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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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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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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Time travel station
Posted in Discourse on Thu Oct 12, 06 by Kyle under Design.
I got onto the BART train this weekend to go downtown and for a moment was transported to back to the 1970s or 80s when the BART system was still fairly new. The interiors of the cars and stations and even the exteriors of the train cars are now filled with advertising posters and admonishments to be wary of and report suspicious packages. However in between moments of consumer cajoling and paranoid persuasiveness you might, like I, happenstance to glance upon a poster slot that no advertiser had the heart or full coffers to fill that month or the empty spot left when a disgruntled passenger not satisfied with mere disfigurement and graffiti alone ripped down whatever message used to be there entirely.
As often as not you’ll find that beneath all these advertisements are very old BART safety posters. In the life of a poster, usually measured in weeks or months, these are unusual specimens that though somewhat worse for the wear have still managed to survive intact. The above is a sample, a little blurry from the being underground in a crowed train taking a telephoto picture effect, but for that I hope you will forgive me. I love little moments of anachronism like this. There is something about this poster and its series brethren that make me pause for a moment and look more carefully than I might otherwise.
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The Eclectic Royal Insurance Company Building
Posted in Discourse on Tue Oct 10, 06 by Kyle under Architecture and 19th Century.
I love old commercial buildings, especially crazy eclectic ones like the above Royal Insurance Company Building in Philadelphia. If you look closely at the photo you can see that this building was built in 1882, during the peak of Queen Anne architecture and Aesthetic the movement in the United States. Close inspection reveals the de rigueur sunflower motif on the panels beneath the windows. The sunflower was to the Aesthetic movement what the I-beam and plate glass was to corporate Modernists. You can also see classical columns and pilasters mixed with pointed gothic arches and finials, among the other delightful details that abound on this building.
The late 19th century is know for this kind of eclectic mixing. The build up of an integrated look through the combination of small details such as arches, decorative panels, brickwork, moldings, shingles, slates, and finials contributed to the aesthetic goal of creating a “picturesque” effect. Like all styles a skilled sense of design is required to make it work well, this mix and match approach did not always ensure pleasing results. However, the toolkit of the 1880s and 90s was big enough to ensure a lively variety and individuality on the street front while still maintaining a common architectural language.
See the full Library of Congress record.
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Contemporary Rowhouse Designs
Posted in Discourse on Fri Sep 29, 06 by Kyle under Domestic Architecture.
I am completely obsessed with row houses, or terrace houses in the British parlance. If you aren’t familiar row houses are tall houses built on deep narrow lots directly touching each other with no side yards, usually involving some kind of shared party walls. Old American cities like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and San Francisco are famous for their 19th century row houses. Of course most of Europe and Britain are blessed with many centuries of such urban houses. There is a lot of general interest in free standing single family houses and high-style apartment buildings, but to me row houses provide a great balance between the density of apartments and the privacy and neighborhoodliness of individual houses.
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I was very interested when I came across this post on the Inhabitat blog. Although the project designed by Youmeheshe is not row housing per se as the buildings do not touch each other or make a continuous street front, I was thrilled to see that tall, skinny, and densely packed houses are being worked on by contemporary architects.
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