Posts Tagged ‘ornament’

letters from Rome

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

For the first time this century I got to spend a few days in Rome. In the throes of elections for Mayor, Regional Head, Premier and Pope, the city seemed more than usually disconnected—but the timelessly great stuff is still very visible and a tangible sense of community endures. Still seemingly on the edge of collapse, little has changed. Slow it goes.

Corruption and chaos condemns Rome to minimal progress and drives its children abroad to find work—but also stops the past being swept away by development and keeps the eternal city gloriously Starbucks-free. In the birthplace of the slow food movement the speed of change is close to zero. The only visible concession to this century, Zaha Hadid’s glorious MAXXI building is discretely tucked away well out of the centre and down a side street as if Rome is a little embarrassed by it. I made a third attempted pilgrimage to Trajan’s Column, ground zero for the western typographic tradition—on two previous occasions cloaked in restoration scaffolding, this time clean and clear but resolutely not open to the public despite facilities and signs insisting on the contrary. As ever, Rome is as frustrating as it is fabulous. I took snaps:

Sant Eustachio: literally the best coffee in Rome and almost certainly anywhere else. Unchanged since the 1930s.

coffee bar

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visual snacks: matchbox labels from Japan/China

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

matchbox label

No Phillumenist I, nor proper collector of anything, but like most graphic designers I love a nice bit of printed ephemera. I bought these matchbox labels in Thailand, and as far as I can tell they are mostly (all?) Japanese, made for the Chinese market and stone lithography printed. I can’t read the text (which might explain much) but the use of flags in some puts them in the  second and third decades of the 20th century – beyond that my ignorance is complete, not that that hinders my enjoyment of them. What is going on in the example above for instance? A diminutive husband and wife extending hospitality to an outsized westerner? or two smartly-dressed children welcoming Daddy home (wondering why he could not afford a full-sized house)? Either way – the drawing, pattern, texture and colours are beautiful.

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eye-snacks from archive corner

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

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book review: Marian Bantjes’ ‘I Wonder’

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

 

I wrote on this blog some while back that I feared we were losing the art of decoration, in passing referring to Marian Bantjes as bucking that trend. With the publication of I Wonder she has singlehandedly rescued ornament & craft from untimely demise at the hands of modernist graphic design.

For those unfamiliar, Marian Bantjes is a Canadian illustrator/typographer/designer (there is no appropriate single word) living near Vancouver who after a decade in book typography and production reinvented her career to a extraordinary degree. She is a kind of missing link between contemporary design and the rich decorative craft traditions of the religious world(s). Her work is entirely secular but there is a strong sense of devotion in it, and she has a gift for creating something something truly extraordinary—spiritual even—from the most unpromising materials or observations.

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bottling decoration?

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Functionality, clarity and rationality reign supreme in contemporary design.  The Bauhaus casts a long shadow and analysis of function, distillation of meaning and removal of the inessential gives us the calm spaces, ordered structures and clear interfaces that we need to navigate our complex modern lives.  It could be argued that decoration is anti-design.  Style is inevitable, but ‘decoration’ is just for cakes and wallpaper, no?

There are areas of design where indulgent visual richness remains desirable and appropriate, a signifier of value and/or emotion. Decoration blooms sporadically now – our rapid cultural turnover often rendering it ‘tired’ before it can establish itself.  It may not be a dirty word any more but beyond the confines of fashion and interior design, decoration often coexists uneasily with cool minimalism and rational typography.  Are we are in danger of losing the art of decoration?

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