Yooo & welcome to today’s Blackbird Spyplane, where it’s the start of “home-jawns week” — we write about goods for the crib year-round, but come December we like to get MACH 3+ TURBO with it and do a dedicated deep-dive to increase your lab’s poppingness. Today’s part one, and Thursday’s the shocking finale.

BTW: The New Yorker published a kind & thoughtful piece about us last week, and also we have a new batch of Spy Souvenirs available — some pieces are sold out and others are close to gone; you can find them all here.

We are a 100% reader-supported rare masterpiece. Join our Cla$$ified Tier for the full Spyplane experience — Jonah & Erin

NOW LET’S TALK HOME JAWNS !

“My home is my castle” — these are 5 words you will never hear us utter at Blackbird Spyplane, except between mocking quotation marks, because castles have MOATS and fortifications built to protect monarchs and ISOLATED INBRED NOBLES, which is corny, whereas we are all about free-flowing connectedness and THE PEOPLE, baby !!

So when readers ask for tips on how to “Spyplane the cribbo,” our thoughts turn to crunchier models of habitation, e.g. the Central American tent-making bats who fashion cribs out of leaves then post up inside them with the fam and/or the homies:

Yes! We bang w/ bats & we also bang with birds, so we were very happy to come across this very cool birdfeeder the other day:

Here in California we R lucky to get mad avian cuties flowing thru the d*mn yard, among other beasts, but as Mach 3+ NYC street photographer Daniel Arnold discussed when we interviewed him, U can hang birdfeeders outside an apartment in the thick of downtown Manhattan and enjoy as all kinds of winged visitors come thru to grab a nibble.

Daniel builds his own birdfeeders, which is tight, but peep the Alvar Aalto-ish Finnish-designed recycled-plastic model above, $70 here in camp green, terracotta and slate gray. (While yr at it, cop some translucent bird tape for yr windows so that no injuries / deaths befall these feathered chirpers, whose conception of “glass” is wobbly. This American Bird Conservancy tape works great.)

Speaking of blessed outdoor home-jawn energies, we first spotted the Earth Flag above left on an East Bay walk & it quickly became “the only flag we acknowledge” — there’s a Montessori resource that sells them online for $28 here, to “remind children of the relationships between all life on this planet.” U could let this s**t fly outside yr lab or use it as a vibey wall hanging.

Meanwhile, above right: NYC designer Drew Seskunas (whose partner does the cool women’s line Nomia) makes flat-pack laser-cut chimineas under the name Prism Outdoors. These are lightweight, come painted or in raw corten steel, and look COOL AS HELL — Pee-Wee’s Playhouse meets Richard Serra. Starting at $895 here.

“Blackbird Spyplane,” yr probably saying right now, “how are you so good at so many different aspects of newsletter-creating? Also — what about home jawns for the interior, for instance, ceramics??”

WE GOT U. “A Mexican and a Jew make things 4 U” is the tagline of Papi Boy Baby Boy ceramics, designed in L.A. by Nancy Stella Soto and Max Maslansky, with a post-Memphis vibe. We like their crab bowl (above left), kitchen-utensil caddies & toilet-brush holders, along with a bunch of other pieces here.

New South Wales-based designer Layla Cluer hand-builds all the molds for her slip-cast line called Softedge. We like the rolled-edge glossed stoneware plates and bowls, matte porcelain wiggly cups and checked dishes, all here. Softedge will ship internationally but that’ll cost $$ so you can check out their list of stockists, too. Tangerine in NYC, for one, carries some of their rolled-edge plates and bowls.

Meanwhile, WOWWW!!!! Oklahoma-born, L.A.-based artist Wills Brewer slings VERY FIRE OBJETS that blur the line between functional & sculptural appeal… There are great geometric “figurines,” some of which call to mind Constantino Nivola’s midcentury sandcasted sculptures (immediately above) and circular planters that look like they were WOVEN OUT OF TINY BRICKS (further above). Mamma mia.

Despite Brewer’s caveat that “money is fiction,” he has a very charmingly low-fi webshop (run through Google Docs), where he accepts money. This Oklahoma museum shop carries several of his terracotta planters, too (along with a cool Ed Ruscha poster...)

And, here’s a bunch of one-of-a-kind cups: At left, a hand-painted joint from Bruno Grizzo, an interdisciplinary artist in NYC, whose pieces start at $115 here.

