Illustrated Book Of The Week : Shop America

If you put all my favorite things into a pot, stirred them up and made them into a book. You might well get this.

Shops! America!! Mid Century Design!!! Who could ask for anything more?





Shop America is a large format collection of 'style suggestions' for shop design from the Thirties and Forties. Idealised images of dream stores from one of the most romantic eras of design in the Twentieth Century.





Everything from sporting good shops and pharmacies





to cosmetic stores and opticians





The use of colour is particularly inspiring - just look at the tones suggested for a supermarket (Much as I love Waitrose, this is far more alluring, isn't it?)





And the illustrations are incredibly stylish - even the sweetshops have a hint of 30's pulp fiction..





Others are straight out of classic film noir. I could swear that this woman is about to pull a revolver out of her purse and shoot the other chick dead. I've watched enough Joan Crawford films to know, eyebrows like that can only mean one thing...





...Trouble.

Shop America: Mid-Century Storefront Design, 1938-1950 Edited by Jim Heimann, with an essay by Steven Heller is available from Taschen Books

Illustrated Book Of The Week : Let Me Drive

What do you want to be when you grow up? A fireman? A nurse? A fairy princess?

If, even now, the answer is "a railway driver", then we have the book for you.

Brian Fawcett's 'Let Me Drive' is the ultimate 1950's how-to manual for the junior steam engine fanatic. It's not really a story book, more a beginners guide to the technicalities of working on an 'iron horse'.




Opening a page at random you're informed that "Mid Gear keeps the valves covering the steam ports to the cylinder, and can be used to stop in the event of a Regulator Rod breaking when the valve is open..."

Fascinating.




Still, even if the text is a little dry, it's the unusual combination of 'Boys Own' type illustrations with technical drawings that makes us want to jump aboard and stoke the engines.




Time to go into the attic and dig out the old Hornby set, I think.

Illustrated Book Of The Week : They Put out To Sea

It's been quite sometime since the last appearance of our occasional item 'Illustrated Book of the Week' This one however seemed to fit in quite well with our recent travel posts. The bright colours and boldness of the plates put a smile on our face.

Dutch Design Week : Exitos Bags

Suzanne van der Aa and Kazoe van den Dobbelsteen have launched a collection of bags under the label Exitos. They are made in Colombia using a traditional appliqué technique practiced by the Cuna Indians. The designs however are anything but, based on drawings of the inhabitants of Bogata, the capitol of Columbia. Exitos’ aim is to provide employment in a fairtrade way to the women who create these beautiful embroideries whilst introducing something fresh and new with their own quirky design style. Rosana Orlandi has already placed an order and I am sure many more will follow .

EXITOS

Illustrated book of the week : A History of Machines

I have a set of six of these titles from ‘The New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention’. This one is a French edition, the rest are English and were once to be found in the library of St Mary’s School

They were designed by Erik Nitsche, who according to his wikipedia entry ‘was a pioneer in the design of books, annual reports, and other printed material that relied on meticulous attention to the details of page composition, the elegance of simple type presentation, and the juxtaposition of elements on a page. His hallmarks were impeccably clear design, brilliant colours, smart typography, and an adherence to particular geometric foundations.’

Which is apparent in the stylish pages of these school text books. We felt tha this one made a particularly good follow up to Kapoor’s cannon. There is a set of 12 of these inspiring titles on Ebay at the moment if anyone is interested. We will show more from our collection in the coming weeks

Illustrated Book of the Week : Children as Artists

This King Penguin book was published in 1944, and the retro style adds a layer that to todays eyes, means that what was then seen as childlike naivity looks sophisticated.
The paintings in this book are a delight, any one of them could claim a place in The Curious Eyes' gallery!

Illustrated book of the week - The Motor Manual

While we're on the topic of transportation. Perhaps some of the magnificent creatures in the last post were modelled on the principles of this weeks illustrated book. 'The Motor Manual'. Published just after the Second World War, this 'practical handbook for the motorist' provides us with some gorgeous vintage visuals.

I particularly like the way that these mechanical pictures act as 'anatomical drawings' of 1940's cars. Most of it looks pretty familiar, but if you're wondering what the 'strangler' is, we now call it the 'choke' - a still violent, but slightly less vivid description.

I find the technical illustrations strangely inspring. But better yet are some of the ads that run through the manual.

Who knew that dip-sticks could look so good?

Illustrated book of the week - The Street Markets of London

It will come as a surprise to absolutely no-one who reads this blog that we at The Curious Eye are big fans of street markets.  There's nothing we like better than digging around a brocante, a souk or an all-American flea. Local colour, potential bargains, weird objets...What's not to love?

So we were very excited to come across Mary Benedetta's accounts of London street markets of yore. Interestingly, it is illustrated with photographs by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy,  clearly taking time off his day job as hardcore member of the Bauhaus to take a few snaps to make ends meet. (Fun fact: Moholy-Nagy had such a tough time financially throughout the thirties that he even resorted to working on window displays of mens underwear to keep the wolf from the door).

Benedetta's descriptions of the 1936 markets seem both familiar and completely dated - it's interesting to discover how much has changed in the course of a single generation. Back then, Portobello was a small fruit and veg market, Brick Lane was so insignificant it barely gets a mention and the jewel in London's market crown was Caledonian Market - a massive bi-weekly event that Benedetta describes as "famous for silver, antiques, curios, junk-stalls, amusing characters, and every phase of market life".  If only I had a time machine.

Indeed, a lot of the market fare sounds very interesting - even if she doesn't quite appreciate it.

Sounds like the interior design schemes of every design-savvy hipster in Williamsburg and London's East End.

Some of the characters mentioned are certainly amusing, take this for example:

Details may change, but the spirit of the markets stays the same - I can imagine a scene like this still happening in London on any day of the week (factoring in decimalisation, of course)

Too true!

Illustrated book of the week - Garden People

Another departure from our usual kind of illustrated book, this week we have a book full of gorgeous photographs. The Thames and Hudson classic presents the works of renowned horticulturalist and plant photographer Valerie Finnis, and is packed with period portraits of her contemporaries, mainly the landed gentry hard at work in their little handkerchiefs of paradise. The get up of these land laboring aristos is much as one might imagine, but seems all the more eccentric due to the time faded hues of the vintage colour plates mainly taken in the 50's and 60's. All in all it's another visual treat.

Those eagle eyed interiorphiles out there will have spotted Jan Baldwins inspiring photos of Valerie Finnis' house in the April 2009 issue of World of Interiors (well worth rummaging around for if you missed it)

Garden People : Valerie Finnis and the Golden Age of Gardening by Ursula Buchan published by Thames and Hudson