Felda aims to sell its handicraft under the “Modern Malaysian” brand in strategic markets including the renowned department store Harrods in London.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said he hoped to see the objective become a reality in the next one year.

“It is my dream that Felda handicraft will be marketed in the shops in Harrods,” he said when opening the first Felda craft gallery in the Craft Complex in Jalan Conlay, here, Saturday.

Two more Felda craft galleries will be opened before the end of the year. Najib said the 11 Felda craft production centres established under the one region one industry project would be used to supply Modern Malaysian handicraft for the global market. Read more…

The office-furniture industry has struggled with two seemingly incongruous problems for years: What to do with worn-out furniture, and a battle against state and federal prison furniture-making operations.

A new pilot program created by an office-furniture industry trade group and the state may help solve both problems.

The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) and the state announced Tuesday that state prisons factories would begin disassembling furniture. Read more…

Something is missing in offices today. It’s not a computer stolen last week. Nor is it cell phones (despite some co-workers’ wishes). It is – or was – the most basic office structure: walls.

Businesses in Greater Des Moines, especially larger corporations, are kicking down the barriers that separate employees from their teammates and creating environments that foster constant interaction with colleagues.

“I think there’s a desire to maximize both productivity and also enjoyment and synergy built between co-workers in the work environment,” said Matt Ostanik, public relations chair for the Iowa chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Collaboration is a tool for companies to do both things: build more output and an enjoyable experience.” Read more…

Art Espenet Carpenter, a self-taught woodworker whose spare but sexy furniture received national acclaim and influenced generations of master craftsmen, died. He was 86.

Carpenter suffered a heart attack Thursday at his home in Bolinas, the Marin County town he helped make a haven for artists after another house he built and furnished there was featured in Life magazine in 1966, said his son, Tripp Carpenter.
Known professionally as Espenet, the elder Carpenter produced pieces that now are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City. Read more…

A plan is in the works to move the historic home of Everglades icon Marjory Stoneman Douglas — but the question is where.

SUBHED

The cozy Coconut Grove cottage where the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas, guardian of the Everglades and American icon, lived for most of her life looks shabby these days.

A pile of cracked cedar shingles sits near the front steps. A shredded blue roof tarp exposes torn tar paper. Water stains run from the vaulted ceiling down the back wall of the interior great room. Douglas’ antique Spanish desk and most of the furniture is gone.

The 1926 bungalow has fallen into such sorry shape that the state has quietly moved to strip management from Sallye Jude, a prominent Miami preservationist. Her plan — to turn the house and an adjacent lot into a museum compound — ran afoul of neighbors. Read more…

Before you purchase, measure the space, consider the view. Here are more tips

You wouldn’t rush off to the furniture store to decorate your living room without giving the project some thought and planning, would you?

Outdoor rooms are no different.

An outdoor room that’s comfortable, functional and beautiful doesn’t just happen; it results from applying design principles, just as you would indoors, garden designer P. Allen Smith said. Here are some tips and considerations:

• Know how big the space is. That may seem obvious, but Susan Dovel of B&G Fireplace & Patio said it’s surprising how often customers come in looking for outdoor furniture with no idea how big their patio or deck is. Measure before you shop, and take note of features such as doors, steps and traffic patterns that might affect where the furniture is placed and how it functions. Read more…

A scrape-off showdown is taking shape in Denver, where home demolitions have jumped 63 percent in three years as developers remake the face of some of the city’s most prized neighborhoods.

In response, the Denver City Council is wrestling with a policy to save true landmarks, without giving residents too much control over what their neighbors can do with their property.

But residents in Washington Park, Hilltop, Park Hill and other neighborhoods complain that the city isn’t doing enough to stop rampant tear-downs for “monster homes.” They are going to court and filing landmark applications to defend their neighborhood charm - and property values. Read more…

Neville Tuli is looking for $33.5 million to invest in what may be India’s hottest market: Art.

Soaring prices for contemporary Indian works prompted the chairman of Mumbai-based Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Ltd. to start the nation’s second art investment fund. Osian, with sale rooms in New Delhi and Mumbai, will start raising money on June 5, Tuli said in an interview.

Days after the Mumbai stock exchange had its biggest weekly drop since 2001, a painting by Indian-born Francis Newton Souza sold at auction for a record $1.2 million. Prices of works by Indian artists such as Souza, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and Maqbool Fida Husain are being driven up by a global surge in art investment, coupled with growth in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy that has swollen the ranks of the nation’s wealthy. Read more…

GEELONG’S Red Cross Craft Shop is more than a money spinner it’s a place for a cuppa and a chat. Yesterday the shop was in full swing, with manager Kathleen Lancaster donating $10,500 to the Red Cross.

The craft store has donated $85,000 to the organisation in the four years since it opened. But Mrs Lancaster said the shop would not have survived without a team of dedicated volunteers.

“People from the hospital wander over and have a little look around so it has become a place for a chat and a cuppa,'’ she said. Read more…

A painting by Chinese artist Chu The-chun fetched 3.2 million dollars at auction in Hong Kong Sunday, underscoring a growing worldwide taste for Asian art.

The inky black and red “Rouge, La pluie de petals sur le village; Blanc, Le nuage au-dessus de la maison No. 53″, painted in 1960, sold for more than six times its asking price of 512,000 dollars.

Auctioneers Christie’s said the sale set a record for a work by Chu, who is considered among the greatest of China’s modern masters.

Other works by modern Asian artists also fetched higher than expected prices. Read more…