Remade Crayons

Today my daughters and I found a plastic bag filled with old dirty crayons. Instead of throwing them away, we remade them. Here's how we did it:

1. Remove the paper from the crayons, and use a knife to scrape away the dirty parts of the crayon.

2. Break pieces of crayons into tiny paper (not wax paper) Dixie cups.

3. Microwave them a minute at a time, until they melt.

4. After they've hardened, tear of the paper.

I just sorry we didn't start doing this a long time ago. I thrown away hundreds of crayons over the years.

Effulgence of the North: Storefront Arctic Panorama in Los Angeles

Artist Sara Velas reclaimed a West Adams theater for the construction of an arctic panorama in the style of the grand 19th century panoramic rotundas.

Paolo, our man in Genoa, is working on "an exhibition on Albert Smith's ascent of Mont Blanc in 1951 and on the 'Mont Blanc Mania' which followed Smith's London show: it ran for 2000 performances over six years and helped to popularize mountain climbing in mid-Victorian Britain." This crazy bing bong world. Paolo, our friend through shared blogging, exploring and a love of cured meats, finds this amazing treasure from his computer in Italy and it is 6 miles from my shop.

I had heard of Sara Velas' The Velaslavasay Panorama before and had poked around the website, and I considered a visit to be a top priority but it somehow slipped off my radar. I knew something interesting was happening, but not until Paolo pointed to this video did I realize there is magic occurring in a West Adams storefront. Resistance is futile; they will see me this weekend as I am a sucker for real magic.

Effulgence of the North: An Arctic Panorama on View at the Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles

The Velaslavasay Panorama website

PS I have saved you a step and looked up the word 'efflugent' - shining forth brilliantly, radiant.

Me Smile Happy Happy...

via noquedanblogs

Dutch Chocolate Tiles of Los Angeles

I'm fascinated with these photographs of the old Dutch Chocolate Shoppe in downtown Los Angeles. It may have been one of the most spectacular interiors in the the city. Just look at this place!

Opened in 1914 to satisfy the new fad for hot chocolate, the architectural firm of Plummer and Feil commissioned ceramic tile-maker Ernest Batchelder to do the interior.

According to Batchelder historian Robert Winter, the cocoa-brown interior was modeled after a "kind of German bierstube, with arches and vaults covered with tiles."

The tiles, all made in Batchelder's Pasadena studio, were sculptured with fanciful Dutch scenes...the windmillls of Holland, dairy maids in wooden shoes, chandeliers of glass milk buckets...

Even more astounding, is this chocolatey interior still exists today, though in disrepair, serving as a souvie mini-mall for street vendors.

If anyone has the means to rescue this gem and restore it, I want to help! Los Angeles still needs a good place to get a hot chocolate.

Vincent Black Shadow on eBay

Restored 1953 Vincent Black Shadow on eBay

Skyway for Sale

Three optimists in Minneapolis bought the skyway bridge that connected JC Penney to the Powers department store. In the two weeks of brainstorming prior to the blind auction, City Desk Studio tricked themselves into thinking this was a good idea. Now, at $79,500, the next sucker can be startled by the costs of moving something that measures 20' x 83'. Truly, somebody will figure it out- even if it means changing hands a few more times. There are really only two issues: where and how to get it there. If you think that money would address both of those, then there is really only one issue, money. After the glassy eyed optimists (like myself) run out of ambition, a pro will step in and make this something fantastic.

Thanks to Greg and Andy, two other glassy eyed optimists, for bringing this to our intention. Greg, Andy and myself will be carefully monitoring each other until this is sold. Our drinking will be moderate and social, Paypal accounts will be frozen, we are banned from using the words 'wire' or 'transfer' and using the two words contiguously is cause for an intervention.

City Desk Studio

Apple design chief's studio

Jony Ive is in charge of Apple's design. Here's a peek at his studio from Gary Hustwit's upcoming documentary about industrial design, Objectified. (Trailer here.) (Via Cult of Mac)

The Impossible Cool: Isabel and Ruben Toledo

The Toledos at home. The clothes are by Isabel; the art work is by Ruben.
Photograph by Max Vadukul.

From the New Yorker:

A week before Christmas, the drafts rattling the safety glass of a big skylight in the main room, which frames a view of the Empire State Building, were so icy that I asked Isabel to lend me a sweater— the Toledos sometimes have to wear the matching ski suits that hang on pegs in the bathroom. She does the cooking in a tiny alcove, and he brews the Cuban coffee. They have Sunday brunch together, lingering over it for hours, and at night, if they don’t feel like going out, Ruben said, “we put some cha-cha or rumba music on and boogie around by ourselves. We’re both great dancers.”

