Lusiana Fashion

Showing posts with label mid-century. Show all posts

The ABCs of Fairy Dust

Very few stores are better at sensory overload than ABC Carpet & Home. Even when you think you cannot absorb one more dazzling display, pattern, color or texture, ABC’s “Visual Team” successfully manages to impose yet another layer of retinal stimulation.

So it was at a recent event held at the store, that I found myself under the spell of what the ABC employees call “fairy dust.” It might appear as glittery graffiti on a mid-century étagère, or as carefully arranged dried buds peeking out from under a porcelain dinner plate. Even when the pixies take it up a notch for special events the effect remains subtle as the sparkles, petals and powders blend naturally with the flickering candles and the ambient surface reflections. After last week’s Apartment Therapy meetup, where Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, daughter of George Nakashima, talked about the work of Nakashima Studios, I had to take a closer look at these ethereal flourishes.

“Fairy dust” also graces the always otherworldly store windows.

Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, signing books, after her presentation.

Cool Collage: Vintage Refrigerator

Reading a refrigerator is usually a semiotic/archeological affair that involves decoding brands of gourmet mustard and carbon dating takeout containers. Well, here’s a fridge you can read without even opening it.

Up for auction next month is a circa 1960 classic GE model, plastered with some 50 years of bumper stickers. Daniel Donnelly, the Alexandria, Virginia furniture dealer and architectural salvager, admits that its intrinsic value might not measure up to its size, but he just couldn’t resist the "liberal-minded" monolith. He described its original home just as you would imagine it—mid-century Knoll, Eames, and Danish furniture, and packed with accumulated artifacts from the family's years of foreign travel.

Up with People!

And yes, it works! Also in this auction is a great assortment of Steve Frykholm posters for Herman Miller.

Architectural Forum Covers

The first three, of these Architectural Forum issues were offered as
one lot on eBay last week…

This next group of issues are available on eBay, from various sellers, right now …

The following are covers from a Frank Lloyd Wright archive at The Steiner Agency. You can go there and see many more wonderful covers of issues referencing Wright.

September 1956

January 1949

February 1961

May 1959

October 1970

December 1970

November 1957

September 1958

November 1959
Apologies for the lack of info on art direction/design/photo credits, etc., but I do not have access to the issues at this time. I hope you can just enjoy the candy for now ...

The Marcel Breuer Coloring Book

It’s probably the only coloring book that assumes the owner has multiple residences and leaves five spaces to list them right on the cover. That’s because The Marcel Breuer Coloring Book (c. 1960) was not for kids, but rather for the staff of Marcel Breuer Associates. The hand drawn pages inside, are filled with inside references to firm projects and personalities .

The drawings and cryptic text make humorous reference to various Breuer projects, colors, materials, and working methods, such as the Unesco Building in Paris, Cesca and Isokon chairs, his use of stone and concrete, and "Breuer Blue.”

Lorry Roeder, who donated the coloring book to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, writes that he started work at the Breuer New York office in 1963 and upon the firm's moving offices, “Mr. Breuer had me clean out, and throw away, all of the contents of a 4-drawer file cabinet that stood next to my desk. He told me that I could take anything as long as it left the office. Which is how I received the Marcel Breuer Coloring Book."

It is not known who wrote and illustrated the work. You can see larger, albeit heavily watermarked versions of the coloring book in its entirety here.

TEXT: FIND THE MISTAKE AND COLOUR IT RED, WHITE & BLUE.

TEXT: The man who drew this is no longer with us. WHY? (use vermilion “116” pencil)

TEXT: this is so restful. Color my suit a restful charcoal brown, put a martini in my hand, add a bit of hair

TEXT: I am a fireplace; one specific fireplace; I am not always this shape but I am concrete like others so please bush-hammer me with all of your might: bang! bang!