Merry Mirrors

I don't know what delivery time is from Australia to other parts of the world, but it’s something to keep in mind, since that is where Sandra Eterovic lives and makes her smile-inducing mirrors. Sandra was recently profiled as an Etsy Featured Seller. Although she studied art history in college, the origin of her handmade aesthetic and love of pattern was her parents’ hometown of Pučišća, off the coast of Croatia, where she spent time every summer as a child. You can read more about her background and influences here and visit her shop to see the mirrors and her other handmade treats.

NOTE: Due to faulty code which unknowingly embeds itself when I copy text from MS Word, posts over the past few weeks have not been received by email subscribers nor appeared in RSS feeds. The offending posts have been removed for the time being.

Waiting to Unveil

Louis Vuitton

While the window displays of New York City provide year-round, ever-changing eye candy (kind of like nature!), it is, of course, at Christmas, that we are most likely to find ourselves, nose pressed to glass, eyes wide with wonder. That is when fantasy, spectacle, and production are taken to new heights--especially at stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys, where “over-the-top” doesn’t even begin to describe what goes on. So pity the unsuspecting tourist who landed in NYC the week before Thanksgiving only to be met with blank stares from the windows of the city’s retail giants.

Not to worry. By the end of this week, all will be revealed.

Macy's

Bergdorf Goodman

Ralph Lauren

Trompe L’oeil Gift Guides

Le jeu de l'oisif
Think of these paintings by Jacques Poirier (1928-2002) as “found” gift guides His trompe l’oeil extravaganzas are crammed with such a dizzying quantity and variety of objects that you’re bound to hit on some gift solutions while studying them.

Poirier put aside his successful career as an illustrator when he was in his early fifties, and devoted himself full time to painting. The world on which he trains his hyper-realism is part junk-drawer-on-steroids and part prop closet of William Harnett and Joseph Cornell. He’s known for embedding puns, anagrams and rebuses into his elaborate works--efforts which, are completely lost on me, since they are in French. You can see more of his work here(where these images are mostly from), and you can read more about his background here.

There is no site for Poirier's illustrations, but you can look at some of his illustrated book covers at Antiqbook, where I did a search for his illustrations.

Hopefully, between the balls of twine, glass orbs, playing cards, doll fragments, scrimshaw and bits of hardware, you’ll at least find inspiration.

Labels link to the product, clockwise:

Scrimshaw book, giant jacks,
antique-games book,
Ikebana shears, game of jacks,
bust of Thomas Jefferson,
fuzzy dice, Scrabble.


Coquillages

Pencil sharpener, shell print,
crank sharpener, Shell Chic,
kraft paper pads, electric sharpener,
crow-quill pens, calligraphy book,
Speedball ink.


Artnica

Binoculars, pipe, tape measure,
magnet, gazing ball


Le vol d'Icare

Crane, Radio Flyer red wagon,
Lego architecture, Erector Set


Histoire d'h

Eco edition playing cards, sealing wax set,
leather driving gloves, Michelin Guide,
alphabet nesting blocks


Le cavalier seul

Faux storage books, book clock,
horse mannequin, Dr. Seuss's ABC


Then again, there's always Chanukah gelt (or gift cards, as they call it today).

Bard Book Blowout

There is a fantastic book sale going on this weekend and next at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery. Catalogs for past exhibits at the gallery are being offered at a 70% discount. And if you buy three, the fourth book is free.

These books are all incredibly well researched, and gorgeously produced. Many of them are the only books on the given subject and for other subjects they serve as the definitive scholarly text. The ones pictured above are only a small sample of available catalogs.

And while you are there, you must see the wonderful show, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones. There is a catalog for that show as well, but it is not part of the book sale.

The top-hat form, below, is in the show, and
there are, of course, many, many amazing hats.


The book sale is at the BGC Gallery, 189 West 86th Street,
near Central Park West, in NYC.
December 8-11 and 15-18, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.