apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Flat sided marble cubes are a fairly common find on eBay and Craigslist but I've never seen the stacked version this picture shows. Custom isn't always more expensive (design adds significantly to a price but you've already go the design), it's as simple as taking a picture to a handful of local suppliers in your area (specifically suppliers of marble/granite), and asking if they can custom fabricate it for you - or - if they can't/won't if know of someone who can. I'd urge you to ask if there are any remnants/leftovers (from countertop projects) that could be used... one way to save even more money! Best wishes.

Holy Trump Plaza batman, but that's some ugly stuff. What is it about the nouveau rich who think lots of marble, imitation antique statuary and heavy brocade equals taste? Looks more like the glitzy trash finishes you see in Trump's buildings.

Bleh. Its one thing to be a WASPy Mayflower society matron living amongst the cobwebs on Beacon Hill in a townhome filled with real Chippendale highboys and 18th century portaits of English hunting dogs. Its another thing to try to fake it.

Dave, Why is (what you think of as) bad taste better if your blood is blue?

Firefly - I think you misunderstand. What I mean is that its one thing if your house is filled with actual antiques and family heirlooms - real Chippendale highboys, real 18th century portaits, real Roman statuary - that were put there when that was the style of the age - 18th century stuff in an 18th century home, Victorian stuff in a Victorian home - and your family hasn't ever changed it.

Its totally another thing when one fakes it - fake statuary and the like - and then, on top, combine it with a "contemporary" spin? It all just winds up as so much Trump-style chintzy glam - too much marble, fake Roman busts, overdramatic brocade, etc. It screams "I have too much money, I didn't grow up around this kind of money and I have no idea how to spend it."

Say what one will about the ageing, musty doyens on Beacon Hill in Boston or Society Hill in Philly - but their Old Money at least has a sense of restraint and style compared to that photo above.

Amen, Dave, I'm with you on this one, though I wouldn't say the tables above are really that hideous. Lots of sharp edges, though:)

Dave and Olya, 2 words:
classist crap-
your blue blood idolotry carries so much baggage that truly should be left in the last century...destroy your iconography before it strangles you.let go,so we can express the evolution and diversity of our world now...

I am no expert on Kelly Wearstler, but as I understand her, she uses no fakes of any sort. She does indulge in refinished funiture of provenance, which is an option most of us cannot afford to delve into simply for the cost of it. The refinishing - often in colors and material some with untrained eyes may find hideous - lends an artificial air that is amenable to certain designs of the interiors. In the end it comes down to personal preference, and Wearstler represents a camp that has dominated the LA region and begins to influence the rest of the country. Put another way, to casually pronounce her work 'ugly' or 'trash' would be to miss the point of the aesthetic revival working in counter to the modernist dominance that has people awfully bored and thirty for a change.

I think it's time to question our own taste in things when IKEA is considered acceptable and brocade not.

Curious_design quoth: "I think it's time to question our own taste in things when IKEA is considered acceptable and brocade not."

Why? The whole point of the modernist movement was that "good design" -- clean lines, simple forms, emphasis on function over applied decoration -- should be mass-produced and affordable for the masses. IKEA is the apotheosis of modernism.

Remarks on the "untrained eye" finding designs "hideous" are tremendously classist, implying that true taste is not accessible to most people, but only to the properly trained few. As the classical Greeks knew and demonstrated, good design has lines that are innately pleasing; this is why any fool can appreciate the Parthenon, but it takes a Ph.D. in design to "get" some contemporary buildings.

While the room in the photo screams, "I made my fortune in plastic surgery and my wife was a small-time model," the shape of the table is still kinda cool. And people who made their fortunes in plastic surgery need to own furniture.

MDF + marbled paper + high gloss polyurethane = marble tables on a budget

i'm not high class, but i'm not white trash.

I don't find that photo particularly hideous, nouveau riche, blue blood or white trash.

I don't find it the best representation of Ms. Wearstler's work, either.

I think the tables work in this setting, and could (possibly) be recreated with MDF (as tony says) but a faux marbled paint finish.

Oh, poop, I missed this damned thing!! I have to give my opinion anyway even if no one sees it.

Those tables in the right room would be wonderful. And, faux finish done well is elegant and lucrative. The Italians sure as hell loved it. And I agree these are nice little tables. A bit of wood, paint and real know how and I could do these and you'd love them, Dave, maybe not even know the difference unless you touched them. And the real thing's nice but maybe untouchable (if at all "findable") for some.

Everyone has different taste. I wouldn't be so quick to knock something and set up an entire scenario about people because they like a set of marble cubes you don't like. You just don't like it. Let it go. Get a massage. Chill. Exercise the restraint you think the Beacon Hill folks do.

A) I am not an untrained eye. In a former life, I spent countless horus staring at paintings, photographs, sculpture. I can tell you why Cezanne truly deserves his reputation and why Duchamp is more important than Picasso. And why its a shame Warhol's self esteem issues and lust for fame have overshadowed his genius. I've worked, on the curatorial side, for one of the premier art museums in the country. (One of the big four, although with the Getty, it might now be more appropriate to refer to the big five.)

B) I've been inside those musty Beacon Hill townhomes. I don't idolize them or some other such "classist" nonsense. Its just when you are living off the dividends from wealth that has been so diluted down the generations such that you need to wear out the elbow in your sport coat, one's frugality by necessity tends to prevent one from undertaking mindboggingly gauche displays of bad taste.

C) When you find yourself having the urge to cover something in shiny marble, take a deep breath and count to 10. And maybe even slowly finish off a gin and tonic. Because 9 times out 10, when you cover something in marble, it looks like shit, no matter how much money you spend on it.

D) And finally, I've also been in a lot of the homes of the noveau riche. And 9 times out of 10 - barf. You start with people who, like most Americans, have pretty mediocre taste and sense of design (unlike, say, those glorious Finns), add gobs of money, and you get...well, you get people who think the Trump Plaza is "elegant."

Dave, seems to me Rachel was asking for help in how to recreate them... not for anyone's approval of her choice(s). So, with all due respect, enough already...

Rachel: good luck with your project, sorry about all my typo's!