Here is the cover of a book I found at the week-end. I was attracted by the square format. Like a spiral binding, a square format is a sign of modern design…and well worth looking for.
As I suspected, the book is quite as interesting as I hoped…
Cover design by Fritz Buhler, Basle and designed by Hans Thoni, Berne
Result! I’ll have a look at my Richard Hollis, Swiss Graphic Design book.
Here are some page-spreads; the pictures are official railway prictures, but the art-direction is dynamic and engaging.
Michael Portillo has just begun a new railroad adventure in the USA…and, this time, he’s following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition up the Missouri river. Amtrak’s (US railways) , Missouri River Runner, also follows the river between Saint Louis and Kansas.
The city of Saint Louis was named by French fur traders after Louis IX of France. The settlement became an inportant gateway to the west after the Lousianna Purchase of 1803.
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, instructed L+C to travel up the Missouri river and to survey the new lands with a view to supporting trade and commerce…
Lewis and Clark provided the first maps to support the westward expansion of the US during the 19C. Identified as Manifest Destiny, the unification of the US continent into a single coherent political and economic entity was brutal…involving ethnic cleansing against Native Americans, Civil War with the southern Confederacy, and also established a racial fault-line across the continent that has endured to the present.
Saint Louis was the site of the infamous Pruitt Igoe housing development. PI replaced a timber shanty-town with modern blocks of flats in the 1950s. Things didn’t go according to plan and the buildings quickly became a symbol of inner-city decline. The development was pulled down in the 1980s.
The film, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), includes a whole section filmed at Pruitt Igoe and with a soundtrack by Philip Glass. More recently, the area of wider Saint Louis has seen a number of mis-judged police attacks against various african-american males. At Furguson Mo, for example. This has understandably provoked the Black Lives Matter movement and the reactionary response.
In amongst all this, it was a lovely surprise to find Michael Portillo looking at pictures by the American mid-western artist, George Caleb Bingham.
I love American painting….especially in its early and primitive styles. If you look at all of GCBs pictures they are not uniformally great…some of the portraits are just not very accurate and show how difficult it is to work in isolation and without example from a teacher or colleague.
GCB produced a number of river pictures and these are his masterpieces. The best of these is, Fur Traders (c1845), shown above. Ironically, this painting lives in NYC.
Kansas City remains an important rail hub for freight services across the US. Here is a satellite picture of the yards…
I was watching University Challenge (BBC2TV iplayer) yesterday evening and was pleasantly surprised by a series of questions about music and trains. Actually, the questions were about orchestral music and trains…not easy for young people.
The questions were about Berlioz and the Paris-Lille railway, Steve Reich and Different Trains, and about the Railway Waltz by one of the Strausses…maybe, the elder?
It turns out that Berlioz composed a send-off for the first through train between Paris and Belgium, via Lille (1846).
When the train arrived at Lille, there was a gala dinner…comprising over 28 000 plates of food! The Paris Lille railway was capitalised by the Rothschild bank, and formed the main part of the Chemins de Fer du Nord railway.
The company never quite had the glamour of the PLM to the south, but it became a very significant international line and had a very high volume of business traffic. Indeed, the international trains from Paris to Amsterdam, and beyond, were facilitated by the creation of the Compagnie des Wagons Lits.
So, there you are…trains, luxury, food and music, all combined!
The poster by AM Cassandre for the famous international service from Paris to the north…is shown above
This postcard image shows the engines of the Nord railway
One of my earliest posts (2011) was about the Jean Mitry film with music by Arthur Honneger. It turns out that this was filmed on the Paris-Lille line.
Here are two iterations of the famous French railway map by Gourdoux. This was a commercial map designed to help salesmen. Just click on the image for more detail.
Quite apart from the intrinsic geographical interest of the map, these particular examples have beautiful typography and combine information and organisation most pleasingly in the form of a ribbon type representation of the railway line.
Here’s a detail of the general idea
You can see how this maximises the amount of information and minimises any possible confusion.
These images are from the French national library collection…but you can see a lovely example of this map in central London. There is one displayed on the first-floor dining area of Mon Plaisir, in Monmouth Street. Mon Plaisir is the longest established French restaurant in London, and does a very nice steak-frites…
PS
Here is a typographic detail from another French map…just to give you an idea of the style
And here is another typographical detail from a map printed and published by Chaix, the printers. I love the decorative letters and the sparkle they give the printing. We’ve lost that.
I know a bit about Chaix because they were very important litho printers involved in printing posters at the end of the 19C. It turns out they were also the railway printers…In deed, the consolidated French railway timetable was known as the Chaix…just like Brdashaws in the UK.
Here is the cover of a book I found at the week-end. I was attracted by the square format. Like a spiral binding, a square format is a sign of modern design…and well worth looking for.
