Ace Jet 170

Waterworld

 

Oxfam Bookshop, some time last year. Two tattered volumes from around 1910 of technical data relating to the waterways of the UK. Edge to edge text. But…throughout one volume, maps. Flipping beautiful maps.

Annotated with proposals for new works, overprinted with routes, amendments and notable features, the maps looked as fresh and clean as the day they were born.

That overprinted text. Lovely.

 

 

The staff found them tricky to price, with no real precedent, and I actually paid more than they asked for. There's a bargain and then there's fair play.

 

Staples

 

I've just found this saved as a draft. Not sure why I never published it, but here it is, a few years late…

If you dig deep into the Ace Jet Archive, practically back to the very beginning, you'll find mention of a previous trip to New York City.

Then, it was when roaming the Upper West Side that I stumbled across an old office supplies shop with amazing dusty old stationery treasure stashed at the back; old stock, unsuitable for the modern office, that hadn't moved for maybe decades.

That's where I found the small box of staples with 'Ace Jet 170’ printed on it.

Fast forward many years and a return to the city. This time the stationery shop was Midtown — Phil's Stationery. Hope it's still there. The guy in the shop claimed they were the people that supplied the staplers for Mad Men.

A kick in the thread

 

I try not to buy everything I like the look of. Sometimes I just take a quick snap and post it somewhere then slip the thing back where I found it. And then sometimes I kick myself.

These were in one of my favourite charity bookshops. And we're still there when I left. But not when I went back later.

Kick.

Paris in your pocket

 

I've always said that I only really miss two things about England: Pubs and London. We took full advantage of both while we could, wandering and drinking as we went — the perfect way to enjoy a city.

I found this in the Oxfam Bookshop on the Portobello Road and snaffled it up for the surprisingly tiny price of £1.99. I have a weakness for pocket city guides. Imagine wandering the streets of Paris with this in hand instead of your phone. 

 

Huguenots of Spitalfields

 

On a swift yomp from place to place I clocked these tiles. Turns out they're the tip of the icing on the cake.

They are on Hanbury Hall, on Hanbury Street and unbeknown to those that don't know, inside the building — that was originally built as a Huguenot Chapel in 1719 — are lots more tiles by illustrator and ceramicist Paul Bommer. 

I could pretend to know a lot about Bommer's Deft style tiles but all I know is, of course, what I found by Googling 'Huguenots of Spitalfields tiles'. There's quite a lot out there, including loads of images on spitalfieldslife.com of many beautiful tiles, each representing some part of Spitalfields' story.

Bliar

 

This is from around 2010 — a few years after Blair's PMship but during that period when he was accused of committing war crimes relating to the conflict in Iraq.

It was designed by David Gentleman as a protest placard and demonstrates the power of a brilliant idea simply executed.

I hadn't seen it before our visit to the Design Museum this week. We were over in London for, amongst other things, a family outing to see Blur at Wembley. 

The two things are not unrelated. Blair and Blur are both cultural icons of a period that means a lot to Karen and I. They were good times in which we got together, got married and had our boys.

Blair was the last PM I liked, shame he was wrapped up in a horrendous scandal of misinformation that caused countless unnecessary deaths.