What's Latest in Ornamentum
From Boneshaker to the Pneumatic Tire
like to think that the passion for collecting is rooted in humanity’s prehistory as hunters and gatherers, that it feeds upon our need to situate ourselves in the environment, and that it satisfies our psychological hunger for a certain stability in time...
“Nose Art” In The Royal Canadian Air Force, 1939-1945
mmortalized in books, movies, and song, the practice of applying illustrative graphics to aircraft during wartime has existed almost since the Wright Brothers took to the sky at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, and J.A.D. McCurdy piloted the Silver Dart off...
Ship to Shore: Steamers and Hotelware of Muskoka’s Golden Age
his summer the RMS Segwun turns 125. She still sails the Muskoka Lakes, the last reminder of what was once the largest inland navigation fleet in Canada. Steam navigation on the Muskoka Lakes began with the launching of the Wenonah by Alexander Peter...
Of Bikes and Bondo: Doc James’s custom creations
Cummings was known only by his middle name, James. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, he ran a shop, an old-time gas station, called The House of Kustom Kolors in Victoria Square, north of Toronto. He painted hot-rod bodies and motorcycle parts,...
The Decorative View of Locomotion
Editorial by John Fleming
The “invention of the wheel, which doesn’t look at all like a leg” (Guillaume Apollinaire), sums up in a few words what is undoubtedly one of humanity’s most useful scientific concepts. Continuous rotary motion through the simplicity and formal elegance of the circle harnesses human energy...
Spring/Summer 2012 Issue – Design and Locomotion
Editorial: The Decorative View of Locomotion – John Fleming
Of Bikes and Bondo: Doc James’s Custom Creations – Lee Sheppard
Ship to Shore: Steamers and Hotelware of Muskoka’s Golden Age – Geoffrey Shifflett
“Nose Art” in the Royal Canadian Air Force, 1939-1945 – Don B. Smith
Many Hands Make Light Work: A Family Album Quilt
hen Oakville, Ontario, art quilter
Linda Achen conceived the idea of
a family album quilt decorated
with signatures and sayings of
relatives for her young nephew in 1998, she was
evoking a tradition begun by women during the
nineteenth century. Then, as now,...
Psychedelic Poster Art from Vancouver: The Ephemeral Turned Collectible
ancouver has a rich history as a
rock and roll city, and few have a
better appreciation for that history
than Rob Frith. Besides owning
Neptoon Records—the oldest independent
record store in Vancouver—and a record label by
the same name which has...
“The Bones of Thought”: Punctuation in Translation
anice Gurney is a contemporary painter whose recent work expresses an apparently binary semiotic in what she has called “punctuation in translation” or as we viewers might say,
“punctuation painting.” Intrigued by a quotation in P.D. James’s novel Original Sin taken from the