The Latest Thing

This is the answer. This is a cook’s glove — made for precisely this purpose, to protect hands against cutting. It was actually designed to protect hands for oyster shucking — involving, obviously, a very sharp instrument, and very high levels of force, which means that a slip entails a quick hospital trip. But, it has a much wider application. It can be used in any kitchen task where cutting occurs, including the (very treacherous) early morning, sleep-deprived bagel-slicing.

It’s made of chain mail. As in the Middle Ages. Real, small-link, stainless steel, non-rusting chain mail. It’s carefully crafted for comfort and performance (sorry, that sounds like a car ad, but it’s true), and it has a leather wrist band for closure. And it’s quite beautiful.

It turns out that medieval chain mail still, today, offers a unique combination of flexibility and laceration protection that’s never been bettered. The hundreds (thousands? I haven’t counted) of small links in the glove conform to any human movement/contortion (more on that to come, a little later). You cannot penetrate them, from any angle, with a blade, or even with the point of a blade.

To me, this is one of the more unexpected products in the Salon Store. It isn’t the result of a high design exercise by a schooled European designer. Yet, in terms of elegance and thoughtfulness, it’s every bit as interesting. It literally repurposes an ancient invention.

That was, after all, why chain mail was invented. The whole point was to protect against incursions from sharp blades and points of blades. So now, this ancient legacy, with its dark history protection in truly awful, barbaric fighting — becomes civilized and protects against slips of the French Chef’s hand.

This particular glove is a very high-quality, lovely piece. It will last a lifetime. It’s very comfortable to wear. You might even decide to wear it out in the evening (see our wonderful Michael Jackson book, “Before He Was King”). In any event, a wonderful unexpected gift for anyone you know who cooks. Or, honestly, for anyone you know who spends time in the kitchen and is clumsy.

It’s possible, of course, that an overly serious chef might view it as wimpy or implying a lack of confidence. I’d turn a blind eye to this possibility. It is, after all, a heartfelt gesture of support and concern.

For me, there was another layer of amusement in finding the chain mail glove. Both of my sons went through that phase where they loved medieval lore. Knights, jousting, castles, etc. As a consequence, we used to go to medieval faires (as they call themselves). They come in greater and lesser versions, and are held all over the United States, mostly in the fall. They draw together an interesting crowd of folks, most of whom have normal lives — teachers, cops, lawyers — but, who also have a second life, as medievalists. They dress in period clothes and … chain mail.

You wander over many, many acres, watching people forge weapons, sword-fight, joust and engage in a whole range of activities drawn from the ancient court. There are stages and jesters and contests and medieval rides. By the evening, after a lot of mead-drinking, it’s all pretty bleary, and sometimes ends with a truly weird medieval rock concert.

So, from this, I had actually become aware that you can buy a range of real chain mail outfits, made by serious modern craftsman, using medieval methods. Replicas of the real thing, worn by serious adults, in re-creations of ancient combat. At the faires, you can actually, sometimes, watch it being made, which is pretty cool. I just didn’t know about the glove and cooking, which kind of completed the picture.

And this leads to one final chain mail fact, in terms of chain mail and contortions (a term I said that I would revisit). Due to my attendance at the faires, I also became aware that a lot of the medievalist folks are club-goers. And not a few are fetishists. So, you can buy chain mail club wear — and fetish wear.

We are not featuring chain mail club wear or fetish wear at the Salon Store this holiday season. I suggested it, but I was overruled. If you would like us to feature these items, please make your views known to me. I will be glad to plead my case once again with our CEO.

You know the drill with traditional Delft china.  It’s white, high-quality, handmade china with unmistakable blue graphic treatments.  Made in Delft, Netherlands, it is collected worldwide.  (Delft was actually a copy of Ming-era porcelain from China, which the Dutch East India Co. began to import into Holland in the early 17th century.  The Dutch copies gained a reputation of their own, and Delftware became a highly desired species of pottery.)

