Please go to our new link for Kiosk.
We stepped into Kiosk last night and were blown away. it is a tiny mecca of great design items from around the world. It's a cross between MoMA and a five and dime store. Curated by Alisa and her husband, who bring back unique items from their worldwide travels and write detailed descriptions for each one, the "store" changes every six months or so....
On our visit, they were selling the end of their Finland theme with dozens of beautiful small items from that country like a scrub brush, a sauna bucket and a Fortuna child's game. Everything hews to their vision of beauty through "undesign." This is how they put it:
"We opened the store to offer an antidote to over-design. We consider the objects we stock to be humble, straightforward and beautiful for their simplicity and directness. Often they are traditional goods that have developed over generations or anonymous design found in general stores, DIYs and kiosks, products created by not one personality but things that are the result of local aesthetics and needs."
They've done Sweden, Japan, Germany and Mexico and keep "ongoing" items in the shop so the favorites are usually available. This is a great place to buy gifts as well as to buy really cool, useful household objects. We spent $80 and bought a game for our daughter, brass paperclips, a beautiful ball of butcher twine and a few other things. The shop is lovely, but for those far away, online shows everything really well. www.kioskkiosk.com
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
I love this store. It can be difficult to find, but worth the effort!
view Aaron's profile
no! you found my secret store!
view lexoo's profile
It's true that there are way too many over-designed things out there, whose design is only there to give the price tag a hike, and things that have been around forever, whose design has never been changed and which can withstand years of use and wear are actually the better designed ones. We ignore them simply because they've been around for too long to be exciting.
But.
After reading today's newsletter, I was clicking on the link with high hopes, and when I saw those very ordinary items, things that can only be found in very traditional stores, I was kind of happy, thinking that, ha, someone has found the beauty of old-world simplicity too.
But after seeing the prices....
I don't know whether I should call this highway robbery or what. Let's just say the store owners value their personal taste very, very highly and think that for others to partake in it, they should pay accordingly.
Or maybe they just think of themselves as very good copy writers and should be paid at least two dollars per word.
view sngl's profile
The original retail price (not wholesale) for most items are about 10% of what Kiosk is selling them for. Would you still find them very well designed and interesting if they're, gush, cheap?
view sngl's profile
hi campari
we figured you'd be posting on our other posts
hence the reason we deliberately did not ask for the comments to be disabled
it's nice you make such an effort talking badly about us
please write to the editors at AT if you want an explanation on why the comments were disabled, I am curious as well, post their explanation here
and please identify yourself so we can be in touch, we'd love to talk to you
the entitled and surly owner,
alisa
view kiosk's profile