Pre-PreFab, or the Modness of Tommy Edison

Thomas Edison is a rock star. Literally: the man created incandescent light. Voices can boom and resonate thanks to the microphone. Global financial markets expand and contract on his tickers. The man held 1,093 patents (true, his factory sucked fresh ideas out of young idealists, but still).

I was unaware until recently of one of Edison's most prescient ideas--in 1906 he conceived of one of the first mass-produced domicile solutions. The dream of affordable housing, according to Edison, could be made manifest in concrete molded residences.





"His system involved the use of elaborate forms and machinery for pouring a one, two, or even three-story house in a single operation, and offered concrete built-ins such as a bathtub. Sectional cast iron forms bolted together were to be assembled on the foundation walls to the height of the house, ending in a centrally located funnel into which the concrete was poured."

The first single-pour concrete house was built on Hixon Street in South Orange, New Jersey (I guess J gets a little more love). Turns out that the cast iron mold for the house was ungainly and unwieldy, so only 11 were ever built.

Italian Kitchen Gadgets

A teeny living space and a subdural vigilance keep me from amassing clutter, so I own very few kitchen gadgets. However, when I go on meandering walks without a fixed destination, purpose, or time limit, I admire them from afar—our neighborhood has some neat stores with fresh wares.

The mezzaluna is one such revitalized object d’cuisine, thanks to celebrity chef/pinup Nigella Lawson.


It’s Medieval appearance (and structure) reminds one more of torture than of the refined ritual of bruising herbs. Convex steel that grows into two handles, the mezzaluna resembles the half-moon it’s named after. Either single or double-bladed, the user rocks the handles back and forth to chop herbs or vegetables. I haven’t been able to locate the provenance of the tool, since I suspect it has more sinister roots than the kitchen, but I shall report my findings at a later date.

The “handspresso” makes the luxury of quality espresso portable.


To use, manually pump the machine to “16 bars” of pressure, use one of their special espresso pods, and pour water, and it’s rearin’ to go. It’s a pretty hot gadget. Then I watched the bizarrely sensuous video, and questioned the group’s branding

See the video, below.

A Familiar Face

"If you look at these chairs, they are mainly made of air, like sculpture. Space passes right through them."--Harry Bertoia



These wonky chairs take me back to sitting outside of Grinnell College’s “Forum”--a modern architectural blunder which functioned as the campus café. Students would try to pick up these chairs, too wide for the door and bafflingly bottom heavy, to take them outside to read or eat.

Spindly and surprisingly comfortable, these iconic chairs originated in the Midwest via San Lorenzo, Italy. Harry Bertoia (1915-1978) immigrated to Michigan from Italy, where he attended Cranbrook Academy of Art, befriending Chicago design icon Charles Eames and furniture visionary Florence Knoll. Trained in jewelry construction and design, he actually cobbled together the ideas for the Eames’ wedding rings.

Bertoia followed Eames (and his wife, Ray) to California in 1943 to work in their studio where they molded plywood to make spectacular and seemingly impossible furniture. WWII rationing made precious metals hard to come by, so Bertoia transitioned from jewelry-making to helping Eames fashion parts for airplanes—Eames was Director of Research and Development for Evans Products Co. at the time.

After departing from the Eames’ studio in 1946, he shifted from wood back to metal, working with Florence Knoll on furniture design at her factory in Pennsylvania. Bertoia began to bend and stretch metal, using a sculptural approach for functional objects. The diamond chair uses meshed metal to form the back support, which then eases into an armrest shape. Unlike the wooden Eames chairs of the period (slim but still opaque wood) the ‘Diamond’ has a different space-sensibility, there and not there, both a dimension and a silhouette.

The creation of the “Diamond Chair” in 1952 raised so much revenue in royalties, Bertoia left furniture for sculpture, shifting the focus of his work from tactile to sonic—he created a series of "sound sculptures," or sculptures that would react to wind movement, including the sculpture in front of the Standard Oil building in Chicago where my Dad worked when I was a kid.


