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Category / Art & Design Awesomeness

The Barbershop Clubhouses of South Africa

I‘m currently going through the early stages of a re-design for this site and trying to decide on a theme I like for the header. My ideas range from a route 66 diner, a lighthouse, to an old world Parisian newspaper kiosk. Maybe a combination of them all? I’m basically a designer’s worst nightmare. And now I’m tempted…

Art I want to Climb Inside

You know the feeling when you see an image so appealing to your senses right then and there that you just want to climb inside? That’s what the art of Victoria Semykina does for me. I think finding an artist you like is almost like finding a new friend; one that shares similar interests, tastes and…

A Forgotten Bowling Alley’s Steampunk Revival is a Perfect Strike

When Highland Park Bowl first opened 89 years ago in the midst of the prohibition, bowling was its side business while booze was its big business. There was a pharmacy out front, a doctor’s office upstairs where they would write you a prescription for an alcoholic remedy and conveniently, a bar in the back to…

Inside the Olympics of Taxidermy

Can you name a famous taxidermist? Me neither. When most people think of taxidermy, they think of dead animals hanging on a dark wood walls, but at the World Taxidermy Championships founded in 1983, the participants are trying to be accepted in the art world and see their creations recognised alongside the greatest art sculptures in the world. “You have…

The French Banksy of Fake Facades

The French are already really, really good at beautifying their towns and cities, but not every façade can look like it’s straight out of a postcard– that is unless you enlist the services of Patrick Commecy. Let’s just say this guy is the Banksy, the Michelangelo (or the Frida Kahlo) of fakery… This was the wall before: A…

One Guy’s Quest to Save the 1960s Time Capsule Homes of America

Miles McDermott might just be the youngest person to restore a time capsule home. An award-winning designer, local tastemaker and fellow old soul living in Phoenix, Arizona, he’s just spent the last few years transforming his own mid-century style home– which he found looking worse for wear on Craigslist– into a virtual museum of 1960s interior…

Crumbling Communist Murals the Soviets Left Behind

In the early nineties, well after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, did you know there were still over 300,000 Soviet soldiers in Eastern Germany? In 1991, there were still 4,200 Russian tanks, 690 aircrafts, 180 rocket systems and over 200,000 civil employees and relatives of officers, among them about 900,000 children. Until the final withdrawal…

The Story of Messy Nessy’s Makeover

Six years ago almost to the day, I launched this blog. I had no idea what I was doing, I barely understood what the term “blog” even meant, but I knew I had something to share so I signed up to the blogging platform WordPress, (which wasn’t much harder than creating a MySpace page), chose…

This Miniature Belle Epoque Photo Studio is Ready for its Close-up

In an era where an expression like “selfie” is announced as the Oxford dictionary’s word of the year, the idea of going to a photographic studio to have a picture taken of yourself, does seem rather like something out of a dreamworld… Ali Alamedy is an artist from Turkey who creates incredibly accurate and detailed dioramas, most recently this early photography studio from the 1900s…

Paris, the Big Picture

This photograph had me at hello, somewhere midway through my morning scroll on Pinterest. I’m always lured in by photos of the Petite Ceinture, the abandoned inner city railway of Paris, a surviving relic of a bygone era, closed since 1934 (you can take a tour with me at the end of this post if you’re curious).…

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