From the Ritva Man

Out of the blue the other day came a great, unexpected phone call from Mike Ross, expatriate Portlander and the creator of the Ritva Man sweaters. We wrote a little about the Ritva Man back in December but Mike was happy to elaborate and talk about the (truly humble) beginnings, from his wife Ritva's first dresses she made by altering a crochet bedspread pattern from a Swedish craft book, to his Ritva Man's first "Homerun" baseball-jersey sweaters made by sewing a different color long sleeve to a short sleeve.

It's amazing what they accomplished in the first couple years.

Top: the first Ritva Man Homerun sweater, circa 1969, now in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1969 Mike Ross designed a sweater called the ‘Homerun’, inspired by a traditional baseball under-garment. From this prototype, in two colours with a simple embroidered flower, there followed around 2500 original variations, with stripes, in unique colourways. Ross later produced the ‘Artist Collections’, a series of ‘wearable works of art’, with appliquéd designs by artist friends including David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Patrick Caulfield.

Above: The Homerun sweaters on Mike Ross & teammates, including Allen Jones, Commander Whitehead, and the Hathaway Man, I think. An unused London Sunday Times photo, 1970.

Above: Julie Christie modeling the Ritva Man Allen Jones sweater (top) and Liz Frink sweater, to coincide with McCabe & Mrs. Miller promotions, from the London Observer, Nov. 1971. The headline reads" At last, off the peg sweaters for 40 pounds". Which wasn't actually cheap as chips. Mike joked (but seriously) one of the reasons the labels were so intense was to make the sweaters seem more important, like a work of art, each hand made and very involved, with all their provenence (I'm paraphrasing). Funny that he would worry, but it's exactly what an artist would do. Indeed, if you were lucky enough to buy one back then today you could sell it to the V&A.

Above, the Ritva Man David Hockney sweater on display at the Sheffield Museum.

Images courtesy of Mike Ross.

Lucite desk

We bought this a couple years ago at a yard sale in Key Largo, via a defunct realtor's office in Miami. It came with matching Rietveldish slab-of-lucite chair and a drawer full of old real estate contracts. Pictured here on its way into the studio to replace the vast expanse of Prouve-esque farm table which I've been using.

Seasonal desks!

Midnight and yellow

Top: Casa Bricall in Vilassar de Mar, Barcelona, 1975, by Studio PER. From habitat: Areas of Communication, 1976.

Above: 11 Harrowhouse-ish 1963 Ferrari 250 LM (with Dubai plates). From the 1980 Octopus book Great Marques: Ferrari.

Sika Mobler

Old Sika Mobler teak nesting tables, from a garage sale.

Kei Bohji-san

A monkey pile of Japanese teak chimpanzees, slightly altered from Kay Bojesen's Danish original. The little one in the middle was on a shelf in my dad's closet growing up and the rest are from yard sales over the years. In the last few months we've used them in our son's room as a mobile (with vine-green yarn)(too dangerous), coat hanger (upside-down off the back of the door-too fragile), and semaphore (Beatles "HELP"-style for "FAOM", which didn't look that good- actually neither did HELP, as they changed it to the more design-friendly NUJV.) The new project is to make a little Ofuro hot tub barrel to keep them in, Macaque-style. If that doesn't work they're going up on a shelf.

Related: the back cover of "This Week: Guide to Wonderful Copenhagen, May 5-May 11, 1973", brought back and stuck in a drawer by my grandparents.

E.H. Shepard at ther V&A

From last Saturday's pre-yard sale yard saling, an old V&A poster by Her Majesty's Stationery Office for the exhibition of Ernest H. Shepard's original drawings for the books by A.A. Milne.

Brought back to Maine after a holiday in London, Christmas 1969.

$5

Related: "That Sort of Bear", the Sotheby's auction of some great E.H. Shepard drawings, etc., from 2008 *here*

...and more insight into that auction at the ever encyclopediac *Daddytypes*.

We're having a YARD SALE!

Update: the yard sale was awesome, crowded, cheap, and super fun. Thanks to everyone who came and everyone who wanted to come! Above: this is nothing compared to what was in the driveway and out on the sidewalk.

As you can imagine the amount of stuff we have is out-of-hand ridiculous, therefore it's time for our own MASSIVE yard sale, this Sunday.

