Alaska Yukon Gold Rush Era Photo Album

Between the years of 1896 and 1899, over 100,000 prospectors flooded the Alaska Yukon region in what many then called “the Last Great Gold Rush.” Books and movies have told of the mass hysteria that hit the region during that time. When it was all over, very few struck it rich, with only about 4,000 prospectors finding any gold at all.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (12)

A Philatelist’s Dream

This week, I take you to a wonderful online museum called Memory of the Netherlands, where I discovered a collection called “150 Years of Design for the Dutch Postal Service.” Thinking I would find an archive only of printed stamps, I discovered something far more interesting — the preliminary sketches, production notes and overlays that tell a far different story. For me, some of these examples slip away from their hard realities and take on the momentary context of fine art collage and drawing.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

Chinese Propaganda Posters

In the the 1950s and 60s, the heyday of what was then called Red China by the West, millions of posters like these were placed in shop windows and factory walls throughout the mainland — all designed to spread fear of U.S. Imperialism and promote the ideals of Communism.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

A Nod to Surrealism

In the image-driven web world most of us frequent today—Tumblr, Flickr, and Pinterest, for example — we are bombarded with images that beg us to look twice. It’s relatively easy to create a yellow zebra with blue stripes, if that’s what suits your fancy. Masterful digital imaging can bring us whatever level of Surrealism you may desire — if you can imagine it, it can be done with pixel manipulation. For artists not working in digital media — those who cut, build, draw, paint, glue, bend, and make things in the more traditional manner — there is something of a “Surrealist” popularity at hand today.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)

Enjoying TypeToy

This week's Accidental Mysteries highlights the blog TypeToy — an online collection of mid-century design and typography created by Aaron Eiland. According to Aaron, the name of the blog is derived from the playfulness he sees from much of the work of that era.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

The Inkblot and Popular Culture

Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922), who is still famous today for his psychoanalytic work using inkblots, was very familiar with a popular 19th century parlor game called Blotto. So much, in fact, that as a schoolboy, young Rorschach was nicknamed “Klecks,” (or, “inkblot”) by his friends — because of his fascination with the game. Players of the game would make up poems or stories based on what they saw from the folded paper inkblots they would create.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (5)

The Deep Roots of Modernism

The Modernist Movement was sparked by a desire by artists, architects and craftsmen to break free of the perceived bonds of “looking backwards” for cultural influences. Art historians have pointed to the British Arts & Crafts Movement, which began around 1880, as the beginning of this forward-looking push for fresh and unexplored creative thinking. It lasted well into the mid-twentieth century.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (5)

The Imagination of Playgrounds

There is a picture by the American photographer Helen Levitt (1913 - 2009) that has always remained with my imagination. Taken in 1940, it is an image of 5 boys playing high atop an abandoned doorway in New York. Though the children could easily be hurt if they fell from their perch, these children are having the time of their young lives. With skinned knees and plenty of daring, these little pirates have created a playground from their imagination and city streets. Levitt was famous for her many marvelous photographs of children at play.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

A Collection for the Ages

A collection of microscopes and telescopes; medical devices and quackery; patent models and salesman's samples; early projectors, still and motion cameras; motors, archaic electrical devices and machinery; globes and surveying instruments; telegraphy and telephones; televisions and radios; as well as objects from our industrial past and household items such as typewriters and sewing machines.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (3)

Drawn to Currency

From Andy Warhol to Howard Finster to Shepard Fairey and numerous artists in between, the beauty of past and present currency has attracted a considerable number of artists to interpret it. Today I introduce an artist well known in numismatic circles but relatively unknown to the rest of us. Tim Prusmack (1962 - 2004) was very active ten to twenty years ago in currency and coin shows, where he exhibited and sold his complicated, hand-drawn in ink currency. His fans called him the “Mozart of Money Art,” many of whom enjoyed purchasing one of his accurate renditions of currency.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)