of the things we own by Masanori to show how they look after being used. The cutting board has knife cuts all over it, and our tin cup set is bent slightly out of shape, but it has all aged very gracefully.

These were the key pieces to the exhibition, two brand new prototypes.

The Chabudai is a small, round-shaped table (600 mm in diameter) with short legs for one or two persons designed to be used directly on the floor for having tea or dining. The Zabuton, a square-shaped floor cushion, is used in combination with a chabudai to sit directly on the floor.

The Chabudai prototypes are available for purchase through our store.

We do plan on making the brass pendant light available through our store very soon.

Futae tin cup set & brass chopstick rests.

A collection of Kami cups.

Magewa bread plate, made from 200 year old akita cedar.

Masanori Oji designed everything from the products to the package it’s placed in.

We kept the front showroom displays very minimalist.

Brass bottle openers on a tray made by Susumu Seto (only one rectangular tray left).

Silver cutlery by Yuki Sakano (we only have a couple of sets left).

Brass chopstick rests.

Brass and cherry wood knife keeper.

45-degree butter dish.

Kakudo walnut plates and dishes.

Bagel trivets. Over time, hot pots burnish the wood creating a “toasted” effect.

Children’s glass – small enough for their little hands.

On Thursday night we had a very special event for one of our designers, Masanori Oji. It was his first solo exhibition in North America, and was a real honor having him in our store available to meet Toronto design enthusiasts.

We cleared out the whole front of the store allowing Masanori to curate the entire show.

The exhibition was titled “Life on the Floor”. Masanori debuted two new prototypes: chabudai (traditional low tables) and Zabutan a floor cushion.

Here is the artist statement:

Japanese people take off their shoes before entering the house. Traditionally, they spend most of their times in the house sitting directly on the floor. They even dine on the floor, so you can still find tables with short legs in furniture stores all over Japan.  After World War II, their lifestyle has become more Westernized, but the custom of sitting on the floor is deeply rooted in their cultural DNA.

Melinda, Celine and Jin checking out the Dharma Sponges and Kawa-Kado (protective leather table corners).

Everyone congregates in the kitchen. Even when it’s not a real kitchen.

Amazing cheese platter by the Junction Fromagerie. I am embarrassed to say I didn’t get a shot of the sheer quantity of sushi and appetizers from Kokoni Izakaya. I am happy to report that all the food was gone by the end of the night.

Sapporo!

John chatting with graphic design team Sali Tabacchi. Thanks for the posters guys!

Holly from Twice Found Vintage had an intriguing question for Masanori:

She collects small wooden boxes from Japan and wanted to know what this little one would be used for. Turns out it is for umbilical cords, and everyone has one and keeps it for life. Strange but true!

Holly managed to get in a lot of photos! They look like they are having a good conversation…

Gord chatting with Masanori (right) and Taku (left).

At one point Masanori was signing autographs, with a Sharpie, like a rock star.

It’s not a party without Bonsai!

One of our customers had her son stop by to chat Bonsai Trees with Masanori.

Thank you Masanori and Taku for being a part of our first craft exhibition!

Thank you Lauren for taking the camera off our hands, and getting some great photos!

We’ll have more images of the exhibition in all it’s minimalist beauty shortly.

Taking a cue from Arren William’s recent blog post we though we’d share with you the four poster designs for the Masanori Oji Exhibition, which is happening tonight and all day tomorrow at mjölk.

The posters are designed by Sali Tabacchi, and are a great start to what we hope will become a large collection of exhibition posters!

I know this is a bit tedious, but we FINALLY got around to setting up a mailing list. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. If you are interested in joining, it’s in the sidebar to the left, under mjölk news. You must sign up regardless of whether you have provided us with your email address before (sorry, that’s the tedious part).

We promise we won’t spam you.

We promise to only send you nuggets of goodness like invites to special events (don’t forget to RSVP to Masanori Oji for Oct 21), new product that we are excited about (the Corona Globe is so new it’s not even on our website yet!), store hour interruptions (so we don’t have to worry about hearing “we stopped by while you were [insert trip, event, summer holiday hours here]“) and whatever else we think you might really want to know about.

ps. FYI: Photos pre-server move (before midsummer) were compressed and are now low res and pixelated. It’s a total bummer.

A New clothing store called Mr Mudd and Mr Gold has recently opened in Stockholm Sweden. The interior is designed by Daniel Franzén and feautures beautiful unfinished pine wood walls and case goods.

The owners seem to have a great ethos when it comes to fashion. They carry brands new to the Scandinavian market, but have already had a long tradition creating quality long lasting products.

via notcot