Blog Posts by Subject: Design

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been doing so much sewing at home in recent weeks (and therefore spending lots of time shopping for fabrics), but I’ve been feeling awfully textile-centric as of late. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve been I’ve been spending time getting to know a textile industry periodical called American Fabrics at the Library.

 As a librarian, I am a list maker, and lately I have been lucky enough to review the bibliography titles in the Mid-Manhattan Library Art Collection. Bibliographies are elaborate lists that contain citations, and sometimes abstracts, of other books, journal articles, etc., that relate to a focused subject. If you have ever written a research paper, you probably created a bibliography at the end, listing the publication information of the materials you used in your research process.

An example that I find particularly charming is a two volume work entitled Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670-1870 by Sinclair Hamilton. It contains a catalog of 

Did you enjoy following the adventures of our Design by the Book artists as they found inspiration at NYPL? Do you want to dig in to the Library's collections too, to find materials to fuel your own creativity? If so, then check out my User's Guide to NYPL for DIY Designers and Artisans--it will get you up to speed on the treasures and the quirks of the entire Library system. And with it in hand you can start your own hunt for inspiring stuff.

It seems that my idea of Richard Bruce Cheney as a two dimensional nefarious character was hardly original, but this manifestation of others’ lack of imagination is mind boggling. Exhibit A, the cover for Charlie Savage’s Takeover:

A few days ago, I remembered that I liked Design Observer—a collective blog that occasionally includes posts from the great Steven Heller. Anyway, there was a post or a link or some other worm hole a few months ago that led to a Flickr page of book covers designed by Alvin Lustig for New Directions in the late 1940’s. Clean, with one or two colors, interesting use of typography or hand lettering, and abstracted shapes, Lustig’s designs are a revelation and respite from the lazy use of the photographic image and rote text layout (a problem then as now).

The latest issue of ReadyMade features a great DIY gift idea from Kimberly Scola: embroidered letters. The project brought to my mind a book on embroidered letters that I had seen earlier this fall. It’s called the Embroiderer’s Book of Design and it was published in London in 1860. Each page offers an alphabet in a differing style—some look as it they will require quite a bit of skill on the embroiderer’s part, but they are all lovely. I've posted four of my favorite pages here (above and below, below, and below): 

So, if you are considering stitching up personalized embroidered gifts, consider the vintage lettering styles from 

Watch as the Design by the Book artists come to the Library in search of inspiration and information! 

(Yes, it's made of soap. From Lester Gaba's On Soap Sculpture.) I first came upon the subject heading soap sculpture in the Library Catalog a couple of weeks ago, and I just had to investigate. And what I found more than confirmed my love of the serendipitous nature of research.

I learned-—in looking through a few books on the subject as well as articles in Proquest's Historical New York Newspapers database-—that soap sculpture as a fashionable hobby was launched by Proctor & Gamble as a means of promoting brand loyalty for Ivory soap. The man behind this campaign was Edward L. Bernays, who has been called the Father of Spin. Proctor & Gamble 

Voltaire the author and father of the French Enlightenment—we know about him, of course. But this influential philosopher also loved handmade work. Voltaire has a place in my heart, and I have devoted time as a librarian to cataloguing eighteenth-century books in The Martin J. Gross Collection of works by Voltaire and his contemporaries for the Library’s Rare Book Division.

And so, on this most special of days, I want to share with you the following excerpt, from Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which illustrates his appreciation for the handmade: “Physical experiments, ably conducted, arts and handicraft—these are the true philosophy. My 

I'm so pleased to be able to tell you, at last, all about a project that has been consuming me this fall at NYPL. This amazing project that I've been lucky enough to work on is a series of small documentaries following five talented local artists as they gather inspiration for their work at the New York Public Library. It's co-produced by Grace Bonney of leading design site Design*Sponge and my Library colleagues in the Digital Experience Group. The first episode is now out, and you can watch here:  I'll continue to post news about the series here, so stay tuned. You can also visit the Design by the Book homepage for more information, including links to each artist's site:

I’m slipping off and attending an exciting celebration on Thursday, so my next post will come on Friday. The National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan will be holding an awards event, A Single Thread: Celebrating Native American Design and Style. Five native artists will be honored for their accomplishments, and most of them work in textiles and adornment. I know three of the artists personally, so this will be a fine time to let them know how much their contributions to the arts are appreciated.

Joe Baker, from the Delaware Nation, is one of those natives who has achieved astounding success in the fine arts, with his paintings receiving 

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” -Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

What about the impact of the great modern art movements on fashions of the times? Perhaps the most influential of those movements was Cubism. Fortunately, a long-sighted costume historian addressed this topic in a small but influential exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute back in 1998. Richard Martin organized “Cubism and Fashion” to contrast the striking similarities between clothing silhouettes from 1908 to 1925 and the artistic revolutions 

I've just begun reading Nancy Mitford's essay collection The Water Beetle and have learned that this author's name can be added to the list of notable needlewomen who contributed to the World War I effort.

In "Blor," the first essay in this collection, she recollects how she crocheted for the cause: "I was soon sitting like a tricoteuse, on the balcony of Grandfather Redesdale's house in Kensy High Street, crocheting an endless purple scarf while the troops marched by on their way to France. (There was no khaki wool to be had so early in the war--you took what you could get.)"

Soon after, she apparently obtained a supply of khaki yarn: "I fell in 

A lot of the stories in The Fashion Conspiracy describe the means whereby the various designers and companies establish their brand. Product branding is extremely important these days, as more and more consumers—especially young ones—pledge allegiance to specific brands. Sneakers are a famous example. Linking fashion and beauty products with famous faces is another time-honored device. If you want to get a good idea of the business process involved in all this, the SIBL Library has a great work: Packaging design: successful product branding from concept to shelf. While researching brands as a subject, I discovered to my surprise that this topic has not been 

In the recent New York Times feature, Shopping With…, designer Kelly Wearstler visited the Los Angeles bookstore, Potterton Books and revealed books that have inspired her. Many of Kelly’s inspiration books are in the collection of The New York Public Library including the article's pièce de résistance “A Speciman Book of Pattern Papers.” Although Kelly paid $3200 for the book, you can look at it for free at the Library. (Just keep in mind that you’ll have to look at it on site, but bring your camera—you can take as many pictures as you want.) If you can’t make it to the Library, there are some beautiful 

Programming is great. Not only do I get to select the programs I present, I am then rewarded 10 fold by attending interesting and entertaining programs and I get paid for it! What could be better? About a year ago I happened to be reading Christopher Gray’s Streetscapes column in the Real Estate Section of the Sunday New York Times. It is the first column I read in the Sunday paper. Generally the focus of the Streetscapes column is a building. However on Sunday, April 29, 2007 Christopher Gray did something quite different. On that day the Streetscapes column was devoted to a man, Paul Shaw. Mr. Shaw is a designer and design historian, specializing in 

If you like Japanese anime and manga you should see the new © Murakami exhibition (April 5-July 13, 2008) at the Brooklyn Museum. This is the first major retrospective on the works of Japanese artist/designer Takashi Murakami, who is known as the Warhol of Japan. It focuses on his work from 1991-2000, “when the artist began exploring his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." From "© MURAKAMI: Brooklyn Museum Photo Gallery”

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuerv and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings. 

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the 

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years. 

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris,