Esoteric Survey

  I didn't go shopping last weekend, but I did get a new bike. My weekend was spent riding instead of the normal picking routine. The bike itself isn't vintage, but it does fit in with my interests of California and Japanese design and the interplay between the two--a modern day  Pacifica  if you will. Some of the parts are also vintage from Japan.  The bike frame is a Sam Hillborne by Rivendell , a small California Bay Area bike company founded by Grant Peterson. From 1984 to 1994, Grant worked as a bike and catalog designer at the U.S. division of Bridgestone, Japan’s largest bicycle maker. When the company closed its American office, he started Rivendell Bicycle Works out of his garage in Walnut Creek, California. Grant has a certain philosophy about how bikes should be designed and used. It boils down to an emphasis on t raditional bicycle technology,  practicality and bikes not being geared towards racing (punny).  They also use steel and beautiful lugged construction. Las

Gion Ishi Sakashita Building, Kyoto by Hiroaki Misawa (1969).  I posted a photo of the building, here in 2012 . I had no idea who the architect was and I certainly didn't know what was hiding upstairs.  The ground floor houses the Sakashita Stone shop.  The second floor is the incredible Ishi Cafe. I had ice cream and fruit. Hiroaki Misawa also designed the Konkokyo Karasuma Church (1971) in Kyoto, but it was demolished in 2019.

  Saburo Inui  table for Tendo Mokko Christian Duc, Ward Youry and Jen Quistgaard

  Japanese vase, Mary Wright bowl, Val Robbins bird

John Caruthers and Jack Boyd  Alvar Aalto More Aalto and Luther Conover James Grant, Doug Ayers, Archie Kaplan, Robert McKeown Knoll x 3  

Doyle Lane Bill Curry for Design Line and Peter Pepper Products table by Howard McNab & Don Savage  Architectural Fiberglass, Architectural Pottery ashtray and Earthgender I finally found a Byron Temple in the wild. You should have seen the pile of garbage I pulled it out of.