The enormous, the tiny, and the beeeaaauuuuutiful

I'm in the middle of a bit of a shopping fever, since our imminent move to Singapore (in less than a week, yikes!) will, for the first time in 5 years, remove me from the Fount of All That is Cool and Amazingly Inexpensive (i.e., Made in China, but, you know, in a good way).

First stop, in the Lido area, was Spin Ceramics, which makes the coolest, funkiest, most unique fine new porcelain I have seen anywhere. The pieces were delivered so securely packed and ready to ship that I decided not to unwrap them just to drool over them, but I found some photos online that were similar to what I bought:

The Lotus Bowl (I got the biggest one they had, of course, almost a meter across, large enough to bathe a new baby, in a pinch):

And then the tall skinny vase (mine has the blue paint on it, but the gesture on mine is much cooler), with a big plate that happened to match: There were a few(!) other things, like the strange and probably completely useless object called the Pomegranate Vase (which I couldn't find a picture of in their catalog) but that I had been drooling over for months. Picture to come when it gets unpacked in Singapore, I guess. Plus they threw in some unexpected freebies (which gives you some idea of how much damage I did there) which were actually things I was considering buying. They must've been tracking me around the shop as I aaaaagonized over my purchases.

Here's a link to a cool flickr stream of Spin Ceramics' collection this year.

Then it was on to Nurenjie (Lady Street) Market, where the first thing that called to me were some teeny tiny retro-looking teacups from the second-run porcelain shop (i.e., the reject shop):

I also got to confirm the news that Super Bar Street, across from Nurenjie, is now gone - a casualty of the proximity of the new U.S. Embassy. Not that I ever spent a lot of time at Super Bar Street, but they did have a couple of good restaurants (notably the Malaysian place, Awana, and the pita place, mmmmm) that I would have missed. Too bad for embassy staff.

Then, in the garden section, some enormous earthenware pots - in the Philippines we call them "tibor". I couldn't help myself - I picked up 5 pieces, two of them bigger than Bella. They are so large and heavy that Mik can barely pick up the biggest one, but they do have great acoustics, and he and Bella had a great time throat-singing into them the evening they were delivered. The tibor my grandmother had were all wide-mouthed and kind of squat, but I couldn't help thinking of small kids falling headfirst inside, so except for the one huge one, I stuck with the smaller-mouthed shapes.

Our movers have made the shipping estimate and provided us with the quote, so I can't in good conscience keep going on like this, but tomorrow, the mission is: lamps. It's shocking, but I just realized that all of our lamps are from IKEA, and that's just no way for anyone to live.