Here's the ad:

We're having a HUGE YARD SALE!! This Sunday (May 30th). Vintage furniture, chairs, lamps and lighting, fabric, vintage clothing, wallpaper, pillows, hundreds and hundreds of books, decorative accessories, vintage glassware, camping stuff, rugs, backpacks, dishes, helmets, Lundby dollhouse, antiques, fireplaces, sewing machines, military bags and uniforms, frames, tools, supplies, pottery, kitsch, art, 60's 70's 80's laserdiscs, knick-knacks, giant wicker sofa, Paul McCobb Planner side table, Milo Baughman dining table, "Saarinen" tulip dining table, a dozen steel David Rowland 40/4 chairs, posters, luggage, games, Electrohome, etc....awesome stuff!!!!!!
PRICED TO MOVE!!!

Drop by if you're around!

Pool Noodle chair

Part Bibendum, part 24-pack koozie.

From Wary Meyers Tossed & Found.

À la table

Vintage Gucci napkins-and-tablecloth, old Gio Ponti silverware, and an early set of Julia Child, from yard sales.

And from the flotsam-filled dock undersides of Portland came the wood to make the chevronned Jean Prouve esque Tropicale (Nauticale?) Farm Table, called "Picnic Table" in Tossed & Found, only because we were watching "Manon of the Spring" when we had to come up with a name.

You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW.

and painted it too. That's my name.

ABC

Alexander

Bitchin'

Calder

The weekend's bags

Unneeded, as usual, but...

From 3 different yard sales: above, an Invicta-striped Regent Belt Co. bag, an old Swiss leather and canvas creel, and yet another old L.L. Bean duffle, this time with the old cursive label and a nice patina to the webbing (that was how I tried to explain the purchase to Linda). Top, a vintage Jansport internal frame pack with its lower outside rack sawn off. This makes it a Kanken-like super sturdy backpack. Below that is a pair of vintage Bean hunting boots in children's size, which they don't make anymore, and never too soon to shop for back-to-school 2016.

Total for everything was 7 dollars, which is hard to resist.

early birds

Morning doves

B&W

Aalto, Rya

Yard sale finds from the weekend: above, a giant, beautiful, and slightly sea-air musty 8'x10' Danish Rya rug from the 60's, a pop lightbulb lamp and an Alvar Aalto shelf.

Below, the shelf and a pair of heavy steel Alessio Tasca bookends, from another yard sale.

Greek

This awesome painting was bought by my in-laws at an estate sale in Florida and arrived via giant tube in our mail last week. Painted by Alex Tavoularis (brother of Dean Tavoularis), who's got an IMDB page so cool you'd expect nothing less than a cute nude blonde crawling around his floor: locations for Coppola's 1974 "The Conversation", art department on The Godfather 2 and 3, production illustrator of Apocalypse Now and half a dozen other Coppola films, designer of the "Taarna" segment of Heavy Metal, the early Star Wars storyboards, etc...

I'm not sure what the story is with the painting, but she could conceivably be anyone: a Playboy Bunny from Apocalypse Now, a girlfriend from Laurel Canyon, a waitress from Marathon, a scuba diver from Key Largo modeling a Taarna look, Teri Garr... but unless informed otherwise I'm going to assume she's most likely an early concept for Princess Leia.

Look Blue Go Purple

Butterfly wings arranged under glass, from a yard sale.

Super Sweet Diamonds

Motified bottle

from the basement of an estate sale.

Rec room

To the Max

Three Peter Max things in our apartment. Above is an old screenprint exhibition poster which was hanging in my brother's room throughout the 70's, then stored away in my grandmother's attic after 1984. For "safe keeping", since my brother has a penchant to sell things, I gave it to Linda and myself as a wedding present from him.

Peter Max-design Wrangler corduroys from probably the same year. Linda found these for a couple dollars in a now-defunct Brooklyn thrift shop. They're made for probably a 10 or 11 year-old, so we'll see what happens when our son gets to be that age. I know when I was ten I would have loved them, but they may be relegated to a Halloween as Greg Brady.

Thirdly is 1969's Peter Max designed "Teen Cuisine, a Beginner's Guide to French Cooking", from a sidewalk vendor in Park Slope. I'm sure the recipes are fine but what's really awesome are Max's saturated, full-bleed gradient silk screened pages. They're not all printed this way, but when they're not, and it's a white page, the type is silkscreened in gradient. Wow.

The Secret Policeman

Sting, resplendent in sublimeness at The Secret Policeman's Other Ball benefit for Amnesty International, 1981.

Also, Message in a Bottle