Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Rodel’

We welcome BLANCO Design Council Member and blogger Joseph Freenor, CFT 411 who has penned this week’s guest post on kitchen design trends including the arts and crafts revival and great rooms. Joseph is a professional woodworker whose long established blog provides in depth information and observations on the kitchen design world.

Arts and Crafts Revival

A trend that has been going on for a long time is the Arts and Crafts Revival. There are any number of people working in the field who are doing incredible work. I wrote a blog on Kevin Rodel in 2008. Mr. Rodel is clearly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but he is not bound to making only reproduction pieces. What Mr. Rodel most wants to do is to create works that have their roots in that movement, but that have been designed for contemporary purposes. And that is more than simply putting a TV in a reproduction Greene & Greene bookcase. What Mr. Rodel has done is to use those designs as a point of departure, and then taken them somewhere else altogether. The results are stunning—no other word adequately describes it. Here’s a link to the original post: http://cft411.com/2008/11/05/kevin-rodel-arts-crafts-furniture-design/

Great Rooms

The other trend that I find particularly interesting is the turn to what I call Great Rooms. These are large rooms that hold kitchen, living room and dining room. It’s something that is just beginning in this country, although it’s been in vogue for quite some time in Europe, where homes are so much smaller than they are in the USA. With the economy being the way it is, people are beginning to downsize. Some are selling large homes and buying smaller. Others are older empty-nest people who have taken in adult children with children of their own. Some clever remodeling to accommodate so many more has sometimes been the result.

I have not said anything about the empty-nest angle, but I have mentioned Great Rooms in a number of blogs. Electrolux calls it the “Live-In Room,” and I wrote a blog on them some time back which I recycled last year for Blanco’s Earth Day Celebration. Here is a link to that blog: http://cft411.com/2011/03/31/electrolux-4/