dromomania

Strange Company features a rather moving and motivational review of a 2006 book on the life and times of a former Royal Navy lieutenant named James Holman who refused to let his handicap define him. Son of a chemist in Exeter who specialised in exotic imports of any substance (medical or otherwise) that could be dried, powdered or prepared for transport from afar, Holman was enchanted from childhood and hoped that a career in the navy would have shown him these remote places.
Though stricken with total blindness at the age of twenty-five after an exhibition in the Arctic in 1810, Holman refused charity and first pursued a course of study in medicine and literature in Edinburgh before departing solo on a classic Grand Tour of Europe, quite confident in his ability to navigate through echolocation. While abroad for three years, he acquired a rather mysterious travelling companion—who was hearing-impaired but also quite the rambler—who made periodic reappearances throughout his life and made some instrumental arrangements that allowed him to continue his journeys. Once back home, his Wanderlust could not be contained for long and penning a travelogue to help finance his adventures, he set off to circumnavigate the Earth, taking whatever means of conveyance that availed itself, and visited every continent except for Antarctica over the next five decades. His description of the flora of India are even cited by contemporary explorer Charles Darwin. Holman’s determination and bravery are pretty outstanding and inspirational, especially at a time when the fully able-bodied would be challenged to face such daunting adventures unscathed and at a time when the blind or the otherwise impaired were dismissed and marginalised by society and his story is one worth retelling.

vila i frid

Visionary entrepreneur and entrepreneur who opened his first furniture store six decades ago this year, Ingvar Kamprad (whose outlet and brand are his initials plus his family farm, Elmtaryd, and the nearby village of Agunnaryd, passed away over the weekend at the age of 91 at his home in Småland. The ability of the corporate culture that Kamprad fostered through the years is impressive not only for the ability to deliver on the vision that the artists and creators behind the Bauhaus movement envisioned—that style should be affordable and accessible—but also in their capacity to reconcile and incorporate the fact that we’ve reached peak curtains and that endless consumption is not the only business model.

chumpley

Our thanks to Everlasting Blört for putting a name to the artwork through an introduction to the extensive galleries of educator, illustrator and sculptor Gary Taxali.  A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, his retro works are reminiscent of pop art of 1930s, the Royal Canadian Mint used the renowned artist’s signature font for a special collection of 25 cent pieces back in 2012 as a crowning achievement to complement all his other clients and commissions, which despite their largely commercial nature still manage to underscore consumer insecurities.

ferrules and eyelets

Via Laughing Squid, we enjoyed discovering the portfolio of Los Angeles-based surrealist Alexandra Dillon whose latest project involves evocative portraiture painted on worn paintbrushes (donated by other artists) and other used pieces of hardware, including shovels, padlocks and cleavers. Some of the faces featured reminded me of this Roman scholar—Woman with a Stylus from the ashes of Pompeii—and indeed it turns out that she was one of Dillon’s inspirations. Even if paint-brushes are thought of as fragile and disposable, the choice of medium speaks to durability and the biographies that inhabit and haunt our everyday tools.

skógræktin

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake shares a short but rather remarkable video on the efforts to reforest Iceland and return it to the state it was, some twenty to forty percent woodland coverage, before the arrival of the Vikings and the clearing to make room for agriculture and grazing lands. Lack of trees contribute to extreme weather in the country as well as diminishing returns on farming and pastures as soils erodes, threatening to turn the island into a desert. Learn more at the links above.

lady driver

Via the sub-reddit of the same name, today we learned about the intrepid Canadian adventurer who gave herself the appropriate travelling credentials as Aloha Wanderwell. Her family devotedly followed her father as he went off to combat in Ypres in World War I and remained there after he was killed in action. The mother, hoping to turn her daughter from her unladylike ways sent Idris (her given name) off to a series of boarding schools in Belgium and then in Nice—but to little avail. Still a teenager, she heard of an around the world endurance automotive race, a stunt to prove the reliability of the Ford line of vehicles, and met with its organizer a “Captain” Walter Wanderwell (an individual of Polish extraction called Valerian Johannes Pieczynski who was imprisoned during the during of the war under suspicion of being a German spy) to say she wanted to join the exposition.
Rather presumptively, she took the name Wanderwell with the stage-name Aloha, despite the fact that the captain was still married to his first wife Nell (no clear indication that she inspired the Perils of Penelope Pitstop) and became part of the crew in 1922. Learning to operate all manner of conveyance including a seaplane and documenting all the adventures across five continents and through over forty countries on sixty canisters of nitrate film, the team spent three years circumnavigating the globe, earning her the title of the “First Female to Drive Around the World,” doubtless an excellent superlative to have and well-earned but it did rather miss out on the other laudable work she performed as a mechanic, a translator, navigator and film-maker, which includes a lot of unique and rare footage. While on the South American leg of their journey in 1931, the Wanderwells travelled to Brazil and became the first Westerners to contact Borobo tribe while on their main, auxillary mission to track down Colonel Percival Fawcett missing on his own hunt for the legendary Lost City of Z. The Wanderwells failed to find that expedition and picked up a mutineer of their own in the process who murdered the captain once they arrived back in Long Beach, California where they had sent up home. Undaunted, Aloha recovered and re-married, eventually touring (under her own power) over eighty countries and driving over a half a million miles, dying surely restlessly at age 89 in 1996.