For reasons that I don’t need to explain, France has been in the news a lot as of late. And so, with Francophilia on my mind, I thought I would share some images of my many many French stamps.

A trip to our local supermarket upstate yielded these three little treasures. Never seen the “One-Pie” can before. Don’t plan on eating the German potato salad. Might give Grandma Brown’s Beans a whirl when the pantry gets low. Odd continuity of color in all three designs.

I spent a little time this week over at the ICFF, and hands down, these were some of the best designs I saw. Designed by Cordula Kehrer for NYC-based Areaware, the rattan and reclaimed plastic bins are manufactured by the talented Aeta people of the Phillippines. If I have this right, the whole project is sponsored by the NGO Preda, who engage in fair trade practices. The designs embody the ultimate challenge of re-purposing existing but discarded products. The plastic bins are paired with some hand process, in this case the weaving of sustainably harvested rattan, then re-imagined into something far more wonderful than either thing on its own.

My postman was holding out on me. He only pulled these beauties out after I begged him to show me any of the other odd stamp denominations he was hiding in his secret drawer. Everything old, really is new again.

How much better is the experience of using a rubberband when it is brilliant orange rather than putty tan? I’ll choose the orange one every time.