The abstract paintings shown here are not by Kazimir Malevich or Paul Klee but by Hindu tantra devotees from Indian cities like Jodhpur and Chomu, the anonymous heirs to a pictorial tradition that dates to the 1600s. Painted on salvaged paper and rarely measuring more than a foot high, the images possess a strange kinship with 20th-century art. And their agelessness cast a spell over Franck André Jamme, a French poet who nearly got himself killed tracking down these works across the deserts of Rajasthan.In 1985, Jamme was on a bus to Jaipur when his driver fell asleep and smashed into an oncoming truck, killing seven people. Jamme suffered a series of comas but eventually returned to India. After consulting a soothsayer, he resumed his quest to befriend tantrikas and understand their meditative art form, which originated in handwritten religious texts but is today mostly neglected on the subcontinent. “I needed around 20 years to find the good nests, the good families where people were still making these marvels,” Jamme said.His discoveries are newly collected in “Tantra Song”(Siglio, $40). They were first exhibited in 1994 at the gallery of Agnès b. in Paris, where Jamme hung this triumphant notice: “Perhaps rarely in the universal history of painting have works at once so mysterious and simple, yet so powerful and pure, ever been produced — a bit as if, here, man’s genius had been able to assemble almost everything in almost nothing.”

(via things magazine)

Back cover of Origami Folding Fun: Pony Book by Isao Honda, Japan Publications Inc., Tokyo, 1968

from Plastics as Design Form by Thelma R. Newman, Chilton Book Co., Philadelphia, 1972

“Extruded rigid urethane foam that foams and sets instantly like shaving cream from an aerosol can, if it were rigid, could create this labyrinth of an environment. (Courtesy, Chemstrand Co. and Michael Lax)”

Cliff diving

The Night of the Hunter, 1955

“The film was a collaboration of Charles Laughton and screenwriter James Agee. Laughton drew on the harsh, angular look of German expressionist films of the 1920s. The film’s music, composed and arranged by Walter Schumann in close association with Laughton, features a combination of nostalgic and expressionistic orchestral passages. The film has two original songs by Schumann, “Lullaby” (sung by Kitty White, whom Schumann discovered in a nightclub) and “Pretty Fly” (originally sung by Sally Jane Bruce as Pearl, but later dubbed by an actress named Betty Benson). A recurring musical device involves the preacher making his presence known by singing the traditional hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” Mitchum also recorded the soundtrack version of the hymn. In 1974, film archivists Robert Gitt and Anthony Slide retrieved several boxes of photographs, sketches, memos, and letters relating to the film from Laughton’s widow Elsa Lanchester for the American Film Institute. Lanchester also gave the Institute over 80,000 feet of rushes and outtakes from the filming. In 1981, this material was sent to the UCLA Film and Television Archive where, for the next 20 years, they were edited into a two-and-half hour documentary that premiered in 2002, at UCLA’s Festival of Preservation.” Source: Wikipedia

“The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters.[1] The film is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, adapted for the screen by James Agee and Laughton. The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The film’s lyric and expressionistic style sets it apart from other Hollywood films of the 1940s and 50s, and it has influenced later directors such as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Jim Jarmusch, the Coen brothers, and Spike Lee.In 1992, The Night of the Hunter was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.” Source :Wikipedia

The Night of the Hunter, 1955

stunning lighting by Michael Anastassiades

(Source: http)

“Polderceramics

2008 | project Drawn from Clay-Noordoostpolder

Artists have long explored the significance of ‘place’ – as a 
site of history and identity; as a dynamic process in constant
flux; and as a politically charged way to both challenge and
contextualise the world. For Atelier NL, the Eindhoven-based
design studio of Lonny van Ryswyck and Nadine Sterk, the 
place in question was the Noordoostpolder region of central
Netherlands.

The overriding principal behind the series was to keep the
symbiosis between object and origin as pure and integral as
possible. ‘We wanted to make tableware so that the vegeta-
bles prepared for dinner could be served from vessels made
from the same soil the vegetables came out of,’ explains 
Van Rijswijck. The designers simply refined then mixed each
individual batch of soil with water to form malleable clays,
before cast-moulding each piece at a consistent temperature 
in order to compare and contrast the resultant differences
between colour and texture from the various soils. To further
the correlation Atelier NL both devised a systematic ratio
system for the size of each piece and stamped each vessel 
with a geo-code reference to match the plot from whence 
the soil came.”

image origin:http://www.design.nl/sbeos/images/image.php?nid=15566&actions=resize,320,379

text from http://www.ateliernl.com/site/polderceramics_more.html

Theodore Waddell’s lamp

Early Eames