Babysitting on New Year's Eve

I'm a very far cry from a teenager, and I won't have on saddle oxfords, but everything else about this picture will be true...more or less...at the stroke of twelve tonight. I will be babysitting my two grandsons while my daughter and SIL go out with friends to ring in the new year.

New Year's Eve 1958
saturdayeveningpost.com

I'll take a good book (on my Kindle)...lay in a few snacks...kick back in a comfy mid-century chair. The boys will be snug in their beds by the time the ball drops, but that doesn't guarantee they'll be alseep.

This Saturday Evening Post cover from 1958 has Miss Teen Babysitter enjoying a glass of milk while watching the festivities on black and white TV. Artist Ben Prins captured the home decor and fashions perfectly. I'll definitely be in jeans and sweater; however, I'll be slugging back a Diet Coke and watching the Times Square insanity in living color on HDTV.

Here are a couple of other New Year's Even illustrations from bygone days that I think you'll enjoy.

Waiter with no one to kiss at midnight by Constantin Alajalov - New Year's Eve 1949
saturdayeveningpost.com

Norman Rockwell's waiter in The Morning After, New Year's Eve at the Waldorf Astoria
saturdayeveningpost.com

I'll probably have this big a mess to clean up...but it will be Legos, alphabet blocks and Weebles!

Have a safe and pleasant New Year's Eve

and

A Very Happy 2012 to All!

Back in the day: Hair curlers

Over the past 60 years, I have endured just about every sort of torture device invented to make women's hair beautiful. Looking back, it's a miracle I have any hair left at all.

I wish I had a dollar for every pincurl my mother wound on my head. The upside to bobby pinned curls was that they weren't terribly uncomfortable to sleep on. The downside was that it took my thick hair forever to dry.

Bobby pins
olivecocomag.com

Pincurls...still being used in the late 1940s/early 1950s
hot1940shairstyles.com

Me, as a pincurl girl

My got my first perm in the early 1950s. My grandmother lived in a small East Texas town of 1,000 people. The beauty salon on the town square was a bit behind in hair care technology and was still using an antiquated perm machine from the 1930s. Without my parents' permission, I was hooked up to a contraption like this...even though I already had Shirley Temple ringlets. The result was horrifying, and my parents were not pleased. There are no photos extant from that period. I think it was a condition of my parents' agreeing to speak to my grandmother ever again.

Permanent wave machine...invented in 1934
pennyspurse.com

From pincurls and bad perms, I graduated to brush rollers. These things were hellish to sleep on! Women suffered in silence for years, until some genius invented small rectangular foam pads to put next to the scalp. The rollers were fastened together with plastic picks, the best of which had a metal rod down the center so they didn't bend.

Brush rollers
ebay.com - southpawtracy

My picks of choice back in the day...still being sold
amazon.com

Brush rollers and hairnet
the60sofficialsite.com

Foam curlers were invented to give us some relief, I suppose. Even though they were much more pleasant to sleep on, they never worked as well for me as brush rollers.

Foam rollers
xtremebeauty.net

The scarf...pre-bouffant satin hair bonnet
ayushveda.com

Ditto plastic rollers...not as effective as the ones with brushes. Like the foam rollers, they always creased my hair.

Clip-on plastic rollers
alibaba.com

Too prone to crease
cosmeticbrushs.com

Smooth plastic curlers were an improvement, but they were still very difficult to sleep on. At this point in hair curler history, the diameter of rollers got completely out of control. And when I couldn't find curlers big enough, I used orange juice cans!

I was all red, all the time.
marlobeauty.com

Plastic rollers and the super-long bobby pin
fiftieswedding.com

Finally, in the mid-1960s, I got a decent night's sleep when hot curlers were invented. Aside from the occasional burn, they were a boon to women everywhere.

Clairol Kindness hot curlers
addoway.com

Hot curlers and special clips
thebeautyreview.com.au

A. Quincy Jones homes

Two homes designed by the noted architect A. Quincy Jones have sold in Southern California in the last 18 months, and one is still on the market. Jones is known for designing many of the homes built by developer Joseph Eichler.

