Ace Jet 170

Redacted

 

It was Culture Night. My eldest teenager was heading into Belfast with some 'friends' to wallow in the free culture dripping from every corner and crevice of the city centre.

I'd never been to Culture Night in Belfast, even though I'd heard it's a great night to be out in; I'm too miserable for such free and easy public expressions of culture. No, The Night of Culture is a night for me to stay home and close the curtains. Batten down the hatches in case some culture breaks free and catches the bus out to the suburbs where we live – I keep a large stick by the front door just in case some culture comes a'knocking.

Of course, my son was really out talking to girls, his interest in an evening of extreme free-roaming culture thinly masking his real motivation.

At least my other son was safe at home.

Not for long. His mate Patrick rang and asked if he'd like to go to Culture Night. Wrenched from the comfort of our comfortable sofa (with matching very large food stool – it's soooo comfy) we head city-centre-wards; the two children too young to roam free on Crazy Night without an adult within rescue distance.

Once in town I was soon abandoned and wandered the cultural streets in search of a familiar face. Instead I discovered a familiar place –  Keats & Chapman open late to cash in on the culture punters, so in I went, with cash (K&C is the city's finest book cave and it flipped my evening better side up).

Top find: This Penguin Education edition of 'Academic Freedom', circa 1974, with a top notch cover by Omnific/Peter Thompson.

 

RIPath

 

6 years and 8,282 moments later…

The death of Path – the beautiful, sometimes flakey, alway marvellous, social media network – is scheduled for 18.10.18. It's sad. There's a lovely bunch of people with whom I've shared much via Path. The group fluctuated between around 12 and 18 but there was always a hard core that stood the test of time. It's quite something, having your friends in your pocket.

We shared lots; benefitting from each other's skills at time and enjoying each other's sparkling wit at other times. There were many bright moments – weddings, births, heroic deeds. But there were dark times too – deaths, illnesses, stresses, anxieties. To the uninitiated, it's probably hard to appreciate just how much (I think) we all got out of Path; out of some software – separated as we have always been by significant distances. Significant, but not insurmountable – we even got to meet up in real life from time to time.

Now, we find ourselves in a peculiarly modern predicament…

We've been given notice to quit our app.

東からのポストカード

 

Visual delights from the East, in the form of first days covers, from the late 60s through to the beginning of the 80s. Like all countries Japan has produced some absolutely stunning stampage (as illustrated here) and many cubic tonnes of self-adhesive shite.

読書

 

My summer read. 

Japan is stalking me. From the corner of my eye I see it, spying on me; following me. From the shelves of a shop; from a painting; whispering, it calls to me through my phone's podcast app…(the flipping weirdo); I bump into it, disguised as a postage stamp that just 'happened' to be passing my way; it sends my son models (better call the police).

It tricks me into letting it in by wearing a rather attractive jacket. 

I was talking about Japan with a friend of mine recently, around a camp fire, as it happens – so I was reminded of Jun'Ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows which Rob and Jon recommended via the North v South podcast.

I was telling Mike about Seth's Gundam habit and Mike was telling me about his mate that worked out there for a few years. Specifically, Mike remarked about quite how different his mate found the culture – for example, when travelling on the tube, unless you know the language it's incredible hard to recognise your destination by the station signs.

Reading these short stories gives you an inkling of the differences too; in the lifestyle and also in the format and style of stories.

The collection is compiled to demonstrate a broad Japanese brush so stories range wildly from matters of culture and honour to family, sex and nature with some translated from nineteenth century texts and others from modern work. So far, all are beautiful and 'other landly' – even the gruesome description of a Samurai's ritualistic suicide in 'Patriotism' almost moved me to tears, wrapped as it was in his motivation for such an extreme act and his wife's devotion and support…best you read it yourself, I can't possibly do it justice here.

 

The cover design is by Matthew Young and uses an illustration – Local Training the Country from Don't Give up Japan, 2012 by Hiroyuki Izutsu.

Pintorinterest

 

What was I doing last August? The one in 2017. Whatever it was it must have been all-consuming because I completely missed the publication of Moleskine's Giovanni Pintori monograph. Actually, that Moleskine published anything was news to me!

Pintori and Olivetti are, as you may know, bound together as tightly as the pages of this monograph. In the days when the typewriter was king, Olivetti was the Commander in Chief and Pintori was its…erm…Field Marshal. Armed with an ammunition box full of colours and shapes (and typewriters) the Lance Corporal Designer General would charge into battle, decimating lesser typewriter regiments with a frenzied volley of sub-machine artwork.

It would be fair to say that Pintori is the man that set the standard for the company's marketing activity, raising it head and shoulders above its competitors and visualising Adriano Olivetti's product vision. Pintori left the company in 1967, a few years after the death of the man, although continued to work for Olivetti on a freelance basis while growing his own independent practice.

The monograph brings together many of Olivetti's iconic ads along with original artwork and sketches then other commissions the designer carried out after leaving Olivetti.

If you're not so familiar with Pintori's work then a quick PinterSearch will yield much delicious fruit.

