John D'Aponte

This tee recognizes Robinson’s legacy in Barack Obama’s achievement, and shows our 44th president some Brooklyn love.

“I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra, I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich.” Said Brooklyn Dodger Manager, Leo Durocher at a midnight team meeting held in the kitchen of the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba during spring training in 1947.

Nine years later, after winning 6 pennants, league MVP, and Brooklyn’s only World Championship, Robinson left baseball to begin his new role as one of the first black executives of a major American corporation, the Vice-President of Chock Full o’ Nuts.

It took John “Jackie” Roosevelt Robinson halfway through that first season to hit his stride, due mostly to the avalanche of taunts and threats hurled at him around the league. After death multiple threats, his teammate suggested the entire team wear Number 42 in solidarity with their second baseman. Let’s all wear Number 44 for another breaker of barriers.

Available in all sorts of colors and styles here and here.

So it’s dark and cold, and you smell. You’re living in such a shitty time, that in the future, it will be called the “Dark Ages”. This description is only mildly ameliorated by the newest invention in town. There’s only one, at the local church, but it’s free for all to feast their eyes upon. It’s what passes for a chandelier: two overlapped pieces of wood, studded with nails, upon which lit candles are impaled, hoisted up to the ceiling by chain.

Needless to say, it’s only onward and upward from there. Wrought iron, brass, glass, ceramic will all be used to hold the bits of light that will propel you from darkness. Candles will give over to gas and then to electricity.

During this last conversion, from gas to electricity, folks will run the new electrical wiring through the defunct gas pipes. It will work so well, the technique will be extended to all types of interior wiring and by the early 20th century, conduit, couplings and fittings will be expressly manufactured for electrical usage. In 1962 New York City will get its act together and update its electrical code to reflect this new conduit technology, and then continuously update it to maximize electricity and minimize danger.

Our Conduit Chandelier reflects this history in its entirety and maintains the classical proportions, while offering a new take by making the method of safety and conveyance of the electricity the basis and the materials for the design itself. It’s constructed by hand, solely from off-the-shelf electrical metallic tubing (EMT). It’s fully recyclable, and made of an average 30% post-consumer content. 

Mosaic is one of the oldest, most durable, and widespread methods of creating two-dimensional images, with the earliest dating to about the 4th century BCE.  By using tiny pieces of colored stone or glass called tesserae, people all over the Mediterranean, the middle east, Europe and North Africa were able to convey information that lasts to this day.

Mosaics are paradoxically closely linked with the way you’re perceiving this site right now, and all digital information for that matter, in the newest, most widespread, but least durable method that the world has ever seen. By using tiny bits of colored light called pixels, people all over the world are able to convey information to each other immediately, yet fleetingly. Each one of the average 786,432 pixels on our screens is a little, teeny, fleeting tessera.

To clearly illustrate this dichotomy, BRDG created a series of ten mosaics based on the favicons from 10 of America’s favorite websites. You know those tiny logos to the left of the address bar on your browser window? They’re called favicons. They are either 16 or 32 pixels square. Replicated in 1” x 1” ceramic tiles, they are 1-to-1 ratio reproductions from pixel to tile.