New York Times

The 25th International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which ended Tuesday, offered many surprises. There were dollhouse-size candelabra inserted into hanging glass bulbs like ships in a bottle and a coffee table whose base was sheathed in python. There was even wallpaper inspired by a 1909 New York Times article about a monkey in a bathhouse.

But nothing caught the eye like the colossal head of William Shakespeare emerging from an African carpet.

Shakespeare in Africa, part of a rug collection by Milton Glaser for the Spanish company Nanimarquina, reflects the 83-year-old graphic designer’s efforts to yoke together disparate subjects in a way that avoids scrambling the brain. “I wanted to take two things that have no relationship with each other,” Mr. Glaser said, “and do what art does: to unify the apparently unrelated.”

He wasn’t alone in his shoehorning. Two booths away, another Spanish company, Lladró, presented several of its porcelain figurines, including a classic macaw, wrapped in World War I-era camouflage. A news release for the collection, which is called Dazzle, explained the concept as “the art of disguise, of the unrecognizable and the imperceptible.”

Original Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/garden/at-the-international-contemporary-furniture-fair-going-for-the-remix.html