Kaufmann Mercantile » Matt Poitras

Now Haus

Matt Poitras — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 03:45:57 +0000

In the late nineties, one of modernism’s great works of architecture was discovered abandoned and in wild disrepair. Known as the “E-1027 House“, Irish architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray had built the stark, rectilinear, Bauhaus-inspired home overlooking the rich Mediterranean azure in Southern France in 1926. Jutting from the craggy cliffside like an eighties drug-den from Miami Vice, the house gave many powerful impressions. Warmth was not one of them. That was until French newspapers began publishing pictures of the house after it had been vandalized and lived in by local street punks.

Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stozl and Oskar Schlemmer on the Roof of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Circa 1920

Flipping through the strangely beautiful photos of cerulean blue Rya rugs littered with shattered beer bottles and cubist murals punctuated with punch holes and French graffiti, one somehow got the impression that the Bauhaus experiment was a style best tempered with chaos, or at least a modicum of humanity – bringing us to the topic at hand.

E 1027

E 1027 Living Room

The time has come for us to spotlight the Staatliches Bauhaus. This will be the first of several entries to focus on the 20th century’s most concentrated effort in “functional” design. That being said, the movement was certainly not the last word on radically simplified form, which has endured into the 21st century. So what, specifically, is the contemporary legacy of the Bauhaus School of Design?

Bauhaus Student Marcel Breuer, Wassily Chair, Circa 1926

From its 1919 inception in Weimar Germany, lead by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus had always been, at its core, a discussion of craftsmanship vs. mass production, a topic still very much debated today. Also known as the International style, Bauhaus’ influence reached across Europe, America, Israel, and India.

Bauhaus Student Marianne Brandt, Self Portrait, Circa 1930

Sometimes cart-wheeling into a mad “theater of human dolls”, other times careening into dystopian nightmares, notably Le Corbusier’s vision for project housing in America, “vertical living for the poor”, which deeply influenced Robert Moses, not to mention his radical Plan voisin for central Paris.

Bauhaus Founder Walter Gropius in Front of his Design for the Chicago Tribune Building

Despite these wild mood swings, the discussion itself endures and this is where we find the school’s true legacy. The discourse. For all its stoic and hard-edged platitudes, the Bauhaus was often an inadvertent litmus test for all the things about us that are the most human. This will be our center of focus — the slippage, the sweet spots and the subsequent perfecting of the Bauhaus style by future generations, often operating way outside the time, place and spirit of the school’s original foundation.

Bauhaus Student & Advertising Director Herbert Bayer, 1926

We invite you to join us in a routine visitation of the Bauhaus legacy in all it’s myriad forms. What aspects of the school do you think warrant a second look? What are some of the more noteworthy objects inspired by the movement that you have personally responded to? We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future entries. The discourse endures.

Bauhaus Professor László Moholy-Nagy, 1926, Image by Lucia Moholy-Nagy

Solid Perfume

Matt Poitras — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:38:09 +0000

Easily applied and alcohol-free, solid perfume has been right under our noses for quite some time. An emerging trend among a throng of chi-chi designers, it is in fact one of the oldest forms of perfume known to man. This tidy, balm-like alternative to the drench-prone atomizer, is an art with a degree of practicality matched only by the extravagance of its reliquary.

Gold and Silver Pomander, 16th Century

4500 years ago, Egyptian women were known to wear large, fragrant cones of sculpted tallow and myrrh on their heads. As the heat of the day melted the animal fat, it would trickle down over the face and body. A few millenniums later, your average Roman might be found lazing in an unguentarium, smeared in hogs’ lard laced with the musky glands of a slaughtered civet. Sadly, this sort of recreation has given way to a more practical and portable means of perfumery.

Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, 1968

Buried deep beneath the pendant flacons and perfume glaces of the osphretic collector lies a whole history of scent cases and aromatic jewelry designed specifically for solid perfumes, the crown jewel of which is the pomander. Consisting of an elaborate filigreed gold or silver ball on a chain, pomanders were often filled with solid perfume made from ambergris – which was a coveted perfume staple, despite being derived from whale vomit and/or feces. Some pomanders were sectioned like apple slices, with a different perfume in each section.