Source: Entobox


Curious, Grinnellians, as to how much these cost? A mere $2,100 each.

Appeals to my inner Débutante

I dig the translation of haute consumption using disposable production values.



Artist: Ed Vince

Monday Linkitude

Disease risk to mozzarella output! Oh NO! Serious Eats paints an even graver picture. (Don't water buffaloes look like the bad guys from The Fifth Element?)

A touch of Italian modernity to anchor one in place.

Slice, the Pizza blog, has posted a thorough and mostly unobjectionable Taxonomy of Regional Pizza styles.

la donna e mobile: campari

I’ve always felt taunted and challenged by “acquired tastes”— the level of maturity required to appreciate the item, the implied elitism of the expression—I would learn to love artichokes, fish sauce and Catherine MacKinnon, just for spite. Campari remains a target to overcome. My aversion to Campari is a point of cultural shame, particularly in light of my enthusiasm for appertivo, or happy hour. I resolved: in October, as I approach 25th birthday, I would make a concerted effort to appreciate the liquor, and then bask in my enlightened standing.

It’s bitter, barky flavor has put my off for years, but I keep coming back for the alluring, vibrant red. Campari’s signature flame, I am told, comes from the natural pigment carmines, which are the dried remains of the cactus-dwelling insect, cochineals. The recipe for Campari is CocaCola-level secret (only one man in at Campari’s factory in Novi Ligure knows the details), but officials do confirm that wormwood and 59 other aromatics and herbs comprise the aperitif.

Campari is almost a fable, a continental version of Camelot—culturally it symbolizes the achievement of success, of a self-made man, but also tradition, of easing into mealtime after the workday. Gaspare Campari was born in Castelnuovo, Italy in 1828, and became “apprentice maitre licoriste” (barman extraordinaire) in Turin at the green age of 14. After futzing with the recipe for his bitter concoction over 20-some years, he officially founded the Gruppo Campari in Milan in 1860. Campari would only sell his product to outlets that displayed “Campari Bitters” posters, quickly establishing a brand identity outside Milan. The business plan was both sturdy and stellar: today, Campari grosses 33 million bottles in annual sales, about the same world-wide as Jack Daniels.

The iconography of Campari is as unique and recognizable as its color. Davide Campari, Gaspare’s son, commissioned ideas for the Campari posters from European artists with the following instructions: “Artists must clearly display the brand name; use uncomplicated color; and the brand should be incorporated naturally in the picture.” French poster art luminary Leonetto Cappiello responded with one of the most noteworthy works of the period: a clown dancing in an orange peel holding a bottle of Campari. Also patrons of progressive design, the Camparis contacted Futurist art superhero Fortunato Depero to create the bottle for CampariSoda, the premixed cocktail. The beaker-like final product combines forceful and urbane features, and appears just as modern as when Campari released it in 1932.



As glamorous and distinctive as its image came to be, the house of Campari contracted trenchfoot in the culture wars of the 1980s. In 1983, the Reverend Jerry Falwell brought a case against Hustler magazine for producing an ad which featured Falwell and his mother in a “drunken incestuous encounter in an outhouse.” The ad parodied a contemporary Campari advertising campaign in which celebrities described “their first time” drinking Campari, with obvious sexual innuendo. The Court ruled 8-0 in favor of Hustler, finding that public figures “must tolerate occasional false statements, lest there be an intolerable chilling effect on speech that does have constitutional value.”

Over the next week, I will sample Campari in various incarnations, I will sweet-talk and swindle my taste buds into submission, I will take down this feeble-minded aversion of mine!

I shall try each of the following drinks, report back on their flavors and my level of satisfaction with the cocktail, hopefully garnering some level of affection for the drink as the week goes on:

• Campari neat
• Campari and soda
• Negronis
• Campari and orange juice
• Americano