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Palettes & pigments: famous artists' use of color
Why preserve Van Gogh's palette? - an exploration of color from the actual layout of various artists' color palettes - Degas, Delacroix, Gaugin, Moreau, Renoir, Seurat, Van Gogh. (via Neatorama)
Papercraft project blog Paper Matrix
Paper Matrix
is a blog that gives instructions for cool papercraft objects, "reinterpreting the Danish tradition of woven paper hearts and ornaments." Cut paper in the prescribed ways and weave it together carefully to make a mobile of colorful hot air balloons, gorgeous and complex boxes; simple but satisfying pennants and much more... including a full theater for performances by paper dolls.
WJSV Complete Day
Thursday, September 21st, 1939, radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C., recorded their entire broadcast day -- from sign on, to sign off. The entire day is available here.
The sound of galloping horses
The Bluffer's guide to Irish folk:
20 songs from the last 50-odd years of Irish traditional music.
Some tasty morsels from the 1920s jazz table
Have you heard the music of Tiny Parham? Though not as celebrated a name as some of his early jazz contemporaries like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong or King Oliver, Tiny's arrangements were inventive, lively and big fun to listen to, and his bands were full of fine players. Here are three slow to medium tempo numbers selected by The Mainspring Press Record Collectors blog that are a good starting point. Then, if you want to get things jumping a little hotter, try Nervous Tension and Sud Buster's Dream. We'll round it out with Tiny's Stomp. Thanks for the music, big man!
The Dada Baroness, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) was born in Germany, moved to the U.S. (and was arrested for wearing men's clothes in 1910) and lived in New York City from 1913-1923. She may have been involved with the submission of Fountain to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (Previously); she also made an assemblage Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, and the plumbing assemblage God is attributed to her, photographed by 1918 flu epidemic casualty Morton Schamberg. She was known to wear a coal scuttle as a hat, with postage stamps on her cheeks; historians have called her America's first performance artist. In the 1920s she was friends with Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay. Her writing was preserved by Djuna Barnes and was finally published in 2011 by MIT Press as Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven edited by her biographer Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo
Secret Fore-Edge Paintings Revealed in Early 19th Century Books
"A few days ago Colleen Theisen who helps with outreach and instruction at the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Iowa shared an amazing gif she made that demonstrates something called fore-edge painting on the edge of a 1837 book called Autumn by Robert Mudie. Fore-edge painting, which is believed to date back as early as the 1650s, is a way of hiding a painting on the edge of a book so that it can only be seen when the pages are fanned out. There are even books that have double fore-edge paintings, where a different image can be seen by flipping the book over and fanning the pages in the opposite direction. When I realized the book Theisen shared was only one of a series about the seasons, I got in touch and she agreed to photograph the other three so we could share them with you here."
EGO·TIBERIVS·CLAVDIVS·CAESAR·AVGVSTVS·GERMANICVS
The 1976 BBC drama I, Claudius, an adaptation of Robert Graves's novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which came out in 1934 and 1935, respectively, is on YouTube in its entirety.
Genre-Bending Covers
From the music website, Cover Me, Five Good Covers: five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song. Why not enjoy all new versions of Cars, Milkshake, Can't Help Falling In Love, The Sound Of Silence, Life In A Northern Town, Modern Love, You Shook Me All Night Long, Age Of Consent, Don't Fear The Reaper, Be My Baby, and much, much more. ( Cover Me previously)
Turn my tiny bathroom into a spa--with a new bathtub.
My existing claw foot tub doesn't fill deep enough. I would like to replace it with a deep soaking tub, of course for the best value possible. Give me your ideas please.
Mari Kalkun on Eesti laulja, laulukirjutaja, ja muusik
Mari Kalkun is an Estonian folk singer. If, after those words, you are still reading, you'll probably like her.
feel so good this mornin' ... gon' be downloadin' all night long
"Folk Music in America" is a series of 15 LP records published by the Library of Congress between 1976 and 1978 to celebrate the bicentennial of the American Revolution. It was curated by librarian/collector-cum-discographer Richard K. Spottswood, and funded by a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. It's absolutely fantastic. And here it is.
but I'll dream of pretty Saro wherever I go...
