And Lipstick Too

I have a small collection of cheap box cameras that my grandfather bough for my in his garage sale adventures. I decided to look into filling the rest of space in one of my bookshelves with specimens from eBay. One thing that I often do is sort the auctions descending by price. That way I often find most curious stuff. On the top of the search for “Kodak Brownie” were two amazingly beautiful cameras with striking art deco design:

“The Kodak Beau Brownie came in two models, the 2 and 2A and were made from1930 to 1933. They were styled by the leading American designer Walter Dorwin Teague, who created a modernistic geometric pattern in two tones on the front panel, which was enameled in a color matching the leatherette covering of the rest of the camera.
The Beau Brownies came in five colors including, old rose, blue, black/purple, brown/tan and green. “

And this wasn’t a fluke either. Kodak also made “Coquette”, which featured a lightning bolt art deco design and came with a matching lipstick holder.

Take a plain box, give it a new design and add some color. Everything old is new again, right?

I think Apple should try to add a matching lipstick holder.

Perky Stuff

I’ve made coffee in almost every which way, except percolated. I also never owned a percolator. Alt.coffee news group FAQ which I always regarded as the highest authority in all things caffeinated, seriously disses the French-invented percolator. On the other hand, people who actually drank percolated coffee usually have good things to say about it. Because of that I think I’ll hunt for a nice percolator specimen on eBay. A glorious Art Deco instrument in chrome and Bakelite. Even if I won’t like it’s coffee making characteristics, it will remain in my collection as a sculpture.


(This particular auction seems to be reflectoporn free.

The Building

Believe it or not, I finally visited my favorite building. My earlier detailed article about the building is here. And here are some photographic notes (a lot of the pictures did not come out well because it was already dark):

From the ground you do not get the same airy, soaring feeling because the massive base hides the true proportions of the tower. But there are redeeming features up close, like this dramatic and unusual triple flagpole:

Once you get closer, other beautiful details come into view, like this stunning art deco lamp:

The lobby is Deco elegance itself:

Later we had dinner at a restaurant in the South Street Seaport. The food was so-so, but the view was amazing:

More Useless Rockefeller Center Trivia

Rockefeller Center buildings are not overembellished with decorations. A few major buildings have beautiful art deco relief’s on their facades, but most lesser buildings don’t have those. On the other hand an underground tunnel that connects the buildings has this beautiful mural on the wall.

I’ve been passing it by for many years without thinking too much about it. I called it “A Half Naked Punk Whipping Two Naked Women”.


I came by a photograph showing this bas relief on a side of a building. But it’s in the underground tunnel, I thought. Well, as I learned from the book (and could have learned from the little plaque on the wall), the bas relief is actually called “Radio and Television Encompassing The Earth” and a similar plaque used to be on the 49th street facade of the demolished RKO Roxy Theater aka Center Theater. The piece if based on a watercolor of Hildreth Meiere. I wonder what happened to the original plaque..

Here’s what the Roxy Theater used to look like inside:

State Of The Art

“Robert Natkin discovered his calling at age 17, in Chicago, when he opened a book and stumbled on the intense abstract art of Paul Klee. He was stunned by the beauty, the color harmonies, and the “music” in Klee’s work.” And decided to rip him off. Behold – the mural at the Newscorp Building (formerly Celanese Building):

Apparently people pay Mr. Natkin to do this sort of stuff. This only shows that corporate art today ain’t what it used to be. Here’s a mural from the former Eastern Airlines Building (currently bleakly called 10 Rockefeller Plaza ):

Auto Moto Velo Photo

My two favorite photography books about New York are David Bradford’s Drive by Shootings : Photographs by a New York Taxi Driver and Harvey Wang’s New York.

You might have noticed a decorative border that I almost always put around my photographs. I first seen it in Harvey Wang’s book. I asked my photography professor in college about how that effect was achieved. She explained to me that Wang took his negative holder and filed down the edges. This projected not only the picture from the negative, but also a little bit of the edge and film sprockets onto the paper. Besides looking cool and framing the picture nicely this also was a way of showing off – this shows that none of his photographs were cropped. It’s like he was saying – look, my framing is perfect, cropping is for wussies. I am a wussie. I crop like there is no tomorrow. And since I am only using digital these days, I rely on a Photoshop plugin called Extensis Photoframe.

