Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built is a fascinating study of the American private house in the twentieth century, the story of suburbia's commodification as house-building processes were industrialised and suburbs fanned out from city centres. Created by Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Conservation (link), the project is subtitled ‘a laserdisc history of suburbia from 1934-1960’. Although it promises great visual treasures (images of the Futurama pavilion, an advertising archive, cartoons, etc.), the scans are sadly pretty low-res. Which begs the question: once a (presumably expensive) project of this kind is done and dusted, will there ever be the time or money to go back and re-scan such material properly? And what is properly? 72dpi? 300dpi?

From the same era comes the period piece illustration of Coby Whitmore, whose post-Norman Rockwell/photo-realist style proved popular on magazine covers and advertising (I, II, III, IV). Along with Rockwell, and other unfashionable names like Earl Mayan, Whitmore did many covers for the Saturday Evening Post. There is lots more imagery at Illustration House, especially pulpy novel covers: I, II. See also the National Museum of American Illustration.

Elsewhere. Giman's collections of model cars, planes, trains. Vintage design books at Recyklotron and Synthetic Space. And if you're in Japan... Bookblessyou. Comparative mammalian brain collections at the Brain Museum. High speed spoon dispenser. Saucy pixel paintings (see thumbnails for full effect) . Image of the day. posted by things at 08:35 / 0 comments