Design

Artists have long used the NYC subway system as a wellspring of ideas, using their experiences to express themselves by way of the written word, visually on film, in oils on canvas, pen to paper, prints and sculpture. Sometimes the artwork is officially sanctioned and sometimes it is not.

When I moved to New York the 1982 the subway system was like a traveling road show of urban expression. Graffiti covered the walls inside and out, where there was a space to make a mark a mark was made. It was a cacophony of visual noise, much of which I could not understand.

It was big, bold and brash, loud and lovely. The graffiti in the interior of the subway cars was mostly black and seemed to be signatures. However on the outside of the subway cars, the colors were vibrant, expansive and the voices unique. The artistic strokes that jacketed the cars were energetic and beautiful. The work was detailed, precise and great care was put into these displays. These were serious artists even if at the time their art was not considered serious but more of a nuisance. A visual revolution was taking place and much of it seemed inspired by the New York City subway system.

Early on, the New York City subway system commissioned artists and artisans to create beautiful designs to decorate the subway walls.

It was utilitarianism taken to its highest level, all for our pleasure. Grand decorative pieces of terracotta announce the station name and each station’s motif is different. Rich and varied colors accent the old crazed white subway tile. Interestingly the colors vary from station to station. In other stations not as grand but clearly as beautiful, wonderfully brilliant mosaics, made up of tiny squares imbedded into the walls create large rectangular plaques that display the station name. In one station the mosaics are made up of varying colors of matte finished squares and in another station the mosaics are of rich jewel tones and yet even another station’s mosaic could be of shimmery iridescent colors. These designs, though purposeful and formal are not in the least bit bland despite their context. On the contrary, they are lively, expressive and display a distinct individualism that is still refreshing a hundred years later.

In the early part of the 20th century, the mechanical wonder of the subway system was a catalyst for visual expression by some artists of the Futurist movement. The speed and power of moving trains lent itself nicely to the overall theme of this group which emabraced the energetic and accelerated pace of the world beginning at the 20th century. Paintings of the Futurists broke down motion in fractured slivers of color, like Max Weber’s 1915 painting Rush Hour, which is a visual display of the New York City rush hour commute done in kinetic geometric planes.

It is not unusual while riding the train to witness an artist sketching the passengers on the trains. In a number of quick fluid strokes, these artists capture the emotions of the people on the train. The sketches may be used later as a reference tool or may exist simply as lovely discreet items. Artists such as Marvin Franklin who as longtime subway worker used his first hand knowledge to create beautifully rendered paintings of the people who ride the trains. Elbow Toe is a street artist whose sketches of subways riders in lines of red ink are expressive and energetic.

Every morning thousands of people descend into the subway stations across the city, hundreds more wait on platforms for their trains to take them to their destination points. The train enters the station, doors open, people crowd into the cars, some sit, some stand, some read, some think and some look about, eventually the train moves, bumping along the tracks as it courses its way through the tunnels. It’s a scene repeated day in and day out, every month and every year for a hundred years. To the daily commuter it is simply a ride; to an artist it is a vast and endless opportunity.

Please join Tracy Fitzpatrick as she discusses her book Art and the Subway: New York Underground on Monday, Sept 14, at the Mid-Manhattan Library @ 6:30 PM

I have also included a link to javier hernandez-miyares blog featuring film clip of posterboy's art, an anonymous New York City based street artist whose only utensil is a razor. He is known for satiric college-like works created by cutting out sections of the self-adhesive advertisement posters in the platforms of New York City subway stations, and pasting them back in different positions.

We're pretty excited at the Library today, because tonight is the debut screening of a documentary short of Design by the Book at the Brooklyn Arts Council Film Festival!

Design by the Book began life as a series here at NYPL, co-produced by Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge. It follows the experiences of five local artists as they explore the Library's collections (and the building itself too!) in search of inspiration for their work. I was their resident reference librarian and had great fun helping them out in their searches. We're planning some super fall programming that will bring more crafty and artsy books out of the stacks and to the DIY-ing masses, so stay tuned if you want to get some hands-on library inspiration too. But in the meantime, come to tonight's event and see some great films and meet the makers!

