YESTERDAY it was exactly sixty years ago that the first Volkswagen T1 rolled of the production line. The T1 and his successors are considered to be the ultimate surf van. They brought countless surfers to exotic places and pounding surf breaks. In total 10.7 million Volkswagens vans were sold worldwide. The advertisements of T1’s you see below were published in the United States in 1963 by the division Volkswagen of America Incorporated.

IN a time when in the western world only sailors and servicemen had ink under their skin, there weren’t much tattoos to choose from.  Most of the pieces on a tattoo flash were anchors, hearts and skulls. The tattoo artist had 50 to 100 drawings in his parlor to pick from and the only custom work in those days was your name or the date. The tattoos on this page must have found their way to the biceps of melancholic sailors. The pieces date from around the Second World War.

CHECK out ol’ Wal (in the middle with the tusks). He is listening to a story about himself. The story is told by Philip Rose and a couple of kids are gathered for occasion. I show this cover because I like the lettering of the title. It reminds me a bit of the bubble-style in graffiti. Nice detail is the seagull resting on the last L. Picton Publishing brought out Tales of Old Wal in 1975.

THESE optic devices have an aura of quality. They are called rearsights and are used by biathlon athletes to screw on their rifles. The adjustable rearsight enables the shooter to moderate the sunlight. In other words, it changes the brightness of the sight picture in different light conditions. The ones you see on this page are made by the German company Anschütz.

CASTLES are cool, but there is a lot of space to fill with furniture and ornamental stuff. The person in charge of the interior of this French mansion decorated the walls with the remains of a good hunting party. The deer horns on the plaster look like a rapidly growing fire. A few moments later and it’s spreading over the ceiling, the start of a horned inferno.

ED Ruscha is fond of words. The versatile artist likes them so much, words appear in his paintings throughout his career. Most of the time he uses an existing type, but between 1966 and 1969 Ruscha makes up his own form. The results are the ‘liquid words’ paintings. The first one has the title ‘Annie, Poured from Maple Syrup’. Check out more paintings of Ruscha here.  They are all there, from the early works from 1958 till the late ones in 1992. Although some are missing.

SUMMERTIME and the living is easy. On the first day of March I’d like to share these pictures with you. They were taken on an early morning somewhere in Anglet, France. It was the last day of a surftrip and with those sunrays you know it’s going to be a beautiful day.

COUREUR Andy Bentza drove this RX Lancia Stratos HF in the early eighties in the European Rallycross.  It’s the only Stratos with a 3.0 liter engine and the car is still the property of Bentza. What make this auto special for me are the black stripes and letters on the white underground. The advertisements and stripes form a nice composition.

IF you are a National Book Award Winner, you have to flaunt it. Like Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud. The fact is printed on the covers of these paperbacks as some kind of stamp of approval. It was probably the idea of the publisher, but ok. The books were published in 1965 and both of the novels have colored pages, like these ones. I especially like the cover of ‘The adventures of Augi March’.

THE modern Japanese writing system is pretty complicated. It uses three scripts: Kanji and two syllabaries called Kana. The first one uses ideograms from Chinese characters. Kana consists of Hiragana, used for native Japanese words, and Katakana, used for foreign borrowings. Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts, and I believe the set you see on this page is Katakana. Keinosuke Sato and Shoyu Ohmachi designed this particular font.