Category archive: vintage

May 23, 2013

Gnarly Vintage Burl Kids Chair

OK, Napa redwood cabin-in-the-forest dwellers, this wacked out kid chair is carved from a single piece of walnut burl. It's not signed or marked, but Rago auctioneers are attributing it to JB Blunk, the master ceramicist and woodworker who...
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From The Woodshop: Two Sweet, Custom High Chairs

You might see one custom high chair from a master woodworker come up at auction, but you hardly ever see two. Rago Arts has these two rather amazing pieces in their upcoming 20th century design sale next month. First...
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May 16, 2013

It's For You: Creative Playthings Cardboard Phonebooth

I have this 1967 Creative Playthings catalogue lying around somewhere, but I swear, I never noticed these cardboard play structures until John from Wary Meyers pointed out these photos on a recent eBay auction. First, yes, a flatpack Creative...
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May 7, 2013

OG French School Desk At Kinder Modern

It is Design Week Mayhem in New York this week. As I was looking through the exhibitors at the Collective .1 Design Fair, I noticed that in addition to my kid-savvy buddy Patrick from Mondo Cane, there is both...
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May 6, 2013

Mullet Headband Sold Separately: Agassi-esque 1990s OP Jacket

OK, straight-up, this fluorescent Ocean Pacific windbreaker makes me wish I had a toddler who I could force to hit 3,000 baseline shots a day before turning him over to Nick Bolletieri to raise into a money-minting champion. Brilliantly...
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April 27, 2013

Cardboard Survivors: Vintage Papp Kids Furniture By Peter Raacke

It really is amazing that this exists. Peter Raacke designed the Papp collection of cardboard kids furniture in 1967. By any reasonable expectation, it should all have been destroyed and recycled a dozen times by now. But someone apparently...
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April 18, 2013

BYO Booster Seats: OG 1975 Volvo C303 Soft-Top

Remember that amazing Volvo C303 that had been demilitarized and given a deluxe-looking, preschool dropoff line-ready metallic silver paint job? Yeah, this is not that. The C303 was Volvo's 1970s military flagship, the Swedish equivalent to the Unimog and...
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April 17, 2013

'Il Buon Mobile Per Bambini': Enzo Mari Kids Shelf

It's not that Enzo Mari has never designed kids' furniture. It's just that he hasn't designed nearly enough of it. Of course, there's the Play Wall, the beautiful corrugated cardboard folding screen from 1967. And there is the Seggiolina...
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April 9, 2013

You Cannot Buy This Helge Sibast Child's Chair

Unless, of course, you're the person who already bought it from etsy seller Blueflowervintage. Sibast's No. 8 chair was first designed in 1953, but I don't know when the kid-size versions were made. If missing the chance to buy...
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April 8, 2013

Project OBJECT's Mid-Century Kid Sale At Fab.com

Remember last fall when that sweet, mime-lookin' Antonio Vitali puppet turned up? Well, he's back. And now he can be yours. Georgia-based design aficionado Aaron Cohen, who found the puppet, just launched a week-long, kid-design-themed sale at Fab.com, and...
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March 29, 2013

Topaz Mountain Sleds By Dave Tatsuno & Bill Fujita

Dave Masaharu Tatsuno ran the dry goods store at Topaz Mountain, where Japanese Americans from the Bay Area were imprisoned during WWII. And he took a bunch of 8mm home movies, using color film which he'd pick up on...
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March 11, 2013

Robert Bliss's Cradle For A Young Viking Or Viqueen

Except for some chairs he made while studying at Black Mountain College, modernist architect Robert Bliss, didn't really get into designing furniture until after he retired as dean of the University of Utah's architecture school, in 1986. In 1990...
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March 7, 2013

It Was An Ancient Randonneur

I've had a draft for a post about this 1940s randonneur in the style and meter of Coleridge's "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" half-written for so long, the unsold item listing has disappeared from French eBay. Which is...
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March 4, 2013

Here Come The Cubies' ABC

History is not written only by the winners. Sometimes the losers get to add a cutesy ABC book with well-crafted, parodic rhymes to the record. The 1913 Armory Show opened 100 years ago last month in New York, and...
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February 27, 2013

Bear In Space: The Truth Is Out There

Bear In Space is a 1970 Russian children's book about a bear who fakes a moon landing. It shows all the neat camera tricks and stuff the bear used to make it look like he really landed on the...
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February 26, 2013

There's An ADO Speelgoed By Ko Verzuu Exhibition In Apeldoorn Until March 17.

