pretty ugly

There are few things in life more elegant than clean white table linens.

Unless, of course, they's clean white table linens that have been especially designed to look as though they've had coffee and hot cigarette ash spilled on them!

I realize it's quite a bit odd to inaugurate a blog about "pretty things" with a post about something "ugly," but Julie Krakowski's textile series Coffee and Cigarettes (nothing to do with the Jim Jarmusch film!) is so provocative and, yes, amazing that I think it is worthy of launching the site. At first glance through the images, I was honestly horrified - there's just something troubling about them on a bone-deep level. But the more I thought about it, the more I was amazed at both the conception and execution of this idea. The work is, in fact, so ugly and so absolutely perfect I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since!