What: Design by the Book will be screened as part of a curated collection entitled Artists in Residence
When: 9:00pm
Where: Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO (16 Main Street at the corner of Water Street)

I first learned about Stanford White in E. L. Doctorow’s book Ragtime. It was the lurid tale of lust and murder regarding Stanford White that remained in my mind until I moved to New York City many years ago. Over a long period of time, I have come to learn Stanford White was much more than the scandal that I first associated with him. Stanford White was a master designer and instrumental in many of the great architectural works of the city.

Without knowing it, I came across the legacy of Stanford White time and time again while living in the city. Slowly I learned many of the great architectural prizes that exist in the city are White's designs. There are Stanford White treasures all over New York and the ones that are gone nonetheless register prominently if only in photographs. For example the long gone great Penn Station was designed by the prestigious architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. I had been looking at images of Penn Station long before I moved to New York in the early 80’s. Penn Station’s demise in 1963 by no means crushed the spirit and importance of this building. Tragically its structure was destroyed for something inferior, but the old Penn Station’s voice speaks loud and clear from the many photographs that exist.  read more »

Did you enjoy following the adventures of our Design by the Book artists as they found inspiration at NYPL? Do you want to dig in to the Library's collections too, to find materials to fuel your own creativity? If so, then check out my User's Guide to NYPL for DIY Designers and Artisans--it will get you up to speed on the treasures and the quirks of the entire Library system. And with it in hand you can start your own hunt for inspiring stuff. Once you get started in your handmade endeavors, please join our Design by the Book Group on Flickr! It’s an open group, and you can post pictures of your creations there, along with a caption explaining the part that NYPL played in your project!

Here's one completed project from the Design by the Book Group (thanks, egoldberg.rm, for sharing!)--a vintage image in the Library's Digital Gallery has been remade into a lovely blue-hued sunprint:

Now it's your turn! Get making and start sharing--I'll do the same!

It's been grand working with our Design by the Book artists Lorena Barrezueta, Rebecca Kutys, Mike Perry, John Pomp, and Julia Rothman. They never failed to surprise me in their interests and their unexpected uses of what they found at the Library. In this, the last episode, they share their Library-inspired creations. I hope that you've enjoyed this series. Stay tuned for future DIY and design projects from the Library!

The holidays are over, and our intrepid artisans are back at work. Check out the latest episode of Design by the Book to see what they are making!

A few days ago, I remembered that I liked Design Observer—a collective blog that occasionally includes posts from the great Steven Heller. Anyway, there was a post or a link or some other worm hole a few months ago that led to a Flickr page of book covers designed by Alvin Lustig for New Directions in the late 1940’s. Clean, with one or two colors, interesting use of typography or hand lettering, and abstracted shapes, Lustig’s designs are a revelation and respite from the lazy use of the photographic image and rote text layout (a problem then as now).

However, since NYPL, like most libraries, does not extensively collect book jackets, my forays into the stacks were for naught. That is until I ran across Alfred Young Fisher’s The Ghost in the Underblows. A 304 page arch-modernist poem that I won’t or can’t summarize, The Ghost in the Underblows was designed by Lustig and printed at the Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles in 1940. Lustig’s design for the title page and the section breaks are quite beautiful given the two-color palette (red and black) he utilized and vastly different from his later work. Each is a small symphony, composed of metal slugs and other odds and ends from the print shop where the positioning and edges of the components become visible on close inspection. Yet moving back the designs resemble a Frank Lloyd Wright window constructed by Malevich.

All of the images from Ghost as well as other information on Lustig are available here, but a close examination with the object provides a real delight.

Watch as the Design by the Book artists come to the Library in search of inspiration and information!

I’m slipping off and attending an exciting celebration on Thursday, so my next post will come on Friday. The National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan will be holding an awards event, A Single Thread: Celebrating Native American Design and Style. Five native artists will be honored for their accomplishments, and most of them work in textiles and adornment. I know three of the artists personally, so this will be a fine time to let them know how much their contributions to the arts are appreciated.

