A Mary Blair Xmas, Everyone!

Our holiday crafting project. Inspired by the artistry of Mary Blair and the Charlie Brown Christmas tree lot. (photo courtesy of Swankster, Rhonda Wong). Click here to see more holiday treats holiday exhibition.

Unwrapped: Monoprints by Jeff Abell

Art: a most excellent Xmas gift. Click here to preview our upcoming holiday exhibition.

Inside Swank Modern Design

Take a tour of Swank Modern Design in the opening episode of Palm Springs Grand Tour 2011 with host, Greg Osborne, of Gay Getaways TV.

Happy Día de los Muertos!

Memory Object

Even if you were too young to own a Sun Porsche in the 1970s, you could put on your Orange Mint flavored Sea & Ski Lipsaver and drive your Datsun to the nearest Beachboys. An iconic American brand that has vanished from the future we live in. An iconic plastic tube full of summer vacation nostalgia. Classic.

Asian modern Khmerchitecture embraces exhuberant cast concrete breezeway blocks, Vann Molyvann accordion roofs, Angkor kitsch plaster reliefs, mid-century modern battlements, Euro-kitsch neo-classical fixtures, gratuitous pediments and horror vaccui iron gates (Phnom Penh).

Looking Swanky

Just finished: the facelift on our 1958 Palm Springs mid-century modern ranch studio/gallery with 15 tons of black lava rock and crushed black glass.

Memory Object

Even if you haven't seen one in 40 years, this magic copper wand can bring back instant memories of sitting around a kitchen table, dipping hard-boiled eggs into glass ice cream bowls filled with vinegar-scented colored dyes rehydrated from tiny tablets; and the eggs, slowly drying, standing upright in holes punched out of the cardboard kit box; and sometimes-smeary decals or crayon resist doodles. Someone out there designed and patented this simple, specialized, and magically unforgettable human tool.

Plan now! Palm Springs Modernism Week, Feb 17-27: films, lectures, cocktails, and tours, from trailer parks to Frank Sinatra's estate. Plus, the opening party for our new exhibition, Desert Mod, on Feb 18, 5-8pm.

This former Howard Johnsons turned Denny's, is now reincarnated as the flagship restaurant of the hipster Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. The floor-to-ceiling windows have been hung with Land-of-the-Giants macrame and beads, but we love the googie roofline supported by mid-century rockery.

For more images from our exhibition, Desert Mod, head over to Swank Modern Design.

Incense, peppermint, rosemary and thyme. Mattel fed the heads of the children of 1969 with this Peter-to-the-Max zodiac fortune telling set, Mystique Fortell Cards. Mixing day-glo colors with graphics appropriated from medieval woodcuts, and tapping into youth fascination with all things occult and Kreskin, it remains an exemplar of classic 60s pop design. Among its definitive prognostications: "far out behavior" and "pickup by a flying saucer."

For more vintage pop tripiness, head over to Swank Modern Design.