Ambergris, Found in Whale Faeces, Image by Nathan Aleksander Szpakowicz

Throughout history, precious, solid-state aromatics have been placed in small “unguent boxes” carried by men and women and sniffed to ward off unwholesome smells. These small charms have taken any number of shapes and forms, including the headpiece of a doctor’s walking stick filled with solid perfume and used when visiting rancid plague victims and mortuaries.

The process of isolating aromatics quite naturally lends itself to a thicker, more salve-like consistency. Solvent extraction of fresh flowers yields a waxy semi-solid with a soft aroma known as a “concrete”. It is only the application of hexane and ethanol that produces a liquid absolute. The same is true of tree resins like frankincense and myrrh, as well as sappy balsams with their sweet, cinnamon-vanilla aroma.

Colone, Museum of Applied Arts, Smelling Capsule, Silver, Germany, 16th Century

Solid perfumes and ornamental jewelry are a naturally intuitive combination. Occasionally, advancements can actually come in the form of a simple revival. This is very much the case with the current swell of solids coming from perfumers and fashion houses. They are merely imitating the natural law. Indeed, even Neanderthals from 100,000 years ago were known to adorn themselves with their own type of aromatic jewelry. They were called “flowers”.

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The Power Of Gold

Matt Poitras — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:17:49 +0000

Let’s sidestep all the financial and psychological aspects of gold for a moment and just admire it for what it is. A freakishly beautiful material. Although this might seem obvious, it is not as universally accepted as one might think. The Gold Coast natives of Timbuktu believed that their heaping surplus of gold was actually only worth its weight in salt, and traded it accordingly.

32.15 Ounces of .9999 Fine Gold (24k), Today's Value: $ 35,898

So exactly what is it about gold, outside of its relative monetization, that holds such sway over us? It’s simple really. Gold is magic in its most tactile state.

Gold Panning, 1918

Useless as a metal for most practical purposes, gold has always been more endemic to creative pursuits and abstract principles. After being minted and used as coins by the Lydians in 635 BC, it eventually proved to be the touchstone that helped define our current model of fiat currency. It still hedges any hiccups our burgeoning new economy may suffer, but this is nothing compared to the effect it has had on the collective imagination of mankind.

Lyidan 'Gold Stater', One of the World's First Coin's, Courtesy of Money Museum

In hermetic mysticism, as well as the basic Italian tarot, gold coins represent the best things this earthly plane has to offer (distinct from the planes of intellect, compassion and intuition). In the Bible it was Jehovah’s material of choice for his first tabernacle: “Though shalt overlay it with pure gold,” He instructs Moses on Mount Sinai, “within and without shalt though overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about.” Even Columbus’ trip to the Americas was primarily a gold prospect in order to buy back the Holy Sepulchre from the Muslims. Allah seems to like a little bling-bling himself.

As the metal of the muses, nothing sings more in the hands of a gifted artist. More than any other medium, its physical properties seem to dictate the content of the work produced. Soft, lustrous and gleaming, the character of goldwork always seems to lean toward the glorious. Indeed the House of Fabergé was primarily a house of goldsmiths. Even scampish young British artists forgo their usual fecal forms and vivisected invective when they get their hands on a chunk. In 2008, the British artist Marc Quinn veered away from his usual grotesque fare when given the opportunity to work with £1.5 million worth of solid gold, opting instead to make the most beautiful thing possible: Kate Moss with her legs pinned behind her head.

Kate Moss in Gold: 'Siren', by Marc Quinn

Gold is a noble metal – it does not react with most elements. That means it is usually found in its native form and nearly lasts forever. 4,500-year-old Egyptian dental work is said to be good enough for today’s mouths. There is no colloquial accounting for the style and quality of pure gold as could be applied to salt, cheese or rap music. 24k gold is 24k gold. Its only real measure of luxury outside of the ebb and flow of demand is what is done with it.

California Gold Rush Handbill, 1849