Joe Baker, from the Delaware Nation, is one of those natives who has achieved astounding success in the fine arts, with his paintings receiving significant awards. Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (Assiniboine/Sioux) is a model for future generations of Plains artists working with beading and dressmaking. Dorothy Grant (Haida) has established her own brand as a purveyor of stylish clothing rendered with Northwest Coast designs. I bought a jacket, embellished with a totemic raven figure, from her in Vancouver years ago that I literally wore to pieces. Veronica Poblano is one of Zuni Pueblo’s most talented jewelers—a huge compliment since Zuni is known for having a large pool of talented lapidary workers and silversmiths. And Denise Wallace’s (Chugach-Aleut) exquisite jewelry-making incorporates the finest of ivory and fossilized bone work, while paying tribute to her cultural heritage.

The influence of ethnic design on clothing has grown greatly since the last quarter of the twentieth century. But I’m still surprised and irritated that Native American design doesn’t get more acknowledgement than it does. Does anyone have any ideas why this is so?

“Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” is duly installed and opens this Friday, the 12th. It is always thrilling to see something that has been mentally visualized turn into physical reality. That’s one of the pleasures of being a curator. There are the hours of planning on paper, of restless paging through plate books, consulting reference tools, and then making decisions that can all too easily evaporate over time. Above all else, there is the necessity of distilling the exhibition’s premise into several clear, presentable ideas.

I remember when I started this blog that I promised how I’d take readers through some of the ideas taking shape for the exhibition. Dealing with Art Deco quickly made me realize how our own perceptions of modernity really began in the 1920s and 1930s. Then there were the ways in which the French conceived of Art Deco as a style, and how other countries, particularly the United States, made their own contributions to the style.

At long last, I’m no longer standing in my own inner world. When the exhibition opens, you, too, can gaze at the colorful images that parade within the Wachenheim Gallery, and hum along with the bouncy music of those decades. Please visit and get a feeling for what happened to modern design in that not-so-long-ago era.

And do not imagine that I’m not mindful of what a sad anniversary this day is. September 11, 2001 didn’t receive the emotional resolution that Pearl Harbor created, when the nation immediately girded itself for war. My teenaged father, like so many others, lied about his birth date in order to enlist, and spent four years in the South Pacific. Our war on terror has taken a different form altogether. Sometimes, in the morning, when I’m stopped on the corner at Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change so I can cross and go to the Library, I’ll screw my eyes shut and look south, opening them in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the Twin Towers. Inevitably, even after seven years, what I see when I open my eyes is the terrible yellow dust of that week, and a void that can never be filled…

A lot of the stories in The Fashion Conspiracy describe the means whereby the various designers and companies establish their brand. Product branding is extremely important these days, as more and more consumers—especially young ones—pledge allegiance to specific brands. Sneakers are a famous example. Linking fashion and beauty products with famous faces is another time-honored device. If you want to get a good idea of the business process involved in all this, the SIBL Library has a great work: Packaging design: successful product branding from concept to shelf. While researching brands as a subject, I discovered to my surprise that this topic has not been greatly written about. I wonder why?

There is also something online that proves to be great fun. The Origins of Brands Blog makes a lot of connections with the same wryness that Nicholas Coleridge displayed in The Fashion Conspiracy. I’m bemused myself over my predilection for national brands. For example, I remain loyal to English perfume (Penhaligan) and French purses (Longchamps), and always, always wear only authentic American Indian-made jewelry.

Do any of you who might be reading this post have these kinds of loyalties? And do you think they’re an inherited or acquired trait?

Our visual world is made up of many bits and pieces. It is the fragments merging together to make up a whole that really make a difference in what we see. Taken alone, these individual parts tend to go unnoticed by most people. For example in architecture, it is the color of the stone, the decoration, the lettering on the sign above the door or the carved letters on a gravestone that help define the structure and create a feeling.

Lettering is a small part of the ornamentation of an architectural structure. It is generally the colossus of the structure itself that grabs the eye first, but if you look carefully and take in the entirety of a structure, a visual reward is there waiting and it is often in the letters of the words that adorn it.

