This is awesome.  Just discovered a sister blog to Letters of Note (check it out if you don’t know it– it publishes scans of original historically significant letters) called Letterheady, which publishes the letterhead of famous figures and companies.  Could browse their archives for… a while.

(Stephen King)

Old books, old trophies, and maps.  Love it.

I am dying to get a look at manuscript archivist Liza Kirwin’s new book Lists.  The book collects various lists of famous artists, from to-dos to address books, with the premise that such lists both augment an artist’s personal history and add insight to bits of history that were happening at the time.

(Can’t make out much of Kline’s tab, but the one at top looks like possibly a Chateauneuf du Pape?)

The book includes ephemera like Picasso’s list of his favorite artists at the first Armory show in 1913, most of whom went on to dominate the art scene in the coming years, proving that he not only had personal talent, but also an eye for quality in others’ work.  (Also interesting that he left off Braque, his contemporary in the Cubist movement… I am personally gratified by this because I never liked Braque’s work haha.)

(Pretty awesome cover, no?? I love the retro illustration and the mix of typography!)

Another “list” is Alexander Calder’s address book, which reads like a summary of the “who’s-who” of avant-garde Paris in the early 1900s. Other lists are more personal, like Janice Lowry’s list of “50 people I need to forgive” and Eero Saarinen’s list of reasons he loves his soon-to-be second wife.  

 Little seemingly insignificant lists, in retrospect, can actually take on major significance as snapshots into the making of a decision, the evidence of priorities, etc.  As a compulsive list-maker myself (I literally have lists for everything– running lists of gifts to give people, equipment I want for the kitchen, etc.), I am totally intrigued by the chance to look at other peoples’ lists, espcially hand-written ones!

Available here from Princeton Architectural Press.

Via The Morning News.

I’m a sucker for old paper things, like airmail envelopes and tickets… they have that effect I’ve mentioned before of making me long for an era I never actually lived through.  They also make me wish the design of small, everyday things like this were still given such attention.

It’s the same way I feel about public buildings, like post offices and public schools– they used to be built so beautifully, and were architectural icons in town, and now they’re just built to be functional and cheap.

Best thank you note ever.

The film has a really interesting history.  It was filmed in 1964, after the Cuban Revolution, and the resulting US isolation, when Cuban filmmakers had starting reaching out to Soviet companies to help them produce their films.  It was directed by a Georgian, Mikhail Kalatozov, and attempts to show Cuba at the time from four different perspectives– luxury, poverty, vagrancy, and revolution. 

At the time of its release, it was rejected both by Cubans and Soviets, for different reasons, and went unknown outside of those countries.  It wasn’t until 1995, when a Cuban co-director of the Telluride had it screened, that it was re-discovered. 

It then garnered the interest of both Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola, who both realized its incredible cinematographic merit and decided to lend their names to its re-release.  Beyond its plot (which is not its strong suit or even its main focus), and its propagandistic nature, its hard to deny the amazing visual qualities of the film, which have influenced many famous American movies.

(Most directly, the scene above, which goes from a rooftop beauty pageant down to a hotel pool and then underwater in the pool, was used in Boogie Nights, but many other films have borrowed more loosely from Soy Cuba.)

One of the main things the film is noted for is the use of long tracking shots– which were done with a handheld camera.  In the clips at above, the camera goes up or down entire stories of buildings simply by being handed off from one crew member to another– no cranes or anything mechanical involved to create these incredibly long takes.  Pretty amazing.

In the shot above, which follows a funeral procession, the camera goes up four stories and then in through the window of a cigar factory and back out again.  The effect of leaving behind the coffin as the focal point and smoothly transitioning into a setting so iconically Cuban is pretty awesome.  Unfortunately the only clip of it I found doesn’t have the original music, but it’s still pretty amazing visually.

(The scene above isn’t that noteworthy, I just really loved the song, and the panning of all the women at the bar.  The second half, with the Russian overdubbing, gets really weird though.)

I was so spellbound by the visuals in this incredible (even if totally biased and/or cliche) look at Cuba, from the very first moments of the clip at top, that I just had to share… check them out when you have a minute to soak it up.  I feel like I just time-traveled back to 1960s Cuba.

Did you know that people in the early 1900s used to collect monograms??  I didn’t, and I think it’s so cool!