OK so this might just be one of those things I am always one of the last to know about but since it is just so nifty, I figured I would point it out here. Anyway, the "it" I am referring to is the fact that you can find whole issues of various magazines on Google Books, some of them quite old!
I discovered this by accident this evening because I was trying to find out who the builder and/or architect was of the 1954 ranch-style house I reside in (architect is still at large, but the builder appears to have been David Bohannon).
My search terms somehow led me to a 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics that contains a large section on house-related issues (building, buying, renovating, etc.)
Anyway, I don't know how many readers are into this sort of thing, but this issue in particular has a lot of VERY cool pictures of mid-century furniture and decor (eeee!) and some impressively detailed plans for such projects as a chair with folding arm-rests, a bed that folds up into a cupboard, and an ice fishing shelter (I kid you not).
So, yeah, I am definitely enjoying this and thought I might as well share! That is all for now.
3 comments:
Hih! thanks, that's pretty cool. :)
> . . .mid-century furniture and decor (eeee!). . .
Google "populuxe" and you'll get a million hits about this kind of thing. (I grew up in that era, BTW. There were some fabulous designers whose work was sold to the masses as inexpensive copies. I didn't know I was living amongst K-Mart [well, we didn't have K-Mart then] knock-offs of High Art. Kromex kitchen canisters,
anyone?).
http://www.populuxebooks.com/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567313167
http://www.amazon.com/Furniture-Interiors-1960s-Anne-Bony/dp/2080304461
Oh, and of course you should also know about Charles and Ray [his wife] Eames, an unbelievable design duo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0vDWqp6J7Y
jimf:
Oh wow cool, thanks for the search term tip re. "populuxe". Looks like it encompasses that sort of "Tomorrowland" style that I have also been quite a fan of since childhood. =D (I am having quite a bit of fun trying to combine my various "favored aesthetics" in my home in a manner that looks nice and is affordable and not cluttery-looking. Never thought I'd care about this sort of thing, but there you go.)
Oh, and of course you should also know about Charles and Ray [his wife] Eames, an unbelievable design duo.
Yes, but I am rather embarrassed to admit that I did not know/realize that the Ray half of the pair was female. Figured the Eameses were brothers or something, if I bothered to think about it at all. But as you note that was certainly not the case!
I was looking at http://www.eamescollector.com recently and the thing that most occurred to me was that the chairs reminded me strongly of pretty much all the classroom chairs I encountered during my schooling years, at least through high school. Guess they had to get their design inspiration somewhere!
Oh and one more thing that stands out to me about 50s magazines...the way there was so much do-it-yourself type stuff in even the mainstream ones. Whereas today most mainstream publications I come across are more focused on "buy this thing!", and magazines like "Make" and other specialized crafty publications are sort of "exceptions" in that regard. (I am not saying Everything Was Better In The 1950s or anything -- far from it, especially in the social justice department -- but frankly sometimes I feel like my own 1980s-era youth was a bit anachronistic-in-a-good-way because of my dad's insistence on fixing and making things as opposed to just paying for new ones all the time.)
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