chairy oh baby

it is with good reason that i remind you to read the small print when bidding on ebay. case in point: a friend had his only bad experience on ebay when he bought, what he thought, was an eames office chair and hassock. he was so excited because it was new, and the total cost was $575.00. wow. this is why ebay can be great. bargains. so far so good. when it arrived, it came in a box around the size of a brick. uh. turns out the auction was for a miniature eames chair by vitra. size: 89mm/70mm/109mm (sorry, i don't know metric conversion off the top of my head-but it's teensy) the thing is, it's really, really, cute and well made. it is in fact, used as a teaching tool in many architecture and design schools. it's just not large enough to sit in. unless you're one of barbie's friends. here you can see it in scale, next to a coconut shell. see what i mean? cute. (i'm probably horrifying many a design snob with that adjective right now) the cautionary tale i tell is comedy (albiet tragic comedy) but these little models of classic furniture design are not meant to be humorous at all. they're kind of like what the model car collection, or the japanese robot collection of the geeky obsessed adult collector- is -to us, obessesed design geeks. i see this in a collection. sitting on a shelf in some art director or interior designer's cube. on the other hand, i can picture a modular room divider. open on both sides, with these little 'mini me"s placed artfully amidst monochromatic book spines and small owl statues. they're cute. kind of pricey. but if you are a design dork... by god, you'll be willing to represent your obsession at any cost.