Zermatt, Switzerland
The first ascent of the iconic Matterhorn (yes, the one on the triangular-shaped Toblerone chocolate package) was made by Edward Whymper, Lord Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson, Douglas Hadow, Michel Croz, and the two Zermatt guides, Peter Taugwalder father and son on 14 July 1865. Douglas, Hudson, Hadow and Croz were killed on the descent when Hadow slipped and pulled the other three with him down the north face. Whymper and the Taugwalder guides, who survived, were later accused of having cut the rope below to ensure that they were not dragged down with the others, but the subsequent inquiry found no proof of this and they were acquitted.
The Matterhorn accident was long discussed in the media, in Switzerland and abroad… newspapers all over the world reported the tragedy and no other Alpine event has ever caused more headlines. Read the full background to this memorable event in mountaineering history here.
Matterhorn photo (cropped) by Juan Rubiano; Illustrations of Whymper et al’s ascent and disastrous descent are by Gustave Doré.
“A single slip,
or a single false step,
has been the sole cause
of this frightful calamity.”
—Edward Whymper
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In the history of twentieth-century fashion and portrait photography, Horst’s contribution figures as one of the most artistically significant and long lasting, spanning as it did the sixty years between 1931 and 1991. During this period, his name became legendary as a one-word photographic byline, and his photographs came to be seen as synonymous with the creation of images of elegance, style and rarefied glamour.
Born on 14 August 1906 in Weißenfels-an-der-Saale, Germany, Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann was the second son of a prosperous middle class Protestant shop owner, Max Bohrmann and his wife, Klara Schoenbrodt.
The first pictures that carried a Horst credit line appeared in the December 1931 issue of French Vogue. It was a full-page advertisement showing a model in black velvet holding a Klytia scent bottle in one hand with the other hand raised elegantly above it… Horst’s real breakthrough as a published fashion and portrait photographer was in the pages of British Vogue… starting with the 30 March 1932 issue showing three fashion studies and a full-page portrait of the daughter of Sir James Dunn, the art patron and supporter of Surrealism…
(Learn more about Horst here, and view a collection of selected works here).
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Wow, summer’s here with gusto… liberated the old bicycle from the shed this week, and had a pleasant drive along the lake (with water levels several feet higher than normal) with my Sweetie… looking forward to more times in the saddle in the months ahead.
I now ride a somewhat clunky 1980s-vintage 18-speed mountain bike, but I did once mount an authentic velocipede (center bottom in image above, with the huge front wheel) that belonged to a neighbour of ours when we lived on Florastrasse in Reinach, Switzerland, back in the 1960s… and I have owned sleeker road-bikes back in the day.
Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Ljubljana, Skopje… take your pick.
I have fond memories of Yugoslavia, so I was delighted to chance upon an online collection of graphics from this former nation, here.
Yugoslavia came onto my radar when I was 10 years old (living in Switzerland at the time) as a result of a pen-pal who I corresponded with in the northerly city of Novi Sad (now Serbia) on the Danube. On boxing day the following year (I was 11, it was 1965) I boarded the Orient Express in Basel for a 32-hour epic train-ride to go visit my friend “Rosie” on the other side of the Iron Curtain (I still can’t believe how much trust my parents placed in me to do this on my own—hard to imagine in today’s over-protective context). Needless to say, I had a blast, I learned a lot (including some significant life-lessons), and I was enamored by almost everything I encountered.
During the late 1960s we would occasionally make day trips into Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) while on family camping trips in nearby Austria. During the 1980s, I visited designer friends in the Zagreb area (now Croatia) with my wife, and spent some fine holiday days in/around Bled (now Slovenia). Later on, I was invited to contribute works to and then serve on design juries of ZGRAF (including one visit in 1991 in the midst of what had become a civil war). The last time I was in (former) Yugoslavia was during the Icograda events in Zagreb, Croatia, in April 2001.
I’m looking forward to another visit to these remarkable Balkan lands some day soon… in the meantime, I’ll enjoy the vintage nostalgia here.
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These ‘fine toys for boys’ feature the ironic statement “Not recommended for children under 36 months” on the packaging—manufactured in the 1970s by Matchbox, long part of Mattel, Inc., the world’s largest producer of plastic entertainment for children. Mattel is responsible for a virtual empire of toys for budding minds including the ever-empowering Barbie dolls that help girls grow up to become the well-rounded, well-mannered women we all know they have the potential to be, as well as the plethora of toxic Chinese-made toys under the Fisher-Price name [Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street] recalled of late due to hazards arising from the use of lead-based coloration.
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
—David Friedman
Esslingen, Germany
Three weeks ago I was visiting designer friends in this charming Swabian burgh… the after-dinner conversation swung towards influential German typographers and Gestalter such as John Heartfield—to my delight, when I mentioned his name our hostess jumped up from the table to fetch (after a bit of searching) a portfolio of Heartfield prints she had acquired back in the 1980s when she was a socialist activist in Berlin (all prints I had never seen before).
John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June 1891 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, Germany to Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer and Alice née Stolzenburg, a textile worker and political activist. He changed his name in part as a way to protest World War I (and he even feigned madness to avoid returning to the service). During the Weimar period he became a member of the Berlin DADA group, where he used his collage work as a political medium, incorporating images from the political journals of the day. He edited “Der DADA” and organized the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920. Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic, Heartfield’s work was banned during the Third Reich, then rediscovered in the German Democratic Republic in the late 1950s.
I’ve posted about John Heartfield before and have long been fascinated by him—his politically charged photomontages during the Nazi regime ended up influencing successive generations of artists and graphic designers.
Above: a small sampling of Heartfield’s diverse work; The hand has 5 fingers; Serenade; Adolf the Superman. Below: a 1971 stamp from DDR (East Germany) in Heartfield’s honour.
Bloomington, Illinois
Fredric W. Goudy (sometimes also written as ‘Frederic’) was a master craftsman and an “American legend of type design,” a man of humble beginnings who started his career at the late age of almost 40. At the time of his death at the age of 82 (in 1947) he had 127 typeface designs to his credit—a list of typefaces designed by Goudy is available here. Read an interesting, in-depth magazine article about Goudy in the April, 1942 issue of Popular Science here.
The graphic above is from a promotion piece published by International Papers that’s been kicking around our design studio for quite a few years (illustrator/designer unknown).
Dornach, Switzerland
This past week I had the pleasure of re-visiting a childhood haunt a few km from where I used to live… the Götheanum designed by Rudolf Steiner. While there, I picked up a reprint of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s colour-wheel graphic from his Farbenkreis (Theory of Colurs), written 200 years ago.
Should your glance on mornings lovely
Lift to drink the heaven’s blue
Or when sun, veiled by sirocco,
Royal red sinks out of view—
Give to Nature praise and honor.
Blithe of heart and sound of eye,
Knowing for the world of colour
Where its broad foundations lie.
—Goethe
