Early to Mid 20th Century Kimono

 

Machine-spun pongee silk woven with stencil-printed warp thread (meisen) Japan, Taisho period, 1912-26.

Machine-spun pongee silk woven with stencil-printed warp and weft threads (meisen). Japan, late Taisho-early Showa period, 1920-40.

Gauze weave silk (ro) with stencil-printed patterning (kata-yuzen). Japan, early Taisho period, 1912-20

Machine-spun pongee silk woven with stencil-printed warp and weft threads (meisen). Japan, early Showa period, 1930-40.

Hand-spun pongee silk (tsumugi) woven with stencil-printed weft threads. Japan, Taisho period, 1912-26

Machine-spun pongee silk woven with stencil-printed warp and weft threads (meisen). Japan, early Showa period, 1930-50

All of the Kimono here can be found in the book, Fashioning Kimono: Dress and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Japan. They were shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art in 2005 and 2006, on loan from the collection of Jeffrey Montgomery, a prominent collector of Japanese folk art.

Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg

The Stenberg Brothers, Vladimir and Georgii, were Russian/Swedish designers, known for creating avant garde/constructivist theater and film posters in Moscow during the 1920's and 30's.

Clyde Bruckman's A Real Gentleman, 1928

Ivan Perestiani's Countess Shirvanskaya's Crime, 1926 (see The Sound's album Jeopardy)

Carl Froelich's High Society Wager, 1927

Hans Behrendt's Six Girls Seeking Shelter, 1927

Ivan Pravov's The Last Flight, 1929

Nikholai Okhlopkov's The Sold Appetite, 1928

See more work by the Stenberg brothers here.

Miscellaneous B&W Photography

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Headwaiter Renée Breguet of Grand Hotel St. Moritz serving cocktails on ice rink, 1932

Harold Edgerton, Gussie Moran, 1949

Orville Robertson, 1980's

Irina Ionesco (of Eva), 1970's

Unidentified photographer, Fritz Lang on the set of Metropolis, 1926

Miscellaneous

Where is this? Who saw it? How come no one took it apart? What else is there? How will I ever find out?

UPDATE: Thanks so much to Stefano, who has let me know that this was taken by Kyle Telechan in  2009. Its title is Abandoned Ferris Wheel. The photographer doesn't remember the exact location of it, other than it's in North Carolina.

FURTHER UPDATE: Digging deeper, I found that it's actually in Mercer County, Virginia, at the "haunted" Lake Shawnee amusement park. There are shit-tons of personal accounts of people who spent time there to wade through at photographer Karen Steuben's website (though very many of the stories are nearly intelligible due to their poor grammar and writing skills.)  There is interesting history of the site as it was a Native American-Colonists' battleground, leading to cursed land, leading to present-day hauntings.

Beach babes are so brave, ca. 1930's

1970 Ferrari 512 S Modulo concept car, by Pininfarina. See how the roof slides forward to open? It must not rain if you plan to drive, or the car will totally get messed up on the inside.

 The media in the 1920's declared Paul Whiteman as the King of Jazz.

Poster remake for Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film, Coffee and Cigarettes. The clever design by Viktor Hertz is a big improvement over the original (in terms of design, anyway.)

New York City, shot by Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen had a long career that he filled with tons and tons of beautiful photos of all different subject matter, but to put them in some kind of order, I'm showing you some that he took of New York. The Flatiron is the most iconic, I'm sure, but I especially find the Brooklyn Bridge interesting, particularly when put in a historical context; I'm sure you don't have to be told about all the lights and buildings that surround it now.

The Maypole – The Empire State Building, New York, 1932 

The Flatiron, 1904

Brooklyn Bridge, 1903

Drizzle on Fortieth Street, New York, 1925

Miscellaneous

 Jil Sander handbag, Fall 2011

An antique Masonic charm from Hungary

An ad for Wire, found in an '87 issue of Spin

Passenger Lists for the S.S. De Grasse, CGT French Line, February 1928 and September 1927, both Le Havre to New York.

Amanda DeCadenet is a fashion photographer who became famous for hosting a British TV show as a teenager.

I can't tell if this is a photo that she took or if it's a photo of her. She looks generally like this and she was approximately this age in the 80's, but it also looks close to her photo style.

Whatever it is, I like the shot a quite a bit; it's kind of posh and bratty at the same time. It might be a visualization of my childhood aspirations!

Vintage Cosmetics Ads

As someone who works in the business of fragrance and beauty products, I find vintage make-up ads incredible. I love the glamorous shapes and styles of the old packaging. Click the images for higher details.

Coty, 1939

Coty, 1938

Charles of the Ritz, 1946

Coty Self Tanner (!?), 1929

Miscellaneous

Mid-80's ad for Yves St. Laurent makeup

Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley of the Human League. I referenced Sulley in my overall look last week.

A shot from The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 silent film.

One of my favorite design teams, Viktor & Rolf, shot by Amsterdam-based portraitists Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm. This was a great pairing because both Viktor & Rolf and Blommers & Schumm do really entertaining and clever work.

M. Montedoro Art Deco Postcards

1920s post cards illustrated by M. Montedoro. Scanned from the book "A History of Postcards" by Martin Willoughby. The details in the clothing and jewelry are fantastic and beautiful

Miscellaneous

This is from a March 1990 fashion editorial in Spin magazine. I was happy to discover that there's an archive of old Spin magazines, page-for-page, on Google Books. I used to read it like a handbook when I was a teenager. Ha!

Poster for the German release of the 1962 film Cleo from 5 to 7, by the only female French New Wave director, Agnés Varda, and starring Corinne Marchand. It's about a French pop star who is wandering around Paris, awaiting the results of a biopsy between 5 and 7pm, while most people in the city are out messing around.

The Camel Thru the Needle's Eye was a 3-act comic play published in 1929, written by Frantisek Langer. It was performed between April and October of that year.

This is either a poster or a program guide for the play. It was designed by Frank Walts, a somewhat obscure African-American illustrator. The majority of his known work are covers for The Masses, an American socialist periodical published from 1911 to 1917.  A short biography of Walts appears in Art For The Masses by Rebecca Zurier (Yale University Art Gallery, 1985).

Chet Baker and his wife Halema in 1955. His plight (and concurrent heroin face) is terribly sad.

Vanity and Prince

Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) was a glamorous Polish Art Deco painter. She was able to make the harder, geometric qualities of Art Deco look feminine and sexy by appropriating a more fresh sort of  cubist style.

The paintings below (except for the last one) are from the personal collection of German fashion designer, Wolfgang Joop.

Portrait de La Duchesse de La Salle, 1925.

Portrait de Marjorie Ferry, 1932

Le Telephone II, 1930

Young Lady with Gloves, 1930