Of course, imagery on Delftware is not street art.  It’s about as traditional as you can get.  So L&R took the Delft color palette and product silhouette and imposed New York graffiti imagery. The result is my favorite china.  It’s beautiful, formal, elegant. But it’s also gritty and provocative.  It makes you think about your preconceptions about art and taste and beauty.  It’s truly fascinating.

I was in my 20s when modern graffiti emerged in the U.S.  I remember going to New York during the days of the Subway Movement and watching the transformation. It was a wild time. The art exploded in a broken city. There was crime, economic collapse and crumbling infrastructure. New York was bankrupt.  And there was this incredible new form of expression … everywhere. Overnight.

The classic tableau for me — driving in from Boston — was a stripped car on the side of the West Side Highway, plundered to a skeleton, upside down like a dead bug, under a huge wall of graffiti.  It felt dangerous, and threatening, and new, and totally different. A doorway into a new and very uncertain era.

Having decided to feature the New York Delft china and having been led to recall the incredible energy of the graffiti movement, I thought we’d also offer a couple of books in the store to memorialize those times.  “Subway Art” by Cooper and Chalfant is a definitive book,  a great collection of subway photography.  Truly stunning.  Jon Naar’s book “The Birth of Graffiti” chronicles the birth of the movement. It originally was published with 40 museum-quality photos; in the reprints it has been expanded to incorporate many more. Both of these books are absolutely beautiful.

Taken together, these products now reflect an important piece of cultural history. Americans — having an uneasy relationship with street art and insurgency — have waged war on graffiti. Just last year, Shepard Fairey was Barack Obama’s official campaign artist. Yet when Fairey had an exhibition earlier this year at Boston’s Museum of Contemporary Art and put up some street art in Boston to celebrate it, he was arrested.  Los Angeles, the modern epicenter of urban art, has recently launched a new crackdown. The energy of underground art in public spaces provokes a strong counter-reaction.

Which is very different from the equilibrium in arguably more culturally mature European countries. I was in Germany this past summer.  Berlin is covered in graffiti — it is a graphic city.  The residents push strollers past walls of street art.  No one seems to mind and, for the most part, it seems to be viewed as a part of the city’s cultural rebuilding. I put together a little gallery of East Berlin graffiti photos, you can see them here.

As a result of the American attitude, the amazing imagery of New York graffiti is now almost entirely gone. Which is, in a very real way, a tragedy. At least we have these wonderful books to commemorate it. And we have Lovegrove & Repucci’s Delft china to give us a quite unexpected and fascinating perspective on that art form, and to make us think a little bit about the comparison to other art forms that, as a culture, we seem to consider more “respectable.”

Late one night during the brainstorming phase last summer, I was winding down by cruising Craigslist (no, not that part of Craigslist). I wound up in “bikes.”

Amid the $1,000 (and $10,000) titanium-framed, fully suspended, on- and off-road competition bikes for sale around bike-obsessed San Francisco, I stumbled onto this. A custom Sting Ray chopper re-creation. All chrome. With spiral/twisted fork … and high-density spoke wheel … and a steering wheel … and mufflers … and a spare tire, to top it off, carried in the back, like my granddad’s ’35 Ford.

I called the phone number the next day. I found myself talking to a young guy — a kid, the owner/builder. He lived in Richmond, an economically challenged city in the East Bay. At the end of my day at Salon, I drove across the Bay Bridge to have a look.

I drove up a street with no occupied houses, save for the one that was my destination. It was encircled by a high fence. There was a large dog in the yard. I honked the horn, walked up and met a Hispanic family. There were three kids playing in the yard and driveway, a well-kept house, and a garage full of projects with wheels. No English spoken here, save for the owner of the bike. Mom sat on the front stairs watching over everyone, friendly but guarded.

The bike builder was 16. He’d built the bike when he was 14. He’d spent months putting it together. Then he rode it to school every day for two years. At night he parked it inside, cleaned it and polished it. The bike led to other projects. He was now building go-karts, not just for himself but with a local shop. He was on a vocational track in school. He needed the dough out of the bike to buy parts for his new cart venture.

