Indigo-dyed cotton made in West Virginia from 1835 to 1956
Espionage and the Secrets of Craft on the Island of Murano
Five Recipes and All-Around Tricks for Winter Coziness
Nature's life cycle is cinematic. Little Edie of Grey Gardens standing in front of her overgrown garden. Image via Swell Dame's Parlour.
It’s Fall and our gardens are dying. You probably spent some time deadheading basil and mint flowers and getting upset when lettuce bolted. By the time herbs and plants start developing seeds and flowers, they’ve slowed down on producing the leaves we love to eat. They have one foot in the grave. Keep the life cycle cyclical and save their seeds for next year.
Not a knob more than what you need. A TV designed by Dieter Rams. Image via Life as an Architect.
“Weniger, aber besser” — less, but better.
Industrial designer Dieter Rams, born in Germany in 1932 (and still alive), was concerned with the chaos going on in the world around him: chaos as a result of the Wars, the Great Depression, and later, the more subtle, but also pernicious chaos of disposable design and planned obsolescence that was the purview of his trade.
Spider webs are stronger (and spookier) than kevlar. Photo by Russell Watkins via the UK Department of International Development.
1. “Animals and plants build structures of incredible complexity without the energy-hungry high temperatures, pressures and toxic chemicals with which we process raw materials in this fossil fuel age, and without generating useless waste.” From Inspired, Naturally, Financial Times.
2. A spider’s web is “made with an input of only dead flies and sunlight, and yet is 5 times stronger than kevlar.” Edible Architechture, Design Observer and Spider’s Dragline, Biomimicry.
3. Sharklet Technologies is inhibiting bacteria through pattern alone. Hospitals are using it on medical surfaces to slow the spread of illnesses, and the revolutionary idea all comes from the skin of the Galapagos Shark. Technology, Sharklet.
4. A waxy Namibian bug who drinks water from fog, inspires a British architecture firm to try and build waxy buildings that gather water from fog. King fisher birds solve the sound boom issues of hyper-futuristic bullet trains. A cement company is harvesting carbon dioxide for building materials, just like their heroes, coral reefs. Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in Action, TED.com (video)
5. If we’re using nature as inspiration for the future, then: Is the real fountain of youth delicious with clarified butter? Science Says Lobsters can Live Forever, but are Still Delicious, Planet Green, Discovery.
Here at Kaufmann Mercantile we can really get behind some tried and true technologies. Coffee makers that don’t need to be plugged in. Pens, pencils, paper. Wood instead of plastic; sea shells instead of plastic. Enter the Museum of Obsolete Objects to remind us of the technologies that have fallen by the wayside. Some of them are irretrievably obsolete and happily so (even if you could get into a time machine to the 1980s to pick up a floppy disk drive, would you want to?).
Mixed type and tense lines. From Simplified Show Card Writing, Carl Rousseau Havighorst, 1942 via The Annie Show via Newhouse Books
This post is an appreciation of one type of hand drawn signage: show card writing. Not Route 66 roadside signage, not painted shop signs, gold leaf work or that by walldogs, not barns, not hot rod lettering, nor Wayne White (the guy who paints words on cheap oil paintings like the cover of Lamchop’s Nixon album); though they all have a place in this discussion and are cool as hell in their own way. This post is about those ephemeral show cards that you might find in the window of an off-price clothing store (of old) or in a grocery store advertising “Ground Chuck — $1.69 lb.” in blue and red letters eight inches high.
But what’s the fun in just watching the past recede further into the distance? Keep reading for links to learning the art of show card writing (or keeping artists alive by commissioning it, if that’s more your style).
Eileen Gray
Visible from the sky. Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici's counter-modernist love palace.
“The biggest secret of E.1027 is that it offers spaces for secrets, having layers of interiors within its interiors.” –Katarina Bonnevier
Eileen Gray designed E.1027 for herself and her then lover, art critic Jean Badovici. She chose an isolated spot on the French Riviera right on the water, and made a house where the sun and sea would be visible from almost every room. The sea and sky floats into E.1027 through giant windows and balconies. She blurred the boundaries of inside/outside, and also upside/downside: the pattern of the floor creeps up to the walls and ceiling. One distinction she made clear is the one between public and private — the building is almost invisible to passersby. E.1027 is perched on a cliff over the Mediterranean without any direct roads leading to it. Born to a wealthy Scottish-Irish family in 1878, Eileen Gray lived well outside societal expectations, and she designed for the different kind of life she lived.
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