(what is this?)

the Sartorialist*—1850s edition

2009-11-30T15:20:00.005-05:00

High collars, tall hats, slim tailoring, a flamboyant touch of plaid, these fellows have got it going on. Stylists and men's designers take note:

California News, c.1851

The top-hatted fellow listening to the latest news about the Gold Rush is the attraction for me here. The dove gray beaver hat, and light vest and cravat are a nice contrast to the suit, all sharply accessorized with a walking stick and teeny tiny spectacles. Notice the extreme curve of the hat brim— this ain't Abe Lincoln's stovepipe. Also note the spotted ascot of the chap in the middle.

I like the long disheveled hair with the proper high cravat (it trumps an obligatory flaccid tie any day, no?) and light-colored, shawl-collar waistcoat. He looks somewhat nervous-tempered, like a pianist.

Looking more like a French Symbolist or character out of Dostoyevsky, American painter and architect Rembrandt Lockwood seems wary and nearly overcome by weltschmerz. He sports a variation of the oiled "wave" or pompadour hairstyle common at the time. His high buttoned coat with broad contrast collar, wide sleeves and large decorative buttons has an oddly loose fit—all the better to stash that phial of laudanum.

Pairing the soft, salmon-colored cravat (loosely bow tied over a spread collar shirt) with a corn-colored silk waistcoat is genius. The slightly worn hat (suede? felt?) and frock coat are the perfect counterpoint to the dandified embellishments. His earring and modified goatee add a frisson of the Roma to the casual but still carefully crafted look.

William Sydney Mount, genre painter (see below)
I'm not usually one for abundant facial hair but there's something rakishly appealing going on here— dude is a player. It's difficult to tell exactly, but he appears to have on a flashy silk neckerchief in a small pattern and large paisley (?) border. I don't love the wide, tubular cut of the trousers, nor the fit of the oddly abbreviated jacket (it's not a cutaway coat because we dont see any evidence of tails) but he manages to cut a dashing figure never the less. Note that behind the left leg (his right) you can see the stand of the photographer's head brace.

George Cunnabell Howard, actor

Inventive layering, and a narrow, slope-shoulder silhouette, carried off with great aplomb. Love the long fitted sleeve. Impeccable.

Another full-whiskered gentleman. A careful study in contrast, his casual hat and bushy locks seem to be at odds with the slim-shoulder coat, high spread collar and fine kid gloves. The outfit is subdued but not without flourish: black silk neckerchief fixed with a (ivory?) pin, extremely wide lapels, down-played check trousers and dandyish long cuffs.

Pimpin'! Junior Orson Welles is working the plaid on plaid.

paintings by William Sydney Mount
California News, above (his self portrait is at front right) and The Bone Player, top

*Oh of course it's not the real Sartorialist.
All daguerreotype images from Library of Congress, except top, from, Art and the Empire City, New York 1825-1861.

Soane House Proud

2009-11-24T14:18:00.004-05:00

Amazing to note that the typical-looking dun-colored London townhouse is...light tan under 200 years of soot

The Dome (above and belowe) with plaster cast of Apollo Belvedere
The Picture Room houses Hogarth's A Rake's Progress series

Library

Soane Museum Director Tim Knox with mummified cats
(From what I've seen in World of Interiors magazine Knox's own house is phenomenal)

Study

The Breakfast Room.

One of Soane's architectural devices— a shallow dome used on his mausoleum among other structures, which Soane preferred to call a canopy— is the inspiration for London's iconic telephone booth.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery
designed by Soane and opened to the public in 1817 as the first public art gallery in Britain

Time was when Sir John Soane's Museum, the late 18th/early 19th century architect and collector's house in London's Lincoln's Inn Fields, used to be a fairly sleepy, almost secret, destination. A longtime favorite of mine, it's sort of a museum-goers museum. One could go for the house tour, or for the architecture of the house, the art in the collection, or for the manner in which the art was displayed... the museum offers layers of experience.

The "secret" out; there is now a coffee table book (which I just got*), a new "Historical and Sustainable Architecture Masters Program" offered by NYU in conjunction with the Museum, and a £6 million "Opening up the Soane" renovation project, launched to return the Museum back to the original design. The Soane is definitely having its moment in the limelight.

John Soane, the son of a bricklayer, trained under George Dance the Younger (one of the earliest Neo-Classicists) before entering the Royal Academy. In 1778 he went to Italy where he studied, surveyed and sketched ancient sites, and met the influential classical fantasist, Piranesi.

One of Piranesi's involuted imagined views

Soane toured private collections and made excursions to eccentric villas, along the way developing an enduring fascination with the distinctive quality of Mediterranean light. Back in London, Soane married well, and happily. In 1792 he bought 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and between 1794 and 1824 he remodeled and extended the house, acquiring two neighboring properties in the process. There he experimented with architectural schemes, ran his business, and housed his growing collection of antiquities and architectural salvage. His practice prospered but his wife's inheritance also helped push the couple's annual income to a comfortable £11,695 (or the equivalent of $588k) around 1800. Soane was thus able to add to his collection with ease, acquiring the sarcophagus of Seti I, Roman bronzes from Pompeii, classical and medieval statuary and casts, mummified cats, several Canalettos and a collection of paintings by Hogarth, among other things...

