Work in Progress

Since I'm working on some really interesting projects at the moment I thought I should share them here with you. I know that I've been lazy about updating my blog regularly and it would be too easy to blame it on a lot of work. I will try to take some minutes every couple of days to keep you updated about what keeps me busy and I hope you'll like what you see.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.

Today was a good morning. When I left the house I checked my mailbox and found my copy of Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m. which is all about the creation of Breakfast at Tiffany's. It is practically a must for everybody who loved the movie, the novel, Audrey Hepburn, Givenchy's little black dress and more.

The advance reviews were great and praise Sam Wasson's book as "A brilliant chronicle of the creation of Breakfast at Tiffany's", "... juicy incide story while giving Hepburn her due as a true modern original" or "Wasson has assembled a sparkling time capsule of old Hollywood magic and mythmaking. So finally the date of publication has come and I received my preordered copy. I can't wait to start reading.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. by Sam Wasson
available on Amazon now

Blogging in Austria and the difficulties with that...

I'm sorry that I wasn't blogging recently but I tried to figure out how to keep this blog interesting. So over the last few weeks I was busy with research about legal things concerning blogging in the internet. I would love to post everything I stumble upon that seems interesting to me. This includes of course photos that are featured online or in print media. 

The problem with legal situation in Austria is that, unlike the United States f.e., I'm not allowed to publish them if I don't own the rights. Not even if my intention isn't to make money with it and even if it is primarily a compliment to the photographer or interior designer. If I do publish photos I don't own the rights to I have to expect that some day a busy lawyer will find my blog and send me a letter with an invoice to pay the publishing rights or even considering a lawsuit.

So I have to find another way in keeping you informed about my finds. Of course I'm gonna continue posting photos but I have to stick with photos I shoot by myself. So I will start carrying my camera around as much as I can and try to capture design highlights on my way through life.

I will also start another category on this blog, called "work in progress", that will keep you posted about my own work on projects. Im quite busy at the moment with the design of two apartments and I'm gonna post the first photos of them soon. So keep on stopping by and don't hesitate to leave comments to let me know what you're thinking.

Spring awakening. Hopefully.

Maybe I'm a bit too early, but since the sun showed up for the last few days in Vienna I'm in a serious mood for spring. I can't wait to pack my warm scarves and jackets away and enjoy the weekends and evenings outside in one of the many beautiful gardens of Vienna's restaurants. One of my favourites is definitely the charming backyard of restaurant MILL in the 6th district. It is owned by a wonderful couple who I'm lucky to call friends and it has become a highlight in Vienna's gastronomy. Their cuisine is a mix of local and international food and the atmosphere is amazingly cosy. The interior is a mixture of shabby chic with an oriental twist and you will never get bored to find new funny details all around the place. From the stuffed fake lionhead next to the bar to the many many different old lamps spread around the restaurant and garden everything creates an incredible stage for great dinners amongst friends or a relaxing brunch on sundays. Actually that is what I am most looking forward as soon as their garden opens this year. There is no better way to start a sunday than with a brunch at Mill. Every Sunday from 11:00 to 16:00 they provide an amazing brunch buffet where everybody will find enough delicious food to be stuffed for the rest of the day. But you better make a reservation on time, because it is quite hard to get a table there on Sunday. So there is nothing more to say than: Hello Spring! Hello Mill!

 

  

  

Restaurant Mill, Millergasse 32, 1060 Vienna, phone: +43 1 966 40 73

http://www.mill32.at

Vienna Online feat. Christian Hantschel

Yesterday an Austrian News Site presented an article about a survey comparing straight and gay living. It wasn't very surprising to hear that gay men spend more money on living than straight men or that they wanna live more in Vienna's City Center while straight men prefer the suburbs. But the exciting thing about this article was that the video features an apartment designed by me and I'm really happy with the way they show my work. If you're interested in the full german article visit Vienna Online or just enjoy the video.

Photo and Video by Vienna Online

Interior Design by Christian Hantschel

feliz década!

After a busy holiday full of celebrating, meeting friends, trying to relax and working I'm finally back again and want to wish a happy new year to all of you. I hope everybody has recovered from celebrating a lot. My first blog-entry this year is a recommendation of one of the best issues of AD I saw for quite a while. It is the January 2010 issue of the spanish AD. Actually for the last months I found myself buying the spanish version of my most favourite magazine more often because I really like the things they choose to publish. It is exactly the perfect mixture of contemporary and classic elements and mostly the combination of colours is amazing. This time the main story is a selection of quite small apartments from 30 to 80 m2 all over the world. Even if you don't speak spanish, like me, you will enjoy the photos. So grab your copy and start an inspiring new year.

Cosy Melody.

Today I have to post something about music for the first time, because a friend of mine (Thank you P.) posted the name of this wonderful young singer from the states. Her name is Melody Gardot and her music got me from the first moment on. It is really great and cosy jazz and is perfect for this time of the year. So I don't want to bore you with my text anymore. Just sit down in your sofa, watch the snowflakes fall, fell the warmth of the fireplace and enjoy this great soft voice.

In the Shade of light.

Recently I walked through Vienna's inner city and discovered that another traditional shop closed its doors forever. It was one of the last shops for lampshades. What used to be a booming business in former times, is a craftmanship that is about to die out here. In Vienna there are not even a handful of them left. Unlike as in Britain where it is still a kind of art it seems that in Austria there is just no market left for it. Although you can create amazing effects by just having a great lampshade made to measure for an old lamp. Actually the shade is often as important as the lamp itself. A great variety of possiblities is shown in the picture below, which shows a part of the range of Besselink & Jones, a british lamp factory. The good thing is, there are two great women left in Vienna who are able to create great lampshades. Find their contacts below but don't forget that a lampshade should fit to your interior as well as the lamp. So contacting an interior designer for help is recommended.

Besselink & Jones, UK, www.besselink.com

Christine Sares, Vienna, www.lampenschirme-wien.com

Anita Markl, Vienna, members.aon.at/markl/

Annie Leibovitz.

What more can you ask of a perfect sunday in Vienna than to see a wonderful exhibition as the current Annie Leibovitz exhibition at Kunsthaus Wien? It is the sequel of a former exhibition that showed her work until 1990 and presents her work from 1990 to now. It is an amazing overview of her work and for the first time shows a mix of commercial work and personal photos of friends and family. Those different types of photos compliment each other in an amazing way and add a much more emotional touch to the whole exhibition, not only because some of those photos showed the last years of her dear friend Susan Sontag, who died from leukemia in the 90ies, and of Leibovitz's father who died shortly after Susan. So if you're in Vienna you shouldn't miss the opportunity to see that amazing overview of her work. The exhibition is open until 31. January 2010.

Kunsthaus Wien, Untere Weißgerberstraße 13, 1030 Wien, every day 10am - 7pm, http://www.kunsthauswien.com/

Hats off to Viennese tradition.

This time I want to introduce you to another great example of a company that was able to survive more than 100 years and that found its way to combine traditional craftmanship and modern design. I'm talking about the most famous viennese hatter Mühlbauer. It has been founded it 1903 and is now owned and operated by the 4th generation of the family. Every hat is still produced by hand and they found there way into the shelves of the most famous warehouses of our time such as Bergdorf Goodman in NYC or Le Bon Márche in Paris. As a lover of hats I naturally stop by every now and then in their flagshipstore in Seilergasse and I often can't resist to buy one of those wonderful headgears. But I'm pretty sure that one can never have too many hats or shoes. Below you'll see some examples of their recent collection for fall/winter 2009/10.

Mühlbauer Hutmanufaktur, Seilergasse 10, 1010 Wien, www.muehlbauer.at