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.

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.

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 have the desire to climb a glacier or a frozen waterfall, you need a pair of these bad boys. They are called crampons and are attached to outdoor footwear to provide traction on snow and ice. Crampons are mostly made of hardened steel, or lightweight aluminum. The front is used for vertical ice climbing. They remind me a bit of the clenched feet of Wolverine.

DIFFERENT trees, different wood. These samples show the variety in structure and color of men’s favorite material.  Cavemen used wood to warm and defend themselves, we make park benches and chess pieces out of it. The names of the types of wood are as exotic as the trees. You see on this page Snakewood, Ziricote, Marblewood, Ironwood, Fishtail Oak and Bocote.  See more compositions of cellulose here.

IT is easy to see Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) as a caricature with his thick French accent and his seemingly never-ending quest on the seven seas. But in retrospect I think Cousteau was a style icon. With a helicopter on his boat ‘Calypso’, in search of shipwrecks and obscure marine life, he had the air of a scientific playboy. His trademark: the red seaman’s cap.  Cousteau even had a collaboration with the watch company Omega. Together they made the Ploprof. It was waterproof to 1200 meters and the watch even had a shark proof bracelet. Omega reissued the Ploprof last year. ......................................... ......................................... Last picture via Watchismo

SOME birds sit in cages, some in glass domes. Like these ones on display below. The glass domes date from the Victorian era. In those days naturalist roamed the earth to catch exotic and colorful birds. After the taxidermist did his work it was the mantelpiece for the birds.

WHEN quality meets a certain high, some products lose their meaning. They become a statement. Like the Fällkniven NL5cx Idun. It’s probably the world’s best hunting knife. It got one the most exclusive blades ever made. The sides consist of stainless 120-layer Damascus steel. The edge is of powdered steel with a hardness of 64 on the scale of Rockwell. The handle is in stacked leather and fiber washers and the fittings are of solid nickel silver. They cost well over a thousands dollars. Fällkniven is a Swedish company, but all of its production is done by subcontractors. The NL5cx Idun, for instance, is made in Japan. It is part of the Northern Light series. All the knives are named after gods from Norse mythology. The others have not the steel blades like the Idun, but are still pretty nice knives.

THE logotype of BeatsNothing is inspired by a square. A square in Lisbon, to be precisely. Just compare the thumbnail of this post with the header. I took this photo a year ago on the last day of a surf trip. There is even a pigeon with the name Waldo in the picture, that sits somewhere on the black and white square. Try to find it.