Wow. You remember that amazing digital archive of ADO Speelgoed at the CODA Museum in the Netherlands? Well, there's an exhibition, too, and it runs through March 17. CODA (Cultur Onder Dak Apeldoorn) is in, obviously, Apeldoorn, in central Holland,...
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February 21, 2013

Western Hemisphere/Pittsburgh Finally Getting A Lozziwurm

A press release announces that the Carnegie Museum of Art is installing a Lozziwurm in a new "pocket park" in front of the museum, in advance of two potentially awesome, upcoming shows: the 2013 incarnation of the venerable Carnegie...
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February 10, 2013

The Sonneberg Toy Museum Has A Scheißeload Of Renate Mueller Stuff

It's no surprise, I guess, that the Spielzeugmuseum Sonneberg, the oldest toy museum in the historic center of the German toy industry, would have a large collection of hometown heroine Renate Müller's designs. There are remarkably few of Mueller's...
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February 1, 2013

This Creative Playthings Puzzle Has Been Buy It Nowed.

In the time it took me and K2 to return our Star Trek video this morning, a faster eBay shark than I snapped up this sweet 1970s wooden tray puzzle Fredun Shapur made for Creative Playthings. Which, technically, yes,...
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January 28, 2013

Ko Verzuu Made This Dollhouse

In 1927 Ko Verzuu made this dollhouse for the daughter of the director general of ADO, Dr. Willem Bronkhorst. It's pretty simple. I bet you could crank one out, too. Also, isn't 'poppenhuis' a fine word? Poppen-anything, really. Nice...
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January 27, 2013

Those Awesome ADO Blocks

Andrew from An Ambitious Project Collapsing is killing it on the ADO/Ko Verzuu collection-diving these days. Verzuu led design for ADO, a Dutch therapeutic/charitable organization that produced toys in the early 20th century. And apparently, one of Verzuu's sons...
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January 23, 2013

Where Is The Kid-Size Lunar Rover Replica?

Alright, people, do not tell me that in 40+ years no one has produced a kid-sized version of the Lunar Roving Vehicle here on Earth. Because I will not believe it. Apollo 16 lunar rover dash cam [kottke] Lunar...
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January 22, 2013

Mama Mia, Santa Lucia! Baby Ferrari Bimboracer

Pencils down, gentlemen, we have a winner. Is the 1950s Baby Ferrari Bimboracer V12 somehow not the most incredible kid-sized car ever? Does it run on an emminently sensible electric motor at an entirely reasonable speed for preschoolers of...
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January 21, 2013

The Greatest Creative Playthings Kaleidoscope I've Ever Seen!

If the first half of the lifespan of Daddy Types is a documentation of all the kidstuff I've bought, the second half is about unloading it all on the next generation. And yes, this weekend feels like a milestone;...
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January 14, 2013

Sweet Creative Playthings Car, With Manual Choke

The eBay seller's right, you don't see these classic Creative Playthings hardwood cars in this nice of shape very often. And you don't see them with all the passengers, either. But I guess the original buyer of this example...
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January 6, 2013

The Ford Treasury Of New Jersey Station Wagon Living

The NY Times has discovered a New Jersey dad whose kids helped him discover the joys of Ford Station Wagon Living. Reading lines like this:"Until the kids, I wasn't into wagons," he said. "Now, it's an adventure every time...
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December 21, 2012

Snap-Together Foam Alligator By Horst Diener

I'm not finding a lot of info--actually none--about this online, so I'll just float it out there. It's a covered foam alligator pillow/toy from 1968 by the German product designer Horst Diener. The six segments snap together in various...
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December 19, 2012

Monday In The Studio With Larry

List of TV Shows Mandy Patinkin ACTS In That I Have Not Seen Nor Do I Plan To, Ever 1. Chicago Hope 2. Homeland 3. "Children Will Listen," the finale from Stephen Sondheim's 1988 fairy tale mashup musical Into...
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December 18, 2012

The Youngest Youngerman

While flipping through an amazing new book on the life and work of the artist Agnes Martin the other night, I realized there is a kid in this random rooftop photograph [by Hans Namuth, but still]. In the mid-1950s...
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December 17, 2012

MONDO X Miami Vitali

"FLEA MARKET FIND"?? Mondo Blogo is just mocking me at this point, is what's happening. Miami Wrap-Up 2012 [mondo-blogo]...
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December 15, 2012

Child-Sized Orkney Chairs

The International Herald Tribune has a little feature on Orkney Chairs, a type of make-do, homemade chairs built by residents of the Orkney Islands, originally from carved driftwood and woven straw, because trees on the islands were so scarce....
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December 12, 2012

Cold Storage Philippe Starck X Target Banana Car

Speaking of expensive things made of cheap, yellow plastic: Here is a mint-in-box example of the acid banana-shaped ride-on toy designed by Philippe Starck for Target in 2001, being sold on eBay by someone whose business model seems to be...
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November 27, 2012

Crown Prince Olaf's Baby Cadillac

London Cadillac dealer Frank Bennett created this electric-powered "Baby Cadillac" in 1912 as a promotional stunt. It caught the attention of Queen Alexandra, wife of Kind Edward VI, who bought it for her grandson, Crown Prince Olaf of Norway....
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November 25, 2012

Modernists' Kids Had The Best Nurseries

In the wake of MoMA's Century Of the Child exhibition, Paul Makovsky at Metropolis Magazine has assembled an awesome collection of images and childhood stories from the offspring of mid-century modernist designers. There's György & Juliet Kepes' daughter Julie,...
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November 23, 2012

