The Most Beautiful Typewriter
Often described as the “most beautiful typewriter ever made,” the Olivetti MP1 (Modello Portatile) was first produced in 1932 and remained in production until 1950. The most sought-after are known as the ICO, referring to the company’s founder, Ingegnere Camillo Olivetti, who famously said, “A typewriter should not be a geegaw for the drawing room, […]
The Toronto Star’s Art Deco Treasure
In 1891, Toronto’s population was 180,000 and it had six newspapers. In November 1892, 21 printers (locked out after a labour dispute at another paper) along with their teenage apprentices launched a four-page newspaper aimed at the working class called The Evening Star (“a paper for the people”). Their reach exceeded their grasp and the Star struggled […]
A Reverse-Kondo: An Office Furnishings Fantasy
I love vintage office furniture and supplies. The other day, I thought, what if I were to do a reverse-Kondo? What would really give me joy would be to acquire a whole new office set-up. In this fantasy, I started to imagine pencils and staplers and tape dispensers and fountain pen holders to sit on […]
The Con Man and True Crime Writer
Nothing like a nonfiction writer who is also a convicted fraudster. Matthew Cox is a former mortgage broker who created fake documents to prove he owned properties then obtained mortgages on them for several times their real value. Authorities estimate he made somewhere between $5-million and $25-million US. He was convicted of fraud in 2002 […]
The Last Stone (left unturned)
I’m fascinated by reconstructions. I’ve done many of them myself — in books and magazine feature stories — and love the challenge of bringing alive events in the past so vividly that readers feel as though they were there. U.S. journalist Mark Bowden’s most recent book, The Last Stone, is a fine example of this. A […]
If Books Could Kill – An Essay
My essay-review in The National Post on how a phenomenon of mid-1800s Britain kicked off generations of blaming popular entertainment for influencing young people to commit crimes. If books could kill: The brutal history behind using popular entertainment as a scapegoat for heinous acts. By David Hayes, The National Post, May 19, 2019 […]
The Comma Queen and Me
I recently discovered that someone borrowed my copy (highlighted and annotated) of Mary Norris’ Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and not returned it. I keep a large file card in my living room to record when people borrow books or DVDs, but my system failed me this time and, thinking of Marie […]
Weegee the Famous
I’m reading Christopher Bonanos’ biography of Arthur (Usher) Fellig, aka Weegee. A brash immigrant kid, he started working joe jobs in photography studios at 14 and eventually became a celebrated photojournalist specializing in gangland crime and the seedy street world of New York. He often got to the scene of crimes before the police, especially […]
The Art of Business: Fortune covers of the ’30s
When Henry Luce launched Fortune in 1929, just as a stock market crash triggered the Great Depression, it was meant to be an upbeat celebration of American capitalism. It was that, but it also advocated social responsibility and featured stunning modernist art on its covers. In his 2004 book, An Economy of Abundant Beauty: Fortune Magazine and […]
Typist & Telephone Torment – Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet studied art in the late teens (of the 20th century) and worked as an artist into the ’20s before he gave it up to become an industrial designer and later work in his family’s wine business. He decided to re-commit himself to art in 1942 and studied with master lithographer Fernand Mourlot. He […]