Soane transformed space with idiosyncratic pass-throughs, corridors and double-height areas, and with his densely layered displays but it is his experimentation with lighting and optical devices that continues to resonate with modern architects. His use of skylights, clerestories, convex and concave mirrors and colored glass panels (some of which were employed in an attempt to recreate Mediterranean light.. In London. Hmmm I think one would need a bit more than yellow glass). In the evening he had his collections lit dramatically with candle and lantern. (It is a particular pleasure to go the Soane on their late night—first Tuesday of the month— to experience the place lit with candles. I don't think that could happen in the US...)

Soane established the house as a Museum in an 1833 Act of Parliament and asked that the museum, in number 13, should be "kept as nearly as possible" in the state in which he left it.

* How I wish I could say the Soane book was fantastic. The historical background and information are very worthwhile but alas, in my opinion, the heart of the book—its photography—is poor and poorly reproduced: murky shadows lack detail, color is disappointingly pallid, many oddly framed shots and lots of lens distortion.

Peepshows of a different sort

2009-11-19T14:00:00.004-05:00

an 18th century rarekiek or peep show box

Piranesi's view of the Piazza del Popolo, and (below) the peepshow illuminated nighttime view

I came upon the startling and thoroughly engrossing Early Visual Media a while back. An exploratorium of "Early Vintage Visual Media Archeology" and veritable online cabinet of curiosities, it comprises forays into magic lanterns, optical toys, early cinema, fairground art, as well as related and not-so related fields ("Prestidigitation, Conjuring Arts, Illusions, Magic, Physique Amusante, l' Escamotage... etc.")

The site is dizzying and disorienting: phrases that appear linked are not, images that seem static are animated, recursive links lead to blind alleys and others lead to yet deeper immersion into someone's scholarly obsession. That someone is Belgian autodidact and independent academic Thomas Weynants whose delightful trains of thought meander and cross in a trail of foreign-inflected English and polylingual expressions ("Jules Richard was passionated by women. He build his own 'folie'").

Shown here, a sampling of Weynant's introduction to the Peepshow Box (also referred to as the boite optique, rarekiek, and "raree show" and not to be confused with the Zograscope...) — a 17th and 18th century optical illusion viewer for engravings. Figures mounted on overlapping slides or back-mounted silhouettes were combined with the engravings to evoke an illusion of depth and perspective. Night views were pierced along appropriate details such as lanterns, windows, stars and fireworks, and backed with colored transparent paper. With light from four interior candles, the rarekiek conjured enchanting jewel-box scenes, presumably when it didnt cause alarming jewel-box conflagrations.

an insider's view of cattle country*

2009-10-31T13:02:00.009-04:00

Fat Mouth, 2008

Reindeer Vivification, 2008

Rashers. 2004

Kiss the Fat, 2005

Down the Primrose Path, 2003

I am dazzled by the old-master skill of Victoria Reynolds' paintings of meat of all kinds: oily swells of viscera, marbled swathes, and dappled and flecked prepared luncheon loaves. Like hellish Dutch still lifes her meticulously rendered slabs and piles of raw flesh mesmerize—when they don't induce a gag-reflex. I find the top piece particularly compelling, bringing out the grotesquerie of baroque and Rococo ornament. The disquieting excess of the carved decoration echoes in the whorls and folds of the meat... .

* a little dark humor... I was astounded to discover the artist is a native of Texas, with an MFA from the University of Nevada — I was sure she was British. She is represented by the Richard Heller Gallery

screen gems

2009-11-05T14:45:00.000-05:00

Normally I try to stay away from posts that simply showcase some nice things with a link— but in this case I don't know what more curatorial added-value I can impart. Herewith, a delicious, if spotty, collection of movie title stills engagingly catalogued and displayed by a (Belgian?) web designer named Christian Annyas— a breathtaking resource of type inspiration.

type distortion

2009-11-03T12:27:00.002-05:00

Graphis cover by Eberhard Rensch, 1965

advertisement for fruit essences, 1962
(funny how sterile, unfruitlike and German it is. Geschmack!)

brochure cover by Ivan Chermayeff, 1960advertisement for a Milan-based printer, 1964type studies, above and below, 1994 by me

I found a couple old Graphis magazines (very serious Swiss "bastion of excellence in design" since 1944) at my local flea market for a couple bucks apiece. This one, from 1965, was a gem. The issue featured an article about Geigy, the legendary Swiss chemical/pharmaceutical company whose brilliant and prescient attention to all things graphic was influential and, well, very Swiss (more in a future post). In addition, it also included samples from "the most ambitious typographic exhibition ever staged" Typomundus 20, which opened in New York, October 1965. There are many examples of stretched, distorted and generally groovy manipulated type, much of it reminding me of film effects in tv or old film (you know, the "hippy party scene with the wild cavorting dancers" effect, or the "you are getting very sleepy" waves). Of course this makes sense with the times: psychedelia, Op Art, and experimentation of many kinds.

I started thinking about how all this was done back in the old analog days, before you could choose a warp or fisheye filter and be done with it. This Graphis cover, by someone named Eberhard Rensch, is described as "a typographic composition that was then photographed through glass structures." How crafty it all was and had to be. Designers were ripping and pasting together images of type or developing type on acetate film, twisting and crunching it and then rephotographing, or manipulating things on stat cameras . (In a recent lecture I went to about book jacket design at Knopf Chip Kidd and Barbara de Wilde went on and on about the stat camera; it seemed to be the magic box of tricks for all their early work.)