Shailer Park Kids Rocker

I stumbled across this in a deep Google search. and it's got interesting lines. But with that DIY-in-the-dark paint job and the handle being hidden/held on by a plastic bag, the Australian seller of this random, old kid's rocker...
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November 20, 2012

Turniture II: Rocking Plywood Playhouse/Bar By Lester Walker

Speaking of plans for cutting circles out of plywood in 1970, this popped up a few weeks ago on retronaut, and then I lost track of it. It's called Turniture II, a 4-in-1 convertible outdoor furniture project by architect...
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Vintage Plywood Rocker Surfaces In Microsoft Ad

As his mind was lost in thought, calculating how much toner the kid in this Microsoft Windows * commercial is burning through, eagle-eyed DT reader Erik was snapped back to reality by this nice, vintage-looking, kid-sized plywood rocking chair....
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November 5, 2012

Old-Timey Photos Of Kids With Cars

DT senior senior car correspondent DT is right: the "Automobile photos with children" tag on David Greenlees' blog for The Old Motor is full of delights. There are mini racers, soapbox derbies, cars so covered with kids they look...
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October 31, 2012

Do You Know Me? Antonio Vitali Hand Puppet

DT reader AC has me stumped, but maybe you know anything about this hand puppet, which seems to have been made by Antonio Vitali. Based on the tag around its neck, it'd seem to be from Vitali's own postwar...
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October 22, 2012

Richard Prince Has A Bob Dylan Poster Dress.

I didn't notice it until Mondo reposted the images. But now that it's framed and seemingly tiny enough to be worn by a kid, I see that the artist Richard Prince has a Harry Gordon "Poster Dress" with Bob...
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October 16, 2012

Sesame Street Old School, Volume 3 Is Brought To You By The Letters WB

Alright, people slightly younger than myself, this is it: proof that there is, in fact, no school like the old school. Sesame Street Old School: Volume 3 is shipping on November 6, from Warner Brothers Home Video. Volume 3...
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October 12, 2012

Boy On The Wall, Hammarkullen, Gothenburg, By Jens S. Jensen

Today in Century of The Child News: Swedish photographer Jens S. Jensen tells the story of taking the great picture that the MoMA curators decided to use to establish the identity of the exhibition, the 1973 shot of a kid...
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October 7, 2012

Carlo Mollino Chalet Bedroom

They're no Carlo Mollino bunk beds, but they're close. Christie's in London has a sweet suite of vintage Carlo Mollino furniture coming up this month that includes a pair of single beds, a wardrobe or two, and nightstands in...
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October 6, 2012

Pre-Snyder Era Kids Redskins Poncho

Unused, c. 1970s-80s, kid-size, vinyl Washington Redskins rain poncho, : $45. Shipping & Handling: $7. Knowing that Dan Snyder does not see even one thin dime of your purchase: priceless. VINTAGE WASHINGTON REDSKINS CHILD'S VINYL PONCHO SIZE S, buy...
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September 19, 2012

Whoa Who Wha? Vitali Playforms Community Helpers

Antonio Vitali Community Helpers? I've never even seen Community Helpers. I thought that Vitali's awesome, biomorphic, carved wood Creative Playthings family was entirely self-sufficient. But no, they had help from, respectively: a Miss Clavell-lookin' nun, a guy carrying a...
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September 14, 2012

Yes, Virginia, There Is A 'Mercedes 500TE'

And since it's apparently Complicated Cuts & Modifications Motivated By Religious Passion Week here at DT... The re-emergence of that AMG Like-A-Hammer Wagon started me looking into its fate, and why AMG didn't end up making 50 of those things/year...
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September 12, 2012

Like-A-Hammer: 1988 Mercedes AMG Mallet 300TE 6.0 Wagon

Let me just say, from personal experience, that if you have a collectible 1980s Mercedes and you haven't accumulated at least $40,000 worth of receipts for it by now, you are doing it wrong. Because those receipts will come, and...
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September 6, 2012

There Is No I In ABC

But otherwise, these lower case, wooden letters from Creative Playthings are pretty sweet. Also choke hazardy. Vintage CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS Wood Set of Toy Letters+BOX, currently $14 + 11 s/h, auction ends Sept 11 [ebay]...
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September 3, 2012

George Nakashima And His Family Moved To New Hope In 1943.

You'd think that as a parent, I'd be less surprised by now at the constant discoveries of the extent of my own ignorance. And yet. Last night, while surfing through the archive of the War Relocation Authority's nearly 7,000 photos...
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September 2, 2012

Bid/Buy/Build: The Creative Playthings Slot-Together Dollhouse Is By Roger Limbrick.

It's funny, all this time it's been an awesome icon of 60s American modernist kids design, and I'd never actually wondered who made the Creative Playthings slot-together, openside doll house. The answer, which Andy knew all along: British designer...
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