The white ones above center with the ill scalloped / fenced-off lips, are from the fire Mexican line Mestiz, who make a lot of great stuff. $85 here.

And above right, SF artist Georgia Hodges makes very cool ceramics inspired by the cold water kelp of Northern California in her Outer Sunset studio. Cups start at $30.

What about some secondhand slappers??

Here’s some handy search terms for 2 vintage rabbit-holes you can go down: There are complete sets of colorful vintage dishes (like the one above) with a Space Age Scandinavian vibe by Swedish designer Hertha Bengtson, which she whipped up for Thomas Germany, and which are coppable at eBay and Etsy for the relative low.

The marigold 17-piece set pictured is $187 here [SOLD]; there’s a red 13-piece set for $175 here; and a more muted brown-and-white coffee pot & mug set, $95 here.

The two PSYCHEDELIC A**-looking pieces pictured above are Horezu pottery, a Unesco-protected Romanian craft dating back to the 1600s. The trippy decorations are applied using a hollowed-out bull's horn and goose quill (!) while the piece spins on the pottery wheel — which is why they look like THAT ANCESTRAL VÂLCEAN SPIN ART. Bonus: The spiral patterns often depicted in Horezu joints are meant to represent the “whirlwind of life”. 🌀 Lots of finds here. The bowl pictured above is here.

“Erin, Jonah… wow. So good!!” (this is what you are probably saying now, verbatim) “but how about something pillowy and soft, like a PILLOW??”

A. We are feeling these sheep-fleece “orb pillows” designed in a collaboration between Casa Ahorita, founded by Mexico City-based design writer Su Wu, and Oaxaca City line Huaraches, from $375 here.

B. Blackbird SpyFriend Emily Bode makes great one-of-a-kind pillows from vintage materials, like this overshot-coverlet piece. Also, we are not sure everyone knows that Bode does fire “senior cord” hand-drawn customizations not only on jackets & pants but on corduroy pillows, too — starting at $268 here.

C. Correll Correll’s new linen and velvet sun/moon pillows are hand-dyed, -cut, and -sewn in NYC, from $128 here. (Also, we wrote about L.A.’s very cool Suay Sew Shop last summer and still recommend their beautifully dyed linen pillows, among other great home pieces.)

D. Atelier Delphine is a women’s line by designer Yuka Izutsu with a lot of Japanese-inspired shapes, and they recently added these wool pillows with Alpaca embroidery, $260 here.

AND FINALLY —

Maybe U R trying to make your FLOORS DRIP i.e. cop some beautiful rugs, in which case, friend, peep these:

A) India / NYC-based artisan jawnsmithers (& SpyFriends) 11.11 have some extremely special home jawns like this Rothko-inspired rug, wood-block-printed by hand using a mud-resist technique and then overdyed in indigo.

B) Beklina is a very good women’s online-only store which also happens to carry mad good wildly patterned vintage Moroccan rugs — here.

C) King Kennedy Rugs in Eagle Rock, L.A., has a crazy assortment of Persian rugs (which they also cut into custom Birkenstocks??) and delightful handwoven car floor mats paying vibrant homage to Land Rover, Honda, Mercedes, Nissan and other WHIP-CRAFTERS, starting at $225 here. You can throw these down in yr car OR just use them as CHEEKY HOME DÉCOR.

D) NYC shop Shark Tooth has a fantastic selection of VINTAGE RUGS, like this one.

E) Herman Miller’s Amy Auscherman put us onto this excellent Barragán Rug from Txt.ure MX, who worked with Casa Luis Barragán to repro the same wool-cotton carpets that swaddle the GOAT architect’s Mexico City floorboards, in a few colors. Starting at about $700 USD. (Prices on the site are in Mexican dollars, so don’t flip out!!)

P🏠E🏠A🏠C🏠E till Thursday, when the SHOCKING conclusion of BBSP home-jawns week drops !! — Erin & Jonah

Our interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, André 3000, Mike Mills, Emily Bode, Lorde, Online Ceramics, Phoebe Bridgers, Michael Stipe, Nathan Fielder, Patrick Radden Keefe, Rashida Jones, Seth Rogen, John Mayer, Romeo Okwara, Ezra Koenig and more are HERE.

Our “Master Jawn Index” — a running guide to earth’s greatest under-the-radar pieces and designers — is here.