Isabel and Ruben Toledo. Photographer: Miguel Villalobos, via ASVOF

Isabel and Ruben Toledo in the New Yorker
A nod to The Impossible Cool

Clarice Cliff

Just as I was about to state that Clarice Cliff represented a warm modernism of mirth and informality, I realized I had already said the same thing last August.

Will I post about Clarice Cliff every time one of her teapots comes up at auction? Um, maybe.

Clarice Cliff at Bonhams

Previously on D+R,
100 Clarice Cliff Teacups at Auction
Clarice Cliff Orange House Vase

Free fonts from the Smeltery

The Smeltery is giving away 18 delightful fonts!

Denture soaps

Regynx made soap that looks like dentures. (Via Craft)

"The City of Los Angeles" Domeliner

"Get a front-page lesson in geography aboard the Astra Dome!"

The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, located on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, has been selling beautiful old-stock post cards, including these 1957 oversized gems (requires a 4¢ stamp!) from Union Pacific Railroad.

Domeliner Luxury Dining

Pullman Executive Suite

Relax in the Downstairs Lounge

If you have an interest in trains, history, or just want to be agog in the presence of gargantuan machinery, a visit to their exhibit grounds is a real treat. Open the second weekend of each month, and every day during the L.A. County Fair.

Peacock Feather Tights

Typically, I don't like to wear anything overtly gimmicky or attention-getting. Fashion-as-conversation piece usually isn't for me (although complimentary remarks are always appreciated). I like my clothes to emphasize and flatter without interrupting, distracting or making me feel like they're wearing me. However, I would make an exception here, because these tights with peacock feathers rising dramatically along the shin are spectacular and I want them. However, I can't tell from the photos if the feathers appear on the back of the calves as well as the front, which I think might be a bit too much.

Link
previously on D+R: Lace Stockings from Agent Provocateur

Paris-Dakar Unimog

Would anything be cooler than obtaining a battle scarred Unimog that had competed in a Paris-Dakar rally? In full racing livery? Old race cars show up all the time at auction, but I have never seen a Unimog from the famed rally.

More from Paris-Dakar 2009 at The Big Picture

Fiddlestixx

The Zellner Brothers’ films always feature interesting objects and curious props cobbled together for their very specific, usually absurd, purposes. Most recently they’ve unleashed three shorts exclusively made for Atom Films about a monkey named Fiddlestixx who just might destroy us all.

Link

also: Flotsam + Jetsam
Previously on D+R: Who Is On First?

Self-Organizing Leaf Pile

As the wind blows, an eddy is created that pulls
all the leaves to a central, swirling pile
St. John's Hospital, 2nd Floor, Oxnard, California

The climate control system in the mid-1980's Mercedes 124-series automobiles is legendary for its needless complexity. Currently, my 1987 Mercedes 300TD blower fan speed oscillates with the blinking of the turn signals. It is charming, in a way, and it is notable for its accidental complexity. I have no idea what occurred in the electrical system to create this odd happenstance but, even with a schematic at hand, it would be fairly complicated to recreate what happened by chance.

When the architects presented the foam core model of the future St. John's Hospital, I am sure their expansive descriptions presented this tastefully restrained courtyard as an oasis of solace. The courtyard would host ceremonies to commemorate volunteers who selflessly logged a 1000 hours of service. Miraculous cures would be announced by earnest doctors. New hospital wings would be presented with city council members standing near. In between those community building events, the families of the stricken would gather to regroup and remember the beauty of a rose while overworked doctors would take a break to excitedly discuss new treatment options.

Without a clear way to get out there or a place to sit, it remains a bland, lifeless concrete pit. Smokers, the stalwarts of the outdoor exodus, are discouraged with numerous No Smoking signs. But, for all the dashed hopes of the courtyard, I suspect that nobody expected the miracle of the self-organizing leaf pile! With the same accidental complexity of the Mercedes blower fan, the soulless building creates a perfect swirling eddy to form a dancing ring of leaves as they collect in a central pile!

Though I am certain this was not designed as such, has there ever been a case of landscape architecture that was engineered to harness the wind to create a self-cleaning space? Perhaps to a central composting pile?

Decaying Nuclear Powered Soviet Era Lighthouses

From English Russia:

Soviet Union decided to build a chain of lighthouses to guide ships finding their way in the dark polar night across uninhabited shores of the Soviet Russian Empire. So it has been done and a series of such lighthouses has been erected. They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas. After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses. Those small reactors could work in the independent mode for years and didn’t require any human interference, so it was very handy in the situation like this. It was a kind of robot-lighthouse which counted itself the time of the year and the length of the daylight, turned on its lights when it was needed and sent radio signals to near by ships to warn them on their journey. It all looks like ran out the sci-fi book pages, but so they were.

From the Department of Bad Ideas, an impressive piece of engineering and construction executed by some very cold Russians. Sure, it made sense for the time. And maybe micro-nuclear plants still do make sense in some pragmatic, world politics vacuum sort of way.

