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This Just In: Areaware’s Wiggle birdhouse and Icosa lamp; Neo-Utility’s canteen utility chair

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Two of Manhattan’s most innovative firms representing an international roster of designers e-mailed us with details of products recently unveiled at the New York International Gift Show. We’d like to hear your verdicts on them.

Above, from Areaware: The Wiggle, above left, is produced by the Dutch designer Jan Habraken. The wooden birdhouse, which has a steel collar that attaches to a shovel, is certainly an eye-catcher, but it’s also a bit of a head-scratcher. Is it meant to be decorative or to be functional? Habraken insists it is both.

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‘As lighthearted as it seems, the design is a deliberate one,’ says the product description.’As children, we gather worms for fishing by wiggling a shovel in the ground. With this birdhouse, the bird can wiggle his own worms out of the ground by simply landing on the house and letting the subsequent momentum do the work.’ It can be pre-ordered from Areaware for $190.

The Icosa hanging pendant lamp, above right, is by trendsetting designer Ross Menuez, who won a devoted following with his Salvor Fauna collection of animal-shaped pillows and T-shirts. The lamp is made from wool felt with a nod to origami and architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. It ‘transforms soft felt into a stable, crystalline form,’ according to the description. And the ‘felt’s filtering properties convert harsh fluorescent light into a warm Mediterranean glow.’ Priced at $120, it can be pre-ordered here.

More new designstuffs after the jump.

Neo-Utility presented the pressed beech plywood and powder-coated tubular steel -- a colorful departure on a classic style. It’s called the canteen utility chair and is made by the English design house Very Good & Proper, founded by restaurateur Patrick Clayton-Malone and designers Andre Klauser and Ed Carpenter. The firm explains on its site that the piece was ‘inspired by the ubiquitous post-war school chair. The result is furniture with design integrity suitable for both residential and commercial applications.’ The $390 imported chair can be ordered through A+R in Venice.

What’s your take? Post your comments below.

-- David A. Keeps

Follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/latimeshome. Photo credits: Wiggle birdhouse and Icosa pendant hanging lamp by Areaware; Canteen Utility Chairs by Very Good & Proper

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