I rooted through my old design sample folders to find these sketches I'd done (15 years ago!) Now Photoshop was around then, it debuted in 1990, but I think we just didnt have it at my office or maybe I was afraid of it. At the time I was doing a poster and brochure/checklist for an exhibit of mid-19th century railroad documentary photography called "Tracking the West." I set the title in ITC Machine and played with a printout on the xerox, moving it slightly as the light scanned. I liked the ghostly ephemeral "tracks shifting in the sand" idea but I didnt end up using it as the rationale didnt seem right: they were talking, in part, about railroad tracks!

Grace notes

2009-10-17T23:16:00.001-04:00

Today I happened across an article in the Times about a secret one minute grace period New York commuter rail factors in on all departing schedules. The piece was nothing special, and a good 350 words too long, but having just had a day on Metro North Thursday, it stuck with me. Evidently a unwritten tradition in New York rail going back decades, "gate time" is the extra minute it took for the last passenger through said gate as it closed, to make it to the train. Thus the train I took to New Haven the other day, listed everywhere from departure board to paper schedule as the 10:08 was in actuality parked until 10:09. At least in theory.

While in New Haven I stopped in at the Anchor. I was meeting up with an old friend who I hadnt sat down with in about 23 years— basically since the days we might have hung out at the Anchor. The city is the same, the bar is still the same, literally, and we are the same people. But not. Twenty-three years alternately slip away and intervene again.

Unfortunately I had one eye on the clock because I was cold, tired and didn't want to miss the 6:57 train. All of a sudden it was 6:35, it was raining and I needed a cab. As I was getting frantic my friend says "Dont worry, its bar time." Bar time? Setting the time ahead with a traditional fifteen minute grace period to make sure the bar closes promptly after last call. How did I not know this?

As an aside: I always think it odd how literally the clock is thought of-- as though it were somehow connected to time itself. As though a clock were like a radio tuning in to the time airwaves...

Photo by CarbonNYC

The [Brutally Honest] Language of Flowers

2009-09-29T09:38:00.001-04:00

"Your self-love and stupidity excite my pity"

a favorite from

The Language of Flowers
The Floral Offering: A token of affection and esteem;
comprising the language and poetry of flowers
by Henrietta Dumont, 1852

A compendium of definitions and quotes on the Victorian tradition of floriography in which "various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken."

Do with less

2009-09-27T18:51:00.004-04:00

After the post about British wartime posters I came across a limited but great collection of American ones at Northwestern University Library. As the site describes it,

these posters represent the government's effort, through art, illustration, and photographs, to pull the American people together in a time of adversity for the country and its population.

The only time in recent era I've felt American people "pulling together" was in the stunned aftermath of 9/11, and in a very different way, in rallying behind Barack Obama. Americans need some commonality to counterbalance the puerile "its a free country I can do what I want" reflex. I fear the country is stuck in polarity and atomizing. As Sophie Munns puts it in a comment here:

there are times for distinct messages to be put to the public reminding us of that working together for the greater good is critical - even though the "greater good scenarios" are immensely complex and global now

Not that posters could accomplish this in 2009 but a creative effort deploying ads and youtube with content created by different independent artists and small design studios might be worthwhile. (I've long thought that someone should do a pro bono ad campaign for fruit aimed at children). Alas, there's so much crap bombarding us perhaps there's no mental bandwidth to absorb civics reminders...

some random thoughts:
"Scrap" is astonishing—why the US gov't appropriated a very European fascist graphic idiom is mysterious but effective.

"United we win" is very poignant.... civil rights still had decades to go

I particularly respond to "Is you trip necessary" and "Do with less" philosophically — I could see these working today: "Leave the car at home: Walk it", and "Do with less" needs to be posted at every Costco, Walmart and Olive Garden Never-Ending Pasta Bowl and Salad bar...

note to self: Eat Greens, Defend Freedom

2009-09-25T21:16:00.008-04:00

About two years ago, online, I came across a brilliant reproduction World War II poster sold by a gallery in London. It was silkscreened (pale blue) and I thought I'd made the most fabulous and quirky find. When it arrived friends were immediately impressed and my framer he said he'd never seen something as simple and cool. It said "Keep Calm and Carry On." Not too long after I saw one in a shop downtown, and then in Domino magazine, and... the rest is history.

I still like the poster. It's an oddly comforting voice of reason, it's beautifully spare, and it retains its permanently disquieting provenance: it was created for use in the event that the Germans occupied London. This now-famous poster, produced anonymously within the British Ministry of Information, was never in wide distribution. Some of these others, above, had print runs of up to a million and were plastered all over Britain.

Having experienced (however fleetingly and at arm's length) the apocalyptic frenzy and blind dread of 9/11, I'm barely able to comprehend what London/England went through—for years. Blackouts, nightly bombing raids, destruction of portions of the City, sleeping in subway stations, sending children out of the city, rationing... The stalwart cheeriness of a poster like "And still the railways carry on!" amazes and irritates me. "The city's being reduced to rubble and Panzer tanks will be rolling down the block next week and the government thinks it best to spend money, time and effort on patronizing ephemera!?" is probably what I would have said at the time. Now, though, I'm drawn to the we're-all-in-this-together no-bullshit tone, the chanelling of Churchillian steadfastness.

