6x6

affiche: early Art Deco posters of René Magritte  

dogs of war: a public service announcement issuing guidance on how to disable Boston Dynamics weaponised Spot units  

whitewash: thankfully, President Biden is able to overturn “beautiful” architecture executive order that would mandate neo-classicism in federal buildings 

clothes peg: the clothesline animals of Helga Stentzel 

second life: exploring and conserving the abandoned spaces of the internet  

mask media: brilliant Soviet Kazakh health promotion campaigns from the 1970s—see also

6x6

pitch and pent: the rooftop illusion demonstrated by Kolichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Mathematics  

making sense of scents: the olfactory capacities are underestimated—via Messy Nessy Chic  

have fun storming the castle: The Princess Bride re-enacted in its entirety as home movies under lock-down  

matinee at the bijou: the Internet Archive (see previously) has digitally curated a massive cinematic history library  

pyrophone: a flame organ that amplifies the tones of vibrating, burning hydrogen  

10¹⁰⁰:an individual engineers an analogue, modular calculator (see also) to count up to a googol

👁️‍🗨️

Via Waxy, we are referred to an expansive and growing and searchable collection of graphic design related items, materials and resources organised from and available at the Internet Archives (previously) by curator Valery Marier. Categories include font specimens, annuals, style guides, book jackets, infographics, data visualisations, various advertising ephemera and vintage branding devices. 

 

 

 

collezionare capolavori

Though in stasis and awaiting visitors, the storied and seldom seen Torlonia Marbles from a private collection are gathered together for public viewing for the first time, resulting from an agreement four decades in negotiation and agreed upon four years before the exhibition was scheduled to open. Not only was the loan to Rome’s Capitoline Museum controversial and fraught with compromise and conciliation, there’s some intrigue associated with its collectors as well—the family once the bankers and economic advisors to the Vatican and master and model for the attainment of prestige and status through art collecting.

7x7

dog and ferret sundries, etc: a fantastic hardware catalogue from the 1930s 

the roaring twenties: the Sea Shanty craze of a century before—via Strange Company 

midori: the relatively modern distinction between blue and green in Japan—see previously 

tag yourself: medieval owl alignment chart 

arkaphones: a resounding retrospective to artist Terry Adkins, who created sonic monuments  

for all the latest medical poop, call surgeon general c. everett koop: the fortune and failure of the post executive branch career of the doctor’s branded medical advice website  

ghost signs: self-appointed guardian of fading signage, collecting it before it vanishes altogether—we can all do this

presque vu, jamais vu

In the spirit of those spirit guides that direct the curious to something never before seen (see also here, here and here), a sort of negative view count, London’s Science Museum—with only about a quarter of its vast

holdings documented—has a digital docent that scours the archives to bring forth an artefact, from the mundane to the mysterious, that has not really seen the light of day since accessioning and a suite of tools to curate and adopt these special exhibitions. Let us know what wonder you are the first to see.

first fridays

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we are given access behind the velvet rope to the Record-keepers’ Rave, a monthly happening that’s both a call-for-submissions and a bit of a friendly battle instigated and organised by the US National Archives and Records Administrative—see previously.

Archives Hashtag Parties are the chance for repositories, small museums and government bureaus to showcase, given a theme and prompt, some of the best seldom seen materials. We too enjoyed this handy cocktail engineering, conversion chart from the American Forest Service from 1974, dug up by the Archives’ Atlanta office—plus this recruiting poster for bakers from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Nearly three hundred institution take part, and after a winter break are scheduled to resume at the end of week one of February, hoping that the growing interest and participation will encourage the public to avail themselves of these resources and time-capsules.

zusammenleben

We really enjoyed pursuing the extensive portfolio of images captured of East Germany in the photography of Ute Mahler, who embarked in 1974 for a decade’s long mission to preserve and convey his fellow friends, neighbours and strangers as they were authentically cool and collected—both candid and posed—and unmediated by geopolitics. Much more curated by the Guardian at the link above and at the on-line gallery exhibition hosted by La Maison De L’Image Documentaire.

