Going Globe-l - Architectural Artifacts, Post 6

I spent an inordinate amount of time tinkering with this old globe.

When I started shooting it, it was up on a shelf in the window.  Obviously the problem with that is that it leaves the globe backlit.  So I moved it to the floor.  Which had the incredibly odd problem of the floor being the same shade of aqua as the water on the globe.  Also, weirdly, apparently globes are shinier than you'd think.  As matte as they look when you're looking at them, they have a nasty glare when you try to use the flash.

Anyway, if you look at this globe, you can see that it's more than just a few decades old.  Even with the current changes in certain political regions, it's been quite a while since most of northern Africa was one large political body called "French West Africa".  I loved to look at maps and globes as a kid.  I remember being ridiculously excited when I got a political map of the world for my wall when I was in about third grade.  And while a fair number of the African nations I learned from that map are no longer either in existence or going by the name they had in the late 70's, I don't remember "French West Africa."

You can also see at the top that most of eastern Europe is bright orange.  It's labeled USSR.  Now *that* was on my map in third grade.

So I got on a bit of History Hunt.  When was this globe made? 

I couldn't find *anywhere* that listed a copyright date.  I found the map maker and where it was made (go, Chicago), but I couldn't find anywhere what year this globe was made.

So I started shooting regions I knew went through changes between the time the USSR was formed and dissolved.

One clue was that Vietnam is still two countries.  It's the purple and green countries on the left hand side of the shot, under China (the big yellow one).  So that means we're sometime after 1955 and before the two were reunified after the Vietnam War ended in 1976.

Also of note, East and West Germany.  Though they were separated from 1950 until 1990, so that actually widens our time frame.







So I went back to map of Africa, knowing that there was a lot of change over a short time there.  The smallest detail caught my attention first.

 The little yellow country I've drawn an arrow to is listed as Río Muni.  I wasn't able to find a lot about this region other than the Wikipedia article that said: Río Muni became a province of Spanish Guinea along with Bioko in 1959.  I couldn't find *anything* that listed it as ever being an independent country, the way it's shown here.

What I did find in this same region was that if you find Gambia, there was a city-name change in 1973.  Bathurst is renamed Banjul.  On this map it's still Bathurst.  Which lets me know, at the very least, this map is older than I am. :p

In further poking I find that The Ivory Coast was liberated from French control in 1960.  So now we're somewhere between 1955 and 1960.

Ghana was made an independent country in 1957 and it's already here as its own country.  So we're between 1957 and 1960.

Also in 1960, the area to the west and at the top of the map, is marked as Senegal, but still shown as part of French West Africa.  In 1960 Senegal and Mali form a union and become independent, but the union collapses before the end of the year, leaving Senegal as a new country.

So... after all this, I'm guessing this globe was made to reflect the best information the mapmaker had in 1960.

I'm not sure if they moved fast enough that the new cartography could be done and the globes printed and assembled within the year.  It's possible this is the political distribution of 1960, but the globe may not have been actually produced until 1961 or '62 or whatever.  It's also possible that for something like this - clearly a school globe of general information - that they may not reprint or reformat every single year.  It might have been made in 1963 because there wasn't any 'significant' - and I mean 'significant' to the American mentality of the time - changes that needed to be reflected yet.


So... yeah, this is what I do on a Saturday afternoon.  I troll through history trying to figure out inconsequential things like, "When was this globe made?"  :)  It keeps me off the streets.  (Especially when the streets are covered with snow this morning and are only about 10 degrees F. )

Going to the Crystal Ball - Architectural Artifacts, Post 5

There was this huge dining-style table upstairs that was completely covered in strands and random bits of crystal that, I assume, came off chandeliers and other fancy-pants decorations from days gone by.

Crystal Commotion

The good news was there was an old 1920's style bar set right across the aisle from it.  Which meant that I could prop my camera up on it to do some long exposure work.  Even with tinkering with the color both in the camera in in post they still seem a little more yellow than they were in real life.  Again, really lousy incandescent lights.  But still... very pretty and shiny.

Crystal Close-up

Here's a bit a little closer, taken with my macro lens.  Shooting crystals, even when the light isn't great, is tough because you have light bouncing off the facets and different shapes at all kinds of weird angles and at various intensities.

