Plan 59

Time to give a shout out to Plan 59. Dedicated to mid century advertising (especially illustration), it's great and you can even buy prints of some of the ads (and illustrations). Above is one of my favorites...

Erik Nitsche

I love this design by Erik Nitsche. Check out this Flickr page (I stole the picture from them): http://www.flickr.com/photos/eriknitsche/ it's safe to say he's definitely in the same league as Paul Rand, Saul Bass etc. For more info: Erik Nitsche: The Reluctant Modernist

Girard Flor tiles

Wow, just discovered That FLOR makes Girard (with the the La Fonda del Sol design) carpet tiles.
Unfortunately they're not available here in Holland and FLOR doesn't ship overseas...
Darn.

the Masters of Design

From Playboy, June 1960.
A sort of "design centerfold"...
Click on the picture for better viewing.

Architecture for sale

architectureforsale.com has been in my favorites for a long time. Have a look at their featured listings. At the moment we have the Sinatra house in Palm Springs (1947, E. Stewart Williams). This one is for lease. A steal at $14000 a month... Furthermore there's the Barsha residence (1938, Richard Neutra, $ 2,495,000), the Johnson/Stone residence (1952, by one of my favorites: Craig Ellwood, $ 2,795,000). Also there's the Kaufmann house (1947, Richard Neutra). It was sold recently at auction for something like $ 19 mil. Apparently the deal fell thru 'cause it's back on the market for a lousy $ 12,975,000... However, personally I'd go for the James Real studio-office, designed in 1958 by Arthur Lavagnino (who?). It's pretty swanky, especially the groovy wooden screen in front. And it can be had for $ 899,000.

from the pages of Arts & Architecture magazine

Recently Taschen outdid themselves (again) by releasing the complete reprint of Arts & Architecture magazine. It comes in 10 boxes and is a complete reprint of all issues (118) from 1945 to 1954. The rest will be released later (A&A was published till 1967). Arts & Architecture was instrumental in putting California modernism on the map. John Entenza (publisher of A&A) also started the legendary Case Study House program (subject of another giant book by Taschen) in 1945 to promote modern living and low cost building.

I scanned this picture from the March 1948 issue. This is the Eames house (Case Study House 8) in an early stage. The built version looks very different from these early designs.

www.taschen.com
www.artsandarchitecture.com

Vintage paperback typography

graphics by Saul Bass

I have been a fan of Saul Bass for years. His work for movies like Anatomy of a murder, Vertigo, the Man with the golden arm, North by northwest and Casino is pretty famous. However, I'd never actually seen much of his commercial work. Recently I got this design yearbook thing from 1962 that had a lot of his work in it. Most of it however was not as original as his movie work. The only thing that I did like was this design for the 1961 Hunt Foods annual report. The picture unfortunately is a bit small...

And while we're at it, when is someone going to publish a book on Bass? Been waiting for that for years...

Octoberama

By Charley Harper...

Girard

Allright! Here we go again! Recently I bought issue number 7 of the japanese magazine "Petit Glam". This issue is mostly devoted to Alexander Girard. Girard was head of the textile division at Herman Miller from 1952 till 1973. He also designed furniture (check out the pic of the chairs, unfortunately these 

are super-rare nowadays), interiors (the famous interior of the 

La Fonda del Sol restaurant in New York) and graphics. Bold use of colors, geometric patterns and influences of folk art identify his work, and set it apart from the work of his contemporaries and colleagues at Herman Miller (Charles Eames and George Nelson). Anyways, Petit Glam can be bought from Maximo and comes in a Girard designed custom-made box.

And while we're on the subject of Alexander Girard. Check out this link I found recently on the web: www.flickr.com/photos/72768715@N00/tags/millerhouse/

A look inside the Miller House (1957). One of only 2 residential buildings designed by Eero Saarinen and it has an interior designed by Girard using lotsa Eames furniture. The whole thing has been preserved in original condition and looks amazing. It's going to be opened to the public.

CTWLCW

The upcoming Modern Design auction at Wright20 has some interesting items going under the hammer. Among them this one-off table constructed at the Eames office of existing furniture parts (CTW table top and LCW spines used as legs). This was made for a visit by the chairman of IBM in the 60's. Charles and Ray must've had the day off when they whipped up this one, 'cause I don't think this was a very clever idea...

Estimate: $4000-6000...

Yikes!

This week the iconic Farnsworth house, designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in 1951, was flooded...

Rockabilly

Over on the excellent blog Today's Inspiration (about illustration from the 50's and 60's) they had a big write up on Mitchell Hooks recently. It made me dig up some pocketbooks from my collection with covers he made. Among them was "Rockabilly" by Harlan Ellison. Great cover! Enjoy!

And remember to check out todaysinspiration.blogspot.com

Yamanaka Group

Bent plywood stool. Designed in 1961 by the Yamanaka Group. Released for the first time in 2003 by Tendo Mokko of Japan.

George Nelson

There are 3 good reasons to start this thing off with George Nelson.

1. He is one of my all-time favorite designers.

2. The Vitra design museum in Weil Am Rhein (Germany) starts a big exhibition about his work today. It runs till March 1.

3. I recently bought this chair (see picture) designed by him. I've been wanting this for years so I'm happy as a clam. This is the european version (with Eames designed LaFonda base) produced in the sixties by Herman Miller and quite rare.

More info about George Nelson: www.georgenelson.org

Vitra design museum: www.design-museum.de