Life Magazine Invention Archive

Dr. Mattastic tells us:

Life magazine titled this collection of Dumb Inventions. I must say that the title is grossly misleading and inaccurate. I can only assume you've already seen the wonderful photographs of these stupefying inventions, but I figured I toss it your way just in case. I adore D&R, you crack squad compiles the best of the best and never lets a fella down.

I agree. Some of the inventions, like the yodel meter, are absurd, but the light up Goodyear tire is a pretty great idea! Cat Mew looks like a Maker Faire project.

Life Magazine Dumb Inventions Archive (Thanks, Dr. Matt)

Admire Before Eating: Cookies

Wedgewood Cookie Platter by Cookie Artisan

It appears that cookies are the new cupcake for those concerned with the latest trend in pastries. You don't want to be caught scarfing down the wrong thing! I especially love how the above is a cookie composition instead of a cake.

Bird cookies by Eleni's of New York

Link to Cookie Artisan (via Wonderful Things People Make)
Link to Eleni's (via Simple + Pretty)

I'll use this as an excuse to link to "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb"

Mat Collishaw's Insect Zoetrope

Wallpaper* has a brief article and a slideshow about a pair of artists that are working with insects. Unfortunately, it appears that we are going to have to go to Berlin to get more information about Collishaw's insect zoetrope and to see it in action.

Insect exhibitions: Mat Collishaw & Jason Pietra

Stitchless Pocket Levis 501s

Mysterious Levis on eBay (via Reference Library)

Futuristic visions of Auckland

Sometimes when I dream about cities, they look like Bernard Roundhill paintings.

Photos of 1950s Batmobile

The interior photos of this die-cast Batmobile are just as cool.

Reginald Marsh

A few Reginald Marsh prints at Swann Gallery

1912 Bugatti T16 5 litre Race Car

Before your great gran-pappy was driving a Model T Ford, Ettore Bugatti entered his handbuilt race car the in Mont Ventoux Hill Climb. At 30 years old, Bugatti won his class and came in fourth overall. The car is now for sale at Bonhams.


Bugatti Race Car at Bonhams

19th Century Deep-Sea Diving Suit

Deep-sea diving suit circa 1882 (described as never being used) by Alphonse and Théodore Carmagnolle, on display at the National Marine Museum in Paris.

Link to related images
Musée National de la Marine

Fallen Off a Truck

One of my favorite discoveries in Paris from last year is a shop called Tombées du Camion (roughly, "Fallen off a truck") hidden at the end of a not-very interesting street, on the west side of Montmartre. If you're on your way to the Montmartre Cemetery (to pay hommage at Truffaut's grave, of course) it's a perfect pitstop. A dark little hole in the wall filled with dead-stock French goods dating from the 20's to today. Chanel powder samples from the 40's, dolls heads, gilded Art Nouveau perfume boxes, grade-school report cards, keychains, and things you can't readily recognize are crammed into cubbies, hung from the ceiling and sorted into bins.

I couldn't resist this ink bottle.

Link
Link to numerous flickr photos of the shop

Mind-boggling Netsuke, Priced Commensurately

Ivory netsuke of a basket of fish, By Sekko (late 19th century)
Sold for $10,370 inclusive of Buyer's Premium
Lacquer and ivory netsuke of a Bugaku dancer, By Ryukei and Bunsai (19th century)
Sold for $2,074 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Ivory netsuke of a bashful monkey, 19th century

Sold for $36,600 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

The Bluette H. Kirchhoff Collection of Netsuke and Sagemono

Blocks from House Industries

From the historic archives of Photo-Lettering (PLINC), House Industries has come up with an online typesetter to whip up logos and headlines with House/PLINC classic typefaces in a wonderfully empowering and self service way. Being lucky enough to have access to the beta site, I have wasted hours seeing how my name would look in different typefaces.

The fellas at House used Photo-Lettering to create some new products including this kick-ass, made in the USA set of blocks.

Yeah, I gush about House from time to time and they are friends of mine. But! I gushed about House long before I shook their hands. I am an old school suck up.

Block Set
Photo-Lettering (Get on the mailing list and be the amongst the first to use and abuse PLINC)

Sleeveface Flickr Pool

Sleeveface. I don't need to explain. Tons of fun.

Link
(I like this one and this one and this one and then I had to play too.)

Machine Project Pizza Oven

From Machine Project:

Michael O' Malley teaches a class on bread and pizza dough, culminating in a temporary wood burning pizza oven installation on the sidewalk in front of machine project

Oh boy, I wish I didn't miss this! Looks like fun and delicious!

Machine Project Flickr Pizza Oven Set

Soap Sculpture

Ivory Soap ad from Lester Gaba's book "On Soap Sculpture" (1935)
image from the New York Public Library's website

Funny that my fellow guest-blogger Robyn posted about incredibly carved watermelons, because I had been wondering about incredibly carved soap. (I shoulda called this entry "Too Beautiful to Shower With".) My father had a really lovely, but simple soap sculpture on his desk of a kneeling nude he'd made when he was about nineteen. It made me wonder if there were many other examples of soap carving, or if it had been a fad at one time. Looks like it was...

I was led to the New York Public Library's website where they had a nice entry on Lester Gaba, who wrote several books on the subject, and created numerous examples of soap sculpture that are astonishing in their detail. I was surprised to find out that this fad was launched as a marketing scheme by Proctor and Gamble:

...soap sculpture as a fashionable hobby was launched by Proctor & Gamble as a means of promoting brand loyalty for Ivory soap. The man behind this campaign was Edward L. Bernays, who has been called the Father of Spin. Proctor & Gamble sponsored a series of competitive soap sculpture exhibitions in the twenties, and winners took home cash prizes. Within the first three years of the campaign's launch, prizes totaling $1,675 were given to winners among no fewer than four thousand entries (as reported in the New York Times, June 6, 1928).