There were some dark brown and more amberish crystals tossed into the mix.  They made the light metering tough because there was no longer a uniform coloring or a uniform depth to the shots.





If I ever go back, I'll probably try to pull out one or just a few and do some isolated shots with them.

Miles of Tiles - Archetectural Artifacts, Post 4

Okay, finally getting out of the loos.

Like I said before, this place takes pieces of buildings and resells them. There were racks and racks of ceramic and stone tiles to use in bathrooms or kitchen backsplashes or as decoration around fireplaces.

Miles of Tiles

As I mentioned, we couldn't use tripods, so doing a narrow aperture with a long shutter wasn't an option nearly as often as I wanted it to be.  For this one, I was able to take one tile, set it on top of the first row of tiles, tilt my camera against it, set a two second timer (so I wouldn't jostle it) and let it go.  This is actually a 15 second exposure at f20.

Piles of Tiles that Traveled for Miles

As you can see there are whole sets of tiles, just in case you're thinking of redoing your shower.  On the flip side, they aren't cheap.  I'm kind of curious how they end up with tons and tons of English tiles, purchased in Argentina and then resold in Chicago. They *look* mass-produced, but I don't know much about antique tiles, so maybe I'm wrong.

Old Orchid Ornaments

These are the ones that really break my brain.  They look so much like the kind of thing I could have made (and others did for that matter) in my park district ceramics lab.

 $75 a linear foot.  Each tile is a little more than a foot long.  So they're roughly $100 each.  They say 'glass', but they seemed like ceramic to me.  I do find it interesting that they still have some of the grout/cement on the edges from their last home.  I'd imagine whoever buys these $100 tiles will have to somehow scrape all that off without damaging the piece.  Good luck with that.

Seriously Expensive Cermaic Stripes

Now this boggles my brain.  It's roughly an 8 inch square ceramic tile wiht some raised stripes, underglazed in teal and then washed down a bit and then overglazed in clear.  I know exactly how this was done.  I'm pretty sure that with the right materials I could do this exact piece.  $65.  Really?  And there's no more data readily available, like this came out of some French palace or something that would give the simple tile a better 'pedigree'.

Earthquake Survivors?

These were over $100 each.  And I get it, in that they're hand drawn tiles.  BUT, they're all cracked and broken, chipped and dirty.  I'd love to see how they'd somehow end up getting used, because none of them are exactly square any more and many of them have cracks running through them, like in the lower left hand corner.  The one on the right doesn't even have the image centered on the tile.  So, they're interesting, but I'm not sure how they'll sell, because I'm not sure how they become reusable.

Okay, tomorrow, the coolest table full of crystal bits ever.

Lest the Women's Room Feel Left Out - Architectural Artifacts, Post 3

Okay, so... back on track today.  Back to the bathrooms at Architectural Artifacts.

So the women's room was about as interesting as the men's.  Slightly less with the massive amounts of toilet paper (which, seemed a little bass-ackwards to me, but so be it).

Front of the Door

Most of them are pretty straight forward. I still find "females" an interesting label.  Also, like the men's room 'engineer' and stuff, I find it interesting that "Hospital toilet" is determined to be a woman's domain.  Also, why would you ever have to label it as a "hospital toilet"?  I mean, if it's in the hospital... isn't it a given that it's a hospital toilet?  If it's from (as it kind of seems to me) a military ship or something, why do you need to denote that it's the *hospital* toilet and not just, you know, the toilet in that part of the ship.  Who cares where it is, as long as it's a toilet, right?  I don't even...

More signs on the inside.  Nothing amazingly interesting.  Other than the fact that the room is so small, that I couldn't even, with my smallest lens, pull back far enough to get all the signs in one shot.

 So here's the rest of them.  Again, nothing drastically entertaining or weird or anything.  Just a whole lot of signs telling you where you are.  (As if the big porcelain 'chair' in the corner wasn't a big enough clue ;).

Reflections of a bathroom sign (or a few)

There was a large mirror on the wall opposite the actual toilet.  Not tilted far enough that you could see yourself from there (because that would just be disturbing), but it lets you see the signs above where you're sitting. Only, you know, they're in a mirror, so they're backwards.  It was all just a bit odd.

