These master glassblowers make the difficult look easy

I've never seen Glas before and I'm absolutely delighted that Aeon Magazine uploaded the short doc on its Vimeo channel. Directed by Bert Haanstra, the 10-minute film about glass making won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary in 1959.

"[Glas] contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made."

Comments

Preserved tattoos of the dead

The idea of preserving tattoos after death came into existence long before NAPSA . London's Wellcome Collection has over 300 specimens of preserved human flesh bearing tattoos , collected in the late 19th century. There are many more examples of smaller collections in Paris, Poland, Portugal, Berlin, and Austria. But what fascinates me the most is this lesser-known museum at Tokyo University, the Medical Pathology Museum, which houses pieces of skin collected since 1926 by Dr. Masaichi Fukushi. "Fukushi would perform autopsies on donated cadavers and dissect off just the skin. He created a method of treatment to preserve the skin and kept them stretched in a glass frame, essentially like a leather. Later the ownership of the tattooed skin collection was passed on to Fukushi's son Katsunari. Katsunari added a further 20 tattooed skins himself and it's believed that the Medical Pathology Museum has 105 in its collection, many with full body suits." ...

This monk makes the best vinegar in New York

Brother Victor-Antoine d' Avila-Latourrette is a Benedictine monk who lives at a secluded monastery in New York's Hudson Valley. He's an internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of several cookbooks, including From a Monastery Kitchen and Twelve Months of Monastery Salads . And he makes vinegars unlike those found in most markets.

Here's an interesting rock formation

There's a cliff on the island of Heimaey in Iceland's Vestmannaeyjar archipelago that looks just like a giant elephant. Heimaey is the largest and most populated island off the Icelandic coast, and it attracts thousands of visitors each year because of this amazing rock formation. You can see few more shots over at 1 Million Pictures .

finding cain

Search This Blog