Bob Dylan ran through the 18th century English folk song "Pretty Saro" six consecutive times during the Self Portrait sessions in March 1970, but none of those versions made the final cut for the album and the song remained in Columbia's vault for the past 43 years, until now. Bob Dylan's Lost 1970 Gem 'Pretty Saro' - Premiere
When type foundries had actual forges
Beautiful set of photos from the Caslon type foundry in 1906. Bonus old-school typography pleasures: Remaking the Pictorial Webster's; Linotype: The Movie Trailer
MeFiSwap 2013-2 - THE SWAP BATTLE
SWAP BATTLE!
Remember physical media? Remember how you can put music on it? Remember snail mail? Remember how you can sent physical media via snail mail?
No?
Well, let me remind you how it's done with the second round of the bi-annual MeFiSwap!
Remember physical media? Remember how you can put music on it? Remember snail mail? Remember how you can sent physical media via snail mail?
No?
Well, let me remind you how it's done with the second round of the bi-annual MeFiSwap!
Gnomeland
Gnomeland
"New Hampshire's Premiere Gnome Destination!" Also known as, what happens when friends play a prank on you and install 500 handpainted gnomes in and around your house. Full Flickr set [via mefi projects]
Mapping the Midwest
How do you define the Midwest?
As part of their exhibit Reinvention in the Urban Midwest (in most-certainly-not-in-the-Midwest Boston) Sasaki has created an online tool for people to contribute what the boundaries of the Midwest are for them. Results can be sorted by respondents' percentage of time spent in the Midwest and state of birth. An Atlantic Cities article shows one writer's opinion, and also links to Bill Rankin's similar Midwest mapping project on his always-excellent Radical Cartography site. An excerpt from The Midwest: God's Gift to Planet Earth has a more irreverent take on mapping the region.
Book designs by Ellen Raskin
Ellen Raskin (1928-1984) is best known as a writer, author of The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel) and the Newbery Award-winning The Westing Game. But she always considered herself an artist first. Raskin designed over 1,000 book covers, including the iconic original cover of A Wrinkle In Time, the edition of Dubliners you probably read in college, and the New Directions edition of a Child's Christmas in Wales (Raskin did the woodcuts on the inside, too; further appreciation here.) More Raskin covers are collected in this flickr set from Bennington College.
Lincoln Highway, the first (attempt at a) transcontinental US highway
On July 1, 1913, a group of automobile enthusiasts and industry officials established the Lincoln Highway Association "to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic of all description without toll charges," and to be a lasting memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Highway efforts started about three years before the first federal road act would provide funding to states to improve the broad network of roads. Never officially finished, the first transcontinental highway eventually became renumbered as various interstate and US routes. To celebrate its centennial, there was a cross-country tour in June.
Talk to the gals just like any old man
Singing the Lesbian Blues in 1920s Harlem.
In Jazz Age speakeasies, dive bars, and private parties, blue singers had the freedom to explore alternative sexuality, and on a rare occasion, they even expressed it in song.
A Scary Story (by Sean Demory)
Sean Demory’s short story The Ballad of the Wayfaring Stranger and the Dead Man’s Whore is built round the mythology and atmosphere of classic American murder ballads like Knoxville Girl and In the Pines. It spooked the bejaysus out of me, and may do the same for you…
No kangaroos were tied down in the making of this post
From Australia Day 2011 to Australia Day 2012 (26 January, natch) John Thompson posted a different Australian folk song on his blog each day, starting with Mortom Bay and ending of course with Waltzing Matilda. For those who'd like the full audio visual Aussie folk experience, there's also Raymond Crooke's Youtube playlist.
Fiesta Fiasco?
Should I leave tonight and drive 700 miles to replace my crappy, crappy dishes? The Fiesta tent sale is this weekend and I am conflicted. Durable, colorful, glazed-stoneware snowflakes inside!