Here are those signs the right way around.  I do like the "Queens" sign.  That's a nice change of pace. :)  Also, next to it?  Probably the largest span of unused wall space in the entirety of the operation.  And this place is massive.




And just very quickly, while I know I've discussed this before, this is a great place to stop and look at White Correction.  I didn't realize how yellow the incandescent lights were in the bathrooms when I was shooting, so I didn't change the setting. I manually corrected it in the version above, but a post-production color correction, in my opinion, is never quite as good as capturing it right in the first place.

A rough 24 hours in my animal world

I don't talk about my own animals much in this blog.  I think the last time I brought up my ferrets was when Magick passed away almost a year and a half ago.  Well, last Tuesday, I lost the last of my original "business" (Business being the collective noun for ferrets - like a herd of cows or a pack of wolves or a murder of crows.)  Gaia was 7 1/3 years old and had two different cancers for the last two years of her life.  The high protein diet she had to be on to keep one of the cancers in check pretty much destroyed her kidneys, which was what ultimately brought her down.  I got her when she was about six months old (which is an estimate, since all my ferrets are rescues from the Greater Chicago Ferret Association and we don't have her initial paperwork).  But given the best estimates the vets could come up with, we decided that she and I shared a birthday.

Gaia ferret - 9.27.2004 - 1.31.2012

Given that she was so young when I got her, and that she was at least three years younger than Magick and Spirit - the first two ferrets I ever adopted - she was always known as 'the baby'.  Even at the end, when the two new ferrets she was sharing a cage with were less than half her age.

This is one of the earliest shots I have of her. You can still see some of her baby-shape in the pudginess of her back legs and bottom.  And how short her nose is.

She was the last of the original business as seen here, moving into their new and improved cage.  From left to right, Gaia, Spirit and Magick.






In less personal news, one of the "Mane Attractions" at the Lincoln Park Zoo has also passed away.  If you come in through the main gates to the zoo, one of the first exhibits you see is the outdoor lion habitat.  And usually, sunning himself on a large rock in the middle of the exhibit would be the male lion, Adelor.  He was put down yesterday due to very, very poor health.  He was 18 years old.  According to the news reports, most lions only make it to 14, the oldest captive lion was 26 when he died.  It strikes me as odd that such a huge, strong animal should have such a short lifespan, especially in captivity where he isn't being preyed on.

Adelor had an extremely impressive roar.  You could be at the other end of the park and hear him when he felt like letting you know he was around.  If you were near the rail of the exhibit when he let loose, you could feel the vibrations of the sound go right through you.

Anyway, here's Adelon welcoming people to the zoo.

Rest in peace our beloved carnivores, big and small.

Architectural Artifacts, post 2 - Making Sales in the Men's Room

So here's post two on the AA trip. Even as big as this place was, there was no space left unused for salable items.  So, if you're looking for a vintage men's room sign, you can find them... you know, on and in the men's room.

Just in case you weren't

 sure...

This was the front of the bathroom door.  Most are pretty straight forward.  "Men". "Boys".  "Gentlemen". "Caballeros".  Most obviously "Males" (but really, who labels their restroom males/females?") But who says the WC has to be for men?  Last time I checked women use the water closet too.

Or even more stereotypically speaking, engineers, quartermasters and fire[people] can't be women?
 But the one that I find the funniest is that one next to the doorknob in red text.  "W.C. Hombres".  We'll go with the British "W.C.", but the Spanish "Hombres".  I'm sure that made sense to someone somewhere.

And if you're still confused once you come in.

BTW, this is the back of that same door above.  Which means that unless you're a busybody photographer woman, you may not realize there are more options for your bathroom labeling needs inside the men's room.  Because, really, who'd think to go look at the back of the bathroom door for something you need?






So many ways of telling you where they are, they couldn't even all be contained on one door. If you can't read the one in the frame, it says, "WASH HANDS.  The law requires thorough hand washing for all food handlers before beginning work and after using toilet.  $10.00 FINE FOR VIOLATORS.  Evanston Health Department."  A whole $10, huh?

