Tag: Vintage
-
The Tail of Spring

When April showers, the air smells warm, damp, and earthy. This particular wet earth scent is called geosmin, or petricor. It is excreted by soil bacteria to advertise food to springtail, an insect-like organism, who spreads the spores by carrying them along. But it’s not only attractive to the springtail, humans are extremely sensitive to…
-
The Ides of March

“Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar In ancient Roman times, the ides marked the full moon of each month. Since their calendar began with March, it was the first full moon of the year. As the ides were sacred to…
-
Danaë

In 1898, the literary critic Hermann Bahr wrote in the journal Sacred Spring, “Our art is not a combat of modern artists against those of the past, but the promotion of the arts against the peddlers who pose as artists and who have a commercial interest in not letting art bloom. The choice between commerce…
-
The Snake

“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”Genesis 3:4-5 Thus Eve eats the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,…
-
Snoopy

The world knows him as Snoopy, the beloved beagle from Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip. In the aviation community, he is better recognized as Snoopy the World War I Flying Ace, one of his most popular alter egos. Sitting atop his doghouse in a flying helmet, goggles, and colorful scarf blowing in the breeze,…
-
Funny Face

“I’d swim the ocean wide just to have you by my side. Though you’re no Queen of Sheba, for worlds I’d not replace your sunny, funny face.” Debuted in 1957, the film Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn, was a parable for her ascending style and stardom. In the film, Jo Stockton, a downtown bohemian bookworm,…
-
Best In Show

The American artist and art teacher Josef Albers once proclaimed that if you were to say “red” to 50 different people, there would be 50 different versions of the color. Names for color, in particular, evolve with language across cultures. For example, the word for pink once meant yellow in Dutch. While ochre meant “pale…
-
The Kantha Gown

Kantha is more than one thousand years old, dating back to the pre-Vedic era in ancient India. Traditionally a utilitarian, functional craft, kantha has evolved into a unique way of portraying and celebrating life events. Today, the word kantha has come to describe the stitching style rather than the object itself. Beyond simple running stitches…
-
The Peacock

The world’s most spectacular border ceremony takes place daily before dusk at Wagah, roughly halfway between Lahore in Pakistan and Amritsar in India. Large crowd gathers between the Indian Border Security Forces and the Pakistan Rangers to witness a spectacle of what could be appropriately coined “Peacocks at Sunset.” Using their body instead of weapon,…
-
The Kantha Jacket

Kantha, meaning “patched cloth”, refers to both the traditional craft of making quilted blankets as well as the stitch itself. The craft is native to rural Eastern South Asia, particularly Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha, along the Bay of Bengal. Originally made from old, recycled saris, the traditional kantha…