Quite some time ago, we featured the D&G Test Card Watch, and now we’ve come across a similar timepiece for your wall in the Nextime Test Page Clock.
As with the wristwatch, it features the brightly coloured design famous from the early television test card. It also has the words ‘One Moment Please’ written across the bottom for added early viewing authenticity.
It costs just under £32 from Corvus Mail Order.
Something cool for your coffee table, an art investment and just a great example of period illustration – thats what you get with Charley Harper – An Illustrated Life.
Compiled by New York designer Todd Oldham, this is the definitive collection of Harper’s work, unique mid-century illustrations of nature, animals, insects and indeed people from a six-decade career. In particular, it showcases his illustrations that appeared from 1950-1975 in the Ford Times magazines, as well as in books such as The Giant Golden Book of Biology (1961), Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two (1961), The Animal Kingdom (1968) and Birds and Words (1974).
Sadly, Charley Harper died this year aged 84, but did get to see this project through before his death. As such, AMMO Books is offering Charley Harper – An Illustrated Life as both a large format standard book or as a luxurious limited edition, personally signed by Charley Harper and Todd Oldham.
It’s priced from $200 (around £100).
Find out more from the AMMO Books website
We recently featured the auction for autographed Marshall DAB radios, which benefitted the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy. Well, that charity and others will benefit for the next big rock auction – for personalised Gibson guitars.
A host of big names past and present have offered hand-painted guitars – everyone from Ronnie Wood, Robert Plant and Roger Waters through to Kasabian and Noel Gallagher, with all the guitars up for grabs at the Gibson Guitartown London Charity Auction, to be held at the IndigO2 on November 20th.
The two pictured above are Ronnie Wood’s guitar, which features his own take on the Albert Hall and undoubtedly the star of the show – Roger Waters’ guitar, which has been personalised front and back by The Wall cover artist Gerald Scarfe. Expect the pric of that to go through the roof.
Find out more about the auction at the London Guitartown website
As Halloween approaches, you might like this ghostly looking side table. The Illusions Table is fashioned from acrylic in a way as to suggest it is a tablecloth floating in the air.
Designed by John Brauer and Hans Falleboe for Essay, each table is unique as they are handmade in Denmark. The Illusions Table is available in the clear priced £118 or in grey, opal (pictured) or brown for £137.
For further details visit Kitchenland.
A nice mix of 1950s period lighting with traditional Japanese design – the Isamu Noguchi 1950 Akari table lamp.
It’s new to the MoMA online store, although original Isamu Noguchi Akari designs have been in the museum’s collection for decades. This reissue is faithful to that era, when electricity was added to the traditional paper lantern.
It’s handmade from washi paper and bamboo ribbing, supported by a metal frame and able to support a 40w bulb. You can buy one for $125, which is around £65.
Find out more from the MoMA website
Reissued for nostalgia, but probably containing quite a few handy hints for the modern era are 101 Things For The Housewife To Do from 1949 and 101 Things To Do In Wartime, originally published in 1940.
According to the first of those titles, there was never a dull moment in the 1949 for the average housewife, with all that dusting, bed making and picture-straightening to do, as well as the other 98 tasks worthy of your attention. And if you can do it with an upright poise and a smile on our face, all the better it would seem. The Wartime book is much more practical – no-nonsense advice on everything from cheap meals and fixing your household essentials to keep fit and keeping a fair complexion. Advice we could probably all do with today I’d say.
Interesting as novelties, but packed with long-forgotten tips and skills we could all do with, you can pick both up for £7.99 each in hardback.
