A Bolder Boulder Travel Guide

Posted on December 14, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

The popular American outdoor clothing company Patagonia commissioned the local design studio Cast Iron to create a city guide to its home town of Boulder, Colorado. The neat little travel guide covers the highlights of America’s “happiest city” from local coffee shops, restaurants, and hangouts to hiking trails and recreational opportunities.  The real highlight of the pocket-sized guide is the innovative use of algae-based black ink and Kraft paper instead of the usual petroleum derived print products.

 

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Charles Dickens and the Marketing of Christmas

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Charles Dickens and his iconic story A Christmas Carol have become synonymous with Christmas celebrations, however a special holiday exhibition at  the Charles Dickens Museum in London demonstrates that his connection to the holiday season is not all candy canes and cheesy cards.

Beautiful Books: Dickens and the Business of Christmas  presents an exceptional selection of Dickens rare books, including a unique “trial” edition of A Christmas Carol with illustrations by John Leech predating the December 19, 1843 first edition, one of which is also there.  In addition, visitors will also find first editions of his other Christmas stories, including The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848), all cloth bound with gilt edges, decorative endpapers, and vignette title pages. There are also examples of the first Christmas card created in 1843 by Henry Cole and illustrated by John Callot Horsley (see above), engravings by Dickens’ frequent collaborator Hablot Knight Browne, various Christmas Victoriana, and stunning jeweled books with bindings by Sangorski and Sutcliffe.

The show runs through April, 2020.

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Home For Christmas

Posted on December 12, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Last weekend, the UK-based artist(s) known as Banksy stenciled a moving holiday themed artwork on a wall in Birmingham, UK. The piece, and accompanying video, were designed to highlight the homelessness crisis in the city. Of course, the mural was almost immediately defaced. The city quickly covered it in plastic for protection, but it now has 24 hour guards. So it goes.

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Paris: 66 Million BC

Posted on December 11, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

I know the big name dinosaurs—Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Velociraptor, etc.—but that’s about the extent of my grasp of Dinosauria. However, my nephew Cameron is a budding paleontologist at the age of two (yes, 2) and he constantly schools me on the identification and naming of his favorite creatures. The precocious toddler has been obsessed with dinos since he was an infant. When we get together he shares his favorite  books, toys, and videos . Cameron not only has an impressive ability to recognize species, but he can accurately pronounce names, such as Archaeoceratops, Diplodocus, Pachycephalosaurus.  This past weekend, I was able show him some contemporary dinosaurs stalking the streets of Paris .

Artist Julien Nonnon has resurrected some of the extinct reptiles for his latest work, “Prehistoric Safari,” utilizing video-mapping technology to project images of the dinosaurs in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. The digital art form is an exciting mash-up of photography, video, and architecture. Nonnon created 17 3D-projections of species that lived during the Cretaceous period. Of course, Cameron identified and named them all.

The projections can be viewed January 5. and online at Nonnon’s  Instagram page.

 

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Mark Twain Travel Writer

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

When we think about the great 19th century American writer Mark Twain, his lauded Mississippi River novels usually come to mind. However, it was the 1869 travel book The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress  which first brought him prominence.  The New-York Historical Society has opened an exhibition dedicated to Twain’s first blockbuster book. Running through February 2, 2020, this is an intriguing look at the young author on the eve of celebrity. The exhibit features Twain documents and letters, photographs, artifacts, and books.

In 1867, Mark Twain was an up and coming journalist, humorist, and public speaker visiting New York City. When he read about the new concept of a pleasure cruise to Europe and the Mediterranean on a ship called the Quaker City, Twain convinced a San Francisco newspaper to pay for his passage in return for a weekly travel column on the voyage and this early foray into organized tourism.

 

The voyage of the Quaker City was well documented by an onboard professional photographer. Some of William E. James’ images are included in the exhibition, including the one below featuring Twain. The author is seated on the floor next to the man holding a hat.

Twain mined his experiences on the ship and during shore excursions for humorous pieces about vagaries of tourism. He dedicated some of his most cutting writing to the hugely disappointing time that he spent in Palestine. Still, Twain’s participation in the trip and his subsequent writing helped to launch American travel writing.

 

 

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Blue Monday NYC

Posted on December 9, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

It’s a blue Monday in “Rainy Day, New York,” a 1940 painting by Leon Dolice—a Vienna-born artist who visited NYC in the 1920s, and it’s a rainy blue Monday today.

 

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Not just the Gateway to the Fjords

Posted on December 8, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Bergen has to be one of my favorite small European cities. The beautifully situated and stunningly scenic city has long been promoted as “the gateway to the Fjords” with much success. But now the tourism professionals at Visit Bergen have enlisted the Norwegian advertising agency Anti to rebrand and update their image.

Norway’s most attractive, and one of its most heavily touristed, destinations has also begun to take steps to head-off the dreaded overtourism that has blighted other European towns. In a daring move, Bergen has set limits on the number of cruiseships that can dock and how long they can remain.

The rebranding campaign, which includes its own typeface, color scheme, travel guides, and tourist merchandise, is using “Life in full contrast” as the new slogan for Visit Bergen. In an effort to broaden attitudes towards the city, they plan to celebrate Bergen’s cultural, as well as natural diversity. There’s even an accompanying video (see below) created with local hip hop artists that uses imagery from a time before tourism was so prevalent.

 

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Bookstore Cat

Posted on December 7, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Old Books with Cat, Barcelona, Photo by Francesc Català-Roca, 1953

Homage to Catalonia

 

 

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We Were Warned

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Last May, the street artist(s) known as Banksy unveiled a dramatic mural near Campo Santa Margherita  in Venice. It featured a child refugee clad in a lifevest and holding a neon pink flare. Over the course of Autumn flooding, during the past months, the painting has been lapped by rising waters. This week, Banksy posted photos on social media that  appear to show flooding up to the child’s chest, and has covered part of the flare.

 

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Think Globally, Shop Locally

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

 

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