Words are as much a part of our visual landscape as the buildings, streets and trees or the people we see every day. A vibrant visual world indeed. Many of us are inured to the most vulgar visual sights, as well as the sublime. Some of us don’t even notice the first spring flowers or the glowering flashing lights of a neon sign, advertising a dingy car service business. We may take a second glance but we easily move on, letting our eyes wonder aimlessly, registering nothing. But really there is much to admire in the letters of the words that plaster our visual landscape. It is the design of the letters that make words noticeable. Most us recognize what we like in structures all over the city without really even knowing why. Buildings are adorned with incised or raised letters above entryways, signs are brightly lit and splashes of paint in cryptic words jump off building walls on dimly lit streets. These visual displays are designed as a feast for our eyes and it is impressive and purposeful.

On Sept 2. at 6:30 PM, on the 6th floor, Mid-Manhattan will host a FREE slide lecture program From Gravestones to Graffiti: 250 Years of Lettering in New York, with guest speaker Paul Shaw. Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. His specialty is lettering, whether written, drawn, carved or typographic. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the author of Looking for Letters in New York: A Tale of Surprise and Dismay. Paul Shaw is the recipient of many prestigious grants and lectures widely. Mr. Shaw is an expert on the subject of letters and can speak eloquently on the design, complexity and craftsmanship of letters that are everywhere from subway signs, to grave markers, to graffiti. Please join us for a wonderful evening.

Books on letter design and graffiti can be found at the library in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Also at the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library, there are an abundance of images on letters/alphabets/graffiti that can be viewed.

More upcoming programs at Mid-Manhattan.

An article on Paul Shaw by New York Times' Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray.

In the recent New York Times feature, Shopping With…, designer Kelly Wearstler visited the Los Angeles bookstore, Potterton Books and revealed books that have inspired her. Many of Kelly’s inspiration books are in the collection of The New York Public Library including the article's pièce de résistance “A Speciman Book of Pattern Papers.” Although Kelly paid $3200 for the book, you can look at it for free at the Library. (Just keep in mind that you’ll have to look at it on site, but bring your camera—you can take as many pictures as you want.) If you can’t make it to the Library, there are some beautiful patterns on the Digital Gallery, including my new favorite, to the right. For while rare books may be expensive, inspiration is always free.

Here are some of the other books mentioned in the article:
(Unless otherwise noted, the books are at the Humanities Library)

"The Bathroom: A New Interior"
"Goodbye Picasso"
"The Hermès Shop Windows"
"Horst: Interiors" (at the Mid-Manhattan Library)
"The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design" (at the Science Industry and Business Library)
"Ettore Sottsass : a critical biography"

One of Calvin Tompkins' Bachelors has shuffled off stage left. As the New York Times obituary makes clear, Rauschenberg's impact on the Visual and Performing Arts is pretty much incalculable.

I can't remember when I didn't know of Rauschenberg's work, having probably been exposed to a few pieces in my teens on a weekend getaway to the Art Institute of Chicago, but one of my favorite experiences that encompasses Rauschenberg and his cadre of New York pals was seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at Lincoln Center in 1999. There in one place--literally and figuratively--were Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, Bob Rauschenberg and, as something of a weird bonus Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gavin Bryars and Jim O'Rourke.

The Library for Performing Arts actually has a DVD of one night that I attended in addition to other videos and printed material relating to Rauschenberg's work with the MCDC as well as his experiments in Performance Art. In addition, the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs has a plethora of material outlining Rauschenberg's entire career.

Goodbye 20th century!

Programming is great. Not only do I get to select the programs I present, I am then rewarded 10 fold by attending interesting and entertaining programs and I get paid for it! What could be better? About a year ago I happened to be reading Christopher Gray’s Streetscapes column in the Real Estate Section of the Sunday New York Times. It is the first column I read in the Sunday paper. Generally the focus of the Streetscapes column is a building. However on Sunday, April 29, 2007 Christopher Gray did something quite different. On that day the Streetscapes column was devoted to a man, Paul Shaw. Mr. Shaw is a designer and design historian, specializing in architectural lettering.

