Heraldic Discrepancies in Fashion

Ralph Lauren’s Modern Field Collection

THERE IS ATTENTION to detail and then there is pedantry, and I hope this falls into the former rather than the latter. Among the numerous e-mails which find their way into my electronic postbox are occasional notifications from the Polo Ralph Lauren corporation, a multi-faceted operation involved in the design, sale, and distribution of fairly decent items of clothing. Just one such e-mail received just the other day informed me of Ralph Lauren’s new ‘Modern Field Collection’, yet another judicious tie-in to take advantageous of the patriotic (or vicariously patriotic) impulses of the consumer before, during, and after the 2010 World Cup. As someone who is interested in national and cultural symbolism, most especially heraldry, I was mildly intrigued and clicked through to find a veritable gold mine of discrepancies which I hope the reader will forgive my exposition of. (more…)

Aldermania

Matt Alderman, already the subject of his own tag on this site, finally has a website of his own for Matthew Alderman Studios. You can investigate his prints, drawings, ecclesiastical furnishings, and liturgical objects. You can even ‘like’ it on Facebook.

In a Westchester auction house

Saturday I popped in to have a friendly chat with Paterfamilias Gill, of which the usual topic of conversation is the decline of civilisation and the amusing side effects thereof. We had reached Afghanistan when Mrs. Gill eventually joined us, and, after showing me the latest addition to the Gill collection (a splendid maritime scene by William Edward Norton), Mr. Gill suggested an expedition to the auction house down a back alley in neighbouring Larchmont, and I happily agreed.

Above is a gilt bronze and patinated metal clock in the French style. I’m rather fond of the curvature of spherical clockfaces, and the serpentine hands are a nice detail as well. This clock would fit in at 15 East Ninety-sixth Street. Estimate of $800-$1,000. (more…)

‘Handmade’ by Xavi García

‘A reaction to the soullessness of digital design’

Not many artists or designers have a business degree from Salamanca or studied management in Gothenburg. Xavi García has, though, and it’s obvious his grounding in the financial realm had an influence on his personal art project ‘Handmade’ — a banknote meticulously created by hand using drypoint, screenprinting, and stamps on newsprint. García describes the project as “a reaction to the soullessness of digital design”. (more…)

4 de Junio

On June 4, 1943, a murky group of Argentine military officers called the GOU (standing for United Officers’ Group, or Government, Order, Unity) overthrew President Ramon Castillo and ended the Década Infame, or ‘Infamous Decade’ that had begun with the 1930 coup against Hipólito Yrigoyen. The ’43 coup was led by General Arturo Rawson, who served as President of Argentina for a month before being replaced by the more politically minded Gen. Pedro Ramírez.

Ramírez sympathised with the Axis powers in the Second World War, and his inability to successfully maintain Argentina’s neutrality in the face of U.S. pressure led to his resignation and succession by Gen. Edelmiro Farrell, who was viewed by most as the instrument of his charismatic junior, the infamous Col. Juan Perón (with whom we are all too familiar).

This poster produced by the junta incorporates a number of the symbols of Argentine patriotism and nationalism. ‘Liberty’ and ‘Justice’ are proclaimed the principles of the junta, and underneath the date of the coup is announced the ‘Dawn of a Greater Argentina’. The Phrygian cap of liberty, a frequent Argentine emblem, rests atop the scales of justice while the stars of the Southern Cross imply a divine favour over the new regime.

The map of Argentina coloured in yellow includes the British colony of the Falkland Islands and Antártida Argentina, the Argentine Republic’s claimed possession on the Antarctic continent (which overlaps with competing claims by Chile and the United Kingdom). Behind the whole composition, the Argentine Cockade looms ascendant like a rising sun, affirming the text’s proclamation of a new dawn under the nationalist-revolutionary regime.

The new Times of London online

IAM MILDLY obsessed with newspaper design (in case you hadn’t noticed that already). But even those few newspapers that manage to either be attractive or worth reading (or indeed both) usually have websites that are astoundingly ugly. Check out the websites of The Scotsman, Le Monde, or the Times of India. They vary from awful to “meh”. The website of The Hindu is ugly, but is being replaced by a much more handsome design. Despite the over-sized ad on the index page, Die Zeit‘s website is on the handsome side of things, but that of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a mixed bag, some well-done details here, other poor ones there. I despise lefigaro.fr, especially since they started charging for their e-paper edition. The structure and flow of telegraph.co.uk is actually good, but the detailing isn’t and (like faz.net) it poorly reflects its newspaper’s personality.

