 |
 |
Photo: Crane bathroom fixtures. Credit: Life magazine, April 29, 1957.
We grew up in a sterile, cookie-cutter home, on a sterile, cookie-cutter street, in a sterile suburb of Chicago, where all the people were white and all the bathrooms were pink. The dads went to work, the moms stayed home and they all got drunk and slept with the neighbors.
So we are slightly puzzled as to why anyone would want to live in the Studebaker Lark of American architecture. Maybe it’s just hipster irony.
But for those who are searching for that perfect Persian red sink (above right) or retro “his and hers bathrooms” with “his and hers toilets” (top) there is retrorenovation.com. Steven Kurutz in the New York Times.
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas is trying to preserve five costumes from “Gone With the Wind” for a 2014 exhibit marking the film’s 75th anniversary. The costumes, part of the David O. Selznick collection, are Vivien Leigh’s wedding dress, nightgown, ball gown, green velvet gown and her green curtain dress, according to the Associated Press.
The L.A. Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat fashioned from Twitter feeds to the most exacting specifications by the bots at paper.li
Dealers in Native American artifacts are trying to rebuilt their reputations after federal raids conducted in 2009 in an attempt to crack down on alleged grave robbing. Associated Press via Washington Post.
Amtrak’s “Great Migration” exhibit on African Americans who left the South is so popular that it has been put on tour. Larissa Roso in the Washington Post. The exhibit isn’t coming to Los Angeles, but you can download it here.
Engineers want to reverse the flow of the Chicago River. Again. Tammy Webber of the Associated Press via the Chicago Tribune.
ladailymirror.com 
When I worked at the Harry Ransom Center in the late 1990s, I was told that the dresses we would send out for display were replicas made by nuns in San Antonio.
LikeLike
@Mary: That’s one of the strangest stories I have heard in a long while.
LikeLike
According to the collection’s site, these dresses *are* replicas (doesn’t say who made them):
the “poteers” dress
the blue velvet/fur robe
the green robe
the burgundy “harlot” dress
Scarlett’s (and Ellen’s) wedding dress
LikeLike
@Pamela: Amazing. What’s the link?
LikeLike
I’m confused. This Web page says they are authentic: http://bit.ly/oGQOce
LikeLike
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/gwtw/wardrobe/dress/GWTWDRESS.html
It wasn’t easy to find.
LikeLike
They *have* the real ones, but as the original article stated, they are just too delicate to be moved/handled outside the preservation attempts.
A lot of the items in the Debbie Reynolds auction have warnings on the catalogue descriptions that they are exceedingly fragile/have been altered/dry cleaned and aren’t meant to be used as dress-up or exposed to everyday elements.
LikeLike
I meant to say I worked at the HRC in the late 1980s, I wish it was the 1990s.
Many of the Debbie Reynolds’ costumes were faded, stained, missing elements (buttons, sequins), etc., and some looked like they had been worn in dressup.
LikeLike
Meanwhile, at the offices of the San Antonio Archdiocese: “Sir, the convent just put in yet another purchase order for curtains…”
LikeLike