Esoteric Survey

On a rainy day in June I went to see Mu by Isamu Noguchi. It's hiding  on the third floor terrace on Keio University's Mita Campus in Tokyo. Shin Banraisha interior, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan In 1950 Noguchi was invited to design a space within the Shin Banraisha, ''Building of Welcome," for Keiyo University in Tokyo. Also known as the Noguchi Room, it was a collaborative interior and garden space designed by Isamu Noguchi and architect Yoshirō Taniguchi. It was built between 1951-1952.   The room serves as a memorial to his father, Yonejiro Noguchi—a poet and professor. A graduate of Keio University's Department of Literature, Yonejiro later returned to teach there for forty years, before his death in 1947 Noguchi creating Mu (1950), which he created two of. Mu at an exhibition in Japan.  Source: Arts & Architecture, 1950 The garden at Keio was Noguchi's first garden design. Photo: Isamu Noguchi by Altshuler, Bruce It was also the first interior ...

  Magdalena Suarez Frimkess Dorothy Schindele and Ed Ruscha Marg Loring, Peter Shire, Sandra Johnstone, David Stewart and Heino Miscellaneous, with some Heath and Quistgaard  I don't know what this stone sculpture is but I like it

  If you've ever been to my website ( www.esotericsurvey.com ) you have probably noticed it doesn't change very often and everything was marked sold. Retail operations have never been a strong point for me. Doing a blog post on an outdoor museum in Japan is a lot more fun than listing things for sale.  Nonetheless, I redesigned my website and listed a handful of things.  To my surprise, a few sold without making an announcement anywhere. Tonight at 5pm PST another handful of things will be going live. The goal is to do it at least once a month. I hope to make it interesting with a variety of things and prices. I've also updated the bio page .

Barney Reid (1948) Wroughtan by Ritts bar cart designed by Forest Wilson. Thanks to Jonathan Goldstein for the ID! Designed Wood reversible tray for Richards Morgenthau/Raymor Gabriella Crespi and others.   General merchandise

  I took a trip up to the Bay Area this weekend. Aalto stools are always great to get. Especially when they're early I had to stop in Ventura on the way up so I took the coast the whole way. I checked online to see if there were any estate sales on the route. There happened to be a good looking one near Pismo Beach. I really wasn't interested in any of the furniture but where there's smoke.  I arrived a couple hours after the sale started, which is when I usually like to go to avoid all the drama. There were a ton of books and they were $5 each. A handful of the usual Amazon book scanners were there with big stacks set aside. If you don't know how these work, they often use handheld or even finger mounted scanners to look up book values by the ISBN or bar codes. If it's worth a certain amount, it turns green and/or beeps if they should buy it. The great thing about them is that the people using them usually have no clue about what to buy outside of what their scanne...

  The Imperial Hotel (1923-1968) by Frank Lloyd Wright was located in Tokyo. It was the second building by Wright at the Imperial Hotel site.  The first was a temporary annex he designed when the original hotel annex burned down. In 1913, after a couple years of correspondence with the hotel's owner, Aisaku Hayashi, Wright was asked to design and build a new larger structure to replace the main hotel. Construction started in 1919.  As you might recall from a  previous post , Antonin and Noémi Raymond worked on the project. Antonin was the project architect, and Noémi worked on decorative art design elements. Koichi Kitazawa and Kyosuke Matono were also architects working on the project under Antonin.  Rendering from 1923  Image:  Old Tokyo The new hotel, seen here, opened in 1923. By the 1960's the hotel was in disrepair. Most notably was the deterioration of the carved oya stone Wright used for the Maya revival elements. In 1968, despite attempts...