Attend it
Last day to catch the always-amazing three-day art fair known as SOFA Chicago. It’s the 15th year for the Annual Exposition of Sculpture Objects & Functional Art. In addition to the usual outstanding series of lectures, collectors’ homes tours, and artists’ demonstrations, approximately 100 galleries will be in Navy Pier’s Festival Hall showing off their primo stable of more than 500 artists from 16 countries. Among them: Gugger Petter’s (with Jane Sauer Gallery) woven newspaper images; and Katherine Gray’s (of Elliot Brown Gallery) glass topiaries.
Cost: $15 for one day. Festival Hall, Entrance 2, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave., 800-563-7632, sofaexpo.com.
— Shaila Wunderlich
Shop it
In the category, How Cool Is That, comes this news: Two of Chicago’s salvage experts — Architectural Artifacts and Urban Remains — have teamed up in a brand-new retail venture, Mongo Home. Seems “mongo” is New York slang for “any object retrieved and re-used, often in an altered manner.” And that’s what you’ll find at Mongo Home, where what’s been salvaged has been “re-purposed,” or spiffed up and pointed in a new direction. The idea behind the store, says manager Molly Philosophos, “is to take some of the guesswork out of what to do with these [salvage] pieces.” Whereas Architectural Artifacts, which has been around for 21 years, gathers from all around the globe, Urban Remains, the newer kid in town at just 2 years old, focuses solely on American finds. For the last couple years, both salvagers would get a call to show up at the same demolition site, Philosophos explained, and it seemed like a good idea to join forces and snare a great storefront location in high-traffic Bucktown. The 4,500-square-foot space is now filled with eclectic, offbeat objects laid out in vignettes. You might be interested in a vaulting table from the Czech Republic ($4,800), which, instead of using it for a flying leap, you might employ as an ottoman or coffee table. Or perhaps you’d be enticed by the blue hanging lights from the London Playboy Mansion ($4,500 each). Or, the 1930s screen door with “Holsum Bread,” spread across its face, plucked from a Wisconsin grocery store ($2,150).
1753 N. Damen Ave., 773-486-6200,. mongohome.com
— Barbara Mahany
Shop it
Skokie is getting a new (and bigger) Crate and Barrel Thursday. The 18,000-square-foot, two-level store is located in the new northeast section of the Old Orchard Shopping Center — just around the corner from the old Crate (which was 9,000-plus square feet smaller) — and will feature the franchise’s standard mix of housewares, furniture and gifts. The grand opening will devote special attention to Crate and Barrel’s 2008 holiday lineup.
40 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, 847-674-6850, crateandbarrel.com.
— Shaila Wunderlich
Shop it
Since the McDuffee Design Group began sharing its Huron-and-Franklin kitchen showroom with furniture company Jane Hamley Wells last summer, the space has benefited from an increasingly impressive selection of sturdy, high-end contemporary European furnishings largely not seen before in the Chicago market. The stars of the show are pieces from Spanish design company Martinez Otero, known for its glossy, lacquered pieces, including a showstopping white lacquered dining table featuring a clear glass center leaf ($6,400). Otero’s offspring line Mo, known for its younger, funkier aesthetic, also has a presence in the showroom, as does Jane Hamley Wells’ own namesake collection of teak indoor-outdoor furnishings. One of the latest arrivals: Euro3Plast’s PlusT Collection, vividly colored, lightweight Italian-made planters, chairs and vessels.
230 W. Huron St., 312-705-7053, janehamleywells.com.
— Shaila Wunderlich
Shop it
It may be better known for its high-end design furniture (all minimalistic and European and chic), but Luminaire in River North long has sold a heady collection of objects — everything from carved stone vases to porcelain cups handcrafted in Belgium and as thin as paper, German-made stainless-steel and diamond jewelry and French incense. And right in time for the holidays, all such design objects are on sale through Nov. 29 with savings ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent. Design books also included.
301 W. Superior St., 312-664-9582.
— Karen Klages
Attend it
The idea is, simply, to showcase Oak Park fine crafts, to make this year’s first-ever Artisan WinterFairan annual shopping destination, in the way that similar shows in Evanston and Chicago draw raves and fans by the thousands. So, the four potters who dreamed it up invited five textile artists and a metalsmith, then found a great showroom — the newly renovated social hall at Oak Park’s St. Christopher Episcopal Church — and now hope that it grows and diversifies year after year.
Besides showcasing the pottery of Nancy Gardner, Linda Hillman, Roberta Polfus and Mary Dye (among the 10 artists), Artisan WinterFair will share 20 percent of its earnings with the church, which will send most of it to West Suburban PADS, the not-for-profit agency that provides extensive services to the homeless of West Cook and DuPage Counties.
Opening night reception, 5 to 9 p.m. Nov. 21; fair hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 22 and noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 23. Free. 545 S. East Ave., Oak Park, 708-386-5613, artisanwinterfair.com.
— Barbara Mahany
Attend it
Get in the holiday spirit with a housewalk and gift show in Ottawa Nov. 16. Deck the Halls IX features five homes dressed by local decorators, plus a Gift and Craft Show featuring handmade textiles, woodworking, glass ornaments and floral arrangements.
Cost: $12 (housewalk); Gift and Craft Show is free. Hours: 11 a.m to 5 p.m. (housewalk); 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Gift and Craft Show). Gift and Craft show at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 401 W. Main St., Ottawa. For more information, call 815-434-3411.
— Shaila Wunderlich
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swunderlich@tribune.com; bmahany@tribune.com; kklages@tribune.com
