May 2009 Archives

• Interview with Edward Dolnick - A facinating analysis on how art forgeries fail when they get too close to the real deal, among other things
• Digital Analogue Clocks - or analogue digital clocks:

• On a more serious note, Who Owns the Worlds Antiquities A review of 2 books on the topic of cultural property laws.

And finally, Oh No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

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The Italian jewelry/watch/stuff house of Bulgari is celebrating its 125th birthday with all sorts of events including their first ever retrospective at  Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Between History and Eternity: 1884-2009.  Besides the namesake jewelry brand, the Bulgari group owns the Gerald Genta and Daniel Roth watchmaking brands, but I doubt these will be on display.  There's what appears to be a press release available online.  The Purists has a series of photos with a much better press release, including about a half dozen of the jewels proper. 
   Bulgari has a special section of their website devoted to the 125th Anniversary stuff(Flash Heavy, content light, it's only a few pages mostly devoted to a Save the Children benefit silver ring) as well as a timeline of designs.  For much more unusual depictions of their designs the photographer Guido Mocafico did a series of shoots for them.
   Also in celebration of the anniversary year they have released 4 new watches as the Sotirio Bulgari collection.  Press release for this collection is also on the Purists, as well as a collection of live shots of them. The four models are a Tourbillon QP, an Annual Calendar, a retrograde date and a simple time/date model in an officer-style case(much like the Patek 5015). 

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The ITP(Interactive Telecommunications Program) Spring show has produced some most unusual sillyness this year, including:

• Painting Robot - Not just randomly slapping paint around, this one can reproduce, well sorta, a picture optically
• Time in 6 parts - A collection of vaguely-clocklike pieces, including one that will keep time for several centuries and then fall apart

and more
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• Dr Seuss on Computers - It has been floating about the web since before time began
• Griping about Computing - Even older collection of quotes.  Having worked with AiX in my current mode of employ I find this particularly, sadly, appropriate:
• It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien discovered Unix, and described it to another different space alien who then implemented AIX. But their universal translators were broken and they'd had to gesture a lot.

[Via] and in much the same theme but from Stihl

• And on a completely different topic Photographer's Math

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First from the New York Times a somewhat summary op-ed on the Republicans loosing their way
Second is after the jump

Confrerie Horlogere(annoying site music) is a group sponsered by BNB (watch movement company) to enable new watchmakers to develop their designs, using BNB movements, nacht.  David Rodriguez is one of the current 7, and present his first piece with a unusual vision.

Press Release from David Rodriguez

It's a movie embedded after the jump, and I've got really nothing to add to it, except to use the word "Fiscing"  to refer to it.[VIA]
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Thierry Nataf has been replaced as President/CEO/Chief Designer of Zenith, one of the brands owned by LVMH by Jean-Frédéric Dufour [ source ].  He helped transform a sleepy brand into something that became shorthand for gaudy excess and mediocre horology, though he did manage to not destroy it's lineage in the process at least.   He was, if not liked, at least one of the most colorful brand leaders.

See some images and such after the cut

A somewhat discontinued model, they still make the series, but it's been all blinged-up, this one is probably from the 1990s.  Apologies for the dust.

Somehow a pair of collections of "people painted to look like the walls" came along

• Liu Bolin - Has a distinctly Chinese flare
• Emma Hack- is far less political
• Invisible Skoda - Making a car disappear in the same manner
  

And unrelated to that entirely, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design announced the winners of the 2009 National Design Awards
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