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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The Metropolitan Museum's Jolly door prize, 1960

1960 Fiat 500 Jolly.

Arrived in Maine in a cardboard box aboard the freight train to Portland from New York City where it had been a door prize at the Metropolitan Museum. 

How great is that? I would've been psyched to win a just a wicker chair.

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Sergio Carpani's 1978 Hi Tech Pompidou Ferrari Pens

Sergio Carpani on his pen:

PARAFERNALIA asked for a pen that was unsellable, a courageous image. I started to work with what was HI-TECH at the time, that was to show the technical parts, the mechanism, the guts of the instrument (just like the Centre Pompidou – Beaubourg of that time) and design the shape of the fitting around it (just like Pininfarina was being asked to shape a Ferrari car around the powerful engines in order for it to perform efficiently). An innovative pen, entirely hand-made with 31 miniaturised metallic components and push mechanism just like the most complex race cars.

Pompidou, Hi Tech, and Ferrari. References don't get much cooler than this.

They're on Fab.com for the next three days

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Thanksgiving dinner extra chairs idea

 The Plia Folding and Stacking Chair, by Giancarlo Piretti (1967).

Top: working off the pounds in The Head-to-Toe Exercise Book (1975)
And above, from Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (1972)

Happy Thanksgiving!

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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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