Lusiana Fashion

Showing posts with label typography. Show all posts

Brimfield, to the Letter

It’s been well over a week since my last post, so to apologize for the hiatus, I’m going to play the Sorry! card. I still haven't quite figured out how to do and see all there is out there and post about it.

Amongst other things that took me away from AME, was an excursion to Brimfield, Massachusetts. I finally made the pilgrimage, in the name of the Goddess of Antiques, to that legendary flea-market-on-steroids.

It’s overwhelming, to say the least, so I’ve decided to parse it by theme. Here’s some typography from the day …

Booth design ranges from junk-dumped-on-the-table to highly styled "environments." Many of the letters here were photographed at Keri Seery’s lovely and soothing Antique Therapy booth. Keri is an interior decorator and has a shop in Concord, MA.

The mid-century architects’ sign, above, and the roll of uncut furrier’s labels, below, were from different dealers. Clearly there’s some fabulous type to be had in Buffalo, NY.

Torn and stained as it was, I just had to buy this tablecloth. I got such a deal! And just what I need--another project!

There are occasional parking lots located along the mile of exhibitor fields. We parked outside of the fair strip, but I hear it’s pretty easy to forget where you’ve parked. That must not be fun at the end of the day, because by then, you are one very fried pilgrim.

Dominoes or Dominos?

Frankly, I have nothing to add to the discourse on dominoes (that goes for theory and design). I just like the boxes.

Read about the history of dominoes here. Read about domino producer, Halsam, here. The company was founded as a block manufacturer in 1917 by brothers-in-law Hal and Sam. Vintage domino sets are readily available on eBay.

Russian domino set for the blind.

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.

Soviet Book Jackets

Krasnoznam, Balt Flot (Red Banner Baltic Fleet).

There are 656 “Russian bookjackets, 1917-1942” digitized on the site the New York Public Library. So though it may look like I got carried away, it was really with great difficulty that I limited myself to the selection here.

While going through these, I was struck by how the cover designers did not confine themselves to the vertical rectangle we see when a book is closed in front of us. Instead, the entire horizontal expanse of the fully unfolded jacket was utilized as designable space. I’m not sure why this was, but perhaps it had to do with the absence of the capitalist mentality that considers every available square inch of printable surface as an opportunity to “sell.”

The entire collection is presented in a “wide screen” format, as opposed to the American and European dust jackets, which are displayed with a squarer aspect ratio of cover-plus-flap or a vertical format of the front cover alone. That is a collection of over 2,000. Something to look forward to …