"Can Anybody Play The Drums?"

 Thanks to how bored my in-laws are with none of their friends down to Florida yet, my father-in-law had some extra time to kill at an estate sale in Islamorada and found this old Who poster rolled up in a Garfield tube (that's killin' time). The poster's from the Cow Palace show in San Francisco, November 20, 1973. Notable for it being the night The Who launched the Quadrophenia Tour, but more notorious for drummer Keith Moon passing out on his drum kit from too much booze and tranquilizers. Pete Townshend then had to ask the audience "Can anybody play the drums?" (5:15) and 19 year-old Iowan Scot Halpin bangs out the rest of the show."

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Happy Birthday Fletcher!

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This poster brought to you by the letter T and the number 5

 The fragmented, abstract, last remaining 1965 grocery store window poster, in our shop. 

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Channel Thirteen Totebags

The symbol of artistic and cultural charity: PBS in New York City's Channel 13 tote bags. Yours with a donation of $50 or more during pledge drives, the Herb Lubalin-logotyped bags were a ubiquitous in Fairfield County during the 70's and 80's, but now nearly extinct- except in our closet, where they're falling off the shelf.

(and now they're in our shop.)

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Tim Gunn, 1986

From my parents' attic (wandering around after Christmas dinner) - the most interesting thing in my old Parsons portfolio was Tim Gunn's memo paper.
Far and away one of the nicest guys I've ever known.






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George Nelson and Irving Harper

From House & Garden, 1965

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Georgia O'Keefe's house, New Mexico

"Neither an Indian house, nor a Spanish house- just my house"
From House & Garden, 1965

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rrrgh!!! there goes my floppy disk!

Hypperealist 1980's Spilled-coffee-on-floppy-disk sculpture, 

in the shop

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Hot Tub Time Machine

It was the best of times

it was the worst of times

from Cannibal Soup: Tubbing with the Thompsons (1978), in the shop.

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If I knew you were coming...

Pastry Bag chandelier, from the book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found (2009)

Singin' by Eileen Barton, 1950

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Hobbit t-shirts, 1976

One of each in all colors, please

. From the back of a Rolling Stone magazine, 1976

...(don't expect the Prompt Delivery)

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There and Back Again

J.R.R. Tolkien's design and artwork for The Hobbit dust jacket, 1937

From the book J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist and Illustrator

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Over Hill and Under Hill

Where I read The Hobbit: Greti di Greve in Chianti, Italy. I spent a year here in 1988. This was the view from my front door. 

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Thinking of something for the man in your life?

There are some gifty ideas in our shop!

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Wary Meyers San Francisco Poster

New in the shop

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Robert Venturi's Lieb House, Frug House

Poor baby. When you was built you didn't think you'd have to go through all this!

Robert Venturi's 1969 Lieb House, in Loveladies NJ, from a 1971 Architecture and Urbanism magazine, and the trailer for the film Saving Lieb House, the ten-day scramble to save the pop-art beach house from the black tide of megamansionism.

See also this Pilar Vilades/Leslie Willamson article on the saved house in the NY Times

Below:

 Venturi's "Frug House" a teenage party pavilion near a private swimming pool. Named after the dance, as that's what would've been going on there. Unfortunately it was never built. 

I'm really liking Robert Venturi more and more lately.

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Talulah Gosh is a Top Celebrity

The Independent has a nice article on the brilliant post-pop life Talulah Gosh, a favorite band from the late 80's. 

Above: A sticker I picked up in 1989 when I stopped by 53rd & 3rd, their label in Edinburgh on my up to the Orkney Islands and The Old Man of Hoy.

h/t Mary at Unchanging Window

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Emil Hermann's Midsummer Night's Wood Nymph

New in our shop

"Despite its condition this is a great painting of a wood nymph dancing around a twilight forest in a sheer, diaphanous cloth. Painted by midwest American artist Emil Hermann (1870-1966). The condition is shabby- it has about 10 chips of paint off the front (although you could almost imagine them as Forest Sprites), one hole, and probably layers of dirt (Antiques Roadshow protocol says I'll leave the cleaning to the experts.) But those flaws considered, it makes for a nice piece of shabby chic decor- the smile on the dancer's face transcends the condition. 

Signed "Emil Hermann 1910" in bottom left corner."

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