An adventure in reading without words

...and 500 more photos.
From the 1975 Swiss book For Kids Only, by Jesper Hom and Sven Gronlykke.
(highly recommended by our kid)

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Hurricane Lamps

Camping Gaz Instalux. 1970's Battery-powered Italian camping lights:

 One of the only things to look forward to when the power goes out.

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Precious Metal

"Fenzi is an Italian company specializing in aluminum windows and door frames. In 1965, when they asked us for a calendar design, we decided to use their scrap metal in all its beautiful anodizations, one sheet per month. It became a precious object."

- Massimo Vignelli

1965! :0

from the book Design: Vignelli (1990)

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Striped cubism

New old lamp! 

Made of stacked anodized aluminum colored blocks.
Like the Superboxes of Ettore Sottsass and the sleeves of The Ritva Man.

related: here

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Speaking of Jumpers...

Clint Eastwood and friends wearing them well-
from Playboy, March 1972.

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A Relic From a Different Age

Our (my) newly acquired Wings sweater by The Ritva Man- one of only 5 black ones ordered by Paul McCartney from Mike Ross in 1975 for the Wings Over the World tour. Very 70's, very Ritva, and very glam rock- designed like a sports/concert t-shirt but made with flashy silver Lurex yarn, and a thick embroidered Wings logo designed by Hipgnosis.

More about The Ritva Man (our friend and recent visitor Mike Ross who's absolutely the coolest 70-something year old you could ever meet ) here. And if you're in London anytime, be sure to pop over to Surrey and check out The Lightbox's show Snap Crackle and Pop: British Pop Art meets the High Street in the Swinging Sixties. Writer Paul Gorman has a great preview of the opening night on his blog here.

...and just in from the encylcopediac mind and scanner-like eyes of Greg Allen is this awesomeness from the late Tony Curtis' closet: Three Ritva Man sweaters worn so much that the labels are unreadable, including a blue Wings, all three on the block at Julien's Auctions, Sept. 17th: No bidding against me...

Thanks Greg!

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Wary Meyers x Alice Cooper x Alvar Aalto

Aalto knock-off stools carved up with the desktop graffiti from Alice Cooper's 1972 album School's Out.

Basically this started out as an exercise in aging wood to a nice honeyed patina- making the originally brand new, very pale wood stools look like we've had them for years and years- but taken to a whimsical extreme. We sanded them down, nicked them up, cut slices off, carved in the markings, initials, and tattoo, stained them, tinted them, and polyurethaned them. All done by hand with no electric anything.

The stool is featured in our book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found and now two are available in our shop. So if you're a fan of Alvar Aalto, Alice Cooper, and us, this is the stool for you!

related:
a typography spread from our book


School's Out lp

Alice photo via Mrs. Gorman

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Adventure of the Three Colors

 

The tops of Lord of The Rings, 1978 edition.

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Brian Henderson's Aalto-filled Country House

Back in May I posted the photo of the Alvar Aalto bookshelves in the little closet library, but it's the house as a whole (and the loads of Aalto) that's the really great thing. Especially so in the sun-room photo (top), with the Josef Albers posters, gangly green plants, Aalto furniture, Noguchi lamp, and British colonial/1970's-Habitat campaign furniture.
All from the Queen Anne country house of London-based Architect Brian Henderson (post-rake, above), and via the 1984 book English Style, by Suzanne Slesin (highly recommended).

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Vegetarian Champion

Vegetarion (I should've spelled it that way) t-shirt a la Artimus Pyle made from one of our old Champion stock. And related, below, Cesar Chavez is one of Richard Avedon's 72 political-world subjects in the October 21 1976 Rolling Stone. (If you're going to have any issue of Rolling Stone, this is it.) And if you're going to iron-on letters to a t-shirt, make sure you get the placement right before you iron, otherwise you may end up with a backwards n, like I did.

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