Pepper Sneakers

There is a Beverly Pepper sculpture entitled Maxi Zig Zag stuck in a corner of the Central Buffalo Public Library. I really like Pepper's work from the late 1960's, although I'm not sure why. In any case, I noticed that someone had stuck a large die cut sticker of sneakers on the sculpture. It is sort of a funny juxtaposition. I wonder if they will need to hire an art conservationist to scrape it off.

Daily Book Graphics #32 / The Old Stone Age

I've been meaning to do some more reading about the stone age. I suppose I should get a more up to date book than this one. ©1968, second impression 1970

Turning 36

Today is my 36th birthday. I think it is going to be a fairly normal day, I've got a lot to do. But here is a selective list of people born on March 24th courtesy of Wikipedia. If only we could all celebrate together.

1874 - Harry Houdini, (Weisz Erik), Hungarian-born magician (d. 1926)
1887 - Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, American actor (d. 1933)
1924 - Norman Fell, American actor (d. 1998)
1930 - Steve McQueen, American actor (d. 1980)
1938 - Holger Czukay, German musician (Can)
1962 - Star Jones Reynolds, American television personality
1965 - The Undertaker, American professional wrestler
1976 - Peyton Manning, American football player

This is me (in the foreground) at my 5th birthday party in 1978.

Daily Book Graphics #31 / Birds of the Malay Peninsula

I bought this book in a used book store in Cleveland in 2005. This got me interested in collecting field guides from far away places (see some of the covers in this Flickr set). It was first published in 1960, this impression is from 1970. These illustrations by A. Fraser-Brunner are some of my favorite depictions of birds.

Daily Book Graphics #30 / Design from Scandinavia

I scanned these graphics from a catalogue called Design from Scandinavia which was published in the early 70s. I have four issues that used to belong to my father. Unfortunately they all got wet in at some point, so they in pretty rough shape. The catalogues are full of drool inducing furniture and interiors. There are a lot of recognizable pieces you find in the standard design books, but more interestingly, there are hundreds of great pieces that haven't made it into the canon.

Daily Book Graphics #29 / Botanical Nomenclature

I'm cheating a bit with this post since I previously posted this cover over a year ago. But I really wanted to include it in this project, so here it is. I bought this book at a discarded book sale at the Buffalo Museum of Science. It's certainly not worth reading, even if I did know something about botanical nomenclature it would be well out of date by now. I bought it because it is a really nice example of the Dutch (it was published in Utrecht) graphic design of the era. I couldn't find a design credit.

Daily Book Graphics #28 / Le Corbusier

Another one of my Uncle John's books. He worked on The Carpenter Center in Boston, Le Corbusier's only US building. The book was published in 1960, it measures 6.5 x 4.5 inches.

Daily Book Graphics #27 / Life and its Marvels

These illustrations come from the International Pictorial Treasury of Knowledge book series, published in 1960. The title of this book is Life and its Marvels: Plant, Animal, Human. I picked up four books from the series at a garage sale a few years ago. The illustrations in these books are fantastic and sometimes strange. The layout for all of the books features a page of text across from a page of related illustrations. The caption for the image page is at the bottom of the text page. I will have more from this series later in the project.

Olfactory organs

Aquatic nests

Different types of stomachs

Daily Book Graphics #26 / Late Modern

Another Helvetica oriented book cover design (and art). ©1969, 1975