Also, the little white one at the bottom apparently says something like "Bathroom towels $.20".  I'm really hoping that means something like paper towels and not, you know, toilet paper or something.  Because, really, charging for T.P.?  Just wrong. :)  (If someone has a better understanding of that sign PLEASE let me know!  I googled "tohallas" and the best the computer could do was say, "Do you mean 'toallas'?", which, actually made sense.)

For those who *really* hate changing the roll.

And of course, if you'd like a vintage T.P. holder... no better place to find them than in their natural environment.  (Weirdly, the women's room only had one toilet paper holder... but that's tomorrow's post.)

 This just begs the question of "why?", doesn't it?  I mean, where are the flushings going when the train is moving that they can't go when the train is in the station?  What are people supposed to do if more than one person has to go before the train leaves?  I mean... ew!

It reminds me of this shot I took on an Amtrack a few years ago (and then photoshopped just the *slightest* bit.  (I swear, all I did was turn the edges of the hat up just a tad, the rest of the evil imagery was already there.)

By the way, these bathrooms are about six feet square and *horribly* lit.  So shooting in them is a bit of a nightmare.

But they are entertaining... as bathrooms go.

Architectural Artifacts, Post 1 - Rug Burn - 1.22.12

So I'm trying to get in the habit of shorter posts, more regularly.  I have about 75 shots from this most recent trip that I've divided into posts of 3 to 6 shots each.  Lets see if that helps.

This shoot was a little unusual for me.  I'm not a 'still life' photographer, but this place sounded intriguing.  It's called Architectural Artifacts and it's a fairly unique place in my experience.  It's part store, part museum, part art gallery.

Basically it's an antiques market.  In a warehouse.  A huge, three-floor, multi-building warehouse connected by bridges and staircases and ramps.  But they don't just stop at the furniture and the art work they can recover.  They have sections of old buildings.  They have rooms of stained glass windows still in their frames.  They have a huge section of heavy wooden doors from all over the world.  They have parts of furniture - the carved bits of antique wooden desks and mantle places and such - oh, and a whole room of mantleplaces and fireplace frames.

The one real drawback to this place is that they asked for us not to use tripods.  The lighting here was insanely erratic.  There were a lot of windows providing natural lighting, but many of them had various pieces of stained glass in front of them.  Even the overhead electric lights were a mix of florescent and incandescent.  On one of my posts I'll be talking about white balance again.  It was *ridiculous* trying to set white balance here.  The lighting changed constantly.  A tripod would have been a huge advantage.  Oh well.

Some of this stuff is what I call "stupid expensive".  I know that old things have value.  I'm a history teacher; I love 'old'.  But when I think of these things as being used in private residences, I get a little, "Really, you paid $14,000 for a pair of old mirrors?"  I guess I'm of the opinion that stuff like that is great.  In a museum.  Where you and everyone else can go visit it once in a while, but I don't get having something like that in your house.

But that's just me.  A fair chunk of my furniture comes from Ikea.

And it starts as soon as you walk in and head downstairs.  They display their very fancy-pants carpets on the floor.  And there isn't *one* sign that says "Do not walk on the bath-towel sized rug that costs more than your laptop."  So we were walking on them.  In our snow-covered boots.  Yikes.

Really Expensive Bath Towels?

So, sure, they are rugs.  So I suppose they are meant to be walked on... but it feels weird to me to walk on something like this in my wet boots.  But as you can see, it's not exactly easy to walk around or between then.

Some of these cost more than my laptop.

More rugs.  The little red on that's kind of up above and to the right of the small black table there was still over $100.  I have bath towels bigger than that rug.

$2500 and You're Okay with Us Walking On It?

It's a little hard to read at this size, but the tag says, "Ex. Fine Bukara.  Early 20th.  $2500.  43x63" and then it has an inventory number.  So I Googled Bukara and came back with the spelling Bukhara.  Assuming these are the same thing with variant spelling, this rug is roughly 100 years old, made from vegetable dyes and is from either Pakistan or Afghanistan.  AND WE'RE WALKING ON IT!  This to me is ART.  We shouldn't walk on the art!

But again, this is probably just me.  And a lot of my decor is about $19.95 from the big box store down the street.