I sometimes think a series of civic-oriented posters wouldn't be a bad idea today...can we get any anti-high fructose corn syrup campaigns going?

Purple prose of yore

2009-09-19T21:00:00.002-04:00

photo of the tomb of Olivier de Clisson (d. 1407), Notre Dame du Roncier, France, by Edwin Rae/Trinity College Dublin

photo of John, 14th Earl of Arundel (d. 1435) by flambard

The longer I don't update this blog, the more difficult it becomes to come back. Mostly this is because I get caught up in endless research and self-editing, which then leads to procrastination, frustration with my topic and a subsequent search for another topic...effectively extinguishing flames of interest at every turn. Bad.

As a perverse antidote to my debilitating, wrong-headed and ultimately fruitless quest for perfection I offer here an unvarnished piece of my early "creative writing," unearthed on a visit to my mother's today. Written when I was 16, the piece was a last gasp of my long-abiding medievalist fancies. Heavy-handed and adolescent and... I still kind of like it! It appeared in my high school literary magazine.

I marveled at the effigies
lined up along the wall,
of kings and queens and poets,
bowed equal to Death's call.

Marble rendered pious, brass,
and fragile filigree,
each erased and broken
by countless centuries.

There was but one small window,
casting a wearied light,
recounting a soul's lone passage
to Hell, its tormented flight.

The solitary casement
suffused its jeweled glow
into gray, sepulchral darkness,
rising from below.

Painfully etched in stone
the sanctae of the dead,
nisi dominus, frustra*
was all that could be read.

And I noticed as I passed
by each neglected tomb
that moss crept slowly over them
imperceptible in the gloom.

* This translates to "Except the Lord in Vain" or "Everything is in vain without the Lord" and is evidently the motto of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.
While I have no recollection of where I picked this up, I undoubtedly read the phrase somewhere and thought it was cool.

attention art directors

2009-08-08T07:16:00.006-04:00

I clicked through to the New York Times'
"reader submitted" video of "Woodstock Memories,"
God knows why.
Most of what's there is uninteresting current remembrance by the grizzled and the not-so, filmed in their kitchens and rec rooms.
There is, however, one haunting, mysterious home video from the time, of people driving away from the Woodstock site. It is faded, decayed, haloed and choppy and the only sound is that of a movie projector.
It is almost too oddly beautiful to be true.
The people, smiling and acknowledging the camera, seem like peace-sign flashing apparitions. The parade of cars alone is noteworthy: a record of a time when DIY jalopies were a huge automobile category....
The footage, with no other explanation, is credited to Robert Bedick.

Postscript thought: How many middle aged advertising and fashion executives of the '60s fetishized the look or music of their youth: the 1920s. (Yes— the equivalent of the Woodstockers today would have recalled Good Old Days of wind-up Victrolas, raccoon coats and silent movies.) I suppose the simple shift dresses of Courreges, say, and the boyish Twiggy silhouette owed something to the Flapper...Something I never thought about before.

The Anatomy of Swearing

2009-07-26T19:08:00.009-04:00

"The fact is swearing is an instrument,
which like any other can only be effectively played
when it is sustained by a sufficient amount of feeling."

It sounded good. I found The Anatomy of Swearing by Ashley Montagu randomly at the Library hoping it might bear resemblance to one of my favorite books of recent times, The Anatomy of Disgust. (Also, I was amused at the idea of swearing being parsed by someone who may as well have called himself Percy Lord Foppington)

Swearing is fundamental to human behavior, providing a psychological as well as physiological release. Montagu asserts that it is "a means of expressing anger and potentially noxious energy is converted to a form that renders it comparatively innocuous." He explains distinctions between swearing that draws strength from invoking sources of religious power and the sacred, and swearing that calls upon the secular, the "prohibited" and the prurient. Also, that swearing owes much to the form of the judicial oath, (May I be gutted like an oyster if its not true) whereas cursing invokes some evil to be cast upon the subject (A pox to thy bones). Obvious perhaps, but interesting enough, none-the-less, to someone who never thought about it before. He sets out to cover swearing from antiquity (did you know swearing was sex-determinant in Greece and Rome? Ostensibly women swore by female deities, men, male Gods) onwards up through an unintentionally humorous analysis of motherfucker (“It may be used as a pejorative or as an honorific”).

Yes! the book is a bit high-flown, could you tell? Montagu revels in the British love of wit and wordplay (he touches admiringly upon invective and sportive swearing, essentially skillful put-downs as performance art). Here's a magnificently dashed off explanation which I loved:

Damn remains the great English shibboleth, the most widely used of intensives, and the one most likely to steer the swearer clear of the Scylla of profanity and the Charybdis of vulgarity.

Getting beyond the basic groundwork, though, I often found the book difficult to follow... The distinctions between swearing, oaths and cursing start muddying since definitions or partial definitions are given numerous times in differing ways. Mostly, I think, I got lost amidst the liberal excerpts from Shakespeare, Rabelais, Sterne, Smollet, Byron and on and on... Far, far too many long and digressive quotes, pages really, reproduced verbatim which was just a tad too much for this attention-challenged reader to handle.

