Archive Category: Arts & Crafts
Teeny Tiny Books
This is sort of like the library necklace, but with real books. From the Publishing House of Miniature Books in Russia come these tiny masterpieces measuring less than half an inch tall. I used Google Language Tools to try and translate some of the titles, and found one title translated as “And Bunin. A. Antonovsky apples”.
An Amazon search brought me to Ivan Bunin’s Collected Stories. The first story is called “The Scent of Apples,” and I learn on the first page that antonovka means autumn apple:
“I remember a fresh and quiet morning…The big garden, its dry and thinned out leaves turning golden in the early light. I remember the avenue of maples, the delicate smell of the fallen leaves, and the scent of autumn apples — antonovkas –that mix of honey and fall freshness. The air’s so clear it seems there is no air at all…”
There is a long history of miniature books in Russia, and you can read more about it here.
Via Nag On The Lake.
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Explore the Victoria and Albert Museum Online
The V&A is, of course, one of the world’s premier museums of design and decorative arts. They have recently announced that over a million items from their collections are now accessible online.
People using Search the Collections… will find images of more than 100,000 objects… The online records vary from detailed studies written by curators to more basic inventory information which might include the maker, provenance, production technique and style… Users explore the site by clicking on images that scroll across the screen or by accessing the powerful search engine that identifies objects by type, maker, date, material or location in the V&A. Google maps show places of origin. Text mining technologies also allow searching of all the text associated with an object so for the first time researchers are able to move from one theme to another.
The example shown above is a board game from 1804 – “The New Game of Emulation Designed for The Amusement of Youth of both Sexes and calculated to inspire their Minds with an abhorrence of vice and a love of virtue.” It was marketed as a morality game designed to lead children “to admire and adopt the virtues of Obedience, Truth, Honesty, Gentleness, Industry, Frugality, Forgiveness, Carefulness, Mercy, and Humility; and to view in their real colours the opposite vices of Obstinacy, Falsehood, Robbery, Passion, Sloth, Intemperance, Malice, Neglect, Cruelty and Pride.” It is one of hundreds of games in the “games” category of the online collection.
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Masterpieces in Coffee
You’ve probably heard all about the art of drinking coffee, but Karen Eland took that to a higher level and made an art of painting with coffee. Have a look at some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, such as Mona Lisa, or the scene from the Sistine Chapel expressed in espresso! Eland also talks about her technique and how it came about.
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Vinyl Records Purse
Do you still have piles of vinyl records you store for no reason? Here’s a cool and stylish way to re-use them: a vinyl record purse. Such things always look fashionable, I guess. Tasket Basket posted quite a few pictures of how she made this one.
Link – via diygadgets
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I, For One, Welcome Our New Furniture Overlords
Voices from the off 1 (2008) by Julian Göthe
Is that an alien being disguised as furniture or is it artwork by Julian Göthe?
This wonderful piece is part of Julian Göthe’s exhibition "Events during Flood" at the Galerie Buchholz in 2008 but just in case I’m mistaken let me just say I, for one, welcome our new furniture overlords: Link
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A Counterfeit Penny Made of Gold
Seattle artist Jack Daws made eleven pennies by casting them from 18 karat gold and plating them with copper. One of those pennies was sold for $1,000 as a work of art. Another penny was spent at a news stand in Los Angeles. Yes, Daws sent one of the pennies into circulation in 2007 as a counterfeit -on purpose. He expected never to see it again. Over two years later, a graphic designer from Brooklyn noticed a golden gleam on a penny she was given as change. She put it away to investigate later, as she was a fan of unusual coins.
Then recently, while doing research about a 1924 Mercury-head dime, she remembered the penny and typed “gold penny” into Google, which returned information on science experiments to give a penny a gold color. She added “1970” and found an item about how Mr. Daws had put a 18-karat gold penny, dated 1970 with no mint mark, into circulation. It was heavier and smaller than a real penny.
In disbelief, she weighed the penny on a digital scale. It came in at three grams, one gram more than similar pennies from 1970. And it was slightly smaller than a normal penny, owing to the shrinking after the casting process.
She traced Mr. Daws’s phone number through the gallery and left him the message. When he called back, he knew it had to be his penny as soon as she described it to him.
Reed will keep the penny as a work of art. How many other hands did the gold coin pass through before she found it? We will probably never know. Link -Thanks, Bill!
(image credit: Lynn Rogan)
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Sticky Note Chair
Photo: razy2
The Polish design team razy2 made a chair that’s built like a stack of sticky notes. The Q-Book is composed of sheets of paper, carefully cut, that are attached on one side. If you need something to write on, just tear off a sheet.
Artist’s Website via Make
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Luggage That Turns Into a Couch
Photo:dezeen
Dutch designer Erik De Nijs created Suited Case — a collection of four functional suitcases that can be linked together in the form of a couch. His goal was to give travelers a taste of home while away:
This concept came from a research on nostalgia during travelling. When a familiar object from home is taken with you on a trip you feel much more at ease. And which object is more familiar then your own comfortable couch.