8x8

persons of the year: more Year End lists from Miss Cellania—see previously  

75x75: seventy-five superlative photographs captured by as many photographers  

mys: the Swedish word without an exact translation compliments hygge when it comes to coping with the prospect of a long, dark winter  

benedict donald: more fine art work (see also)—suitable for framing  

the twenty most powerless: the disenfranchised and estranged of the art world 

she said see you later, boy: McSweeney‘s most read monologues, vignettes and confessionals of 2020  

dance, dance revolution: a dance number from a trio of Boston Dynamics robots—see previously  

refreshing your feed: fifty superlative podcasts according to The Atlantic—via Super Punch

nefertiti

Representing chief consort and Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep IV, the iconic limestone bust was discovered on this day in 1912 by a team of archæologists working under the auspices of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG—the German Oriental Society) led by Ludwig Borchadt in Amarna at site that housed the workshop of celebrated sculptor Thutmose. Since its first going on display to the public in a Berlin museum, Egyptian authorities at the bureau of antiquities have requested that the three-thousand three hundred and fifty year old artefact be repatriated, arguing the significance of the find was downplayed and had inspectors been allowed to fully examine the bust, they would have never allowed it to leave. Focus of aspirations for revanchism after the dissolution of the Prussian monarchy and defeat in World War I, Nefertiti was conscripted for a rather fraught political career of propaganda (see also) in the Third Reich in the years to follow. Presence in the Zeitgeist included the 1935 cinematic portray of the Bride of Frankenstein, patterned after the signature crown, and her role and cultural impact has now been rehabilitated insofar as she is considered the counterbalance to the figure of Tutankhamun and a good-will ambassador for representation, art and the field of Egyptology. The arguments against repatriation, characterising nations outside of Europe too unstable to properly care for their treasures and cultural heritage is particularly rubbished by the way Germany has torn itself apart, Nefertiti sent away for safe-keeping in a salt-mine and nearly lost to history.

the great bed of ware

Via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump, we are directed to one unusual artefact of the Victoria & Albert Museum collection in the monumental and for the time of its acquisition in 1931 for a princely sum of four thousand pounds budget-breaking piece of furniture.

Originally housed in the White Hart Inn in the town as sort of a tourists’ draw for the stopping off point a day’s journey outside of London to points north, the massive four-poster bed—at three metres wide big enough to accommodate four couples—and was built by carpenter Jonas Fosbrooke in the last decade of the sixteenth century with Renaissance style marquetry and ornament inspired by Hans Vredeman de Vries—and to add to its history and provenance, couples have carved their names or initials in the headboard to mark their stay and is mentioned by name in Twelfth Night (circa 1601) and works by Ben Jonson and Charles Dickens.

gie

 

Via Boing Boing, here is another spot-on comic by Ruben Bolling (see previously, which also makes us contemplate this future presidential library or this duly decorous display at this Berlin wax museum) that aptly addresses the emergent situation of the “wouldn’t it be a gas if we acidebtal kissed” constitutional crisis and QVC coup of the deposed, alternative government of a subnational territory that is the Winter White House.

das wiesbadener manifest

Declared on this day in 1945 from their base of operations (collection point) in the occupied capital of Hessen, the officers that comprised the special commission of the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives organisation (the MFAA, the group also known as the Monuments Men) was a stern rejection that European treasure should be taken to the United States as plunder and the spoils of war.  The recovery and restitution efforts beginning earlier that summer, the programme’s first director CPT Walter I Farmer of the US Army Corps of Engineers received a large shipment of Nazi-looted art and antiquities, and soon the enormity of the task was apparent, prompting the issuing of the manifesto, announcing: “We wish to state that, from our own knowledge, no historical grievance will rankle so long or be the cause of so much justified bitterness as the removal for any reason of a part of the heritage of any nation even if that heritage may be interpreted as a prize of war.” Over seven hundred thousand objects and artefacts were catalogued by the organisation, stolen from museums (works from the Berlin Gemäldegalerie and Nationalgalerie including Botticelli, Rembrant, Rubens and Cranach), private collections, Jewish citizens and political dissidents and were kept safeguarded from reparation claims and trophies of war that had been taken back to America were repatriated, President Truman getting involved with the debate and ordering paintings and sculptures returned to Germany in 1948.