Link to the New York Public Library's entry
Link to an excerpt from Gaba's oop book with several images scanned

Too Beatuiful to Eat

I was totally impressed at this watermelon carver in the Avignon market, June of last year.

Then I saw this watermelon carving at Environmental Graffiti... wow!


For more watermelon art, click here.

Heuer Dash Mounted Stopwatch at Auction

Heuer. A chrome plated dash board stop watch

Monte Carlo, 1970's
Jewelled manual wind movements, black dial with luminous Arabic numerals, digital jumping hours with lock feature, the large hand shows 60 minute, the small hand the seconds, start/stop winding crown with return to zero by push button, mounted on a chrome finish back plate with four mounting screws 56mm x 56mm.

Bonhams Clock, Watch and Barometer Auction

Orangutan Sculpture - Les galeries de Paléontologie

(click for a larger view)

Yesterday I checked out Les galeries de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée (translation probably not necessary: Galleries of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy) and was immediately blown away by this enormous and shocking sculpture found in the entrance of a mother orangutan strangling a man. I completely neglected to take down the name of the artist and have been unable to find any images or information about this sculpture online.

Update! D+R reader Greg Allen wrote in:

That insane Orangutan Strangling a Borneo Savage [1895] sculpture is by Emmanuel Frémiet, who also did an earlier sculpture of a gorilla abducting a naked white lady which was an inspiration for King Kong.

I was already agog as I paid my ticket and continued to be blown away by the parade of ghostly skeletons crammed into a long, suitably dilapidated and crumbling gallery.

Link

Garage Sale Report - September 6, 2009

Curious bunch of junk, right? Update forthcoming as I get it a little more together. I am excited about this find.

Enchanted Dolls

The work of Marina Bychkova is simply divine. Her understanding and expression of human gesture articulated into a posable work that can re-express it multiple times, in multiple ways, makes me despair that I'm wasting my own time as an artist. But, respectfully, her work is more inspiring than it is discouraging. The embroidered clothes, the watery expressions, the white-moon painted nails. As I was looking at her work, I realized that it cannot exist in a static form. Each doll can express endless poses so you never are fully satisfied by looking at it once. I want to look at them again and again. I want to play with them. They are dolls, after all. The only other work that comes to mind is Hans Bellmer's iconic, re-posable work, La Poupée.

I stumbled across a set of extensive photos on flickr of Bychkova's dolls, more than are included on her website, by the photographer Chad Isley, who documents her work:

Link

Really Really Big Bikes

Above is Kevin Cyr functioning Camper Bike , on which he later based a number of paintings. Conspicuously, he provides no photos of the inside of the camper. We'll forgive him this omission.

And then there's this... the Pedal Pub, on which you can get totally hammered while riding around town with 16 of your closet friends.

Interesting Figural Banks at Auction

Nothing sadder than an elephant dressed as the rich kid from the Little Rascals.

Henry Peirce Still Bank, Mechanical Bank and Cap Gun Auction

Braun Slowly Disappearing from Consumer World

Photo: T4 Style

For a couple of months, I have been considering selling the iconic Braun AB1 travel alarm clock at Coco's Variety. Exquisitely precise and restrained in design, the AB1 just does what it is supposed to do - tell time, wake you up. This is the antithesis of coffee pots with thirty buttons and over-designed car interiors.

While trying to find a wholesale source, I called Braun, which is now a division of Proctor and Gamble, to learn they are getting out of the toaster, alarm clock, coffee grinder, clothes iron and coffee pot business to dedicate themselves to "personal care devices like razors." Now, Braun makes a nice electric razor, but it is a shame to lose the AB1. It is in the MOMA permanent collection, after all.

Braun AB1 at MOMA Store

Paris and Fruit Fly Trap

I am back in Paris for a couple of months which means two things: time to hit the hardware section of BHV and make a fruit-fly trap! These events are not related to one another.

Gramma Gum's Never-Fail Fruit-Fly Trap
In a small dish / jar of water, dissolve:
a spoonful of sugar
a spoonful of vinegar
a few drops of liquid dish soap (doesn't need to suds up)

The fruit flies will be attracted to the sugary, vinegar-y liquid, but due to the soap they won't be able to take off from the surface of the water and will sink to the bottom. Works like un rêve.

I love to visit BHV, a huge multi-level department store. Nothing overly glamorous or rarefied, really. But my favorite section is hidden downstairs. Just below the cosmetics, purses and jewelry is an extensive hardware department where you can have keys cut and peruse endless bins of enamel signs, keychains and house numbers. I bought this chunky, reverse-embossed lucite numeric plaque for 3 euro. Simple pleasures.

Also, I'll have work in two shows opening in Paris and Lille in October. Information about the work I'm showing and the exhibitions is on my blog, Embroidery As Art.

Link

Previously on D+R:
Deyrolle Paris Fire
Musée des Plans-Relief
Un Regard Moderne
Serge Gainsbourg Properly Deified
Super Maniable!

Shackitecture Considered at MSN Real Estate

Don Viens' Greenhouse Cottage

Michael Pelkey’s Key West cottage

MSN has lots of interesting examples of shackitecture. At D+R, we define shackiteture as modest architecture of grand ambition. Always a sucker for reuse castles, I must admit I am particularly fond of the Michael Pelkey's perfect white box. The efficiency of enclosing bookshelves as walls creates a wonderfully warm nest.

MSN on Shackitecture (Thanks to longtime D+R reader Scott for the tip!)
Previously, D+R on Shackitecture