The fabrics which are used to cover the suit cases emphasize the homely feeling. I searched for a combination of fabrics which amplify each other and which create a prominent image. By using prints on the large luggage and the pad on the hand luggage I tried to put down a lively picture.
The work will be on display at the upcoming Dutch Design Week in Eindoven. You can view more pictures at the link.
Link via Geekologie | Dutch Design Week | Artist’s Website
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Energy-Harvesting Rocking Chair
Photo: Design Boom
Rochus Jacob designed and built the Murakami Chair. As the user rocks back and forth during the day, the chair charges a battery that powers the lamp. Jacob writes:
I was looking for opportunities to generate energy through activities we naturally do. The final result is a rocking chair that enables the user to experience production and consumption of electricity in a gentle and rewarding way. An abstract process becomes tangible and eventually cultivates natural awareness. Complexity is covered by simplicity. Advanced nano-dynamo technology which is built in to the skids of the chair and more efficient light sources such as the newly developed OLED generation makes it possible to build a rocking chair with a reading lamp running on electricity generated from the rocking motion. During daylight the energy gets stored in a battery pack. The construction of the flat and bendable organic light emitting diodes allows new form factors such as using the traditional shape of a lamp but instead of having a light bulb the lampshade himself turns out to be the light source. To have a drastic reduction of consumption the big challenge will be to make consuming less feel like getting more.
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Outdoor Dragon Skeleton Sculpture
Photo: Virgil England
Artist Virgil England is best known for his custom fantasy-inspired knives and swords. But in 1990, he stepped outside of this domain to create a life-sized (if that’s an appropriate term for an imaginary creature) dragon skeleton in Chugach National Forest in Alaska:
The part of the Dragon that is exposed is about 18 feet long. The wing is 15 feet high. The skeleton is carved whale bone and forged mild steel with reindeer rawhide stretched and stitched over the bones. I did it to display a 59 1/2 inch two handed sword called “The Veil of Tears”. After the ten hour photo session It went to a three day showing in San Francisco then to the buyers.
You can view more pictures at the link.
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8-Bit Costume
Photo: kindacarsick
For Halloween, blogger Sarah McPherson painted her face and shirt to resemble a low-resolution image. She writes “The shirt took forever to paint, and my face only took slightly forever.”
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Man As Industrial Palace
(YouTube Link)
In 1926, Fritz Kahn created the poster “Man As Industrial Palace.” as was appropriate for the Art Deco era, he depicted the human body as a factory run by little workers processing food, moving blood, and pumping engines. Henning Lederer took this idea and turned it into an animated short. From a promotional brochure for the film:
The visual crossover between industrialization and science in Fritz Kahn’s artwork demonstrates surprisingly accurately how human nature became culturally encoded by placing the knowledge in an industrial modernity of machine analogues. He produced lots of illustrations that drew a direct functional analogy between human physiology and the operation of contemporary technologies. Therefore, by illustrating the body as a factory, Kahn was able to relate the body’s complex organic interior to the industrialized space so common in society during that period of time (the poster was created in 1926).
Link via The Presurfer | Full-Sized Poster
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Marlene Hairy or In My Bathtub I am the Captain
Oh, art! My day would certainly be much more dreary without performance art like this: In 2005, Marlene Haring donned a Chewbacca-worthy suit of hair and went crawling around Vienna’s "Second District" (the city’s red light district), much to the delight of passer-bys:
The long-blond-haired creature sleeping on the pavement at the street-corner rendezvous outside the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts did not greet the more-or-less informed audience, but set off at surprising speed on all fours into the park. The assorted audience followed as the creature made its way through the greenery towards the Prater (Vienna’s permanent fun-fair), past Autodrome, Space Shot, Ghost Train and Casino Admiral, emerging on Austellungsstrasse (Exhibition Road) and crossing into the neighbourhood known as the Stuwerviertel, where Marlene Haring lives.
Then it started to get weird: Link
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Lightsabers Make Everything Cooler
So says Mathue Shell of Geekstir, who is (presumably) the creator of this photoshop. It’s an adaptation of John Trumbull’s 1795 painting “The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton”, owned by the Yale University Art Gallery.
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Periodic Picnic Table
In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table in the shape of the periodic table of elements. From a campus newspaper:
The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.
Link via Make | Image: Anonymous Make reader
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Detailed Cut Paper Maps of New York City
Photo: KMO Studio
This item has already sold on Etsy, but you can still see images of KMO Studio’s enormous and detailed cut paper maps of all five boroughs of New York City. When the four sections are put together, the map measures six by eight feet.
Link via Make | Artist’s Etsy Shop
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A Chair Made Out of Drinking Straws
Photo: Scott Jarvie
But I wouldn’t suggest sitting in it — it’s an art piece rather than functional furniture. Scott Jarvie made the Clutch Chair out of 10,000 drinking straws after “a microscopic observation of the structural composition of trees and the directional properties of Capillary tubes….” You can view more pictures at the link.
