Vino

I like to judge books by their cover, sometimes...  I have occasionally picked a good looking book only to find out that the words inside are not so pleasing to my brain.  Still there is no reason to have a good book with an ugly label.  Shouldn't it be the same with bottles of wine.

At work I open lots of bottles of wine, especially now that it is the holiday season, and seeing that I have to present bottle after bottle I end up looking at a lot of labels.  I've noticed that while we have some good wines, we have mostly boring or ugly labels.  Why?

Yesterday while waiting for the sushi chef to finish my customized sushi box I started looking at the wine labels in the isle just adjacent.  I started looking at the labels there and then continued the search via my computer.  There really are some lovely bottles out there, and I would like to think that good tasting wine abides within those glass cylinders.  Most of the rieslings I've tried that have nice labels taste great...but maybe it's because they also happen to be German rieslings.

Anyway, I have not tried any of the wines below, I just wanted to share a smattering of lovely wine labels/bottles.  So if you buy these and they taste bad, DON'T blame me!

Why can't more bottles look like these?

From Don Sebastiani & Sons:

Under the Three Loose Screws Label

Used Automobile Parts...who doesn't want to try a wine with that name?

Under their The Other Guys Label

Plungerhead.  I don't know if the name or the label is better.

Pennywise.  Such a simple label, nice.  Also the top is sweet, covered with wax?

Hey Mambo!  Mambo Italiano!  Clean lines with a nice little silhouette detail.  I would really like to be at a restaurant and order that (even though I don't really order wine at restaurants very often because it's so upcharged).  "Um yes, could I have a glass of the Hey Mambo Swanky White?  Thank you."

From the Cecchetti Wine Company:

Under the Line 39 label

Orange and light blue together!  Good color combination!

Under the Redtree Label

Now the people at MASH Designs have created lots of great labels for several wine makers, so take a look at some of their creations!

For Molly Dooker:

I know, right, sweetest vintage inspired labels ever!  LOVE THIS!  This makes me want to have a wine and cheese  and chocolate party right now!

Enchanted Path...More design goodness!

Velvet glove!  I really want this bottle, after drinking the contents I would use this bottle as a vase, along with the other bottles from this company!

For the Rolf Binder Wines under the Magpie Estate brand:

Mash continues with good design for Killibinbin Wines of Australia.

The perfect wines for complementing a good old fashioned horror movie!

You could just go to the Mash website and go through their portfolio, but I'll show you a few more, because they are all great!

For Small Guy wines:

For Inkwell Wines:

Please take a look through all of Mash's designs, they're all unique and clever, and read about the ageless Return of the Living Red wine they designed a very unique label for.

Read about it here!

Another design firm with some lovely labels is nine99design.

For Shefa wines:

So I don't open any bottles so lovely as these above at work, but there is one label we do have that comes close, perhaps because the owner is a different kind of artist.

The Francis Ford Coppola's Brand, Director's Cut:

Hello, costumers that come in, can you please by this?

Ammi Phillips

So I collect things, or essentially, I'm a pack rat.  And one of those collections is Postcards.  Odd ones, random ones, vintage ones, funny ones, etc.

The last time I visited The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, I went into the gift shop and found that two of my favorite Amon Carter paintings came in the form of a little mailable postcard!

One of the two postcards, that I ended up purchasing, was a small print of Girl with Cat (Miss Catherine Van Slyck Dorr) Oil on Canvas, c. 1814.  Painted by Ammi Phillips, American, 1788-1865, he traveled through Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, and was considered an American folk artist.

I am not a good painter by any means, I can paint shapes and forms and even people, by my shading is a travesty.  Ammi can shade...but he can't make a person's eyeballs even.  And I like that.

Most of his work, like a lot of the early American folk art, is very simple, raw, and a little cartoonish almost.  I know that Ammi was self taught, and maybe this was the styles that he preferred but here are the fictional conclusions I have made up in my head as to why his portraits look do not look very three dimensional and real.

• Ammi was a traveling man, going door to door with paints and a canvas in hand.  He knocked on the doors of the bottom tier of wealthy.  Those that had a few wads of money to spare, but not enough to get a multiple day sitting painting, these people could only afford the one afternoon painting.  Ammi could give them that and he could also give them buy 2 get one 1 free deals.