Abandoned Russian Nuclear Lighthouses (Thanks, John!)

Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Official Home Page

Not from the Internet Archive.

I will admit that I am a little bit of a Warren Buffet groupie. He is a startling intellect with a very charming, ukelele-playing low key style. As the price of BRK-B hovers around $3000, I have been poking around and doing a little due diligence on Berkshire. Though I will read any article on Buffet, Munger and Berkshire, I never thought to look at their website. Holy 1995!

The Berkshire Owner's Manual is a particularly refreshing bit of sanity.

Berkshire Hathaway

ZZZThreadZ

Fellow (digitizing) embroiderer and Austin friend Jimmy Bradshaw has been doing the most original digitized designs I've seen this side of sweatshirts and baseball caps. Jimmy's website is nothing to speak of itself, but we can forgive him as he succinctly explains:

I'm an embroiderer not a web thingy doer.

Eagle Stealing a Baby
Unicorn vs. Fairy
Yeti with a Wristwatch

Illustrations from "The Big Book of Real Trucks"

At San Francisco's Alemany flea market last weekend, I picked up a clean copy of "The Big Book of Real Trucks," a children's book published in 1950, with superb illustrations by George J. Zaffo. I don't know if I had this book as a kid -- the pictures seemed familiar, but I'm a '67 model, so this would have been a few years before my time. Nevertheless, Zaffo's illustration work is timeless, both as a fine example of his craft, and as a window on midcentury industrial design.

I've scanned the whole book for your viewing pleasure:

The Big Book of Real Trucks (1950)

The Most Wonderful Dashboard Ever?

I really love the design of the dashboard inside this 1965 Ford Thunderbird. It's got gauge pods, a thermometer-style speedometer, and jet cockpit-inspired HVAC controls on the center console. What an immersive environment!

Here's another version, in red:

Forest Fires in Motion Jars

At an antiques show a few weeks back, I noticed a booth that was selling a series of vintage light fixtures that created a realistic flame effect using rotating screens hidden inside the housings. Turns out these things are called "motion lamps," and they were popular during the 1950s.

The choice of a forest fire motif was mildly terrifying, but the billowing fire looked very toasty, as you can see in this video. I added some audio snap, crackle, and pop, to enhance the mood:

Mail Order Catalog Brilliance

Johnson and Smith Company, 1940's

(Please, click for big. You will not regret it)

The Morning News features an interview with Robin Cherry - author of a new book on mail order catalogs. The accompanying slide show includes some stand out pages featuring His and Hers Blimps (Neiman Marcus, naturally) and a $98 Pong set from Sears.

Sears, 1900

Over the years of garage saling, I have assembled a collection of about 15 Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs with the earliest being an impressive Sears summer book from 1932. Hoarded by set decorators and costume designers, these old catalogs have a retail eBay value that is more than you might think as they are invaluable resources for establishing a cohesive look for a specific time period. If you are set dressing a 1972 kitchen, what pancake flipper would mom hit Jimmy with? Would the appliances be harvest gold? Would the kitchen table be cracked ice Formica or white and brown with sparklies?

While it is knee slappingly funny to gawk at the shag bathroom sets of the 1970's, the richest bounty lies in the early catalogs from a time that the Sears catalog really meant something. Before the interstate highway system and the internets tube system, the Sears catalog was a profoundly important and optimistic source. It was a catalog of empowerment. One day, you are Joe Nobody, without a fiddle or an egg for breakfast. Weeks pass and it must have seemed like a miracle when that new fiddle, kerosene-fired incubator and carefully wrapped fertile eggs arrived in the mail. A community event, I suspect.

Having used inflation calculators, I have compared the 1932 prices of everything from screen door hinges to chore jackets. Selvedge denim dungarees from North Carolina mills were the equivalent of $25, while bicycles were terribly expensive. Of course, the world changed. Labor, materials and container shipping have shifted business so radically that it is a testament to Sears that the doors are still open.

Sears is struggling, no doubt about that. Squeezed to the middle, as they say. The low end has been stolen by Old Navy and WalMart. What if they repositioned themselves towards quality? Not a change across the board - they can still sell Dockers from Honduras. But what if they reintroduced the legendary Hercules brand and sold a pair of $75 selvedge denim, narrow loom dungarees that wore like iron?

How many songs were written on Sears guitars? How many babies laid in mail order cribs? How many loved ones were buried in their coffins? How many birthday parties were enjoyed and fevers endured in the Sears mail order homes? Will any company ever matter as much as Sears did?

Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping

What Is Jazz?

I love Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. My father raised me on a steady diet of cornball humor, bad puns, antiquated jokes ("A beatnik slinks into a diner...") and an appreciation for physical comedy. Which isn't to say I'll bray at any pratfall- I like the good stuff. While it makes most of my friends cringe, give me hokey, corny, post-vaudevillian, birth-of-television comedy any time. With Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner cutting their comedy-writing teeth, how can you go wrong?

