Third Drawer Down Studio

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Trump it

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This is our new window

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Harriet and duck hanging out at our Third Drawer Down store and distribution centre in Fitzroy - a quacker of a Christmas 🐤

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We love these Energy Gloop Cups. Their creator, Brian Rochefort is a RISD graduate, sculptor and ceramicist whose work is downright rock 'n roll.

Each cup is one-of-a-kind and handmade glazed ceramic. Beautifully, unapologetically gloopy. Perfect for tea or coffee drinkers who can't wait to banish the days of getting their cup repeatedly "mistaken" for someone else's at work or home. 

Claim your very own original gloop (or call dibs on one for someone special) in-store or online (we ship worldwide).

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Sensitive-skinned friends who normally think of bath time as boring will love these mild-to-be-kind, long-lasting Soap Rocks that light up with natural colors underwater and create luminous reflections above water.  

They are free of any animal products or petro chemicals, come in a variety of fragrances, and change shape over time with use but consistently provide your skin with a gentle cleanse and refreshed feeling. Packed with all-natural extracts like aloe, vitamin E and almond oil, too. Pictured above is the banded opal Rock - we also sell black onyx, black opal and rose quartz in-store and online (we ship worldwide).

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Tonight we're adjusting our antennas to connect with the hearts and brains who want to become makers of technology. Know anyone who gets giddy at the thought of taking gadgets apart and figuring out how they work?

Technology Will Save Us's DIY Instrument Kit would be perfect for any musicians-in-the making wanting to engineer their first notes. Good for anyone aged 10+ and only takes an estimated hour to put together.

The device is light sensitive, which means you can willfully "interrupt" the light beams it creates to control the volume and pitch of the music you make.

Available in-store or online (we ship worldwide).

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Today we're looking back on the making of our Fitzroy store mascot Norm's distant cousin, Rubber Duck. It was created by Dutch artist, Florentijn Hofman. Originally a one inch prototype, in 2007 it became the largest rubber duck in the world (pictured above), as tall as a six story building and weighing over 600 kilos.  Instead of creating something with a political connotations, Hofman wanted the Duck to be a friendly, floating non-discriminatory character who brought joy to anyone who encountered it. Want a larger-than-life rubber ducky to call your own? It fits the bill (no pun intended) for an underrated new summer friend. Available online (we ship worldwide).

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3rd Drawer Down on Flickr.

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Outside our Fitzroy store back in March this year.

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This tea towel, screen printed with embroidery, features 'Virtues théologales (Flower)' by Louise Bourgeois. Roughly translated, the petals read: "Loves me, loves me not (passionately, crazily, not at all, with love, a little, a lot..."

Perfect for tender hearted friends who daydream about secret crushes whilst doing the dishes.

Also suitable for fierce fans of the French-born American artist who are in the market for some affordable artwork (stretch onto canvas to hang up at home; a local framer can help!)

Available via our online store (we ship worldwide).

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In 2011, we collaborated with the Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris and conceptual artist, Lawrence Weiner to create these XX XY blocks.

During the 60s, he was one of the first people to present language as art. As a self-taught artist, he believes in making art as broadly available and as engaging as possible. He sees art as "messages left by other people...archeology rather than history".

Lawrence's blocks reflect how society is built on an xx and xy structure.He says "I've been fighting [it] most of my life because I don't get it."

Resist the world-weariness and play at home by putting together the building blocks of society and then pulling them apart. Available via our online store (we ship worldwide).

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Today we're going back in art history to the birth of the Guerrilla Girls!

Seven New York-based female artists formed the group in 1985 in response to a MOMA exhibition called 'An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture'. Only 13 of the 169 artists were female. The show's curator stated that anyone excluded from the show should rethink his career (note the pronoun used).

In reaction to this prejudice and gender bias, the Girls protested in front of the museum and began their mission to fight against gender inequality in the art world.

Over the years they've remained anonymous, extending their attention to challenging sexism, racism and tokenism in films, mass and popular culture.

Art writer Susan Tallman says of their infamous posters (some pictured above), "[They] were rude; they named names and they printed statistics (and almost always cited the source of those statistics at the bottom, making them difficult to dismiss). They embarrassed people. In other words, they worked."

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In 2008, slashie power couple Miranda July and Mike Mills created these limited edition pillowcases in collaboration with us.

Miranda’s work often expresses what’s most difficult to understand in the simplest ways. Her pillowcases reveal the trickiness of expressing desire and the bonds that we create with strangers in unlikely circumstances.

Mike’s pillowcases were inspired by his project ‘Rainbow’ where he drew one thousand hand-painted rainbows using children’s watercolours. In his birthplace of 1970s California, rainbows were a sentimental visual icon of the era, representing positivity, beauty, nature and magic. In reality, rainbows were just waves of light hitting water particles, bringing to life colours that existed everywhere but were rarely seen together.

The Rainbow pillowcases are available online. Sadly, our Miranda July pillowcase sets are sadly out of edition, but we would love to hear from anyone who purchased or were gifted them. Where do they live now and how have they improved your sleep cycle or life in general?

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Helena Rubenstein was a Polish-born self-made cosmetics millionaire who first moved to Melbourne as a teenager so she could start selling her vats of beauty creams.

She was a master at persuading wealthy women to pay a lot of money for beauty products and transformed the make up industry into something glamorous, alluring and respectable.

Sharp as a tack and the ultimate entrepreneurial spirit, she ran her business with a tyrannical iron fist. One of her most famous sayings was: "If I hadn't done it, someone else would have."

We collaborated with The Jewish Museum recently to create a series of products inspired by her legacy.

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"I like the small important things, the overlooked, unloved, things on the side. These moments to me often reflect more about how we live, than the official version. I’m not trying to be preachy at all; I’m just pointing out the things that> I think are important. It’s about making a space for people to think about how we live." — artist Jon Campbell on his 'Yeah' flag project, which has since evolved into neon signage, larger-than-life banners, bunting and even our signature tea towels.

His work encourages us to remember the everyday-ness of art: it's about the small, important things. It's for everybody. Yeah!

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Fondly known as the 'giant spoon and cherry situation' by locals, this super-size sculpture was created by pop artist Claes Oldenburg in collaboration with his wife and artistic collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen.

Commissioned as a centrepiece for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, 'Spoonbridge and Cherry' remained on-location from 1985-1988. The namesake cherry weighed 545 kilos and would turn glaceed with snow during the winter months.

Above is the mother of Carol Litchterman (a chartered member of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Sculpture Garden), Sylvie, posing at the opening of the Garden, 1988. After the photo was taken, Sylvie said, “All of a sudden I feel like having an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top!” and proposed that she and her daughter skip their planned lunch and go straight to dessert. Image courtesy of The Walker Art Center.

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'Readymades' such as Marcel Duchamp's The Fountain rebelled against the idea that art must be 'beautiful' and encouraged people to realise that art could be anything. Even a porcelain urinal.

Apparently the original creation was lost (believed to have been chucked out by someone who mistook it for rubbish), but many reproductions, such as this one displayed at SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), have been commissioned over the last century.

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Play Dominos in Shrigley mode. His illustrations of skulls, grumpy old men and raggedy cats will be the perfect diversion when planning your next move.

We collaborated with D. Shrig to make these; they're part of our new Play collection.

Available online (we ship worldwide) or in-store.