one small good thing

…and it is. Four years ago, Fuel, a London-based design company, started up its own publishing company and since then they have been putting out books that are so brain-squeezingly interesting, not to mention creamy to the touch, that it makes you fall in love with print all over again. It also helps that they are Russophiles and that their catalog features such esoteric topics as an analysis of crime as a genre and reproductions of vinyl sleeves from rare library recordings. But my all-time favorite is ‘Home-made Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts,’ by Vladimir Arkhipov, a book of color photographs documenting household items that Soviet citizens had to fashion themselves during times of scarcity. Each creator, or descendant thereof, is interviewed and a grim, yearbook sized photograph of them is also included. The results of all this earnest striving to reproduce the most commonplace of items by hand are always touching and often hilarious. I have given it as a gift three times and counting.

A glimpse inside the book 'Home-made Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts,' by Vladimir Arkhipov, from the Fuel Publishing website