Ilonka Karasz New Yorker Covers

How is it possible that someone with 186 published New Yorker covers* is not a household name?

lonka Karasz (1896-1981) was an insanely talented artist/designer/illustrator who, in addition to magazine and book covers designed pottery, textiles, furniture, silver and decorative maps. Earlier this year, at the Bard Graduate Center, Karasz scholar Ashley Callahan presented the work of Ilonka and her equally talented sister Mariska. The creative siblings came to the U.S. from Hungary in the 1910s. They settled in Greenwich Village where they became active participants in the avant garde of fashion, art and design.

Thanks to Callahan’s extensive research, each sister has had her own exhibit at the Georgia Museum of Art and there is a book to accompany each; Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz and Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz. You can see 106 Karasz covers at condenaststore.com

Whichever cover you find yourself on this weekend, picnicking in the park, sunning on tar beach, or stuck in traffic, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend.

*Next most-published-New-Yorker-cover woman is Gretchen Dow Simpson with 58 covers, followed by Edna Eicke with 51, and Mary Petty with 38. 

Karma Chocolate and Other Addictive Dahlias

Weston Spanish Dancer

Karma Chocolate, Prince of Orange, Sakura Fubuki, Spike, Thomas Edison, Amorous. These are just a few of over 200 dahlia varieties grown at Endless Summer Flower Farm in Camden, Maine. Farmer, Phil Clark, started growing the flowers in 1997 for his daughter’s wedding. Dahlia-growing became an addiction and he now enables others who are hooked or would like to be.

As for the name, “Endless Summer Flower Farm.” Well not exactly. Camden is likely to have frost before September is over. The tubers must come out of the ground before then, not to be replanted until late April. There’s Maine humor for you.

Karma Chocolate

Happy Face

White Kelvin

CPW

Cafe Au Lait

Procyon

Procyon (again)

Hamilton Lillian

Lupin Ben

Tartan

Baron Kati

Colorado Classic

Dare Devil

Just Married

Thomas Edison

Pink Flair

Farmer Phil with a spectacular Cafe Au Lait.

You will definitely get high walking the fields.

A simple Ball jar will do for a vase.

Every combination is an inspiration.

Catalog link

Bonnie Cashin's Sweater Paintings

American sportswear designer Bonnie Cashin, is probably best known for the iconic bags she designed for Coach leather, from 1962 to 1974. As a pioneer of women’s sportswear, she was all about comfort and ease of movement to support the active lifestyle of the modern woman. Though her medium was clothing and accessories, her output was more art, sculpture, or design, than “fashion.” 

In a piece about her for the 2001 “The Lives They Lived” section of the the New York Times Magazine, Amy Spindler wrote:

Her clothes alone were so colorful that she used them, in open closets and exposed shelves, as her apartment's primary decor. That decor blended beautifully with pieces by the designers of the day she considered her peers, people who didn't make clothes at all -- the Eamses, George Nelson and Isamu Noguchi. She had little patience for the inbred fashion industry, which she felt was devoted to hobbling women with its fussy clothes.

In 1964, she designed cashmere sweaters for Scottish company, Ballantyne of Peebles. These paintings of sweater bodies, are in the archive of her work at UCLA. They could so easily hang on the walls of a modern art museum.

I love these color names.

Above: anthracite and Robin red.

Below: Bursom, seaweed, sundew, and coral