On the stereo

One of the sad things about the iPod/MP3 revolution is the loss of the stereo as an interior design object (not to mention the loss of sound quality). Different stereo components seemed to have peaked in different eras -for instance, amplifiers from the 1960s have both powerful sound and excellent style. Here, I have a 1960 or 1961 Sherwood S-5500 II, a 64 watt tube amp. It was built in Chicago in a factory on north California street in a building that is now a Korean Cultural Center. The turntable is a Harman Kardon T60 from the early to mid-1980s. The matte silver finish is still remarkable, and the timelessness of the designis reflected in the fact that there is a T60 used as a design prop in the current CB2 catalog. The speakers come from the mid 70s, an era that my rose tinted glasses tells me was a time when no bachelor pad was without speakers like these, when turning on the stereo pushed the listener and his long flowing hair back into his chair. These Infinity 4000s are from my uncle, who bought them
in the mid-70s and used them until the early 90s when he replaced them with smaller, probably more practical, satellite speakers. I got them a few years later after they'd been sitting for a while and the speaker cones were dry rotted. The brown tweed grilles are still like new and are really beautiful, which is good because these do take up quite a bit of interior real estate and something tacky might be a little hard to live with for long, even if they sounded great.
The cabinet is the only thing I own from IKEA (I think). I bought it in 2001 and have since seen the same one in apartments and houses in the design section of the New York Times as well as in the homes of many people I love and respect. The red gives the room a bright spot and the color is one of strength and vitality. Red brings a lot of life to a room, but it can be overdone easily and more might make a room look cartoony. The rug is a wool oriental that I bought some years ago from the Brown Elephant in Chicago, a nice unpretentious rug that balances out the minimalism of the IKEA cabinet. Mixing a little old with a little new gives any room a personality as individual as the owner.