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Fantasy Bookplates
Will at A Journey Around My Skull asked readers to create bookplates in the style of the early-20th century magazine Der Orchideengarten (previously at Netaorama) for a contest. They were to include orchids and other flowers, corpses, giant insects, monsters, or diseases. The entries are quite interesting! Memphis artist Michelle Duckworth was the overall winner. Pictured is the bookplate by Ellis Nadler. Link
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The Largest Mona Lisa in the World
Under the direction of artist Katy Webster, children painted an enormous copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at a shopping mall in Wales:
Dozens of adults from community groups and youngsters from Wrexham schools coloured 82 vinyl tiles to make the paint-by-numbers portrait.
It is on show at Eagles Meadow, and will be used to raise money for the children’s hospice charity Hope House.
At 17.5m across, and covering 240 sqm, it is some 50 times the original.
Video at the link (preceded by a commercial).
Link via GearFuse | Image: My Modern MET
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Smile or Suffer the Consequences While Wearing the Happiness Hat
(Video Link)
Lauren McCarthy created the Happiness Hat – a gadget that detects whether or not you’re smiling. If you’re not, it drives a small metal spike into the back of your head to encourage to you resolve that problem quickly:
An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. The device runs on Arduino.
Link via Geekologie
UPDATE 10/29: The YouTube video’s status was switched to private, so I swapped it out for a Vimeo version.
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Borax Crystal Spider and Cthulhu
Natania had already planned to make slime and ectoplasm for Halloween when she came up with an idea for crystal-encrusted Halloween decorations. Get some pipe cleaners and some borax and make your own with her recipe. Link
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Town-Sized Optical Illusion
Photo: Today and Tomorrow
Swiss artist Felice Varini is known for his massive art installations that show different images depending on the viewer’s vantage point. Recently, he created an optical illusion that covered the entire Swiss town of Vercorin. In the picture above, it looks like rings have been drawn over an image, but what Varini has done is painted walls and roofs at particular angels to give this impression. Click on the link for pictures that show how Varini crated this illusion.
Link via Make | Artist’s Website | Previously on Neatorama: Felice Varini’s Ellipse Anamorphic Art
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A Font Designed With E. Coli Bacteria
Image: Jelte van Abbema
Dutch designer Jelte van Abbema created a typeface out of e. coli bacteria. Cliff Kuang wrote in Fast Company about how he did it:
Van Abbema created the font by stamping bacteria into paper, and then placing the paper in a jury-rigged incubator, which provided the right humdity and warmth for the organisms. As they multiplied and died, the resulting fonts changed color and shape. As van Abbema says, bacteria “transforms the image to something new,” creating something that is literally alive, changing every minute without ever being tended.
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The Amazing Sculptures of Fabio Viale
If you took a look at the larger version of this sculpture (left), you’d immediately conclude that it was made out of Styrofoam. As impressive as that would be, the real mind-blower here is that it’s actually marble.
All of Fabio Viale’s creations from marble have a deceptive quality to them, prompting the beholder to utter “No way,” with each new sculpture. From paper airplanes, to actual working boats, to classic renderings of the human form, they all inspire.
For instance, these seemingly impossible tires linked together? Black marble.
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Comic Book Character Costume
Image: Tasha Marie
An artist from MAC Cosmetics painted a woman as a comic book character for Halloween — right down to the dot printing style of old comics books. Or, alternatively, as a figure from a Roy Lichtenstein painting.
The pictures were taken by publicist and photographer Tasha Marie. You can view more at the link.
Link via Geekologie | Artist’s/Company Website
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Minimalist Nativity Set
Less is more with this Christmas nativity set by artist Oliver Fabel, available in German and in English. Link -via Swiss Miss
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Queen Victoria Squirrel
This is called anthropomorphic taxidermy art. It is a real squirrel dressed as Queen Victoria mounted in a shadow box perfect for hanging on your wall. Crafted by Etsy seller lovedtodeath, this could be yours for only $495.00. Link -via Everlasting Blort
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Brain Cake Is Scary, But Tasty
This brain cake looks terrifying, but the process to create it is pretty cool. The brain folds are simply made of frosting and the blood is only food coloring. I think a simple way to make things even more delicious would be to used a raspberry puree in place of food coloring.
Link Image Via kiffakitty
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Marie Antoinette Costume
Still haven’t got your Halloween costume yet? If you’re willing to put a lot of work into the effort, consider this gory, historical and somehow, still beautiful headless Marie Antoinette costume.
Link Via Craftzine Image Via Make Magazine
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Twelve Creative Bathtubs
Photo: Elite Choice
Oddee has pictures of twelve unique bathtubs, such as the one pictured above, which was made out of 18-karat gold. Its estimated value was $1 million, which is probably why it was stolen out of a Japanese hotel in 2007.
Other bathtubs at the link include one that looks like a high-heeled shoe and one inspired by the works of Le Corbusier.
Link via The Presurfer
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