Well, I was hoping to get profanity, blasphemy, vulgarity and obscenity laid forth in a buffet of verbal amuse bouche, but I got a fucking five- course sit-down dinner instead.

Now Playing (on the Artistic Printing Blog)

2009-07-16T11:50:00.004-04:00

my iPhone purchase, a psychological study

2009-07-12T18:28:00.004-04:00

“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”
— Oscar Wilde, c. 1878-80

Aesthetic Bridegroom— ‘It is quite consummate, is it not!’
Intense Bride— ‘It is indeed! Oh Algernon, let us live up to it!’

George du Maurier, Punch, October 30, 1880

After much hemming, hawing and hand-wringing, after purchasing a Blackberry—almost immediately regretting it—and returning it, I bought an iPhone. I had my previous phone, a no-frills samsung which was built like a tank, for about 4-1/2 years. If the flip top (barely tethered on one side by a husk of plastic but still working) hadn't finally given way, which required my holding the phone open with two hands, I would have kept putting off the phone purchase. (This appears to be my M.O. See my TV wrap-up, with German vocabulary)

I signed on for my erstwhile Blackberry at the Verizon store on Flatbush Avenue in my neighborhood—a storefront place near the subway. It was just me and the salesman (a very laissez-faire Russian guy whom I'll call Yuri). The calm was interrupted just once by a guy who blustered in, threw down a $20 and left. Yuri explained it was just remittance for a prepaid cell phone but somehow it gave the place a sort of a OTB feel...Needless to say the Soho Apple store, crystalline and humming with genius, was quite unlike this. My personal iPhone facilitator, a late-20s tattooed and short-pantsed guy I'll call Hector, was chipper and i-fluent and patient as I stumbled over the touch screen and repeatedly forgot my passwords. Hector didnt miss a beat when he suggested I might want to take the free iPhone class. I am considering taking a class. For my phone.

some thoughts:
By getting a Blackberry I was by my own volition NOT joining the cool kids, not drinking the Kool Aid, etc etc. I imagined I was placing pure basic communication (phone? "check," text? "check," email? "check") over bloated gadgetry.

By getting a Blackberry I was missing out on all the fun. I was making the choice of budget managers and Human Resources VPs everywhere. I was PC. I knew I was in trouble the moment I tried to reach into the screen and move something.

Whereas previously, things I stumbled upon, or had a fleeting interest in—things that crossed my field of vision momentarily while outside— could easily be dismissed, forgotten or, if absolutely necessary, be put into long term mental or paper storage, since, well, I was outside. Now, with the iPhone am I obliged to do something? Seize and frame the moment by uploading a status report, making a video of it, searching, identifying or mapping it?
With this phone I can no longer forget it at home, I can no longer NOT turn it on or refuse to participate. I could find my way around in an unfamiliar city, I could upload the photos of birds I identified with my phone to flickr, I could name obscure typefaces, I could draw the cover of the NYer fer chrissakes. There's so much I could be doing, there's so much I should be doing with this phone. I hope I can live up to it.

Hollandaise source

2009-06-27T17:58:00.003-04:00

(the pattern above, is called Holy Ghost Fire)

At top, Yinka Shonibare How to Blow up two heads at once, 2006, incorporating Vlisco Dutch Wax fabric
Shonibare's work deals with post-colonial cultural amlgamations and cultural authenticity

All other images, Vlisco

I was vaguely familiar with what I thought of, generically, as African print cloth: bright–often harsh– color choices, large patterns. That was about the sum of my knowledge. I nearly gasped when I found out about Vlisco, the Dutch fabric company that produces* much of this wax print "African cloth." In Ghana, Ivory Coast and other West African countries, "Veritable Wax Hollandaise Vlisco" (Real Dutch Wax, Vlisco) carries the same cachet as Rolex or Louis Vuitton. Popular with the "Nana-Benzes," (ladies who favor their Mercedes) Vlisco evidently pairs well with their gold-framed eyeglasses, necklaces, and gold wristwatches.

How did a company in a small town in Holland become the major purveyor of quinessentially "African fabrics"? By way of Indonesia. Dutch traders discovered Indonesian dyed fabrics and imported them back to Europe. The van Vlissingens, a Dutch merchant family, had the idea that batik dying could be mass-produced in Europe and Vlisco was established on August 15, 1846. By the late nineteenth century Dutch factories were supplying the bulk of the Indonesian batik market, and as Dutch freighters stopped at various African ports on their way over, the fabrics began to gain an African clientele. West African soldiers serving in the East Indies also took to the fabrics and brought them back when they returned home. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when economic restrictions were enacted to protect domestic Indonesian batik production, Africa gradually became the exclusive market for Dutch batik. Central and West Africa in particular embraced the fabrics, integrating them into the local culture.

