Martin Burgers

Dean Martin's contribution to Dinah Shore's 1966 The Celebrity Cookbook.

House Beautiful Indeed

One of my favorite homes, located on the water near where I spent some of my formative years, is the Hawkins Ferry house in Grosse Pointe.

W. Hawkins Ferry is best known for authoring the definitive book on Detroit architecture, The Buildings of Detroit. But he was also a philanthropist, art collector, educator and modernist and was responsible for such great things as the core of the Detroit Institute of Art's modern art collection, the Marcel Breuer-designed Grosse Pointe Public Library (including Calder sculpture) and his own International Style home on the shores of Lake St. Clair, designed by noted local architect William Kessler in the 1960s.

Built as a house for art and entertaining, the residence was featured as the cover story in the September 1969 issue of House Beautiful. Here are a couple scans of this really incredible house to inspire you, or make you feel really inadequate. Most of the art you see in there (dig the Giacometti sculpture) can now be found at the DIA. The floorplan should be helpful to you when the time comes for you to design your own home.

Addiction

As I drove past Greektown Casino this morning I saw an elderly woman getting out of a cab to go in for, presumably, a day of nickel slots. I questioned to myself how someone could find that entertaining, and thought about the way that people get addicted to the high of winning and just end up losing. What a terrible thing, don't do it little old lady!

And then I stopped and reprimanded myself for (a) judging someone else's good time (as usual) and (b) being a total hypocrite. Because nothing beats the high of a good vintage score, especially after a dry run.

I obviously jinxed myself with my last thrifting post because it's been miserable going since. I was planning to go on hiatus for a while, and then at the last minute yesterday decided to hit a couple of my regular spots. A guy I know on Facebook posts every week about "speaking into your existence" and willing yourself to have a good week, so I tried to will into existence some Arabia Ruska dinnerware, an original Braun Aromaster or a Sony PS-F5 linear tracking turntable but my optimism was not rewarded. 

At my final stop, lingering to prolong my chances, I ended up poking through the books (generally a fruitless endeavor at thrift stores). Jackpot.

I don't know how a trove of vintage architecture books ends up in a random thrift store in a working-class suburb, but I'll take them. Naturally the hiatus is a distant memory - I'll be back out there thrifting the next time the opportunity arises. It's a sickness, people.

Ferry & Jerry

Bryan Ferry, with Jerry Hall giving Jerry Hall. Before the heartache. In honor of Valentine's Day.

Exotic Wood

An unexpectedly satisfying week at the thrift stores. Thanks February.

Clockwise from upper left: Part of a set of really hip cocktail glasses from an unknown manufacturer, but basically a stemmed version of the Libbey St. Regis cocktail glass; sitting on a stack of Brazilian rosewood veneer chargers from Japan.

Dansk Kobenstyle pot in white; on top of a Dansk Rare Woods tray, this one in Mutenye wood. It wasn't free, but it wasn't expensive, and only the second time I've discovered Rare Wood in the wild. The other time was a rosewood ice bucket with a poorly repaired split top for $500 at an estate sale, which needless to say neither I nor anyone else bought.

A set of Sasaki Handcrafted rocks glasses, most with labels, surprisingly undamaged and complete at the Salvation Army. Those of you who thrift know what a miracle this is.

Rounding out the exotic woods, two teak bar boards from Den Permanente, the legendary Danish design store in Copenhagen.

Source Material

The old Playboy buying/gift guides from the 60s and 70s are some of the highlights of the magazine, and early on were part of the inspiration for the first Hugh pop up. The products were vetted, the styling was straightforward, and for a lover of vintage stuff there is always something cool to see.

Take, for example, this bar gear guide from 1961. A Dansk Fjord bar tool set was $15 (about $120 today if you trust the consumer price inflation calculator). Dunhill had some pretty hip silverplate bar accessories with that 8 inch cocktail jigger and tapered cocktail shaker. And Raymor was selling a streamlined martini pitcher I'd be happy to stumble on today.

Reboot

I recently spent some time cleaning out dead links from my bookmarks folder, and was dismayed to see so many blogs I used to follow have disappeared. It's like blogging stopped in 2012. Which it kind of did, with social media becoming the preferred way to connect online. But all that great information and inspiration disappeared too.

As a small business on social media, it can be difficult to connect with followers - a like or brief comment on Instagram is about as intimate as things get these days. Facebook used to be a conversation, but now you're lucky to reach 5% of your page fans without paying $10 per post. It has its uses for promotion, of course, but the magic of the casual connection is gone.

Social media also isn't really the best way to bundle various types of content in one place. So there's that.

I'm making a leap of faith and starting this blog again. Think of it as the Hugh backchannel - it isn't meant specifically to promote stuff we have in the store. It's more the things that inspire the store. Pop culture, vintage finds, musings on design, tales from around town. 

Hugh is still on social media! Connect with us on Instagram @thankhugh for product info and store stuff, and me @joeposch for things related to this blog and more. Follow us on Twitter @thankhugh. Fan us on Facebook /lovehughlongtime.

Blogging is dead. Long live the blog!