A view from the playroom into one of the children's bedrooms. A curated selection of Farrow & Ball vibrant colors was presented to both younger members of the family. The beautiful color selected for this bedroom wall is Oval Room Blue. The two bedrooms also show off one of our all time favorite ceiling fixtures - the Jasper Morrison designed Glo Ball by Flos. We are smitten with quality of light, from full on to fully dimmed, that comes from this deceivingly understated fixture.

A miniature Ball Chair.

A Mirror Ball pendant by Tom Dixon hovers over the kitchen counter.

Inspirational spaces

Produced in 1948, the Ball Clock’s playful colors speak to the nation’s optimism and the scientific potential of the era. But the shape—reminiscent of an atom—also carries the shadow of atomic warfare, which haunted the national psyche during the Atomic Age.

Dwell-curated pavilions focused on design for humankind, scandinavian design, the modern family, and technology. 3-D printed designs in the Energy 360/Technology Pavilion included a glowing piece by Daksh Sahni.

Ball clock, designed by George Nelson. Loaned by Vitra Inc. Available at the Dwell Store.

British artist Hannah Sawtell and technologist Avi Flombaum created sawbaum.com, where users can create visual collages using multiple vine streams. "We wanted it to look like a visual comic book, with overlapping panels," said Flombaum. "And we wanted it to be fun!" Photo courtesy Rhizome.

The Ball Portable Outdoor LED Lamp ($119-$299) is another study in simplicity: waterproof and shockproof, these rechargeable LED lamps come in either 10, 14, or 20-inch diameters. Its elementary, spherical form translates to endless applications: arranged in patterns on a lawn, deployed within a pool, mounted atop a table (as seen here) and more. One charge means 8 to 10 hours of use.

A classic Ball Bubble Lamp hangs in The Opdahl House, designed by Edward Killingsworth for Richard and Joyce Opdahl on the island of Naples, in Long Beach, California.

Bocce by Fredericks & Mae, $320 Bocce, a lawn game whose lineage can be traced to the Roman Empire, is modernized with this hand-painted set by a Brooklyn studio.

The Ball Clock was the first of more than 150 clocks designed by George Nelson Associates for the Howard Miller Clock Company. Production started in the late 40s and continued through the 80s. Vitra still produces a number of the Nelson clocks, including the Sunburst, the Eye, and the Sunflower.

The bubbly metallic Ball Lights Gold is made up of polished brass and nickel or black plated stainless steel. Available with silk braided or gold plated pendant rod.

The wood ball pen is available in an array of colors and features a simple, clean design that is eye-catching without being distracting. Both practical and beautiful, this instrument takes jotting down notes to brilliant, artful heights.

A local standard in Japan for over 20 years, Delfonics produces innovative, colorful stationery and desk items. The wood ball pen is available in an array of colors and features a simple, clean design that is eye-catching without being distracting. It will make a perfect instrument for an architect or architecture lover. The pen is both practical and beautiful, taking jotting down notes and sketching to brilliant, artful heights. It is also available in a smaller size.

Utilizing a marbling technique, Leah Ball blends two colors of porcelain to create the Day-Night Porcelain Mug. With a matte exterior finish and glaze interior, each mug is handmade, ensuring that no two are exactly the same.

And of course, to make those sketches, there's the Delfonics Wood Ball Pen Black Ink. This pen from Delfonics—a stalwart producer of desktop items in Japan—comes in a range of bright colors including light green, sky blue, and more.

In the living room, an Eames lounge chair is matched with a Richard Conover–designed fiberglass chair in similar proportions. A custom coffee table by Asher Israelow com-plements the industrial lighting by Workstead, affixed to walls painted in Farrow and Ball’s Manor House Gray. The sliding doors leading into the home office were fabricated by Markus Bartenschlager.

In the playroom, a velvet Desiron sofa is set off by Down Pipe paint from Farrow & Ball.

At a renovated home in Pennsylvania, the orange kitchen countertops were swapped for custom concrete countertops. The cabinets were painted Pink Ground by Farrow & Ball and paired with Build.com hardware, giving the kitchen a warm glow, in particular thanks to the natural light coming in from the double exposure of the windows. The kitchen sink and faucet are from Amazon, while the tile is from Lowes.

American designer George Nelson created everyday objects including lamps, clocks, and accessories with the mission of bringing modern design into American homes in the 1950s. Nelson worked with Vitra to create a variety of wall clocks, including the Ball Clock, now a midcentury icon. The design originated from a night of collaborating with Isami Noguchi, Bucky Fuller, and others, and although many designs from the session were considered silly, the sketch of the Ball Clock ended up becoming fully realized. The Ball Clock is currently on sale for 15% off at the Dwell Store until 10/26/2014.

Interior Table 369

This vintage advertisement features George Nelson’s Ball Pendant Light. The beginning of the caption reads: “Airy, lighthearted ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Net Lights,’ designed by George Nelson, make lamps and lighting fixtures that delight the eyes and warm the heart. Their pleasing shapes are fashioned in sturdy, lightweight steel and a special translucent white plastic.” The Ball pendant is available at the Dwell Store in a range of sizes.

To bring the property back to its natural glory, landscape architect Lillian Ball removed invasive plantings and replaced them with indigenous landscaping.

A new dining table, made from a leftover acrylic slab by 3form, sits on just the other side of the kitchen workstation. Photo by: Greg Powers

Kim in her guest bedroom, on a daybed she fashioned out of a queen-sized bed and a plywood headboard she painted. The walls are cloaked in Farrow & Ball Inchyra Blue.

The living room in the "Baller Jawn." The living room console is from Leeward, and the light fixture is from Noevara. The sling chairs are by Noevara in collaboration with True Hand, and the framed artwork is from Megan Biddle.

Illustration via drawastickman.com.

The gallery includes a built-in bookcase painted in Farrow & Ball’s Hay, which complements the white oak flooring. A sculptural light, chosen in white to match the ceiling and walls, adds visual interests.

Located just off the entry hall, this room opens onto a lush garden. The residents commissioned the overhead light from designers Sylvain Willenz and Hubert Verstraeten. “The use of red billiard ball references Charles and Ray Eames’s Hang-It-All coat rack,” says Smith. The wall-hung light is by the contemporary São Paulo–based designers Luciana Martins and Gerson de Oliveira. The rug is a Moroccan patchwork from the 1960s; the teak-and-leather Kilin chair is by Sergio Rodrigues; and the cane-backed sofa is a student daybed designed by Hans Wegner for Getama in the 1950s.

Seamus rebuilt the front porch to be more historically accurate, and the couple painted everything in Pink Ground by Farrow & Ball, except the porch ceiling, which has Little Boy Blue by Sherwin Williams.

Glo-BallWe head into a northern Italian factory to track lighting luminary Flos's production of Jasper Morrison's best-selling series of Glo-Ball orbs. Featured in the October 2008 issue.

The final stop on the tour was at the downtown offices of the architecture/art/design firm Ball Nogues. Gaston Nogues was there with his son to show us around the dynamic, messy space.

Wooden carved out a cozy sitting area by the back window. The walls are painted with Farrow + Ball's Great White. The chime on the wall is from The Tienda at Hotel San Cristobal in Baja California. The backsplash features glazed Moroccan zellige tiles from Cle.

The meditation-room-turned-ball-pit, illuminated by blue tinted windows.

Thomson notes that the uniformity in the property is a nod to minimalism, but there are small details that distinguish one room from another. The size of the flooring tiles, which are heated, change in size from the front of the home to the back in order to create a “varied rhythm,” he says. The timber ceiling is painted with Farrow & Ball’s Charleston Grey.