Founded in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1880s, J.A. Bauer Pottery originally specialized in containers for the most popular of local products… whiskey. Manufacturing stoneware crocks and bottles – John Andy Bauer built his business on traditional earthenware techniques, thick and sturdy liquor and water jugs which meant to follow function more than form. It wasn’t until Bauer relocated to Los Angeles in 1909 that his innate creativity began to take root.
J.A. Bauer Pottery Bowl, Circa 1940s
Alice Waters (born 1944) is one of the unrivaled pioneers of California cuisine, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, among the first US restaurants to promote locally grown, seasonally available, organically produced ingredients. While this now might seem a given, this philosophy was groundbreaking in 1971, when Waters first opened her restaurant.
Alice Waters at her Restaurant 1975
It may be called “hǔbiao wànjīnyóu” in its native tongue, but it’s just Tiger Balm to me. I’ve been using this since my hippie mom rubbed it on my chest during the cold New England winters of my youth. The burn on my skin still has a calming, comforting effect on me.
Invented by Chinese herbalist Aw Chu Kin in the 1870s using the healing combination of menthol, eucalyptus, clove, cassia and mint oil. Kin’s two sons – Aw Boon Haw, a hell-raiser known for street fights and mad business skills, and Aw Boon Par, the gentler of the duo – made their father’s tincture a global phenomenon in the early 1930s, mostly just by being good guys.
Aw Boon Haw in China 1949
The production of synthetic plastics began in 1907 with the invention of Bakelite by Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863 – 1944). At the time, there was a thirst for a new material that w0uld fulfill the needs of the latest innovations – radios, electrical insulators and mounts, telephones, car parts, cameras, toasters, vacuum cleaners- any product that required a material that could resist heat, electricity, and be cheaply manufactured through mass production.
Bakelite Camera by Kodak
Spawned from the unlikely mind of an expat German scientist – the Chemex coffeemaker is a brilliant melding of design and convenience, a thermal carafe drip-system consisting of lab grade borosilicate beaker glass and a filtration system using laboratory filter paper.
Peter J. Schlumbohm, Ph.D, had moved to New York City in the mid-1930s and was desperately searching for a great cup of coffee amid the city’s stale automats and late night diners.
Peter Schlumbohm (Check Out his Cigarette Holder) / LIFE Magazine 1949
Letterpress Printing
It’s all been said before. It’s all been seen before. Nothing is new. Or at least this would be one way of looking at recent cultural output, which has amounted to a retrograde immersion in the past. ’80s remakes clog the movie process from pitch to multiplex, fashion revisits deceased designs, the clamor for the posthumous tomes of exhumed esoteric authors — all roads lead backwards.
13x18 Chander & Price Craftsman Press, Courtesy of Boxcar Press, Syracuse
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