RGM-89 JEGAN

 

Somewhere between The Amazing World of Gumball and Overwatch my youngest son (he's not so young any more) builds Gundam models. Back in my day it was the Spitfire and Chieftain Tank that we assembled from Airfix kits bought from that model shop up on New Street. For Seth, it’s Mecha – equally complex, but shipped over from Japan.

If you lived in Japan, these amazing model kits wouldn’t cost you too much – a few week’s pocket money maybe, depending on which side of the Bullet Train tracks you were born on. We have to stump up for shipping but they are undeniably cool, so money (and time) well spent I say.

Seth's building quite a collection now and is really into the TV show they derive from.

The models take time to construct and (forgive me for sounding predictably parentist) in our age of fast gratification, that's a very pleasing thing to witness.

They're also awesome to photograph.

Pebble, without a cause

 

I, for one, am a natural pebblist. Unshackled by geological concerns, I am drawn to the pebble like a moth to a flame by an unconscious notion. For me, it is an instinct…and not one shaped by nature or nurture.

I grew up in Birmingham. Further from the sea, can you not get on the island of Great Britain, and although we holidayed by the sea occasionally, it wasn’t common enough to stir, within the young Ace Jet, a great interest in ocean-smoothed rock fragments.

Coming ashore 14 years ago in the north eastern corner of Ireland, I found myself dwelling in quite a different environment. The sea was, and has remained, mere minutes away. More than that, it seems that the Northern Irish find it hard to pull themselves away from the sea so when occasion takes us to explore beyond our immediate area, I am encouraged by both people and the call of other places to hug the coastline.

It seems the best places here are by the sea.

It wasn’t long before my gaze turned towards the shingle, the beauty of pebbles took hold, my hand reaching down to pick up a flattened ovoid of schist, a piece of chalcedony or a quartz veined slate.

‘Hang on a minute! You said you were “unshackled by geological concerns”, now you’re all “schist” this, “quartz veined” that. What (as the kids say) the flip?!’

Ah, well kids, you see now I'm reading Clarence Ellis's The Pebble on the Beach – A Spotter's Guide, recently re-designed and re-published by Faber & Faber. I'm getting the gist of the schist.

It's a really nice read and has a lovely 'fold-off' cover that reveals the illustrated spotter's guide. You can find out more about it on the Guardian's website here. It's unapologetically über-nerdy so you'll get the longshore drift of the 'swash', the 'backwash' and the 'fetch' and so much more that I don't think you'll look at a beach the same way again.

I'll be testing that out next weekend as we head northcoastwards once more. 

 

Hospitaleyes

 

This is, probably, my favourite building on the Belfast skyline; ever since we moved here I've admired it. I may be in the minority but I know I'm not alone. In fact, I'm very grateful to James Greive, who wrote about his fascination for the Belfast City Hospital building a few years ago on Architecture Ireland — not least because his piece fills in some gaps (and, provided the architect's impression below. Hope that's OK James).

The hospital building was the brain-child of 'avant-garde' architect Louis Adair Roche while he worked at Munce and Kennedy who don't seem to be around anymore. Cork-born, Roche's family moved up to the northern territories of the British Empire during the 1940s with LA packing his suitcase and heading over the water to study making buildings and that at University College London…in London. It seems that the hospital was his finest work, although it is also considered by many to be a monstrous carbuncle. I flipping love it.

Surprisingly, to me at least, it was opened in 1986. I've always assumed it was from the seventies. But, speculating wildly, that date might be a clue to explaining how the flip LAR got away with dropping that spaceship into the south western corner of the city.

I've heard stories about other Belfast buildings built during 'The Troubles' (late 1960s to late 1990s): against the backdrop of paramilitary shenanigans, seriously dubious city planning decisions were made. Maybe there were a few backhanders here and there; maybe there was a little 'pressure' applied — a little 'persuasion', you might call it. Who knows; between you and me I get the distinct impression that the laws of the land, during those difficult times, were somewhat more flexible than in other regions of the United Kingdom.

Whatevz. I for one (and I think Mr Greives would agree) am glad that the Rochemeister was granted approval for his design.

 

This gives you an idea of the building in context although you get a much better sense of its prominence from the ground.

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By the way, I didn't take the photos! They're great and I stumbled across them online, on the MDE Installations website. Finding them (the best photos of the building I've seen) is what prompted this post but they weren't credited so I can't say who took them. I use them with gratitude to the photographer and in the hope that whoever it was doesn't mind and won't be round to punch my lights out :-)

 

 

Roche died in 2014.

This is what The Irish Times had to say.

And here's a piece in The Irish News.

Loose Threads

I'm just putting these here. I've sold a couple, without trying but one day I'd like to get them out there and see if anyone's interested. Personally, I love them, which is the best place to start. Watercolour with cotton threads.

Kickstarting Dwiggins

W. A. Dwiggins (1880—1956) was one of the pioneers of American graphic design. A skilled calligrapher, type designer, printer and illustrator, he was a major force in print design in the early half of the twentieth century. He's one of those enigmatic figures that influenced so much — an ever-present name even if you don't know much about him.

Written and designed by Bruce Kennett, W. A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design is the first comprehensive biography on the great man. Currently a live Kickstarter project, from the Letterform Archive, it's already well exceeded its pledge goal but if you want a piece of the action go here now.