{design} – Page 163 – { feuilleton }

Chemiserie Niguet

Spotted at Beautiful Century, this scan of a postcard showing the flower shop which now occupies what was originally the Chemiserie Niguet in Brussels. The shop is in the Rue Royale, and the Art Nouveau storefront was installed in 1896 from a design by Belgian architect Paul Hankar (1859–1901). Considering this is one of Hankar’s few Art Nouveau designs to have survived the depredations of “Brusselization” I was surprised that the only illustration in any of my books was the early plan below. (In fairness, Victor Horta tends to dominate any general discussion of Belgian Art Nouveau architecture.)

Magasin Niguet (1896).

Searching for the shop as it is today on Google Maps reveals the view below. Shame about the camera catching the rubbish awaiting collection. The bland 20th-century facades surrounding the storefront make its presence an incongruous one but at least it’s survived, unlike this Parisian establishment.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rue St. Augustin, then and now
• Hector Guimard elevations
• Infernal entrances
• Hector Guimard sketches
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras

Josef Albers album covers

Provocative Percussion (1959) by The Command All-Stars.

You’d think that the handful of album cover designs produced by Bauhaus artist Josef Albers would have decorated something by Xenakis, or one of the composers experimenting with tape recording and electronics at the end of the 1950s. But no, it’s the easy listening cocktail music of Enoch Light and co. who received the benefit of his abstractions. The covers are smart solutions for how to embellish a collection of percussive instrumentals without resort to the thumping obviousness of a photograph of the artists or their instruments. Albers’ designs found their way into more American living rooms than they otherwise might have done, and established a trend which you still find being imitated today.

• You’re The Top by The Command All-Stars

Persuasive Percussion (1959) by Terry Snyder And The All Stars.

Provocative Percussion Volume 2 (1959) by Enoch Light And The Light Brigade.

Continue reading “Josef Albers album covers”

Weekend links 155

Poster design by Mishka Westell for this month’s Austin Psych Fest. Billy Gibbons’ pre-ZZ Top psychedelic outfit, The Moving Sidewalks, surprised everyone by reforming for a New York gig last month, their first performance together in 44 years.

• Pye Corner Audio played the Boiler Room, London, last week, and remixed a track from FC Judd’s Electronics Without Tears. Also on the latter is Chris Carter who talks about his own remix (and the “Radiophonic” Mr Judd) here.

• Tom Bianchi’s Fire Island Pines, Polaroids of New York’s gay enclave from 1975–1983. Related: In Conversation with the Violet Quill: Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White.

• From 2011: Sex, prison and lost ligatures: The story of Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde typeface. Related: The ITC Avant Garde Gothic group at Flickr.

• Music reissues: Tape Works 1981–1982 by Laughing Hands is out now, and Scott Walker’s early solo albums will be reissued in the summer.

Drugs and the Mind (ii), a cover design from 1957 by Eric Fraser (1902–1983) whose illustrations and designs are in exhibition at the Chris Beetles gallery, London.

• At Ubuweb: William S. Burroughs + Brion Gysin + Genesis P-Orridge – Cold Spring Tape (1989).

• The World According to John Coltrane, an hour-long documentary.

• Neko Font: for when you need a word made of cats.

• Fuck yeah, Sarah Bernhardt

• Sordid Spheres!

• 99th Floor (1967) by The Moving Sidewalks | Over Fire Island (1975) by Brian Eno | Ledge (1980) by Laughing Hands

Weekend links 154

Collage by Chloé Poizat.

• Xenis Emputae Travelling Band plays the Music of John Dee, and free at Bandcamp: Victorian Machine Music by Plinth, the “creaking, winding, piping, chiming and wood-knocking of Victorian parlour music machines”.

• Jeremy Willard on Mikhail Kuzmin, “the Oscar Wilde of Russia”. Related: Conner Habib on the Disinfo podcast discussing pornography, sexuality, and whether sex be a revolutionary act.

• Ed Vulliamy paid a visit to Hawkwind’s Hawkeaster festival. The Hawks’ Warrior On The Edge Of Time album is released in a remastered edition next month.

• Blasts from the past: Mahavishnu Orchestra, live in France, August 23rd, 1972, and Ashra (Manuel Göttsching & Lutz Ulbrich) in Barcelona, 1981.

An illustration by Alberto Martini for Raw Edges (1908) by Perceval Landon.

• NASA’s cover designs for Space Program manuals, guidebooks, press kits, reports and brochures.

• PingMag—”Art, Design, Life – from Japan”—makes a welcome return as an active blog.

• Suzanne Treister‘s Hexen 2.0 Tarot designs.

• Listening to records that no longer exist

• The architectural origins of the chess set

• The Bohemian Realm of Absinthiana

• Les sources d’une île: a Tumblr

• Hammer Without A Master (1998) by Broadcast | Test Area (1999) by Broadcast | Make My Sleep His Song (2009) by Broadcast & The Focus Group

The Ghost Box Study Series

01: Youth and Recreation; 02: Cycles and Seasons
03: Welcome to Godalming; 04: Familiar Shapes and Noises

The Ghost Box Study Series, a sequence of occasional seven-inch singles on the Ghost Box label, is looking increasingly good as a set. The design, as usual, is by Julian House, while the music is by Belbury Poly, Moon Wiring Club, The Advisory Circle, Mordant Music, Broadcast, The Focus Group, Hintermass, Jonny Trunk and Pye Corner Audio. Being collectible items, the vinyl editions are sold out, but all the releases can be purchased in digital formats at the label shop.

05: The Open Song Book; 06: Animation and Interpretation
07: Autumnal Activities; 08: Inversions

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A playlist for Halloween: Hauntology
• Forbidden volumes
• The Séance at Hobs Lane
• Ghost Box