Along then strolls the once-venerable Times (f. 1785), with a brand spanking new website at thetimes.co.uk. Clear, orderly, precise in its details, and just plain handsome in its overall design. There’s nothing particularly special or over-the-top about it; it’s just well done, but that is shockingly rare for newspapers today. (more…)

Cape Town’s New Way to Get Around

Over at Fascination Street, Brent Smith shows us the newly revealed branding for Cape Town’s new integrated rapid transit system: MyCiti. I’m not partlicularly impressed. Most of my fellow uitlanders will be forgiven for lacking an understanding of the stylised freehand letter ‘y’, which is rather tortured into representing an outline of Devil’s Peak, Tafelberg, and Lion’s Head. Mr. Smith diplomatically reserves judgement but I think they could’ve done better, although they could have done much worse.

Classical South Africa

I’m rather fond of the little coin logo of the Classical Association of South Africa, which appears on the front page of the society’s scholarly journal, Acta Classica: Verhandelinge van die Klassieke Vereniging van Suid-Afrika. CASA also publishes, in cooperation with Stellenbosch University, Akroterion: Tydskrif vir die Klassieke in Suid-Afrika. The study of our ancient civilisation is alive & well in South Africa!

The Clootie Dumpling

IT IS A DESIGN masterstroke, combining simplicity and ease of recognition with layers of symbolism. The emblem of the Scottish National Party is just one single line that descends, turns around, and crosses itself, but while remaining uncomplicated manages to evoke the Saltire (Scotland’s flag), the thistle (Scotland’s flower), and — the pudding which has given the logo its nickname — the clootie dumpling, a Scots specialty. And yet, despite its ubiquity, there is surprisingly little to be found online about the history of the SNP’s clootie dumpling.

The emblem was commissioned by William Wolfe (right) in 1962 for the parliamentary by-election in which he was standing as the Scottish Nationalist candidate. The party had typically employed a lion rampant as its symbol, which Wolfe thought too complex, and got Julian Gibb (in his own words, “scarcely out of childhood”) to design the brilliantly simple logo. “A political visionary with an eye for iconography,” according to Gibb, Wolfe used the emblem in the unsuccessful by-election campaign and a year later successfully proposed it to the party for adoption as the party emblem.

“The adoption of a geometric logotype is a bold act for a political organisation, especially a nationalist one, with the swastika a not too distant memory,” writes Gibb. “But the inner logic of the thing was persuasive. Forbye imagined allusions to saltire, thistle, and clootie dumpling, there was perhaps something irresistible about virile angularity supported on swelling curvature, implying among other things that in this outfit, the mechanistic depended on the organic. At one end of the scale of application it was devised to be hastily slapped on walls with a furtively loaded brush (the aerosol age had yet to come) and a quick flick of the wrist – no skill required. Try doing that with the lion rampant.” (more…)

Hollandic Heraldry

The Eden Spiekermann group, who were responsible for the redesign of The Economist in 2001, recently developed this logotype for the Dutch province of North Holland. The conjoined legs of the ‘N’ and ‘H’ integrate the province’s coat of arms.

’n Indiese woning in die Moederstad

Kaapstad het ’n bietjie van die Himalajas

Twee versamelaars van suid-Asiatiese kuns het ’n subkontinentale woning in ’n Kaapstadse meenthuis geskep. Die huis was die onderwerp van ’n artikel deur Johan van Zyl in ’n onlangse uitgawe van Visi-tydskrif met hierdie foto’s van Mark Williams. Die algehele effek is ’n bietjie “over the top” vir my, maar die verleiding van die Oriënt sal nooit ophou. (Bo: ’n Paar van marmer-olifante uit Udaipur wagte by die hoofingang).

“In ’n nou keisteenstraat aan die rand van die Kaapse middestad staan ’n huis met ‘n geskiedenis” Mnr van Zyl skryf. “Toe dit in 1830 vir Britse soldate gebou is, het die branders nog digby die voordeur geklots, en nie lank daarna nie het Lady Anne Barnard hier sit en peusel aan ’n geilsoet vy wat ’n slaaf vir haar gepluk het, stellig van dieselfde boom wat nou in die huis se (nuwe) trippelvolume-glashart staan, ’n knewel met ’n vol lewe agter die blad.”

“’n Dekade of twee gelede het die reeds luisterryke geskiedenis van die huis ’n eksotiese dimensie bygekry toe twee toegewyde versamelaars — selferkende stadsjapies wat destyds in die modebedryf werksaam was — hier kom nesskop met hulle groeiende versameling Indiese oudhede.” (more…)

La Bandiera dell’Io Amo L’Italia

In most countries, the voter of sound mind and disposition is hard pressed to find a political party worthy of his vote. One of the charming aspects of Italy is that the inverse is true: there are usually at least half-a-dozen political parties worth voting for, sound in policies and public morals, though the more recent trend has been towards amalgamation. It nonetheless often seems that every Italian of public stature has, at some time or another, founded his own political party.

