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Pietre Dure Exhibit At The Met

Filed under: Decor, Art

If summer holidays have kept you out of the city, you may have a treat waiting for you upon arrival in New York: the pietre dure (Italian for "hard stones") exhibit at the Met. The museum's second floor galleries are filled with ornately designed furniture, vases, and various objêts d'art all featuring hand-carved pietre dure that could take artisans years to complete for just one piece. As highly valued now as then, one recently auctioned example of pietre dure was sold for $36.7 million in 2004.

The exhibit will run until September 21. If your travels won't take you down 5th Avenue by then, see the gallery for stunning examples of this painstakingly rendered art.

Gallery: Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe

Prie-dieu Made for the Electress Palatine

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Tags: art, exhibits, furniture, inlay, italy, met, objets dart, ObjetsDart, pietre dure, PietreDure, the metropolitan museum of art, TheMetropolitanMuseumOfArt

Paul Smith iPod mini case

by Anne Metz (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Gadgets

In honor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit, Anglo-mania, a retrospective of British fashion, I thought I'd join in the Anglophilia with something hip and Brit: Paul Smith's leather iPod Mini carrying case.

If you're not familiar with Paul Smith, let me gush about him for a few minutes. He's best known for his tailored suits, but in the past few years, he extended his collection to include women's ready to wear, accessories and perfumes. What Paul Smith does best is basically what the British do best -- mixing subsersiveness with tradition. Smith's suits, are on the outside, exactly what you would expect a stuffy British business man to wear. On the inside, though, he includes details like lavender satin or this funky ticking stripe liner.

It's the same striped patten he uses in this iPod mini case. The sleek elastic sides enable this carrier to accomodate both the 4 and the 6 GB Mini.

Sort of mod, sort of cheeky, this pod holster gives me the feeling that I should be spending a good part of my life listening to The Kinks' song "Waterloo Station" on iPod repeat. Price: $130.

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Tags: anglo-mania, british, ipod, ipod carriers, IpodCarriers, Kinks, Met, Metropolitan Museum, MetropolitanMuseum, paul smith, PaulSmith, stripes, Waterloo station, WaterlooStation