Cool Collage: Vintage Refrigerator

Reading a refrigerator is usually a semiotic/archeological affair that involves decoding brands of gourmet mustard and carbon dating takeout containers. Well, here’s a fridge you can read without even opening it.

Up for auction next month is a circa 1960 classic GE model, plastered with some 50 years of bumper stickers. Daniel Donnelly, the Alexandria, Virginia furniture dealer and architectural salvager, admits that its intrinsic value might not measure up to its size, but he just couldn’t resist the "liberal-minded" monolith. He described its original home just as you would imagine it—mid-century Knoll, Eames, and Danish furniture, and packed with accumulated artifacts from the family's years of foreign travel.

Up with People!

And yes, it works! Also in this auction is a great assortment of Steve Frykholm posters for Herman Miller.

Class Photos: University of Iowa College of Dentistry

The University of Iowa has a vast and varied digital archive to explore. Included are over 80 years (1883-1967) of graduating-class photo boards from the College of Dentistry.

The early years, of course, have the most interesting boards, and not only for visual variety. I couldn’t help noticing a perplexing change in the number of women graduates over the years. During the first 40 years, 34 women earned degrees, with the classes of 1888 and 1902 graduating five women each. From 1925 through 1967, however, there were a total of seven female graduates--over the entire 42 years! I'm not quite sure which of those stats I find more surprising. Today, 40% of students at the College of Dentistry are women. Drill, baby, drill.

Off-Black and Nude

Welcome to the world of hosiery. The subject really deserves its own one-word-titled book like Salt or Cod because ‘enmeshed’ in the history of “Hose” you’ll find the history of, among other things, technology, sexuality, art, the women’s movement, natural resources, and cross-dressing.

Like any other specialty item, legwear has a language all its own. I’m pretty sure that “Nude-to-waist” is a technical term and while “off-white” can be found everywhere, in the realm of hosiery, "Off Black” is a standard color.

And the packaging…




Three illustrated boxes from the mid-1950s.




I'm just crazy about these Deco boxes from Old Nylons. They sell original vintage hosiery, and carry many rare, boxed specimens that sell for upward of $100. The site also provides details about the manufacturing process and the mills.






White space-age chairs, Pucci prints,
purple & orange—so very 1960s.




This type of cut-out-peek-a-boo packaging became very popular as a way to show color. But there's no way around it, if there are no samples to fondle, one must occasionally violate the taped plastic package.




I don’t quite get it, but Warren Beatty seems to have wandered from Shampoo (1975), onto the set of Saturday Night Fever (1977).



Sources and sites for more "sheer" hosiery delight:
SSSH960 Nylons Collector on flickr. A vast trove of hose pix. Many brands, and photos of what's inside all those lovely boxes--the protective tissue paper, the paper bands, etc. Many thanks to Alain for use of images.
Sleek 'n Chic, Deedeebon, and Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day for Touch of Soul package.

Cement Bag Graphics

Thanks to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, we know all too well how catastrophic the results of faulty cement can be. Then again, it has also been the only fix.

Cement is one of the most consumed substances on earth, said to be second only to water.

Visit any construction site, anywhere in the world, and the bags of cement you see were likely to have been packed in locally printed bags. Together, these images form a global, graphic compendium of all we demand from our most common but significant, of building materials: strength, durability, dependability, consistency, endurance, even eternity.



CREATURES OF STRENGTH

Elephants are very well represented

You may have seen these laptop bags made from unused cement sack, by Wren, in Wired. Below, a vintage Thai poster.

Other animals that stand for strenght and fortitude ...

A fish? In Asia, the carp has long been considered a symbol of strength, endurance, perseverance and fortitude—all good traits for cement (not so good for the Great Lakes). It is said that the carp can jump completely over the rapids of the Yellow River and overcome all manner of obstacles.

And creatures of mythic strength.


STRUCTURES OF STRENGTH

The castle.
The pyramids.
Elemental to pyramids, the triangle shape, be it a rock or a road (or a triangle) is a classic symbol of stability.
And let’s not forget to remember the Alamo.


VINTAGE STRENGTH

“The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, California"
 was composed by John Fahey in the early 1960s. A vintage Monolith bag is featured on the 7” single by Cul-de-sac, 1999.

Devil’s Slide, Utah, is named for a nearby rock formation. The town grew up in the early 1900s around the Union Portland Cement Co. It is now a ghost town.


PURE GRAPHIC STRENGTH


Russian "constructivist" cement bags.

These bags assert their strength via macho graphics. Although, Vijaya reminds me of a gynecological term Oprah uses …

AMBUJA MAN
And speaking of macho, Ambuja Cement of India, features a muscleman cradling a humongous dam. Dams are the most cement–intensive projects there are. We might not be accustomed to seeing ads for cement here, but in India, branded cement ads are not uncommon. I came across the Ambuja logo in varying degrees of realism— from airbushed, to graphic black and white. Ambujaman is even painted on the sides of buildings.

Photo by Rene