Ornamental 19th Century Book Covers
Posted in Discourse on Sun Jul 29, 07 by Kyle under 19th Century and Books.
I ran across a page that had images of many highly ornamental 19th century book covers this morning and I just had to share it with everyone. There are various styles, some with ornament, some with pictorial engravings. All very gorgeous.
My personal favorites are the ones with “Eastlake” ornament.
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You know it is either a sad or accomplished day when...
Posted in Discourse on Wed Jun 13, 07 by Kyle under Books and OMG!.
Amazon.com’s automatic suggestions only offer books that you either already own or have read already.
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Recent Reading No. 2
Posted in Reviews on Mon May 14, 07 by Kyle under Books and Architecture.
This should really be titled Recent Reading No 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, et al. because I all I have been doing recently is organizing after having moved to a new apartment, reading books and working, working, working. Hence the cavernous silence on this very site lately. What can I say, books are much easier than the blogosphere to curl up with in bed when you are tired. Anyway, here is a partial recap of what has been attracting my attention.
New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age by Robert A. M. Stern, et. al. (The Monacelli Press, 1999)
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. (Pantheon, 2006).
Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders. (HarperPerennial, 2004)
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Good-bye, Mr. Chippendale
Posted in Reviews on Wed Dec 20, 06 by Kyle under Books and Decorative Arts.
I recently found a book at the San Francisco library titled Good-bye, Mr. Chippendale by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings. Before I had even turned beyond the copyright page something caught my eye that told me how wide a gulf stood between the period when this book was written and the present era.
The book begins with a disclaimer that:
This book has been produced in full compliance with all government regulations for the conservation of paper, metal, and other essential materials.
This simple perfunctory sentence said a lot about the mentality and material circumstances of the United States at the time. In fact, the book dates from 1944, nearly a year before the end of World War II on September 2, 1945. Material deprivation and the rationing of materials needed to fuel the war effort was still in full effect and this siege mentality seeps into the book. The author elaborates on two main thematic points throughout the course of the book.
The first theme is a snappy, verging on glib and flippant, anecdotal summation of the history of interior decoration in America especially vis-à-vis the establishment of the antiques collecting “industry”. Which you are soon informed, as if the title of the book did not make it abundantly clear, he throughly deplores…
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10 things I am thankful for
Posted in Discourse on Fri Nov 24, 06 by Kyle under Miscellany.
Good friends
This one really goes without saying and doesn’t need much elaboration.
Dover Books
I love Dover books. They are relatively inexpensive and are full of amazing inspiration for design. They also are a really important source of historic documentation. Their reprinting of old design texts allow us to easily read and look at texts that are old, expensive, and rare enough that they would be almost otherwise impossible to acquire. From obscure historic clothes patterns to the books of architectural drawings of entire buildings Dover books have it all.
Bargain Books
One of my most favorite things in the entire world is finding a good book at a cheap price. For example, I recently had the luck to come across a nice copy of the large catalog book of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for $2.50. This may not be as exciting as finding an amazing antique French clock at a yard sale or being given a set of Herter Brothers furniture by you nice old neighbor lady, but such little deals do make for a contented afternoon.
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Fashion:The Mirror of History
Posted in Reviews on Wed Nov 15, 06 by Kyle under Books and Fashion.
I must extend my most sincere digital apologies for neglecting this blog for aeons of internet time. Life and work have been keeping me quite busy lately. Furthermore after sitting at a computer all day long who wants to do so for one’s miniscule remainder of the evening..? I’ve been finding myself inclined to recline in bed and read the evening away instead of basking away the night in the phosphorescent rays of of the blogosphere.
Halloween festivities revived my interest in a good costume, so in my spare moments I’ve been reading through Fashion: The Mirror of History by Michael and Ariane Batterberry. It is quite the compendious tome, and thusly I haven’t finished it yet. I have managed to read my way from Ur and Egypt all the way up to the court finery of baroque-era France. Only a couple more centuries to make it through…
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Kunstformen der Natur
Posted in Discourse on Fri Oct 27, 06 by Kyle under Art and Science.
Have you ever heard the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”? No? How strange… Well! Now you have and doesn’t it just roll right off the tongue? That phrase was one of the trademark utterances of German naturalist, biologist, theoretician, artist, and generally fascinating guy, Ernst Haeckel. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is a complicated way of saying that as an embryonic creature grows and develops it retraces the evolutionary path that the sum of its genetic ancestors went through. It is certainly an interesting idea, but ultimately turned out to be wrong.
Biologists determined that Haeckel’s theory was not the mechanism that caries out evolution and natural selection was declared the fittest theory. Haeckel was working during the 19th century alongside Darwin before we had so much conclusive information about genes, DNA, and other micro-biotic bits. So one might forgive him for making conclusions that were a little hasty. After all, the most sophisticated instruments and procedures biologists had available to them at that time were their eyes, albeit aided by early microscopes.
What is interesting to me from an aesthetic perspective was what the eyes of Ernst Haeckel saw, and subsequently transcribed.
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For your idealogical thirst, Leninade
Posted in Discourse on Fri Oct 20, 06 by Kyle under Design and OMG!.
No fancy meditations for today’s posting, just an amusing pictorial anecdote continuing this week’s theme of communist cultural production, or more accurately, capitalism’s ability to recuperate just about anything back into the marketplace for profit.
We have all seen Che t-shirts on college campuses, Soviet Constructivist inspired music packaging and advertising (Neville Brody anyone?), and the cultural revolution of Mao memorabilia marching across the spreads of interior design magazines and hip tongue-in-chic boutiques and now you can quench your thirst Red Style!
Presenting comrades, Leninade soda:
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