Topiary

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  • subtitle: Shear Madness

By Terence E. Kiff | 8 Aug 11 | Garden | 2 Comments
Passage, Levens Hall, by Beth Dow

A topiary dreamscape. "Passage, Leavens Hall." Archival pigmet print by Beth Dow.

On a walk through Versailles, its maniacal grandeur is impossible to ignore. In the film The Shining, it is an endless maze with horror at every turn. It is a dark art that literally comes alive for Edward Scissorhands. This shear madness is topiary.

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Punching Bags

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  • subtitle: Tools of the "Sweet Science of Bruising"

By James Fox | 29 Jul 11 | Accessories, Sports | 6 Comments
Rocky Marciano puching a speedbag

Rocky Marciano keeps his eye on a worthy opponent, the BenLee speedbag. Image via Fight Toys.

A.J. Liebling, who wrote The Sweet Science in 1956, was nostalgic for a time when neighborhood boxing clubs were common, before they were overtaken by family circle TV. I won’t go that far but I do happen to believe in the value of neighborhood boxing clubs as a venue to learn and grow, and also as an outlet to explode and work out the jitters. The heavy bag and the speed bag are the iconic pieces of boxing paraphernalia, but there are others, and the intent here isn’t to hand hold or bury you in information, but give a little history and perhaps inspire you to try these tools of the sweet science. (Note that this isn’t an endorsement of professional boxing, which I see as a mismanaged and crooked beast.)

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Other Voices and Readings

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  • subtitle: Handwriting is Dead, Long Live Handwriting

By Aurora Almendral | 19 Jul 11 | Design, Other Voices & Readings, Stationery | 1 Comment
A drawing from Merriweather Lewis' field journal from Fort Clatsop, Oregon

Notes and a fish from the Clatsop, Oregon, field journal of Merriweather Lewis, February 24, 1806. Image from Brain Pickings.

1. Cursive is dead: “That cursive-challenged class included Alex Heck, 22, who said she barely remembered how to read or write cursive. Ms. Heck and a cousin leafed through their grandmother’s journal shortly after she died, but could barely read her cursive handwriting.” The New York Times.

2. Handwriting shrinks as desperation builds: “To Whom It May Concern,” from Assorted Street Posters, Outsiders, UbuWeb. Collected in New York from 1985 to the present.

3. Halfway between font and handwriting: hand-painted signs just won’t die. “Sign painters,” Imprint.

4. Just a little ink on one piece of paper and a transaction for the ages: The Sale of Manhattan, Letters of Note.

5. Five Voyeuristic, Cross-disciplinary Peeks into Great Creators’ Notebooks, Brain Pickings. (via a Design*Sponge tweet.)

6. Take Care of Your Little Notebooks, New York Review of Books Blog

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Rope

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  • subtitle: Braids, Currents and Oblivion

By Daniel Lang | 14 Jul 11 | Materials, Outdoors | 7 Comments
A very large rope with a man's hand for scale. Vintage photo.

A man's hand dwarfed by the brawny girth of rope.

Rope is the wheel of the ocean. Man has used it to bind together and control materials for millennia, from raftsmen navigating the rabid waters of the Nile to nomadic whale hunters rolling over the dark fathoms of the sea. It is a tool that predates all but the most rudimentary instruments of survival — the sharpened stone, the blunt hand tool — and like these objects, versions of it are found in nature: the vine, the twisted branches of plants, even the muscle fiber beneath your skin.

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Cricket Trailer

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  • subtitle: Nothing but Invention and Necessity

By Aurora Almendral | 28 Jun 11 | Design, Outdoors | 5 Comments
Exterior shot of the cricket trailer

The Cricket Trailer at work looking space-age and efficient while inventor Garrett Finney plays the Ukulele. Photo by David Bates.

I’d been chattering for a week about spending the summer in a trailer dropped on the smallest patch of grass  and wildflower somewhere Upstate when I came across the Cricket Trailer over at Men and Women of Industry. (If you’re not fantasizing about camping now, you will be once you’ve seen their childhood snaps.) The lightweight, angular trailers were designed by Garrett Finney, an architect who came to camper design by way of NASA, where he worked on the International Space Station’s “Habitation Module” (astronaut-speak for “home”).

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The Clock of the Long Now

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  • subtitle: We talk to the Men Who Went from Inventing Supercomputers to Chasing Slowness

By Jennifer S. Li | 23 Jun 11 | Electronics, Materials | 2 Comments

In this ever-advancing modern era, where the mantra of the zeitgeist is “better, faster, cheaper,” Danny Hillis — inventor of the supercomputer that instigated our current fast-paced society — beseeches us to slow down, twiddle our thumbs and smell the roses. Hillis has been working since 1996 on a monument-sized clock to be sited on a limestone cliff in eastern Nevada, dubbed the Clock of the Long Now. This clock is nothing like your average wristwatch. The Clock of the Long Now will be large enough for visitors to walk around in and is designed to last 10,000 years — roughly the period in which humans enjoy a relatively constant climate and advancements in culture and technology. It will tick only once a year, bong once a century and cuckoo at the millennium, a pace Hillis hopes will inspire society to think in terms of decades, centuries and millennia, as opposed to the prevailing harried New York minute.

Danny Hillis a supercomputer engineer at a connections machine

A young Danny Hillis hard at work at his connections machine console.

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Other Voices and Readings

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  • subtitle: Seven Summer Books to Hold in Your Hand

By Aurora Almendral | 16 Jun 11 | Books | 3 Comments

Erik Heywood keeps the outstanding blog Books and Bookshelves, where we found a lot of books we wish we’d known about sooner. Erik was nice enough to compile a list for Kaufmann Mercantile. There are peeks into the fascinating mundane of a tragic artist, a chronicle of the realities beyond romantic notions, and a page-turner on what happens when you do your homework with a notebook and a ship. His picks and a few words about reading after the jump.

The Natural House by Frank Lloyd Wright

"The Natural House" (1974) by Frank Lloyd Wright.

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Automata

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  • subtitle: For the Love of Pulleys, Ratchets and Gears

By Aurora Almendral | 13 Jun 11 | Artists | Comment

It never ceases to amaze me that there are whole genres of human exertion waiting to be discovered. Automata is a world with a history dating back to what seems like the beginning of time, when King Solomon decided to have a throne built surrounded by bowing automaton animals and a brass eagle swooping over to crown him each time he sat down. Technically self-automated machines, the mesmerizing world of automata never seems entirely useful, something opposite the goal-oriented, computer-bound, non-movement of many of our lives. (The video below comes via Cabinet of Wonders)

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Natural Dyes

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  • subtitle: A Splendid Shade of Milked Snail and Other Colors

By Aurora Almendral | 2 Jun 11 | Do It Yourself, Fabrics | 5 Comments

There was a time when color was worth crossing the Sahara for. It drove men to risk life or scurvy to bring back logwood bark from across the Atlantic, or swim under the surface of the sea to harvest unearthly colors. Far-flung villages became famous for the luck of having a plant or beetle that could produce a dye like no other. Travel the world over, and the color souvenirs were truly things of wonder: a black of a somberness never before seen in Europe, or a purple so deep it was too rich for even the Empress of Rome.

Red dye vats in the Fez tanneries, Morocco

Red dyes in vats that have been around since the 1400s. Fez, Morocco.

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