The subject of the article was completely new to me and I found it fascinating, exciting even. In the article Christopher Gray went on a walking tour with Paul Shaw whose focus was on letters: letters on buildings, in the subway and on monuments, letters which appear everywhere in the city. After reading the article I had experienced a visual revelation, allowing me to see beyond my pedestrian eyes. I found myself looking anew at buildings, monuments and signs that before I would glance over.

I knew Paul Shaw would present a wonderful program and decided to invite him to come speak at the library. I contacted Christopher Gray and inquired about Mr. Shaw. Christopher confirmed my thoughts about Paul Shaw and happily provided me with contact information. After receiving Mr. Shaw’s email address I wrote a lengthy email to him, introducing myself and what I do, followed by a polite request for him to come speak at the library. My wishes were granted with a response of “yes, I’d be happy to speak at the library!”

Months went by and then came the creation of the promotional materials for the program. There was further correspondence between Paul and I about content and title of the program. Initially there was some confusion between Paul and I about what the title should be for the program. Paul’s title was, how should I say, not the most exciting it should be to attract an audience. Paul’s title seemed geared to a specific audience, with perhaps more expertise in the field of typographic design, definitely not appropriate for a general audience. We went back and forth on this discussion for a few more emails till Paul understood what I had been politely trying to tell him. We want people to come to the program, not avoid it. “Oh” he said. “You want something more jazzy sounding.” “Yep, exactly!” I said. The next title fell right into the perfect range of jazzy/sexy. Then came the wrangling with the look of the flyer. Naturally Paul wanted to see everything and I was happy to oblige. He is a designer and I was told by my supervisors to expect it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be problematic. We create an effective, nice looking flyer, with an already established template. It was initially created with lots of input from present and former employees. Hence we produce a solid looking flyer. Many of our patrons have told me how handsome the flyers look and I take this as a good sign. Paul made some comments and some changes and I tried to appease his requests. Finally we came to an agreement on an appropriate flyer that he could be happy with. Phew!

The night of the event we got our biggest crowd ever, 135 attended. And Paul Shaw did not disappoint. If ever there was a blockbuster program, this was it! Paul worked hard on his presentation, you could tell. He had us on the edge of our seats. He presented a program in three parts: letters in the subways, letters on apartment buildings and finally letters on department stores (Paul Shaw counts Lord & Taylor as a former client). Interesting stories, as well as a bit of design theory and history melded into a fascinating and visually exhilarating experience. It's all in a letter, I just never knew how much. Paul Shaw will be coming back in the fall to do another program. I hope you can attend!

Generally in the same subject area, I have included a review of Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary that uses the legendary typeface to weave a broader story about typography, graphic design and visual culture in the last half-century.

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuer and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings.

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the period. A pared-down style probably seemed more challenging than more lush style did. Pared-down furniture was also probably easier – and less expensive – to make.

PAB: What about those white rubber curtains?

MS: Texture and touch was important to him from the first. Later, he would become a master of the flesh, with a truly tactile sense of the body. He often wore a leather jacket.

PAB: Certainly the early 1930s were a time of economic struggle in Britain, and by 1932-3, Bacon was moving away from design and into painting. Do you think that once he became acclaimed as a painter, he found his old work in the decorative arts to be an embarrassment?

MS: English society was not particularly interested in advanced continental design, and Bacon’s business was probably not very successful. Most of his customers were friends. For example, the Australian novelist Patrick White bought a desk. But I think Bacon, in his twenties, simply became more and more interested in painting as he grew older. He was already painting as a teenager in the late 1920s.

PAB: In interview after interview when he was older, Bacon consistently belittled his youthful experience as a designer. Why did he do this?

MS: Many artists like to imagine that they spring fully-formed into the world. They do not enjoy acknowledging that they were ever confused or uncertain.

PAB: The 1920s was the age when modernity shone with such new promise. Do you think this affected Bacon, even though his time as a designer was short?

