1 Artist / 1 Piece: David Maisel

David Maisel has created some eerily beautiful photographs in his History's Shadow series. It consists of re-photographed x-rays of art objects from antiquity. I love this concept. It's such a stunning way to explore these sculptures. Read the entire artist statement here.


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Charleston in September

I flew home to South Carolina in September and we drove down to Charleston for a weekend to visit family and friends. I hadn't been to Charleston in several years. After living in Los Angeles for quite awhile it's refreshing to get away to a place with some serious history. My mom and I toured a few historic homes (Nathaniel Russell House and the Aiken-Rhett House) and I highly recommend both of them. We couldn't believe that we'd never explored the properties before this trip. We spent an afternoon just walking along The Battery. We also took a trip over to Wadmalaw Island to tour the tea plantation there. It's the only tea plantation in North America! Sometimes it feels good to go back to my roots (lots of Charleston in my blood). All in all, it was a lovely (and HOT) weekend escape.


All images by Maureen Price. Please do not use without permission.

Costume History: Disney Style

Illustrator Claire Hummel has taken it upon herself to add a wee bit of historical accuracy to some of the most popular Disney heroines. Granted, many of the originals weren't too terribly far off the historical track in terms of costume design but there was definitely some room for improvement. I thought this was such a cool project but I'll fall all over myself for anything that glorifies historical accuracy. While Claire's renderings are still extremely stylized in that Disney sort of way (with a dash of artistic license), I think they are certainly more interesting than the originals.



Originally found here

1 Artist / 1 Piece: Lady Clementina Hawarden

As a big early photography buff, I've been enamored of Lady Clementina's work for many years. She began experimenting with photography in the 1850s and is now one of the most well remembered Victorian photographers. I studied her work in college during a photography course in which we spent a lot of time focusing on capturing aspects of adolescence. She mainly photographed her daughters as children and teens and, in doing so, has given us an interesting look at upper class Victorian life for a teenage girl. Although most of her images are very stylized and posed (often portraying bits of Greek mythology), they still feel very real to me. This image is an albumen print from wet collodion-on-glass negative.



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Letterpress class!

I'm pretty excited to take my first letterpress class today! Just wanted to gather up a little inspiration and a few cool videos. I'll report back after the class tonight. I can't wait to see what we'll get to make!


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No clue what any of this is about? Here's a great instructional video from Naomie Ross:

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

...and another fun one from Egg Press in Portland, OR:

Egg Press Letterpress Video from Pressing Letters on Vimeo.

The Illustrations of Kay Nielsen

Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) was a Danish illustrator who specialized in children's literature. He also worked for Disney in the 1940s. His work was used in the "Ave Maria" and "Night on Bald Mountain" sequences of Fantasia (one of my favorites). He also painted stage scenery for the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. I love how elegant and rich these illustrations are. You don't see too many books for children illustrated like this anymore. It's clear that Nielsen was influenced by Aubrey Beardsley (another favorite of mine) but he takes his work to a much more vivid and textural place. So beautiful...I would love an early edition of one these books.


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Sad day...

Such horrible news coming out of Norway. My heart goes out to the people who found themselves in a nightmare today. Here's to the beauty of Norway.


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Signed, Sealed, Delivered

How great are these envelopes?! I'm loving the illustrated return addresses for the different business. Stay tuned for some fun posts from the Dwell on Design convention and our Long Beach adventure (complete with very cool jellyfish pictures).


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Pierluigi Maco

I guess this week's 1 Artist / 1 Piece got me into a Renaissance mood. This fashion shoot by photographer Pierluigi Maco with model Vlada Roslyakova is one of my all time favorites. It was featured in Vogue China in January 2007. The mixture of period and modern is spot on and the styling is gorgeous. Roslyakova was a perfect choice as she really does look like she jumped out of a Botticelli painting. I wish we would see more fashion spreads like this one.



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The world inside...

These illustrations are stunning. I found them today and had to share. They are botanical microanatomy plates by Frederik Elfving. He was a professor of botany at the University of Helsinki. "Anatomia Vegetal" was published in 1929. I could spend so much time looking at the details of each plate. These really are a designer's dream. I find loads of inspiration for shape and pattern, line and scale. Beautiful and humbling.



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Photochrom Travel

It's easy to spend a lot of time looking through the Library of Congress Flickr photostream. That's where I found my Rosie the Riveter pictures last week. Well, I couldn't help myself when I found their travel set with over 1,000 photochrom images. "Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches." The locations for three of my favorites here are Blue grotto, Capri Island, Italy, then Kongen og Dronningen, Bispen in Norway, and the pier and shore in Blankenberghe, Belgium. If you're a history of photography buff like me then you will go nuts over this collection on Flickr!

Rosie

How fantastic are these photographs? I found all of them through The Library of Congress flickr photostream.The original images are color transparencies ranging in size from 35 mm. to 4x5 inches. They complement the better-known black and white FSA/OWI photographs that were made during the same period. I love seeing color images from this time period. I somehow feel more connected to these folks. If you look around in this album you'll find that the photographers recorded the names of these women and what they were doing before working as mechanics and engineers and how old they were. Very inspiring. It's just too bad that most women weren't given the chance to continue working in these fields after the war.

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