Do-lo-rez ottomans upholstered in Vlisco by Ron Arad for Moroso
photo from yatzer

The prints are vivid, overscaled and exhilarating.
Many of the fabrics, though, feature incongruously representational—realistic—subject matter. It is this literalness that I find difficult to... parse. Vlisco has been showing up in Western fashion and now industrial and interior designers are incorporating it as well (see above). The fabric's use in nontraditional ways has a brio and irony that is ravishing. But with the wax print fabric's original colonial provenance in mind, out-sized patterns of table fans, video game control panels, wristwatches and richly outfitted kitchens veer uncomfortably close to 'naive' and 'totemic' for me. A kind of conflation of animist wish fulfillment and western status good. Rather than wearing the logo, wear (the representation of) the object itself— or a list of your favorite possessions.

Some background from the exhibit Fabric of a Nation: textiles and identity in modern Ghana held at the British Museum in 2007:

Wax prints are prestigious cloths with a high social value... Cloths are also widely used as a powerful mass communication media, for commemorative, political, religious, social and other message conveying purposes.

Similarly a Vlisco press blurb offers this quasi mystical take on, essentially, wearable inventories of material goods:

This collection is a symbolic interpretation of crowning moments and treasured possessions. The designs reflect abstract objects and images that bring memories to life in vivid, fantastical form. Each fabric tells a colourful story of its own, personal to those who wear them and those who admire them. How looking through a key hole or ringing a door bell or taking a journey may have changed your destiny. How precious items or music may speak volumes to you alone. Each design evokes a personal, unique connection and bond. So, reflect upon your own journey.

Surreal. Equal parts "shocking" Schiaparelli gesture, superstition, and status trade trinket...

* Some explanation of the process: Wax print fabrics are created with a resist-dye technique akin to Indonesian batik. Engraved copper rollers spread hot wax on both sides of a roll of fabric. The cloth is then dipped into a dye bath, color penetrating into the areas that are not covered with wax. (The sign of a quality wax print is that the cloth is printed on both sides.) The wax is washed off in varying stages and the process is repeated, layering the color prints. The technical difficulty in trying to align patterns in different colors gives the lesser quality productions a slightly haphazard organic quality. Colors that don't align properly come out looking like bad offset printing, which I find enormously appealing...

Addendum: interesting information and observations from someone familiar with some of the traditional fabrics in Africa (Thank you, Nina):

When we lived in Cameroon I collected a lot of cloth materials (called "pagnes" which is french for loincloth) but unfortunately the Chinese have now entered the market and are doing it much cheaper than anyone else. Subsequently people are buying it from them rather than the Dutch and the quality is entirely different. Also, because of the immense volume of used western clothing being shipped to Africa it is so much cheaper for people to buy western clothing instead of having things made out of the traditional cloth. That is also a reason for the decline. Here in Madagascar, except on the coasts, no one wears the traditional lamba material either. In the markets you can buy t-shirts, pants, shirts, etc. for pennies. It is a great pity. I miss a lot the color and mix of design from Central and West Africa. Something else that was also fun to see were the cloths printed for every occasion by businesses. The beer manufacturers, electric companies, etc. and bible verses, too, very popular.

Now Playing (on the Artistic Printing Blog)

2009-06-22T10:17:00.004-04:00

As I ready my next real post here I thought I'd plug my other endeavor: the Artistic Printing blog, which focuses on the particulars and peculiarities of 19th century decorative letterpress printing. I'm smitten with the current post topic, Mr. George West, aka "West, the Printer." We discovered just a few of his printing specimens (more images on the blog), and very little biographical information, but Mr. West comes across as a man I'd like to know. (Above, West's Improved Memoranda Calendar, 1889, featuring Mr. West himself, and a technologically forward-thinking photograph of his downtown Easton, Pennsylvania shop).

A businessman with self-promotional flair, an artist with eccentric formal sense, and a skilled craftsman who produced accomplished work, West was a singular character we wish we knew more about...

Walt Kuhn

2009-06-15T19:00:00.002-04:00

Lavender Plumes, nd

Green Pom-Pom, 1944

Roberto, 1946

Chico in a Hat, 1948

Chorus Captain, 1935

Dressing Room, 1926

I came upon Walt Kuhn by chance, noticing Dressing Room for the first time a few months ago on one of my infrequent visits to the Brooklyn Museum. I took a photo of the painting while passing through, forgetting to note the artist. Then I stumbled on the magnificent Chorus Captain on a rare visit to the Yale University art gallery. I immediately knew it was the same artist, although I didn't yet know his name and even though the paintings are from different periods and differ stylistically. Just yesterday I finally looked up the signature from the photo I took of the Yale painting, expecting to find some Weimar/Neue Sachlichkeit follower. Much to my surprise Walter Francis Kuhn (1877-1949) was born in Brooklyn. He worked as a sculptor, draftsman and cartoonist in addition to painting, and was an organizer of the landmark Armory show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) of 1913.

In my research I came across the intriguing art inconnu, who says of Kuhn:

There is certainly an air of unease about some of his paintings but I wouldn't describe them as disturbing...there is a lot of humanity in his portraits. This is made all the more remarkable by the fact that unlike most modern portraiture almost all his subjects sit in full costume, often including face masks or makeup, often looking faintly ridiculous.

I found Kuhn's stark, psychologically intense portraits vastly appealing and disturbing simultaneously. His circus performers alternately stare out confrontationally from full stage make up, while others wearily recede behind the regalia.

