Glowing from withinWhat looks like alabaster, smells...

Glowing from within

What looks like alabaster, smells like French vanilla ice cream, glows like a halo and costs less than one of those pillar candles? Hint: It is a candle, but one that’s hollowed out and lighted from within.

Lighting designer Kevin Reilly started the trend, creating wax fixtures reinforced to prevent melting by the 25-watt bulbs that illuminate them. Sconces start at $1,500 and can be ordered from Kneedler-Fauchere at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, (310) 855-1313.

For those who’d rather burn less money, there are alternatives that require just a little more maintenance. At Crate & Barrel, the Ivory Pillar is a tall wax vase with a candle in the bottom that can be burned for 40 hours. It comes on a minimalist Asian black stand and costs $9.95. Target’s Barrel Hurricane Lantern, available in two sizes and color-scent combinations (ivory-vanilla, as shown, and dark brown-sandalwood), is even more ingenious. It comes with a replaceable candle in its base and starts at $14.95.

-- David A. Keeps

EBay? No way

Lisa CLIFF is an online-auction Darwinist. For the Pasadena hunter-gatherer-dealer of glass and pottery, EBay just isn’t good enough, so she developed her own website (www.20thobsession.com) to make sure her favorite pieces go to good homes. With the look and feel of a Beverly Boulevard modernist gallery, the website offers Fantoni ceramics, Blenko bottles, and Nelson clocks and bubble lamps without the attendant agony of a weeklong auction.

Instant gratification doesn’t necessarily mean premium prices, as the selection shown here illustrates. The smoky blue vase by Tapio Wirkkala is tagged at $115; the 1960 Riviera platter by Higgins, $245; the Fantoni patinated copper ashtray, $125; and the Cubist ceramic of lovers, $165. This week, 20thobsession launches its spring offerings, which reflect Cliff’s growing interest in California studio pottery from the ‘50s to the ‘70s.

“Some of the best ceramic artists in the country studied in this area,” Cliff says. “They developed their own special glazes that are beautiful and so pleasing to touch it’s like holding a worry stone.”

-- David A. Keeps

The brush-off

for painters

Frustrated painters, it’s safe to return to your masterpiece-in-the-making. A motorized tool, the Artist’s BrushMate ($80), cleans paint out of brushes -- even hard, dried ones -- in seconds without using flammable turpentine or other toxic cleaners.

Put a brush no wider than 2 inches into the top of the plastic tank, and rotating bristles spin through it, from the delicate tip to the heel where paint likes to hide.

The tank can be filled with tap water, or for tougher oil paints and adhesives -- including common house paint -- use the Artist’s BrushMate Brush Cleaner, a water-based solution that cleans oil-based paints ($45 for a gallon). It is biodegradable and nonflammable. It won’t corrode pipes when poured down the drain, and it has a near neutral pH, which means it won’t cause paper or canvas to deteriorate. “You could drink it with no ill effects,” says Martin Smith, who, with inventor Ted Brackett and marketing specialist Vincent Carter, introduced the products to art supply stores this month.

The “spring meadow”-scented solution also comes in a 10-ounce spray bottle for washing hands ($15) and a package of 25 wet wipes ($10) that have a soft side and an abrasive side for scrubbing dried paint off handles, palette knives and work surfaces.

One bonus: Smith, who heads the product design department at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, says eliminating the hassle of washing brushes “makes you a better painter.”

For more information, call (310) 647-6200.

-- Janet Eastman

The L.A. take on Italian minimalism

For more than 50 years, Minotti’s low-slung architectural tables and real-estate-consuming sectionals have defined contemporary Italian minimalism, winning a huge following in Los Angeles, where it has just launched its U.S. retail flagship.

Designed by architect Roberto Minotti, the 7,000-square-foot showroom (8936 Beverly Blvd., [310] 278-6851) had its coming-out party during the design world’s March madness known as WestWeek. In addition to the firm’s classics and new designs by Rodolfo Dorondi, Minotti also carries Venini lighting and is the exclusive American outlet for hand-dyed crystal chandeliers (as shown here, $28,000) by Loliememoli, a team of two Milanese architects.

With designs named for famous artists (the Hockney sofas are extremely curvaceous) and pieces made from fine woods, chrome and leather, Minotti is as much an investment purchase as a small painting. The Kline sectional, far right, is $16,676; the leather Held chaises, $5,936; and the pony circular rug, $12,457. “It has the look and materials that say Hollywood glamour,” says Fouad Mirza of Minotti, a company that is not averse to nibbling the hand that feeds it: Among its other artistic offerings are Russell Young’s Warhol-style police mug shots, $6,500, featuring Steve McQueen and Juliette Lewis.

-- David A. Keeps