Evenings on the lake

The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio

While reviewing McGill University's excellent online exhibit of Childrens Books of the Early Soviet era, I came across this oddity: Dionisio Minaggio's Feather Book. Published in 1618, the book consists of 156 images (of mostly birds, but also people) composed entirely of undyed feathers from birds native to Minaggio's Milan. A beautiful and somewhat unsettling work.

[sidenote: apparently the feathers in this book are some of the oldest preserved, non-fossilized feathers in existence.]

Comment function

Yesterday, Dave over at Ramage was kind enough to inform me that my comments feature was not functioning properly. The issue has been resolved (many thanks for the extremely quick response from the Typepad help staff), and those that wish to leave comments may now do so. Just an FYI for my visitors...

Kodomo no kuni

via a recent (and much appreciated) discovery, comes Kodomo no kuni, a copiously illustrated site devoted to the pre-war Japanese childrens' magazine of the same name. Take a few minutes to explore some of the superb illustration work featured --you won't be disappointed.

Ad Access

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History has an excellent archive of mid-century advertising, with over 7000 examples ranging across numerous subjects. For anyone interested in the mores and idioms of 20th century popular culture, this is an essential resource.

del.icio.us archive link

Often, when I'm surfing, I come across links which, though they of interest to me, really don't warrant a full posting here. So... I've decided to use Joshua Schachter's excellent site del.icio.us to keep track of them. If you are interested on where my web-travels have taken me as of late, you can look here. I'll update as often as possible, so y'all check back now, ya hear...

Vintage Hawaiian Shirts

Beautiful. Don't know why I like these so much, but I do...

Poster contest entry

ok, so I entered this poster contest at computer love, and thought that some folks who frequent here might be interested in my submission... Let me know what you folks think (thats what the little comment box at the bottom of this posting is for)...

Wink

The things one learns on the internet...

Apparently, there exists a parlor game, called Wink, which is only played by Quakers. Strange...

The Center for Land Use Interpretation

is a research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues. The Center employs a variety of methods to pursue its mission - engaging in research, classification, extrapolation, and exhibition.

Literally next door (and linked under sympathetic institutions) to the previously mentioned Museum of Jurassic Technology, The Center for Land Use Interpretation appears to be an excellent resource for all sorts of cartographic and environmental information. Particularily useful is their Land Use Database and the archive of their newsletter, Lay of the Land.

Museum of Jurassic Technology

Famously explicated a few years ago in Robert Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a unique institution. Located in a storefront in Culver City, California, the Museum is--as far as I can tell--dedicated to exploring the philosophical meaning of museums in general and by extension, what it means to capture, remember, and explain historical knowledge. By mounting elaborate exhibitions on fictional subjects (complete with physical displays, artifacts, and relevant monographs), the Museum might be best understood as an on-going work of conceptual art or as a peculiar kind of theaterical staging--one whose boundaries, by continuously extending themselves into the quotidian space of real, daily life, question what it means to be real, to have a here and a now, a present and a past.

Chris Karath's Blog

No Frills, ain't it?
Here is a link to my co-worker's blog. Random daily musings, words of the day (I will take credit for introducing ennui and anomie), and pictures...

Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity

I've been visiting Nick Aster's excellent blog, Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity quite a bit lately. An excellent site, if only for the gathering of disparate links and issues pertaining to positive and negative trends in all manner of urban planning, public design, and useability issues.

Simon Ladefoged

noted today via la modern association (and much earlier on the excellent Norwegian design site GUU) is the photography of Simon Ladefoged, whose work evokes the kind of cool (and extremely beautiful) mannerist sensibility one sees coming out of Europe nowadays.