Some other art(ists) to keep in mind, with regard to Kuhn:
German "New Objectivity":

Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber, Otto Dix, 1925

Fernand Pelez:

Grimaces and Misery, 1888

Guy Pene du Bois:

Cafe du Dome, 1925-6

Edward Hopper:

Soir Bleu, 1914

Some background:
As a young man Kuhn left the US for art training in Europe, studying in Paris and Munich. After a summer's work produced only one painting, Kuhn's notion that he had plenty of time was brusquely dispelled when a teacher said, "For you it is a quarter to twelve."

A hospitalization for a serious stomach ulcer in 1925 compelled him impose a time limit of two years in which he would "find himself in art." He concentrated on his early interest in theatrical and circus performers.

Enormously self-critical, he claimed that he was “forty years old before he painted a really worthwhile picture.” A 1967 article in American Artist revealed that “He ruthlessly destroyed more paintings than he preserved, and he never signed one until he was completely satisfied with it.”

In his last years Kuhn suffered increasing mental turmoil, becoming irrational and moody. When the Ringling Brothers Circus was in town, he found solace in attending night after night. His family committed him to Bellevue in 1948; he died the next year of a perforated ulcer.

Roses, 1933

Highlights from the Collection (part 9)

2009-06-08T16:04:00.000-04:00

The coat I have hanging over my couch usually merits a remark from visitors. No it's not my childhood Sunday Best... I found it several years ago at a Housing Works in Chelsea. While I casually browsed racks of 1970s-era double-knits and god awful 80s big-shouldered denim, its diminutive, slightly doleful presence stopped me cold. I immediately fell in love.

Mystified as to whether it was dolls' clothing (too big), children's clothing (oddly proportioned) or a costume of some sort (but why?) I couldn't even place what decade it was from (1890s? 1920s? 1940s sewing project?). But since it was more Edward Gorey than Eloise, I happily parted with $25.

This we do know: Much of the stitching seems to have been done by hand (odd as sewing machines go back to the 1860s at least...), the deep maroon mohair velvet is quite stout—almost upholstery weight— and the color seems to differ between the top part and the skirt. The placket (terminology?) is faced with a delicate pink ribbon and all is lined in bright Tiffany box turquoise wool. Finishing the piece are carved mother of pearl buttons although one is missing.

I think of it as my Gashlycrumb Tiny wardrobe prop.

Consider the Crest

2009-06-01T09:24:00.007-04:00

On a visit to Bowne* yesterday I was able to study Robert Warner's latest ebay find. Somehow he is able to ferret out and "win" fascinating and often significant ephemera without emptying the coffers. I have no ebay karma, even when I win, I lose.

This exquisite little gem, ca. 1880, appears to be a child's album for collecting and arraying crests and monograms. A selection of 7 or so appealing geometric page designs serve as display guidelines for arranging the art. Each page pattern is printed in color—one is vaguely islamic, another looks like a cathedral window—and each looks like a coloring book version of a page from the Grammar of Ornament. What floored me was the detail of these snippets of engraving: most examples are smaller than my thumbnail. What disappointed me was the realization that these crests were likely not acquired bit by bit—not garnered from, say, years of missives from "Prince Leopold," or correspondence with "The Royal Dragoons," or "Quekett Microscopical Club", each heraldic emblem cut from its letterhead or calling card, each paper escutcheon stowed away in some violet-scented family keepsake chest. No, they were probably purchased in packs: a revelation by way of the advertisements at the back of the book. No matter. I picked up some useful Latin (and French) mottoes along the way:

sine macula– without spot or blemish
cave adsum—beware I am present
nosce te ipsum— know thyself
esse quam videri— to be rather than seem
sapere aude—dare to know
avisez le fin—consider the end
fuimus– we have been; we have endured
renovate animos—renew your courage
le bon temps viendra—the good times will come

---

NB, coming soon: Now that we've scanned the colored guide pages, Robert will letterpress print them and bind them into an updated version of a pasting and display album based on this one. It will be sold at Bowne along with a selection of vintage and vintage inspired ephemera bits— a starter kit of sorts. beautiful.

* Bowne & Co., Stationers at South Street Seaport Museum

A side venture or two

2009-05-27T21:05:00.006-04:00

We're hoping the artistic printing blog will become a forum for discussing late 19th century design in general and a showcase for various oddities we've come across.
Please send along your comments and queries.

Also:

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing web site
is active
featuring illustrative excerpts, and useful information

plus a handsome

Men of Artistic Printing
supplement

Artistic printing and my return

2009-05-19T21:00:00.003-04:00

Over the past several months I tried to forget my failings here by losing myself, instead, in the long-term project Doug and I have have been slaving over:

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing
A Collection of Letterpress Examples
with Specimens of Type, Ornament,
Corner Fills, Borders,
Twisters, Wrinklers, and
other Freaks of Fancy

Our book is published, a web site is coming soon, a postcard is on the way and

a (FREE!) talk
is scheduled for Tuesday, May 26, 6pm at the Grolier Club (47 East 60th Street).

A background note: The history of design has, with just a few notable exceptions, skipped over the late nineteenth century. One could be forgiven for believing that the history of design and publishing went something like this:

Gutenberg... Caslon... William Morris....French advertising posters... Modernism....

