Via the always interesting Super Punch, a venerable ceramics kiln in the Saga Prefecture is inviting the curious and adventurous to tour their facility before being unleashed on a treasure hunt in their vast warehouse. Producing porcelain since 1865, no one really has an accurate inventory of the factory seconds or discontinued lines—stock that went unsold for one reason or another.
For a small fee, visitors are given a torch, gloves and a basket for a ninety-minute’s scavenge and allowed to keep whatever they can fit in the basket. It’s a good and fun way to clear out the bargain-basement, and reminds me of the time I went to a sprawling flea-market in the town of Selb with table after table of tiles and porcelain objects made in the local factory—and I’m very happy that Flohmarkt season is coming around again.
Wednesday 30 March 2016
overstock or my name is hunt hunter
Tuesday 29 March 2016
aliolio oder orange is the new black
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, perhaps. I had to wonder at the coincidence of receiving a sturdy mug as a gift that was patterned with little constellations of the same horticultural bulb florets the following day. There is quite a lot going on with what we would refer to as tubers, much more interested in what is going on underground and conveniently out of sight. H replied that maybe that was the new fashion-flower of the year. Maybe poke-salad is next.
catagories: ๐ฑ, food and drink
sir top of notch
Nag on the Lake as always has a wealth of interesting and intriguing posts to pore over and often it’s hard to settle on one—of course, you, gentle readers do not need to settle for just one article—but this item about a concept car that was to be the final word in automotive safety struck me especially as bearing further investigation.
The unique chassis of the Sir Vival has a cyclopean turret for the driver above the passenger cabin and had segmented front-wheel drive motor (sort of like the Enterprise being able to separate the saucer section from the warp-core) and a host of other ingenious safety features. In an age where we’ve drifted away from these retro-futuristic visions and are moving towards vehicles that are self-driving but are non-starters without a strong WiFi connection and would never suffer a tinkerer or any non-authorised repairs as that would violate the terms of the lease, I hope enough jalopies are preserved for our post-Apocalyptic steeple-chases—as these newest models would not fare very well, I think.
catagories: technology and innovation, transportation
great seal
It turns out that this flag—which is an outlier being within the rules of simplicity and proportion where most flag-makers, either with only scant history to draw on or uninterested in aboriginal traditions, belted out what they could as eager members of the coalescing federation. Surely I’d seen this banner, along with all the others, on display in the parade-grounds but it struck me as something wholly new.
South Carolina’s flag directly recalls the battle-garb of the rebel militia with the crescent charge and the palmetto trunks that defend the fortifications against British assaults during America’s revolutionary war, instead of invoking the colours of the constituents of Yugoslavia or other desperate campaigners of inclusion and splitting the difference. Michigan’s motto is basically “if you lived here you’d be home by now,” in Latin. Surely having a distinctive symbol is a requirement for membership, but it does seem as if some ran out of ideas and were under pressure of a deadline to throw together something. One has to wonder what barriers to ascension that later territories had to face.