Skip James' Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
...James is, of course, overshadowed by the most famous bluesman of them all: Robert Johnson... Few can resist the legend that he sold his soul to the devil, was poisoned by a jealous lover, and died a young genius's death... Skip James' mythos is less compact than Johnson's. James survived his misspent youth, and the story of his later years provides plenty more of the kind of misery that fueled his music. Where Johnson supposedly cut a single, grand deal with the devil—trading his soul for mastery of his form—Skip James seems to have struck deal after deal and never come out ahead. In a way, James' story is the truest story of the blues: He led an open wound of a life, and all he got for it was minor-league, post-mortem stardom.Skip James' Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
See also Mississippi John Hurt & Skip James on WTBS-FM 1964
Information, Please!
Can you identify a composition, given only a single clarinet cadenza? Can you recite a poem, given only the last words from a single stanza? Can you play on the piano extempore the most popular song from a Gershwin show, given only a snippet of a few seconds from a little-known piece in the production? And can you believe this was once one of the most popular radio shows in America?
The radio quiz show from a wrier age, Information, Please, features an urbane, erudite host (Clifton Fadiman, the editor of the New Yorker's book review section), whip-smart panelists (like Franklin P. Adams, of "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" fame), and ridiculously interesting guests (Dorothy Parker, Leonard Bernstein, S. J. Perelman...!). Several years' worth are available here, for your listening pleasure. (Start with Page 2 -- the quality of the broadcasts on Page 1 is quite low.)
the 387 houses of peter fritz
In 1993, while browsing in a junk shop, artist Oliver Croy discovered 387 model buildings, each neatly wrapped in its own garbage bag--the architectural creations of Austrian insurance clerk Peter Fritz.
Keeping It All Together: Paper Fasteners at the National Archives
"I think about what has kept me here at the National Archives for all this time. It couldn’t be the bone-wearying monotony of shuffling heavy cartons of records from here to there...No, there’s something else that gets me in the door every morning. Fasteners." A brief survey of various paper clips and their ilk encountered by employees at the National Archives.
"Listen here James, we’re lucky we made it—she earned it!"
The female artists who shaped the American Dream Girl
(mildly NSFW) "...according to pin-up art expert Louis K. Meisel, three of the most talented pin-up painters from the Golden Age, roughly the 1920s to the early 1960s, were women. “Pearl Frush, Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert were terrific, as good as any of the men—in fact, better than many of them,” Meisel says." A fascinating look at three very interesting women and their work in an area of art that is overwhelmingly known for its male artists.
Pony Font request OpenDyslexic
"OpenDyslexic is a new open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. The typeface includes regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles. It is being updated continually and improved based on input from dyslexic users. There are no restrictions on using OpenDyslexic outside of attribution."
Hugs, High-Fives, and Happiness
Welcome, mini-[username]! Congrats, MeFi's own [username] for [thing] that further enriched us by having you here! Oh, look, our own [username] did [MeFi-related thing] in [non-MeFi venue]! Guess what - [real name/othernic] is Mefi's Own [username]!
She looked good coming down those stairs
One hundred years ago today in 1913, an art exhibition opened in New York City that shocked the country, changed our perception of beauty and had a profound effect on artists and collectors.
The International Exhibition of Modern Art — which came to be known, simply, as the Armory Show — marked the dawn of Modernism in America.
The Man Behind The Brilliant Media Hoax Of "I, Libertine"
"In the 1950s, a DJ named Jean Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show on New York's WOR that was unlike any before or since. On these broadcasts, he delivered dense, cerebral monologues, sprinkled with pop-culture tidbits and vivid stretches of expert storytelling. 'There is no question that we are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here,' he assured his audience in a typical diatribe. 'Hardly anyone is listening to mankind in all of its silliness, all of its idiocy, all of its trivia, all of its wonder, all of its glory, all of its poor, sad, pitching us into the dark sea of oblivion.' Shepherd's approach was summed up by his catchphrase: a mock-triumphant 'Excelsior!', followed by an immediate, muttered 'you fathead ... '" (via)
Everything but Hawaii
"Cheever wasn't the only one who found inspiration at the Writers' Project [NYT]. Others included Conrad Aiken, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Arna Bontemps, Malcolm Cowley, Edward Dahlberg, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Kenneth Patchen, Philip Rahv, Kenneth Rexroth, Harold Rosenberg, Studs Terkel, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright and Frank Yerby. These federal employees produced what would become the renowned American Guide Series, comprising volumes for each of the 48 states that then existed, as well as Alaska."