The first home is the residence that Jones designed for actor Gary Cooper and completed in 1955. It is located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. According to the previous owner, who sold it for $15,500,000 in July of 2010, the neighborhood sits above Sunset Boulevard and is less known than Beverly Hills but more upscale. The 6000 square foot, 4 bedroom/5.5 bathroom house has a single-sloped roof rising to a wall of windows, mitered glass corners, ranch-like wings, a stone fireplace and a small pool with a miniature waterfall that is half inside the house and half out, flowing beneath a glass wall.

Gary Cooper home
eichlernetwork.com

Interior of the Gary Cooper home
eichlernetwork.com

Next is the Hamma residence, a 1731 square foot 3 bedroom/2.5 bath home in the Los Angeles area. It was built in 1951 and declared a Los Angeles Historio-Cultural Monument in 2005. The home sold in June of this year for $1,575,000.

Hamma residence
realtor.com

Interior of Hamma residence
realtor.com

The third home, originally listed at $29,000,000, makes the other two homes seem like a bargain, even at its marked down price of $24,900,000 ($2,929/sf). This 8500 square foot home sits on 3.6 acres in Bel Air and boasts ocean and city views, glass walls, a vineyard, a guest house and meandering paths leading to the gardens, pond and swimming pool. The house was built in 1965.

Bel Air home
realtor.com

Pool area of Bel Air home
realtor.com

Nanny Still

Nanny Still (1926-2009), also known by her married name of Still-McKinney, was a Finnish designer of glass and ceramics. She studied at Finland's Central School of Arts and Crafts, receiving her degree in 1950.

In 1949, before finishing her education, she started to work as a glass designer for Riihimäki, Finland's largest glassworks, and remained there in some capacity until 1976, although she designed some pieces Norrmark, Heinrich Porzellan and Val Saint-Lambert. Starting in 1977, she designed glass and ceramics for Rosenthal Studios and continued to do so for the rest of her career. She also designed for Iittala.

Her work was shown in the 1954, 1957 and 1960 Milan Triennials, and she received the Diplôme d'honneur in 1954 for one of her pieces. She won an A. I . D. International Design award in 1965 for her Flindari decanter. Some of her most famous designs are the Harlequin (Harlekiini) series from 1959, the Saturn (Saturnus) series from 1960 and the Ambra series from the early 1960s.

From r20thcentury.com

Flindari bottle
modernity.se

Raillo vases
collectorsweekly.com

Pompadour vases
parfemtevaningen.com

Neptuna bottles
collectorsweekly.com

Harlekiini collection
collectorsweekly.com

Ambra candlesticks
designlasi.com

Grapponia bottle
carters.com.au

Glass and wood candleholder
moma.org

Saturnus candleholders
lasikammari.fi

Stalactite pendant lamp
ztijl.com

Mango flatware for Iittala
chow.com

Nanny Still
designicon.com

You look so familiar: Part 3 - Stacking

Ah, the ubiquitous stacking chair. It seems that almost everyone has dabbled a bit in this design over the years, and the wheel is still being reinvented, so to speak, as evidenced by Knoll's 1999 Cirene by Vico Magistretti, the 2000 Gigi by Marco Maran and  2004 chair by Ross Lovegrove. 

A quick Google of "stacking chairs" will show just how many designers and manufacturers have come out with their versions, yet very few, if any, significant changes or improvements have been made over the last 6 1/2 decades. Enough already!

The Stacking Chair

Charles and Ray Eames - 1948
treadwaygallery.com

Ray Komai - 1949
1stdibs.com

Georg Leowald - 1955
architonic.com

Arne Jacobsen Chair 3107 - 1955
designmuseum.org

Robin Day for Hille - 1963
telegraph.co.uk

Cirene chair by Vico Magistretti - 1999
knoll.com

Gigi chair by Marco Maran - 2000
vastudc.com

Ross Lovegrove for Knoll - 2004
knoll.com

Making memories: Christmas 2011

My grandsons on Christmas Day...

Sixty years from now, I hope they look back on photos like these with the same fond nostalgia with which I view snapshots of my Christmases in the early 1950s.

Note to self: Don't forget the failed attempt at weaning Gray from the bottle on his first Christmas Day (and all that entailed...ewww) or Holden's first encounter with hot chocolate and marshmallows, which he called "marshmuscles."