Readers will no doubt recall the Holy Father’s rather brave baptism of the Egyptian-born Italian journalist Magdi Allam during the Easter Vigil of 2008. Signore Allam has proven his Italicity by following the peninsular trend of founding one’s own political party. Founded as Protagonisti per l’Europa Cristiana (Protagonists for Christian Europe), Allam’s party is now known as Io Amo L’Italia (I Love Italy). The party has had an early success in that its founder was elected to the European Parliament in the most recent elections, and he caucuses with the Christian-democratic Unione di Centro in the continental assembly.

Anyhow, the relevance for us is that Magdi Cristiano Allam’s political party has adopted a “baptized” tricolore of its own: the green-white-red tricolour defaced (as is the proper vexillological term) with a simple golden cross the arms of which reach to the ends of the field. A very simple solution, and not half bad really. One of the party’s Facebook followers suggests having a tricolore with a Constantinian-style cross in the center, which is another not half bad idea.

Baptizing the Tricolore

THE RECENT RULING of the self-styled “European Court of Human Rights” that the presence of crucifixes in Italian schools is a violation of the rights of a non-practicing Lutheran from Finland has sparked a surge of outrage against European institutions in Italy, and indeed elsewhere. While (as Gerald Warner has reported), the Italian Constitutional Court has shown the proverbial two fingers to the ECHR judgement in a ruling of its own, one junior cabinet minister has a suggestion of his own. Roberto Castelli, Italy’s deputy minister for infrastructure and transportation, suggests the country should reassert its Christian identity by adding a cross or crucifix to the Italian flag.

“I believe,” Mr. Castelli said, “that Europe has the right to recognize its true identity that we are starting to lose completely.” Even the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Freemason and ex-Socialist Franco Frattini, seemed amenable to the idea. “Nine European countries already have the cross on their flag,” Frattini pointed out. “It is an extremely common proposition.” (more…)

Le « dingbat » du Figaro

Did you know that Le Figaro used to have a “dingbat”? No, neither did I, until I was stumbling through the archives the other day. For a brief period in the 1930s, the Fig stylistically dropped the article “le” from its nameplate, while continuing to be known as “Le Figaro” for all intents and purposes. Simultaneously, they introduced a handsome horizontal dingbat to sit atop the newspaper’s unique name. (more…)

The Australian

A surprisingly handsome newspaper, especially considering it is owned by (and, indeed, was founded by) Rupert Murdoch. Reminds me of The Scotsman in its broadsheet days.

Scottish Field

“He looked up from Scottish Field and all the colour, all the warmth of the world of those pages seemed to drain away.” So writes Alexander McCall Smith in The World According to Bertie, in which the eponymous minor’s enforced visits to the child psychiatrist at the command of his overbearing mother are made at least somewhat bearable by the freedom to flip through the pages of the magazine. Scottish Field is an institution, a staple of doctors’ waiting rooms and bed-and-breakfast sideboards, as well as acting as a Caledonian companion to Country Life and The Field (both of which are produced south of the Tweed, a world away). Your humble & obedient scribe even once graced the high-and-mighty social pages of Scottish Field, beside Lt. Col. Bogle and His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh.

Scottish Field recently underwent a bit of a redesign, which included a typographical change to its old-fashioned nameplate (often called a banner or, erroneously, the masthead). (more…)

Joost Swarte

This year’s summer issue of The Walrus featured a cover from the cartoonist Joost Swarte, which occasioned a post about the Dutch ligne-clairist on the magazine’s blog. Mijnheer Swarte actually invented the term ligne-claire (or klare lijn) to describe the Tintin-esque school of bandes-dessinees, and has collaborated with the noted Peter van Dongen on the latter’s Rampokan series depicting the late years of the Dutch East Indies before it became Indonesia. Swarte’s work has also featured in The New Yorker, our “local” weekly which partly inspired the Canadian Walrus. Jumping from the printed page to brick and mortars, the new Musée Hergé in Louvain-le-Neuve was actually designed by Swarte. His previous architectural work includes a theatre building in his home town of Haarlem in North Holland. (more…)

The Nook, Stellenbosch

This place opened up in Stellenbosch just before I left South Africa, but I never had the chance to check it out. I like to look of the place, even though the colours are a bit too subdued for my taste. (more…)