The Hermit of the Herald Square Hotel
In 1907, Ida Wood checked into a suite in the Herald Square Hotel. She wouldn't leave the room again for 24 years.
The king of love is dead.
On April 7, 1968 - three days after Martin Luther King's assassination - Nina Simone performed the Martin Luther King Suite for the first time at the Westbury Music Festival in NY: Sunday in Savannah, Why (The King of Love is Dead), Mississippi Goddam.
Advance to blue triple circle!
Take a copy of Monopoly, cover it in lye for a few days, boil from off the bones whatever flesh remains, and give the clean white skeleton a tasteful, minimalist paintjob, and you end up with ONOPO, an extreme reduction of the original boardgame by Metafilter's own Matthew Hollett, aka oulipian. Via mefi projects, hat tip to fastcodesign c/o Rock Paper Shotgun's always-lovely Sunday Papers feature.
What is this antique table?
Any idea what this mechanical antique table would have been used for? Photo of the side. Photo of the top.
Shit. What? Rollers. No. Yeah. Shit.
The pitch was simple: “John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Blues Brothers, how about it?” But the film became a nightmare for Universal Pictures, wildly off schedule and over budget, its fate hanging on the amount of cocaine Belushi consumed. Soul Men: The Making of The Blues Brothers.
Unknitting the Unravelled Sleeve of Care
A 22-year old student, Imogen Hedges of London's Kingston University, has invented an unknitting machine to ravel knitted items and wind the yarn into skeins for re-use. I do have my doubts about how much time this machine would actually save, but the machine, which is made out of a bicycle, is a very clever contraption and a lot of fun to watch in action, and its facility for steaming the yarn as it winds it is ingenius.
The Board Games Women Make
Ever played Monopoly? Then you've played a board game that was designed by a woman (it was, under its original title, "The Landlord's Game," the creation of Elizabeth Magie). Want to play more board games designed by women? Let's go!
Data Wankery Inside
I recently got my hands on a copy of Tableau Desktop. It's supposed to be a business intelligence app, but nevermind that. The first thing I did was hook it up to the infodump files!
The Man with the Golden Cardigan
If you’re interested in vintage knitting and crochet patterns, you might like to check out Re Knitting, the blog of a retired West Yorkshire woman named Barbara who for the past two years has been helping to sort and catalogue the U.K. Knitting and Crochet Guild’s collection of magazines, pattern booklets, pattern leaflets and other publications. Barbara has posted about some of her finds among this collection, which are sometimes drool-worthy, sometimes hilarious, and always interesting. She’s come across such evocative knitting artifacts as: patterns for delicately crocheted WWI-era patriotic tea cosies and milk jug covers, the WWII-era official guide to knitting for the army, instructions for crocheting your own cloché out of paper, patterns for very sexsai 1930’s bathing suits and very mod Mary Quant sweaters, patterns for sweaters commemorating Queen Elizabeth II’s 1977 Jubilee celebration, and patterns documenting Roger Moore’s pre-James Bond career as a knitwear model.
defective yeti's good gift games guides
Matthew Baldwin (MeFi's Own* Defective Yeti*): " ...That’s why I come armed to every social engagement with board games, to help facilitate that whole human interaction thing that people thought was important before smartphones gave us an excuse to avoid eye contact with others. It’s also why I give games as gifts—and why, for more than a decade, I have been helping others do likewise. And so, my annual Good Gift Game guide, showcasing those board and card games from the last year or so that are easy to learn and teach, fun and engrossing to play, and that can be completed in 90 minutes or less." (additional notes & more games for the 2012 guide)
The Video Games Women Make
"The experiences of women may not be easy to portray in the aggressive world of videogames. If such a game is made - and I hope it is - it will be because its creators demanded to be heard. It will be created because women made it." (Source)While the vast majority of video game titles are designed primarily by men, women have been a part of video game development since the earliest arcades. Here are some of their games:
The Four Queens
Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Emily Saliers & Amy Ray (Indigo Girls) are featured in this 1991 Austin City Limits "Songwriters Special" episode. Filmed at the peak of the female singer-songwriter arc 20 years ago, this special also includes Julie "From A Distance" Gold. [~58m, download links also available at the link]