We did what in publishing jargon is sometimes called a "micro-history." Instead of Cod or Salt we chose Artistic Printing, the elaborate style of commercial letterpress printing popular ca. 1870s-1890. We've taken a piece of obscure cultural arcana and tried to reason that, well, it's not so obscure after all— or it shouldn’t be. Artistic printing was popular taste. It drew upon, and helped perpetuate, motifs that show up in other decorative arts of the time. In certain ways the style allowed for, and encouraged, design freedom and experimentation. Artistic printing showcases some of the more adventurous typographic play made to that date and many of the oddest conceptions of page arrangements ever.
Since it was allied neither with high art or nor fine book publishing, there has been an academic snobbism about this style’s commercial “taint.” That is changing...

Jarhead

2009-02-16T07:54:00.002-05:00

Spouted, globe-shaped jars, or askoi, from Canosa, Apulia (modern Puglia) c 250-350 bc.

I'd first seen examples of Canosa pottery at the British Museum a few years ago and was completely astounded. These particular types of vases were frequently made to be placed inside tombs, thus never intended to be functional, and it seems that gave their makers license to go bonkers. Sometimes called "magenta ware" because of the strident pink and purple coloring, Canosa pottery is garish, outlandish, loud. Seemingly bizarre conglomerations of heads, figures, spouts, and horses, they are completely antithetical to the supposed ideal of ancient Classicism.

I like that early Classical scholars seemed to be embarrassed by them:

From Canosa, a city near the east coast, north of Brindisi, have come a series of vases which the most ambitious endeavours have been made to decorate with figures, the result, however, being altogether unsatisfactory. Examples...[are]...mixed and confounded in an almost ludicrous fashion.–Marcus Bourne Huish Greek Terra-cotta Statuettes 1900

It occurred to me that these were likely made by local craftsmen extemporizing on a known theme—riffing— rather than artists creating to a traditional standard. Perhaps like the gravestone carving of colonial New England they're folk art interpretations, each potter adding and altering the form as he saw fit. Like Classical Outsider Art.

From an earlier post, and some other favorites:

Another thing I never truly noticed before was how mutable form was for the Greeks and Romans et al.This flies in the face of the measured, symmetrical rationality that supposedly defines the Greeks. Double-faced ("janiform") heads, heads split down the center, human figures sprouting horses, extra heads or an accretion of limbs. Vases in the shape of legs, heads, phalluses, birds, even lobster claws... It's as though corporeal form, for them, was a transient state: often recorded, in bronze or terra cotta, in mid-transformation...

Social pages

2009-01-13T11:00:00.008-05:00

Update: Many thanks to an anonymous commenter– who sounds very much like a curator in-the-know– for filling in much of the background information on this album. It is in fact not Constance's album– it is her sister Amy's, who was a 14-year old at the time. Read more interesting tidbits in the comments section...

The leaves of this album are somewhat tersely recorded as "albumen photomontage with watercolor embellishment, London, 1867, Constance Sackville West." Found within the fascinating online collections at George Eastman House, that venerable photo repository in Rochester, NY, the pages have no other commentary or curatorial insight. In my research as to who Constance was I've discovered that my ability to decipher British Peerage and hereditary lines is sorely limited. Other than knowing she had to have been a fairly close relative of notable Bloomsbury adventuress, Virginia Woolf paramour, gardener, and woman of letters, Vita Sackville-West, the album's creator was a mystery. It is possible that it was Constance Mary Elizabeth Cochrane-Baillie who married Reginald Windsor Sackville West (without the hyphen) in 1867. That would make the person who conceived these truly exceptional and endearingly odd tableaux a newly-married 21 year old. Possible.

Most of the characters gamboling on lawns and reclining at the shore (or whose disembodied heads bob amidst the clouds) form a roster of mid-nineteenth century bold-faced names and are are identified in Constance's hand. The Earl of Scarborough, the Marchioness of Huntley, the Queen of Naples, and the "Misses Bismarcks", among various other royal and social lights, are in her parade of notables.

This oblique view of Constance's daily circuit (croquet, hunting parties, lots of sitting–a life lived as a series of tableaux vivants) makes the evidence of her agile imagination far more intriguing. It's interesting is that she had access to so many full-length photographs of friends posing–did they have photographing parties? What else did Constance do?

Addendum: Thanks to the wonderful Florizelle who has pointed me toward another strikingly similar embellished photo album in the collection of the Musee d'Orsay. Georgiana Berkeley made her album around the same period as Sackville West (1860-70) and created witty dreamlike scenes interspersed with more typical portraits and mementos. It seems as though she and Constance would have moved in the same circles. I wonder how common a hobby this was? How many other albums disappeared, falling victim to vigorous housecleaning in some decade or other...

the song remains the same–for now

2009-01-29T06:39:00.009-05:00

While there is absolutely no guarantee that, after over 14 years, I might be moving, it has become a distinct possibility. And suddenly I was overcome with nostalgia for a space that I still inhabit. Suddenly the walls and windows became very precious. This small apartment has soothed me and contained me in volatile combination; it is at the same time active expression and shell. I've pondered some of this "tyranny of things" before.

I took these photos over a year ago, and some things have changed since then, but then again, its all the same.

the woodwork is notable

refrigerator close-up

the view

my cat is of mercurial temper