Cut to precision, this slick and shiny melon wedge is made of crushed glass imprisoned in perfectly buffed resin and rests on a light wood rind. Complete with seeds, it glows when positioned where the sun hits it. This is one of those objects certain friends always ask me if they can “steal” at least a few times a year. It’s managed to stay ripe on my table and, calling all friends, it ain’t goin’ nowhere.
This is the real deal, vintage 1967 original Spirograph by Kenner No. 401. Although the resulting art was too precise and anal looking for me – zillions of geometric combinations looking like they’re made from little spiders’ legs – I recognize the Spirograph as an icon in Pop Culture. Just like those string art paintings of owls, ships and such that I passionately collect but never felt drawn to create.
Made by locking gears and rotating plastic wheels inside other plastic wheels and tracing with a pen as they move, the rules of this are too rigid for me. Hell, I can’t even paint inside the lines so something demanding precision and this much repetition definitely falls outside my scope. I was always the free form type. But I love that Spirographs make non-artists feel like artists, proud enough to hang their creations on their walls and refrigerators. I’ve always looked at art – any form of it – as something social and a crash course in self expression. So if a series of little curves, technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids, turn most people on who am I to argue?
1960’s Spirograph commercial:
1970’s Spiromania commercial:
I’m not a drinker but I love vintage bar accessories and drag the best of them out when I entertain on weekends. Nothing is more popular than these pipes that hug a bottle and through which the liquid drains when it’s tipped.
Made in 1961 by Poynter Products Inc. Cincinnati, Ohio, Plastered Plumbers’ slogan is “The whiskey goes ’round and round and round and r…”. This scores an extra notch on the Kitsch belt not only for excellence in concept and slogan but because the the first ’round has an apostrophe in front of it while the rest of them remain bare. Not to mention that the first roun is missing a D. Perhaps diminished capacity on the part of the art director after sampling the product accounts for the diminished punctuation.
Though mostly a craze associated with the 1950’s and 60’s, animal families as ashtrays and sculptures will never go out of style. This one has four pups following their boxer-ish mom around the rim of an Atomic shaped ashtray with a 70’s style crazed paint job. Not only are they cute but the puppies, earless mounds of clay that the artist apparently rushed through compared to the detail he/she gave to mom, provide excellent crevices in which to rest cigarettes and other smokables, keeping them ash free until crushed out in the doggie’s playground.
If only these puppies remotely tasted like the foodstuff they attempt to mimic I’d be a real happy camper. But, alas, they taste more like sour lemonade than the preferred juicy wienie. The good news is the hard meat shafts sound fantastic when they shake in the can so these wienies have joined the other percussion instruments in my recording studio awaiting the right song to howl through. Guess I’ll just have to pop a bacon gumball to get that hit of meat I need right now.
I can’t imagine that many people working at Bayshore Industries, the company responsible for this follilicular fun for the face, knew many actual artists to pattern their work after. Not only is it a mix of stereotypical arty types – 1950’s bearded beatnik above the neck and 1960’s flower power below – it appears the designers had little regard for what artists have to say as they forgot to leave a hole for the mouth.
Brand new “Pigmy Will”!
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I have tons of MLK memorabilia – busts, rugs, pens, cufflinks, ashtrays – but this book of matches is one of my favorites. Comes in a matching set with Jackie Robinson, Mahalia Jackson, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Bill Pickett.
I, thankfully, have found three sets of these over the years so have slowly struck the first MLK, © 1976 Universal Match Series 1, which is down to three matches and counting.
Yes, the name and graphic are fantastic but couldn’t they have spent a little more time thinking about their target customer before they named the shade “Off Black”?! I’m pretty sure what shade the marketing guy at the Standard Hoisery Co. of Brandon, Miss. was… Not to mention that ‘pantyhose’ is one word.
With the hairdo on the left looking like the perfect bundt cake, a bulldog in the middle and a bouffanted Jay Leno on the right, what Jesus used was The Faith Tones’ heads to perform some of the most astounding hair artistry in the history of Christian album covers, the Kentucky Derby of cheese championships in the 1960’s and 70’s.
I love that The Faith Tones invested in matching baby blue polyester tops that would go up in flames if a match were within twenty feet of them but stopped short of buying matching blouses or scarves or whatever they’re wearing underneath. I suppose the theory was “no one will notice” and with the indisputably best hairdos of the 20th Century they were almost right.
Although this LP has made the Internet rounds, something so astounding always bears repeating. The Faith Tones and their heavenly follicles have indeed ascended to the throne of Kitsch Klassics!
Although this LP has made the Internet rounds something so astounding always bears repeating. The Faith Tones have indeed ascended to the throne of Kitsch Klassicism
