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Showing posts from April, 2021

The Mummy's Curse and the Armani Suit

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    There’s a reason it’s called rag paper.   For centuries, ragpickers supplied the papermaking industry with cotton and linen. Discarded clothing scraps were the aluminum cans of the past. They provided a livelihood to the unskilled. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, everything changed. A rising bourgeoisie and the success of education lead to increasing demand for printed material. The impact upon paper and the rag   supply chain was unanticipated. Consumption of traditional cotton and linen scraps outstripped supply.   The price of rags rose. When demand for papermaking material exceeded supply, alternate sources were sought.    One long forgotten trove of very, very old rags was rediscovered in the 1800s: linen wrapped Egyptian mummies. A Maine papermill owner imported a boatload of them and removed the linen wrappings. The linen was then converted into pulp with the end product being butcher wrap.   Production of the brown   ...

Isamu Noguchi and His Nisei Muse

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Noguchi Doing Time While it is true that at Poston Isamu Noguchi was neither fish nor fowl not fully Japanese and was in the internment camp voluntarily None of those who had reason to not want him around had the authority to release him He was a perpetual outsider Much like Pollock was portrayed as a cowboy but was anything but Except for Jackson's drinking Two artists doing time in ill-fitting Pigeonholes The book tells the story of Isamu Noguchi's girlfriend and muse during his time in the Poston Internment Camp, located in the Arazona desert where she inspired his famous lamps. CLICK HERE TO BE TAKEN TO THE FULL PREVIEW OF THE BOOK. The book is a limited edition of fifty copies.