When the Galapagos Islands Exported Turtles

After visiting a museum exhibit of antique toys, I realized vintage board games make for charming art. Then, for $6, I found this 1950 Cargoes game at GasLamp Antique Mall in Nashville. Cargoes was made by Selchow and Richter, a 19th-century game manufacturer from Bay Shore, New York, a firm best known for creating
 the games Parcheesi and Scrabble. 

The Cargoes box top exhibits stark mid-century modern graphics. But it is the board itself I plan to frame. The colors are vivid, and, naturally, there is a sea monster swimming in the lower left-hand corner. 

It is, after all, a board game, so it also has cute playing cards. In a fashion similar to Monopoly, winning Cargoes involves the acquisition of property. But the property, cargo, involves what was popularly shipped along international trade routes of the 1950s. Some of it is quaintly outdated. For example, ivory is no longer the primary export of Lagos, and the Galapagos Islands probably aren't shipping out too many turtles these days. But olive oil from Naples? Send some my way. 

To get an idea of how vintage boards

games can look as art, here's an antique Steeplechase game in a frame. 

Lee Miller, Muse and Beyond

There is currently an exhibit called "Man Ray, Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (it runs through Dec. 4). These two photographers shared a romance and a photo studio from 1929 to 1932, and from the white heat and ashes rose some incredible images that changed the face of photography. Miller lived the glamorous life of a fashion model in New York City during the 1920s, but she ultimately found her inspiration behind the camera. She met Man Ray soon after moving to Paris in the late '20s, and the two went on to perfect solarization. 

A solarized portrait of Lee Miller by Man Ray.

 

A famous Man Ray shot of Miller. 

Her swan-like neck, perfectly captured by Man Ray. 

Being a model, Miller had her beauty captured by other famous photographers. George Hoyningen-Huene took this one in 1928.

In this 1931 photo, shot by the famous Horst, Miller wears Lanvin. 

Miller's likeness was also distilled, this time in oil on canvas, by Pablo Picasso in 1937. She also inspired Joseph Cornell to create a mixed-media piece named after her. Miller went on to have an illustrious career as a photographer during World War II; she was one of only two women known to have photographed combat (the other was Margaret Bourke-White). However, from this experience she received psychic wounds that never quite healed. She retired early to a life of relative domesticity in the English countryside, punctuated by problems with drink.  

Words of Wisdom

When I was in college, way before one could buy adhesive stick-on words for your walls (why didn't I think of that?), I pasted a 6-inch deep roll of brown butcher paper around the top of my dorm room. In black paint I scripted the words: "Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes." — Henry David Thoreau. Today, what with how far graphic design has come, we have so many new choices. But I'm still not above the rudimentary. 

Like this. This photo was taken by my good friend in New York City, the inimitable Frank Weldon, on the Williamsburg Bridge. It's so New York; these are a people who have always got to be saying something. I just love simple bon mots scrawled in chalk or paint. When I lived in New York City for 12 years, I would often glance up at a phone pole, or down at the sidewalk, and see Shepard Fairey's Andre the Giant. 

This one, for $18 from Color Bee on Etsy.com, is perfect for a "woman of a certain age," if you know what I'm saying. There's also a "She blinded me with science" version. 

I simply must have this one, being Southern, I mean, darling. But here's the rub: While it's been all over Pinterest and Polyvore, I cannot find the origin of it. Please advise; I must possess. 

This lightbox installation is by Brooklyn artist Heidi Cody and is in the home of hipster NYC interior designers Robert and Cortney Novogratz. I love that the "m" is from M&Ms packaging.

Studio Mela, which sells on Etsy.com under Dazey Chic, has so many fabulous prints it's hard to choose just one. But if you've ever seen a bird with a french fry, you get how genius this truly is. 

Have a FAB weekend, darlings, and eat some french fries and pancakes for me ... 

The Lovelies of Laundry

My husband recently installed a contraption called an "outdoor clothes dryer." This is just a fancy, 2011 way of saying "old-timer's drying rack." He's into this urban "homesteading" lifestyle, as we now not only have 30 tomato plants, we also have four heirloom chickens pecking away inanely at the ground. So this is what this dryer thing looks like ... 

Jealous much? It makes the sheets feel deliciously crisp, plus they smell like fresh air. Yum. I never believed Martha Stewart all of those years when she waxed rhapsodic about such things. Then again, I lived in New York City and I doubt the air there would have imparted the same "je ne sais quoi" as that of Tennessee. 

Speaking of laundry, how glamorous are these ads for ... Dreft? Yes, only in Poland, evidentally, could beautiful illustrations be used to sell laundry detergent.

 The Leo Burnett agency in Poland was responsible. I'm not sure why they're written in English.

 Love these. The Dreft bottle looks a little incongruous, though. Right? Anyway, I'm glad that the Advertising is Good For You blog brought this to my attention. Otherwise I would have needed to, at some point in my lifetime, Google "Dreft" and "Poland." Hmmm.