In New York City, there’s a space on West 25th Street, tucked away off the street with very little signage where every editor and stylist for all the major magazines visits on a regular basis:  PropHaus.  This is where all the little dishes, cups, linens, tables, vases, bakeware and anything else you see in beautifully photographed spreads in magazine come from.   The tarnished spoon resting in a blueberry cobbler: PropHaus.  The beat up wooden cutting board, warped and darkened just so: PropHaus.     You name it, they’ve got it.

I like to stop by Prophaus on my days off to get a sense of what’s new in the inventory and to just get inspiration for future photo shoots.   I send lots of stylists I work with to PropHaus to pull things because I do think they have one of the most edited, picture-perfect worthy collection to work with.  I like one-stop shops, can you tell?     Here are some finds that I snapped some pics of to share with you.

This Home Lab container would be perfect for a kitchen story, wouldn’t it?

These glass tumblers with the natural vine pattern etched in are really quitely lovely.  I thought they were vintage, so I snapped a pic against a black tablecloth I found.   Well, it turns out they aren’t: I was shopping down in Soho for some dishes and saw them for sale and they are made from the company Roost.  How foolish of me, I thought.  But here’s why PropHaus rules: Only there can you rent ONE glass.  In the store, you have to buy SIX glasses.   The money you save, plus you can return it back to the PropHaus once the shoot is over.

Lovely marble floral dishes.   Lots of uses for these for photo shoots.

I want someone to manufacture these pine-esque coffee mugs.  Hmmmm… hello, JCPenney, I may bring these to you to manufacture!  Would you buy them?

And all the vintage and antique flatware.   It’s all organized by type: Dark wood, plastic, white, modern, bamboo, stainless, sterling, etc.  You name it, it’s there.  I pulled out pieces here and there to show you my favorite finds.   Can’t you see these in a Gourmet food shoot?  I sure can…

Tags: PropHaus

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 1:47 am and is filed under Magazines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.