OR

• Ammi was a cynical sort of man, he thought people were vile pieces of rubbish.  Therefore as he convinced his subjects that he was painting them a beautiful portrait he secretly was harboring resentment towards them as well as the rest of the human race.  So he tried to characiture-ize them as much as possible whilst still being able to get away with it.  They were humans certainly, but he brought out that they were only hollow shells with imperfections.

OR

• Ammi was a fashionable man.  A man of the times and sitting on the cutting edge of art.  Ammi knew that super realism was soooooo yesterday, and he was not about to be considered an old man behind in the times.  Today the minimalistic folk art look was in, and he was participating in that movement whole heartedly.  He would paint at night while his musician friends sat in a semi-circle strumming their lutes and tooting on their woodsy reed flutes.

Certainly none of this is true.  I think this was just his signature style.  But I honestly really do like Ammi's work.  There's something quite simple and amusing about it.

Here is some more.  Enjoy.

Portrait of Mrs. Sarah Cornwall Everest, c. 1812

Woman with Pink Ribbons, c. 1830

Mrs. Mayer and Daughter, c. 1835

Joseph Slade, c. 1816

Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog, c. 1830-1835

Jeannette Woolley, later Mrs. John Vincent Storm c. 1838

Stay tuned for more Early American Folk Art!

Saving Lives

My dear friend Erin Trieb is a photojournalist, though photojournalism is not the only area of photography that she excels in.  Just recently she spent quite a few weeks over in Afghanistan documenting life in a US army trauma center out there.  Her story Headlined on MSNBC a few weeks ago, but I thought I would continue to share it.  Note: There are some graphic pictures...it's on a trauma center.

Here is the story.

Here is her blog from the Afghan adventure.

Necklaces - 2

Just the other weeks I posted several necklaces that made me slightly more than a little greedy.  In my perusing of the world wide web to locate gifts for people I've come across another set of lovely necklaces worthy of sharing.

From the Etsy shop Irregular Expressions.  This necklace is hand crocheted with beads integrated into the necklace.  These lovely creations are from Istanbul, Turkey and all the items are crocheted or knitted.

From the Etsy shop Love and Dream.  Interestingly enough, this is another Istanbul located shop.  There are all kinds of items within, but I particularly like these simple necklaces with simple beads and vintage lace.

  

Now we move onto recycled and repurposed items.  This is from the Etsy shop Seven Ply where all the items are partially made of recycled skateboards!  Combining jewelry and skateboards, what could be better?  This one is my favorite because of the bit of humor included in the necklace.

  

Here are some necklaces from the Etsy shop Luxe Deluxe.  Some of the items have lovely vintage parts, from chains to pendant pieces, and almost all of them made with an asymmetrical appeal.

  

Finally more necklaces!  This Etsy shop, Etcetrix, is bursting with vintage repurposing and recycling, mixing new with old, and old with old.  Lots of lovely finds.

Beards

I think facial hair is hilarious and fun.  But since I am a woman with normal amounts of hormones I cannot grow facial hair of my own.  This is were Erin Dollar comes in with her cute, handmade, felt beards.

She sells them on her Etsy.com shop (I Made You a Beard) and she has the above Santa beard on sale at Fred Flare. 

Her blog is also insanely great with links to artists all over who create beards of all sorts weather they be drawings or paintings or objects.  Take a look!

Location! Location! Location!

One way to make sweet looking music videos is finding great locations.  A few weeks ago my friend Mel pointed out the Empire of the Sun music videos to me.  We both commented on the amazing locations that they had found, but we also couldn't get enough of everything else from the costumes to the eccentric performances, not to mention the great music.  I can't tell if they take themselves totally serious or if they're just having a great time.  I had heard them a few times before on Pandora, but now I am obsessed.  I can watch them over and over and over without tiring of them.  I don't quite understand the story that ties all the videos together, but the costumes and tone branch from one to the next, as if they are vignettes meant to be strung together.

Take a look at Walking on a Dream (the title track of their debut album).

Crazy...but I love it!

Here's a sample from We Are The People:

But it only gets better.  Today I found out that there is an iPhone game based on all the Empire of the Sun goodness.   The levels in the game are based on scenes from the music videos. 

I got the game, but only had a chance to get the first few levels before going to work.  

Let's just say, I was able to play it (which is incredible since I don't know how to play video games),

and it was the strangest game I have ever played. Yay!