SPECK: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things [Hardcover]

Peter Buchanan-Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2001

In Speck, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Art Director of the New York Times Op-Ed page, asks artists, designers, lawyers, writers, collectors, and photographers to explore our obsessions with the small objects that loom large in our everyday lives.To wit: Maira Kalman empties people's pocketbooks; Nicholas Blechman and Jesse Gordon trace the history of the oldest piece of dust; David Horrowitz catalogs manhole covers; and Peter Buchanan-Smith unearths a 1966 high school yearbook and transcribes the inscriptions ("To a real sweet and cute guy with a great personality. Remember English III").Speck also shows how "ordinary" people can fascinate as much as "ordinary" objects: an interview with shoe shiner Harry Kitt, Manhattan's last practitioner of the dry-shine, photographs taken by a blind man on a sight-seeing tour, and a barber's extensive collection of earth, water, and air from around the world ask us to re-think our assumptions about the commonplace.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Disturbing closeups of lipsticks; a collection of heartbreakingly earnest lost-pet fliers; painstakingly documented differences in the scribbles produced by Eraser Mate or Dynagrip pens all help make up Speck: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things. Peter Buchanan-Smith, art director of the New York Times Op-Ed page, presents various odd obsessions of 25 artists in various media, and the result is this set of 200 color and 50 b&w illustrations of "projects" that come dangerously close to drawing charges of haphazard artmaking and are all the more engaging for it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Peter Buchanan-Smith is Art Director of the New York Times Op-Ed page.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (December 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568982976
• ISBN-13: 978-1568982977
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange and Wonderful, April 11, 2005

By 

JAL "jlwest" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SPECK: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things (Hardcover)

This is one to buy for yourself and buy for your friends. It's for anyone who needs to be reminded that when we think outside the box, we come up with wonderful ideas. Read the editorial reviews and believe them - this is a strange, weird, wild book. I've grabbed family members and friends and made them sit down with it. I've put it on the Staff Picks shelf at the book store where I work. Personal favorites: the drawn lines showing the movement on different subway lines in NYC, and the collection of different rock samples and soil samples belonging to a barber in the city. These strange collections are actually very moving, very haunting and human. After you look at this book, try looking up other books published by Princeton Architectural Press, which is bringing out some of the best books around - they also did PHOTOBOOTH by Babette Hines, and YOU ARE HERE by Katherine Harmon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elevating the ordinary to something extraordinary, April 9, 2006

By 

Kathy (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SPECK: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things (Hardcover)

If you like visual journal type of books like "Drawing From Life" you will probably enjoy this. It is a nice sized book with a great textural cover. It seems like a lot of thought was put into the printing of this book and the feel of the paper to the reader's touch.

Will you learn any art techniques from this? Nope...not that kind of book.

There are interesting visual experiments, a funny personal collection of name misspellings and several other text and/or visual anecdotes of every day life.

I liked "Drawing from Life" just a bit better because I felt more of a connection with the contributors since the commonality was the obvious journal. This book does not have that same connection for me but I still enjoy it simply as a lover of a visual feast.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Went back to buy it, February 24, 2006

By 

Karen Tiede (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SPECK: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things (Hardcover)

I saw this book in the store and then left it behind in a mad fit at register lines that were too long. Two days later, I was back in the store--couldn't let it go.

I love this book. It fits somehow with Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, and I wonder if the two books have the same editor? It's a collection of views into other people's minds, affirmation of things I've thought to do and never followed up on (had my own collection of cat whiskers until I moved).

I wish it had a little more background on HOW these artists managed their inventory--my experience suggests that for every "finished" and shared project, there are dozens in the wings, cluttering up the studio. But OK. Think Edward Tufte on Small Multiples--what an amazing amount of information is generated when information is collected and presented over time.

Did I say I love this book?