One Plus One Equals Three

Daimaru: Then and Later and... 'Kimono'

Many Melburnians will be familiar with the Japanese department store chain of Daimaru. We had a Daimaru store in this city for quite a few years, located in the Melbourne Central development that was designed by famed 'Nakajin Capsule' architect Kisho Kurokawa (who, incidentally, died last year). At left is an image of some kimono being sold at one of the original Daimaru stores. This one's in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, which was founded in 1726.

The image at left is part of a new exhibition in town: Kimono: Osaka's Golden Age at the Immigration Museum. Many types of stunningly beautiful kimono are on display in an exhibition designed by, well, yours truly, in conjunction with the museum. We designed the 2D aspects within the show and a souvenir book.

Children's kimono, women's and men's kimono, accessories, drawings, paintings, and the star of the show for me, firemen's kimono, are on show (in Melbourne only) until September 14. The exhibition "highlights the wealth and prosperity enjoyed by the Japanese during the Edo and Meiji periods (1850-1900)". 'Kimono' celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Melbourne-Osaka Sister City relationship and the 10th anniversary of the museum. The kimono are so delicate and of such an age that the display has to be swapped round in two months time to avoid wear-and-tear and possible risk of fading (but they still look great after 150+ years to me).

Stand by for more on this exhibition. The kimono are quite breathtaking and the show really is a knock-out (even if I say so myself).

A couple of quick pics from the opening in the continuation...

3 x Design Notables Noted

3 x design notables that you may not have noticed before:
– Rick Poynor on Will Burtin (image above)
– Peter Seitz at Design Observer
– 26 minutes with Sagmeister – whom you probably have noted, no doubt – but I've not come across this video before (with that identity for Rem Koolhaas too).

All masterful stuff. Worth noting.

2 x Clever Exhibition Designs

Here are two recent exhibition/trade show designs that I've been particularly impressed by (inasmuch as they've been viewed online, not walked through by myself). johnson banks' design of an exhibition about penicillin uses flattened-out drug packaging as the display panels and a trade show booth for Charles and Ray Eames (as part of the Herman Miller display) uses giant interlocking Eames cards. Both are clever ideas beautifully resolved.

The Stuffing of 'Big Red'

Phar Lap (which is Thai for lightning) was an extraordinarily successful racehorse in Australia during the Depression-era 1930s that went on to become a celebrated sporting hero and later a cultural icon. No visit to the Melbourne Museum was complete without a wander round 'Big Red's' glass enclosure, where school-kids could (and still can) marvel at his immense size of 17 hands (most horses are 15 to 16 hands high).

He won 37 times from his last 41 starts, including the 1931 Melbourne Cup. Banjo Peterson said at the time: 'Phar Lap, the one and only, a freak, a horse of the century'. In 1932 he was taken to the U.S. where he won North America's richest horse-race, the Agua Caliente Handicap. Then 2 weeks later, he was dead.

Struck down by a mystery illness, long rumoured to be the work of American gangsters, but in reality it appears that Phar Lap became ill with a bacterial infection (Anterior Enteritis) brought on by the stress of travel to the U.S. and months of hard racing.

Phar Lap's corpse was then transformed via taxidermy into the iconic exhibit at Museum Victoria (image above). The Soibelman Syndicate News Agency Collection of photography on display at The Visual Studies Workshop has archival photographs of the process. (Careful, those squeamish amongst you may find one or two of these images a tad 'icky').

Link courtesy of Evenings On The Lake.