So, the bike, a little chrome conceit, a ghetto ornament, had started him on the road to a career. He was blessed with a strong mom who had created a fortress of a household. He was on his way, a fragile, hopeful contrast to the kids just blocks away in his sometimes incredibly sad city.

Two-hundred fifty dollars was a lot of money for a bike that had seen a pretty hard and well-used life, no matter how deeply it had been loved. The fork was loose; the wheel spokes had a patina of rust. But for a signpost, a memory of a hardworking family, doing their best against really bad odds? I paid him, and hoisted the bike into the back seat of my car. I asked if I could take their picture, and received an emphatic “no” from his protective mom. (Of course not — what was I thinking?) The bike now sits in the courtyard of our little house in Marin.

So, what does this have to do with Salon? It’s just this: Products — things — matter.

On the one hand: As consumers, we are drowning in an endless sea of bad and unnecessary products. Too much stuff being produced. Stuff that sucks resources away from more socially important needs. Products that, whether cheap or expensive, are awful. Devoid of ideas, sometimes even dangerous.

So we become anti-consumer, anti-product, anti-retail. We look for ways, in a world filled with hardship, to simplify, to walk away from the avalanche of stuff.

But on the other hand: Products — the right products, designed with passion, for the right reasons, made responsibly — can be inspiring. They can be the embodiment of values and, indeed, of dreams. They can literally change people’s lives, both those who produce them and those who consume them.

A product may distill the conviction of a young designer, studying art, wanting to make a difference. Or it may represent the deeply held beliefs of an engineer who has spent a lifetime studying a need and developing a theory. Or it may embody the witty, fun imaginings of an inventor who just wants to make people smile. Or it may hold the hopes of a 14-year-old kid who can make something of chrome that embodies his loves and passions, that gives him a reason to work toward his future.

For the past decade or so, I’ve spent my life in retail, and around designers. I love it because of the creativity and the passion. There’s lots of uninspired crap, yes. But there are also companies that stand for something and products that mean something. You find it in small companies and large ones. Young designers turn out stunning products in their living rooms. Larger companies sometimes, out of the blue, and in shocking contravention to their prior history, come up with an impassioned, different approach.

So this is why I think that offering products for sale fits with Salon’s mission. Not every product fits with Salon. In fact, few do. But if a product is driven by ideas, by values, by dreams, then it fits. If it makes you smile or conveys a thought or gets you to reexamine the way you do something, then it’s as resonant as a political statement, a movie or a book. It’s an idea, and a very concrete one. A product isn’t an argument that can morph or shift or dodge or be reinterpreted. It sits there, and it means it. It is what it is.

The mission of the Salon Store is to find and showcase products that fit with Salon — because they embody ideas. As a starting point, we embraced three key words: smart, funny and progressive. The Salon Store is about finding products that fit these words, these filters, and giving them a stage. The idea is to create a virtuous circle — guiding you to great products, and thereby, helping designers with good ideas to build their companies.

With our holiday collection, I hope you can see some of these values reflected — the beginnings of this mission. It is just a start. And it’s a fluffy start. The holiday collection is a gift collection, things that we think are different in fun and interesting ways. We chose it in part based on the idea that the holidays can be terribly serious for many people, and that, of our three key words — smart, funny and progressive — at holiday time, the focus should be on funny, on helping you make someone smile.

Many of the things in this collection, however, actually also reflect some broader values — for example, because of where they’re made, or how, or by whom. Next year, as we add new things to the Store, you’ll see an expanding and serious emphasis on things that, in various ways, reflect and embody important social goals.

Last summer, on that evening in Richmond, before I drove off I asked the kid a question. I told him that I was in the process of starting a new e-commerce business. I said, “If I put a picture of your bike on my site, and, if someone wants one like it, would you be interested in making more?” Maybe, he said, guardedly.

I’ve carried this around with me since then. So, if you like the bike, write me. I’ll see if I can interest him in producing some bikes. Who knows, if we were to get some traction with it, it might even help get him through school.

And that would be exactly, precisely, reflective of why I wanted to do this in the first place.