13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 714)

October 15, 2024

1. Meet one of the world’s most prolific chair collectors:

How Noritsugu Oda found himself sitting on 1,400 chairs. Over 50 years, the Japanese illustrator has accumulated a world-class archive. Now he has to decide what to do with it.

“He still remembers the day in 1972 when he spotted a 4 Chaise Longue (then known as the LC4) designed by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret in 1928. It was a piece he had seen in interior design magazines and felt compelled to purchase despite the ¥300,000 price tag (£4,620 today). To secure it on his modest earnings (¥35,000 a month) he had to take out a loan.”

Read the full article on the FT.

2. Mundane found objects, transformed by American artist Frank Traynor

Discover more of his work here.

3. Stevie Nicks Kicking Butt in platform shoes in a 1983 Self Defense Manual

The little-known 1983 book, Hands Off!: A Unique New System of Self Defence Against Assault for the Women of Today, written by Bob Jones, an Australian martial arts instructor who doubled as a security guard for Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Joe Cocker and other stars. Stevie Nicks agreed to take part in a photoshoot where she would help demonstrate the nine mnemonic movements. Jones recalls,” This lady was a professional: in two hours I had a hundred of the most magnificent photos ever offered to the martial arts, and just one would make the cover [above].”

Found on Open Culture and more photos from the out of print book on Voices of East Anglia.

4. Séance, the 1970s board game

Here’s a review on Youtube:

5. This gem of literary history:

“No Nice Girl Swears” by Alice-Leone Moats. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1933.

Found on Forgotten Bookmarks.

6. Such a modern pose for 1915

A young woman in a bathing suit with the requisite hose and water shoes. Found on Everything Victorian and Edwardian.

7. The two-month old Emperor

Ivan VI of Russia, who ascended the throne at the age of two months, was overthrown by his cousin Elizabeth Petrovna a year into his reign. He spent the next 20 of his life secretly imprisoned without the guards knowing his true identity, before being killed in an attempted rescue.

Read his rather tragic story on Reddit.

8. The War Piano

The G.I. Piano (a.k.a. Victory Vertical) was a piano made by Steinway for the US military. Meant to be used in all kinds of theaters, it was designed to be small enough to be carried on a ship or parachuted from a plane and to be able to cope with the humidity of the South Pacific.

More found on Wikipedia.

9. Diana Ross and Maxine Powell’s Motown Charm School

Maxine Powell, although she didn’t write songs or play any instruments, was arguably as important as anyone employed at Motown Records in the 1960s. Diana Ross once described her as: “the person who taught me everything I know”.

For five years from 1964 Powell taught grooming, poise and social graces to all the stars of Motown including The Jacksons, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Marvelettes, Mary Wells and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

“She was such an important, integral part of what we were doing here at Motown,” Robinson once said, “It didn’t matter who you became during the course of your career — how many hits you had, how well your name was known around the world — two days a week when you were back in Detroit you had to go to artists’ development. It was mandatory.”

Full story found on Flashbak.

10. A Jazz Age NYC Bohemian Dinner in List Form

In this wry list, writer and artist Charles Green Shaw tried to capture the experience of attending a “bohemian dinner” in New York’s Greenwich Village. Shaw was a poet, as well as a journalist, and the genius of this list lies in its distillation of the dinner down to the little details of setting, food, and social interaction.