A messy metamorphosis

Feeling lucky? Taken a dip into the 777th edition of “13 Things I Found in the Internet Today”, which funnily enough, was a series born from that one time I broke both my elbows after tripping over my computer cable, and couldn’t type long-from articles because my arms were covered in casts – so I could only surf the net in search of links to save that inspired me!

ovie title typography is a lost art in my opinion. Hollywood today just doesn’t put that same pizazz (yeah I’m gonna use that word) in to their opening or ending title sequences anymore.

An Ode to Vintage Book Design - Inspiration Vault - Messy Nessy's

I came across a collection of “Do Not Disturb” signs from hotels around the world and as far as hotel collectibles go, the doorknob signs seem to have gone largely unnoticed, despite being pretty interesting design-wise. I’m almost sure this extensive archive (there are pages and pages of them) is one of very few that exist.

found another thing I wish I’d been born a few decades earlier for: vintage wallpaper hunting. Suzanne Lipschutz got there before everyone else. She was the first, the original crazy bohemian lady from New York who scoured the earth, from Paris flea market stalls to hardware stores in small town middle America, in search of forgotten wall coverings that nobody else wanted.

A magazine like Jugend was never going to survive Nazi Germany. A monthly art periodical created in Munich in the late 19th century, it featured many Art Nouveau artists on its cover, and effectively launched the art movement in Germany. They called it Jugendstil, literally “youth style” in German. This period of art and design is still known as Jugendstil after the magazine, a word used by graphic designers and collectors in Germany today. The magazine however, as fabulous as it was, is long buried.

Their’s is a love of strange and beautiful proportion. The kind measured in porcelain, peanut-sized dolls, and antiqued oysters as big as your face. “It’s hard to imagine a time when we’d stop digging,” says Belle, back-lit by a wall of technicolour glass bottles, “I mean it’s addictive. And when you have someone who gets it? Well…”

I just spent the morning finding out everything I can on the Bohemian Grove. For two weeks every summer, the 2,700 acre secured private camp in the Ancient Redwood Forest of Northern California, plays host to some of the most powerful men in the world. Every republican U.S. president since 1923 has been a member of club, including Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush family maintains a strong involvement to this day. The top secret operation behind the development of the atomic bomb, known as the Manhattan Project, was first planned at the Grove in 1942, and it’s said to have played a key role in major political and business deals since it was founded in the late 1800s. This place is a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true. But it’s also a summer camp in the middle of a remote forest where the global elite can take off their ties and behave like a bunch of lost boys who’ve tied up their camp counsellor; free to run wild and break all the rules…

As a decorator, the late Madeleine Castaing embodied over-the-top luxury and la vie bohème. As a patron, no – diva – of the arts, Castaing’s eye for excellence helped sponsor some of the greatest artists of all time, from Soutine to Modigliani. During the height of World War II, she opened an extravagant boutique behind the Boulevard Saint Germain and held court there as the queen of interiors, well into her nineties. It became a legendary place and increasingly eccentric; like a Ms. Havisham’s Parisian lair or a portal into the pages of a book by Proust. Today, saying you’d like a room done in “le style Castaing” isn’t just decorative shorthand for elegance with a big kick of personality, it’s a challenge to a designer; a reminder that the best luxury shouldn’t just be bought, but brazenly assembled from the imagination.

I’ve been yearning to get back across the pond for a good ol’ dose of “weird America”, but I tend to forget that my own country has some pretty odd, quirky and wonderfully nostalgic sights to see when you venture off the main road. Wes Anderson would have a field day with Atlas des Régions Naturelles, an online archive of more than 10,000 photos documenting French vernacular architecture, aka, all the kinds of stuff that makes you do a double take on a road trip.

Her private villa in Versailles hosted the last great Parisian party before the storm of World War II, attended by Coco Chanel, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the Rothschilds. Paris fashion experts named her the best-dressed woman in the world and her eye for design catapulted her to the higher echelons of Parisian society. But Elsie de Wolfe was not your conventional socialite of the era. Despite her marriage of convenience to a wealthy British ambassador, she enjoyed a lengthy and highly public affair with her great love, a female literary agent and theatre producer. She called herself a “rebel in an ugly world.” Let’s step into the world of this 20th century Marie Antoinette…

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