toy building brick

A couple days ago, the world marked International LEGO Day, inscribed on the calendar on the date when Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed the American patent application for his product sixty years ago. GK Christiansen was the third son of the inventor and founder Ole Kirk Christiansen who began making wooden toys in his workshop in Billund, Denmark in 1932—before moving to plastic as a medium—and was the managing director of the company from 1950 to 1995. The company’s name and line of construction toys is from the Danish words leg godt—“play well.”

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.