MS: I doubt Bacon was ever very optimistic about the promise of modernity or that he took seriously the utopian aspirations of modernist design. But he remained interested until the end of his life in creating an environment that represents more than just a fashionable interior and, instead, embodies a powerful worldview. Today he is celebrated for establishing what may be the most chaotic and messy space ever inhabited by a sane artist. In fact, after his death, the artist’s studio – litter and all -- was placed on public view in Dublin. I’m sure that Bacon, who had an appealing sense of humor, occasionally smiled at the contrast between his mature working space and the clean, honed clarity of his youth.

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years.

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris, where he was exposed to the height of Art Deco artistic energy. When he returned to London, he started up as a furniture and rug designer. Do you think his experiences in Paris led to this development?

MS: Before Bacon went to Paris, he spent time in radical Berlin. There he would have seen the most advanced furniture and rug design, and he also came to know elegant and raffish people interested in whatever was new. In Paris, he discovered Picasso.

PAB: One of my reference books up at the Art Desk says that Bacon considered his furniture designs to be “extremely bad copies of Le Corbusier.” Other books, however, state that his furniture and rug designs were actually quite good.

MS: I wouldn’t call them either extremely bad or extremely good. Remember, he was barely twenty years old. He had no formal schooling in art or design. When considered in that light, his work is remarkably precocious. Historically, however, it just amounts to an interesting example of period design. His pieces have flair, but are not especially original.

PAB: Bacon himself called his designs unoriginal and heavily influenced by contemporary French design. However, doesn’t his work seem to reflect a variety of influences from the period, including English and German modern trends?

MS: I’m not an expert in the design of that period – yet! -- but, yes, he seems to draw upon a variety of sources. Creating a pastiche is what most young artists do.

PAB: Did his early work with interiors help him with his later paintings?

MS: In his paintings, Bacon often sets his figures in an abstract geometric space that may well recall his immersion in the edgy designs of the twenties and thirties. The furniture in some paintings is also reminiscent of his early designs.

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon.

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the artistic atmosphere of that fascinating era, only to break off his design work and turn to figurative oil painting fulltime. Knowing that Mark has been working away downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to question him about Bacon’s early years. The next several posts, on April 29 and May 1, brief interviews with Mark Stevens, will recount what I learned from him.

The cloche hat was all the rage in the Art Deco decades. The bell-shaped cloche had a close fit and narrow, dipped brim suited to the shortened, or bobbed, hair of the young flapper. She was a new incarnation of the modern woman, with places to go and things to do. Why, she’d even smoke cigarettes in public!

Want to have a good laugh? Or maybe purchase something, once the offerings are made clear? Go onto www.20sgangstercostumes.com and get yourself a flapper costume. I think my first memory of this stereotypical dress was during an episode of the original Star Trek television series, when Captain Kirk and his landing party ended up on a planet where everybody dressed and acted like 1920s gangsters and molls.

A colleague of mine at the Library knows a place in the Garment District where you can go and have your own cloche hat constructed for you! You can pick out the fabric and trim, and even watch the hat being blocked. We’ve always meant to go there, but invariably we get distracted by something or other at work. One day we will go—if only to release our inner flapper!

I was so intrigued by the Christian Louboutin exhibition at F.I.T., it led to me rummaging around our catalogue in pursuit of further information. One thing I discovered was an authoritative scholarly work on the shoe industry in Europe, with focus on fashion rivals France and England. Giorgio Riello’s A foot in the past: consumers, producers and footwear in the long eighteenth century offers significant information about the textile and production history of shoes and boots.

In the process of locating this book, however, I began to see how shoe history researchers could become easily confused with their findings. The problem lies in our Library of Congress Subject Headings. The obvious term to use is shoes. Yet there is another term that was adopted at a later date: footwear. To do a thorough search, it helps to search both terms. The tricky part is in the age difference between the terms; shoes will yield more citations because it’s older and been around longer, yet newer, and often more up-to-date works on the subject will only show up under the heading footwear.

Now, for the even more tricky fact! When one searches shoe industry and footwear industry, more citations show up under the newer footwear industry heading. Again, this is undoubtedly because so much more has been researched and written about this subject, as with all costume history, over the last ten years or so.