This unusually staged clip from Your Show of Shows is one of my favorites. Sid Caesar does a hilariously artful, air-headed riff asking: "What is jazz?" ("Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.") -while simultaneously giving a serious nod to the burgeoning artform. What follows is a stunning performance of "Beale Street" with Jack Cole and Chita Rivera.

If you can't dispense with five minutes to watch this crazy, wonderful performance, it's like, your loss, man.

Link
Another favorite: This is Your Story

eta: The Mighty Boosh "Jazz Trance"

Bottle cap design

Inspiring design on these old bottle caps.

Nifty House in Tokyo

Nifty house in Tokyo.

The Golden Tools

Last weekend I got a plaintive call from my pal Carl to come down to Austin's City Wide Garage Sale and keep him company at his booth where he was selling a modest selection from his numerous objects of curiosity. The best by far was this 22 karat, gold-plated set of tools from Neiman Marcus designed for the "Diligent Duchess". Complete with its original box bearing a bona-fide, hammer-wielding duchess! Hm. Doesn't look like any duchess diligently used these tools as they are in perfect condition (click the picture to inspect up close, and check out the glittery handles).

The Mounty Holly Register

In the 1980's, it seemed like 'zine culture was so vast and so varied that there was an endless sea of xeroxed personal expression. Of course, with the interdoodles, we see that the desire to self-publish was exponentially larger than anything Factsheet Five could have fathomed.

Of all the great internet stuff out there, Mt. Holly Register most fully captures the 'zine ideal. Beautifully designed, it is a wonderful way to click away some time while you try to figure out what is real, what is imagined and if the difference matters.

Did the 2007 Mt. Holly Days really include a free saw dust pile at 10:30?

The Mount Holly Register

Shack Built to Float Down River

These guys know how to live. Fishing from a hole in the floor, brewing coffee in the morning, and playing the banjo on the porch. They are natural comedians, too.

Razor Blade Sharpener

Over at Ramshackle Solid, Eric recommeds a pull-cord powered, double-edge razor blade sharpener. I didn't even know that anyone was still making double-edge razor blades!

You just clip your used blade onto the pegs, close the lid and pull the cord a few times. The cord spins the pegs in little orbits which passes both sides of the blade over the interlocking sharpening element which has the right angle to sharpen the blade back to good as new condition.

I used it for the first time this morning and the blade felt brand new.

Razor blade sharpener

1937 Barn Find Bugatti Type 57s

Whatever your particular interest, be it ukuleles or pogo sticks, there is a universally accepted ideal of plucking the Hope Diamond from the rubble. It is a bourgeois notion not unlike the ubiquitous coffee shop fantasy of 'rescuing' the pretty waitress and running off to Mexico. Our predictability is eclipsed only by our lack of imagination.

Certain that our uniquely refined aesthetic and compassion for the object aids in discovery, we optimistically search every thrift store back room and each garage sale jewelry box for the overlooked article that is waiting for our refined appreciation. Thus is the magic pull of the barn find.

And we are all out there looking. Individually, we are looking for that particular article that would take the prized position in the curio cabinet. It is the object that we think about as we drift off to sleep, fully realized in every tiny detail. The real treasure hunt high wire act is identifying those treasured gems that are outside of our narrow interests. That is when you have gone pro.

The 1937 Bugatti Type 57S originally owned by Earl Howe, whose existence has only been known to a handful of people during the last 50 years will be sold at Bonhams’ Retromobile sale in Paris on 7 February 2009.

The Bugatti with Atalante coachwork retains all the attributes that will ensure its appeal to the world’s most discerning collectors. It has a spectacular provenance having been owned by Earl Howe, Lord Ridley, Harold Carr and others; it has a continuous and chronicled history; and it has exceptional originality retaining original chassis, engine, drivetrain and body. It even has what appears to be a remarkably low mileage with an odometer reading of just 26,284.

It is not the millions of pounds that is keeping me from buying this Bugatti. Well, it is the millions of pounds, but is not ONLY the millions of pounds. It is also the bulletproof provenance, the lack of mystery and the fact that I have already missed the electrifying moment of opening the garage to see the car slumbering under the layer of dust. I am an explorer, an archaeologist and an anthropologist. Not a collector.

1937 Bugatti Type 57s at Bonhams

Electrohome Stereophonic Furniture

Electrohome of Canada offered these "audio ideas from tomorrow" in 1968.  

"You've never heard a chair like this before!  A chair with built-in stereo speakers, built-in controls.  Has the privacy of earphone listening without that clamped-in feeling.  Lounge back and take flight!"

The hardwood table featured a "sunken" turntable and AM-FM receiver, plus a 360 degree speaker system.

Looks mighty heavy, but I want one...