älmhult almanac

Previously we posted about the archival qualities of the IKEA catalogues dating back to the company’s 1951 founding, though beforehand it was just what was featured on the covers and not the older contents, and now—via Plain Magazine—we discover that the store’s museum has curated each edition in its entirety and makes them available digitally for all to peruse. The next leap forward we think will be arranging a 3D download for some retro furnishings.

glass microbiology

Via two of our favourite bloggers, Nag on the Lake and Everlasting Blört, we are directed towards the exacting model that Luke Jerram and his team of glassblowers have created of the strain of coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 as a homage to global effort to contain and combat the global COVID-19 pandemic and to help scientists and non-scientists alike to visualise and focus their efforts on an artefact magnified by a factor of two million. There is an educational video and a gallery of previous sculptures of pathogens and pestilence at the link above, and whilst not on the same subject, these creations made us recall the glass specimens made as museum pieces of deep sea life that would have disintegrated on surfacing but we thought also speaks to the inspirational value of this heuristic that is as much art as it is utilitarian.

contrastive analysis

Coinciding with the Feast of Saint Jerome, considered the patron of the profession for his version of the Bible in Latin with commentary from the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts, the Vulgate around 382 CE, the United Nations has designated today as International Translation Day to honour interpreters and their role in connecting the world.  Colloquially known as such not for using common (vulgar) Latin as there were few native speakers left as the Empire fell and Romance languages developed, but rather because the gospel was formerly promulgated in Vetus Latina—that is the disglossic (previously here and here) Old Latin texts derived from fourth century Greek sources that were superceded by wide-spread adoption of Jerome’s work over the centuries and becoming the versio vulgata.  Renowned for his scholarship, the priest and confessor—also known as Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, has an extended patronage including archaeologists and librarians.

schwebebahn

With unreserved enthusiasm, Dan Schindel of Hyperallergic recommends us to indulge in this admittedly outstanding restored footage from 1902, another superlative highlight from MoMA’s Film Vault Summer Camp, of Wuppertal’s flying, suspension train (mentioned previously but have yet to make that trip plus see also) shortly after going into service. This clip is two-minutes in length and the entire circuit through the city, which one can still take today, lasts around half-an-hour, calling at ten stops.  Much more to explore at the link up top.

album amicorum

Long before the more modern manifestation of social media, there were friend books (see previously here and here) and as the Guardian reports one of history’s finest exemplars Das Große Stammbuch of Philipp Hainhofer has been acquired for the library of Wolfenbüttel (also home of Jägermeister) nearly four centuries after the institution tried to purchase the celebrated and celebrity-filled volume.
The seventeenth century equivalent of an influencer found in Augsburger merchant and diplomat had acquired many followers whose signatures were illuminated with an elaborate artistic commission, and include autographs from the Holy Roman Emperor, the pope, the Medicis, various kings and many other contemporary luminaries. The duke for whom the library owes its patronage tried to purchase it from the estate of Hainhofer after his death but it was at the time fame and followers were out of his price range.

a man, a plan, a can

Appropriately called out for its stereotypes and gendered biases that do not advance equity in the kitchen—though I do admit that it is often the most help and the least harm I can do is in setting the table and clearing up—we were struck with the illustrations of this vintage Working Couple’s Cookbook—via Weird Universe but curated then culled by our astute librarians (previously), which are strongly suggestive of adversarial graphic generation.
A Nitty Gritty production, written by Peggy Treadwell with artwork by Carl Torlucci—I can see that he specialised in this signature style but can’t find anything outside of this one collaboration unfortunately, with complimenting an author’s words seeming like an especially democratising task that is relatively accepted and well established as gender-neutral.

7x7

flotus: chainsaw sculpture of Melania Trump erected in her hometown torched on US Independence Day

[screaming internally]: assorted news items including thrill ride guidance from Japan

holy wisdom: Turkey reconsecrates Hagia Sophia as a mosque after eight decades as a museum

dining alfresco: the variety of New York’s newly founded streateries

mallrats: a tour of shopping galleries past

strike a pose: professional model An Tiantian shows off her photogenic gestures

swamping the drain: Trump wines and dines wealthy campaign donors while America slides into failed statehood