Untitled short film still

Incredible embroidered shorts from the 1975 book American Denim.

I always think that's Cindy Sherman at the top.

also:

Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji

Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji. 1959

"I have photographed the mountain more than 150,000 times,
but I fear that I have still not exhausted all its possibilities."

Cover design and layout by Ryuichi Yamashiro
Published by Charles E. Tuttle Co.

Japan, you are in our hearts.

The Cobra-Ferrari Wars 1963-1965 by Michael Shoen

All images from The Cobra-Ferrari Wars 1963-1965 by Michael Shoen (1st edition, 1990). The quintessential book on the 1960's battles between Cobra and Ferrari for the GT World Championships.
I found this at a thrift shop a few months ago and it hasn't been far out of reach since. It's amazing.

Related, a vintage 60's Carter's jacket found around the same time.

Wary Meyers Baxter Library Installations

Our first round of installations for the Old Baxter Library/Via Advertising Agency is finally all together in one spot on our website. Including this fountain pen & ink seating group, which would look equally cool with oil wells, pastry bags, or shampoo bottles- whatever your company's reception area needs, we can do it.

Click!

Alexander Calder constellations

Some constellation wall sculptures by Alexander Calder. I scanned these from the book Calder's Universe, meaning to relate them to the Zolo toys, but amongst the Ettore Sottsass buzz I completely forgot. Anyway, aren't these awesome? My thought was, how fun would it be to do this with the Zolos? They already have holes drilled in them, so all you'd need is wire (or a thin dowel), and velcro (to keep it in place on a wall), and you'd end up with something like a "Memphis splat". And a way of actually utilizing the Zolos instead of keeping them sequestered away until the age of non-choking-hazard/non-banging-them-on-the-table comes around.
For that matter you could do this with any wooden toy- the Calder above the fireplace somewhat resembles one of those wooden Pinnochio figures, or a Kay Bojesen soldier. Although if you'd do this on a child's wall you'd most likely want to remain in the abstract.



Also, the Breuer's Constellation (middle photo) makes me want to put these into an orrery, or even make a completely strange Sci-Fi one, like a Star Wars orrery, with two suns, Alderaan, Endor, Death Star....

Kids' Stuff

Pages from the 1979 book "Kids' Stuff" by Linda Foa and Geri Brin. Besides "Children's Spaces" by Molly McGrath (later) this is our favorite book about kids' design. If you judged Kids' Stuff by its crazy cover you'd probably never open it, but inside it's like a kid's version of High Tech, the 70's industrial-style home design sourcebook, with hundreds brilliantly designed things, like chairs, tables, lamps, storage, drawer pulls, tents, ropes... all photographed either on seamless, on a Superstudio-esque grid, or in the cool NYC apartments of the authors and their friends. One of my favorites is the table from Scandinavian Design (above), used as a changing table, and "actually billed as a writing desk by the manufacturer".  The book's acknowledgements mention a heavy thanks to designer Joe D'Urso and design author Barbara Plumb, and it shows. Also it's a sourcebook itself, so it tells you what everything is, how much it cost, and where it was available. Everything that is except the incidental decor in the kids' rooms, notably this girl's ball-bearing based, plastic sphere-encased, self-levelling desk lamp (below). 

The Basement Stacks

The latest of our installations for the the old Baxter Library in Portland, 

newly occupied by the Via Advertising Agency. This one's in the basement, referencing the old library, history, roots, poltergeists...

Heavy Metal 1977-81

From Ebay.
AAAAA+++++!

Related: Bowie at the Beeb:

The Adventures of the Three Colors

Neat!
Day Glo printed acetate pages make magic in the 1971 kids' book The Adventures of the Three Colors, by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor (of Barbapapa fame). It tells the tale of a boy named Herbie and his dog Angelo, who are out one day and see a rainbow, which inspires Herbie to want to paint some pictures, but the only colors he has are red, yellow, and blue. And he soon finds out those are all he needs, as he has a penchant for painting his animals much too close to each other- actually always overlapping.



Like too many other things, we have two of these- the original edition and the clunkily revised, definite article-free 1980 edition.