Irish designer Ryan McElhinney's baroque lamps and mirrors, made from plastic toys, call up a variety of associations — from a sense of boyhood nostalgia to over-the-top kitsch to the drama of a Rodin sculpture.
McElhinney sculpts the one-of-a-kind pieces by hand, composing the toys and then coating them in a high gloss polyurethane lacquer. The work is both silly and stunning — recycling with a sharp eye toward design.
• See more of Ryan McElhinney's work on his website.
Images: Ryan McElhinney
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I think these are pretty cool. I like the sense of humor and the suer clean shade keeps it's sculptural.
I would love one of these for my house. *considers digging through the little one's stash for broken goodies*
Half weirdly unsettling, half awesome.
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god *SQUEEEEEE!*
Love it!!! I am so totally going to go raid the toy section of Goodwill POST HASTE!
Um, this wasn't even a new idea in 2009... I remember making Christmas "trees" out of old small toys when I was in Girl Scouts as a kid (probably around 3rd grade). We took a foam cone form and hot glued small toys and bits and pieces on the "tree", then spray painted it either gold or silver. It actually came out a lot better than I expected, pretty much like the first picture frame photo above.
It's super easy as long as you have hard plastic toys. Try it!
Altogether amazing! Meets in the middle of genius/fay/butch/nostalgic. Perfection & fun, indeed!
I made picture frames like these in 1982 and sold them at my gallery in Eugene, OR. Wondering what I'm putting together right now?...
Picasso did this too...
http://uat.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AOD%3AE%3A81119&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1&background=gray