Moon Over The Paramount


The skyscraper with the globe on top is called the Paramount Building. The building has a mountain like shape and the little stars on the illuminated clock face look like the stars on Paramount Pictures logo:

That building used to have a kick ass movie theater on the ground floor, the kind described in my favorite sci-fi story of all time, Henry Kuttner’s “The Proud Robot”. Now it houses WWF store and NY Times offices. WWF undertook an amazingly complex project of rebuilding the original theater marquee:

Working with the New York City Landmark Commission was a prolonged challenge in replicating the historic sign. Purists on the Landmark Commissions often push for exact replications ­ right down to the materials involved. But Tobin & Parnes had ideas for bringing the epic sign into the 21st century using new materials and technologies.
The commission initially rejected the idea to use LED technology in 1996, but later approved the concept as more signs in the surrounding area started incorporating LEDs. “


Multimedia Signage Inc. in California manufactured the signage that boasts the highest resolution ever achieved. The LED pixels and cells have a .45 pitch. The highest resolution before this sign was created was .75 pitch.

In order to get TV quality resolution on these screens we needed to go with that .45 pitch, otherwise the resolution would only give you a clear image of someone from their shoulders to the top of their head,�? said Ms. Dibner. “Using the .45 pitch we can get almost the whole person in there.�?

But how do you use technology without distracting from the historical detail of the sign? It was something that many were not sure could be achieved using LED technology because the sign curved up and down. But the Landmark Commission demanded that the sign’s original curvature be replicated.

The solution: using very small diodes and arranging them to match the curve. The result: any image on the sign curves with the curvature of the marquee with no distortion, another requirement of the Landmark Commission.

I just love the topic of new technology meeting the old. But Landmark Commission people are nasty engineer hating snobs.

Shaker and Baker or Gaudi, not Gaudy

When I was in my teens, I wanted to become an architect. I read books about architecture, and one of my favorite pastimes was trying to tell the architectural style of any buildings I saw. I did that in my native city of Odessa, Ukraine and on the trips to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. For a while I really favored the Gothic style. I really liked the soaring feeling of gothic churches. But then I’ve seen a rather plain building with rounded, yet also soaring shapes. The only decoration on the building were relief plaques. The building was rather old, yet depicted on the plaques were an airplane, a light bulb, a telegraph key and I think a radio. My dad explained to me about Art Deco style.

Here, in America, I learned about different art movements of the beginning of the century. It gets pretty complicated. There is Art Deco, Art Modern, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts and Shaker style. Why I like these styles? Well, it’s because I think that they have just the right proportion of beauty and utility. This is a sort of a mental cheat sheet that I have (embellished with links, of course):

Shaker Style: Shakers are a now mostly extinct religious sect. In fact they are a splinter of the Quaker movement, and were called shaking Quakers because their praying during which they shook. I can’t distinguish Shaker Style from Arts and Crafts, and indeed they are very similar. Genuine Shaker items are very expensive, but these days many manufacturers make shaker style furniture and kitchen cabinets. Although great designers and craftsmen, there are very few Shakers remaining. I bet it’s all because they are supposed to be celibate.

Arts and Crafts: Started in Great Britain. A bunch of designers and architects were pissed off by the poor quality and gaudiness of early mass produced things. Their motto was something to the tune of “turn artists into craftsmen and craftsmen into artists”. Simple bordering on austere designs, natural materials, muted colors, handmade look. The radically new idea was to take away most of decoration, but at the same time turn structural elements into decorations. Instead of hiding beams, supports, joins and other elements of construction, the designers would instead show them off. The solidity, strength are considered virtues. The proportions are usually more down to earth, not meant to dwarf a person. Think Frank Lloyd Wright and Newcomb College Pottery. Basically heavy duty, expensive hand made crap for rich people with good taste.

Art Nouveau: Started in France. The name is derived from the name of some gallery or exhibition or something like that. The idea was to create a whole new style for the new century. Just to be different. The designs are organic (meaning that things looked as if they were grown, not built), proportions – elongated. Not a single sharp edge to be seen. Think Aubrey Beardsley, Tiffany (who names their son Louis Comfort?), Gaudi and what he did in Barcelona. I would also call H.R. Ggiger’s stuff modern Art Nouveau, although I don’t know if that’s correct. In general a style for eccentric rich people.

Art Deco: Very similar to Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. The major difference is that instead of making things look hand made, the fact that things are made by machines now is celebrated. Elements of the design are very industrial, proportions – soaring. There is a wide variety in colors used – sometimes they are muted, even dark, sometimes – absolutely outrageous. Shining stainless steel is not out of place, and neither is polished black lacquer. Think Chrysler Building, Empire State Building and other New York skyscrapers, early Polaroid cameras, bakelite rotary phones (in fact anything made out of bakelite), cathedral radios, turn of the century cars.

The thing is, Art Deco is easily corrupted. There is a style that is sometimes derogatively referred to as “Bronx Modern” or “Flatbush Renaissance”. Gaudy, ugly stuff. Like much of Italian furniture sold in Brooklyn. Or like Joey Tribbiani’s apartment in “Friends”. Such perverted Art Deco is rather common. Do not confuse it with true, beautiful Art Deco.