The crafty blog Tigerlily Tinkering explains how to make a chuppah — the canopy under which a Jewish bride and groom stand (or, as in the photo above, sit) during their wedding ceremony — that displays significant objects between sheets of silk.

Fourteenth in an occasional series.

“The Curious World of Patent Models” is a traveling show organized by the Rothschild Patent Model Museum. On display at the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena through Aug. 15, 2010.

Via Core 77.

Thirteenth in an occasional series.

1) Several Significant Objects contributors have been nominated for Emmy awards! Colleen Werthmann for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Special (82nd Annual Academy Awards). Dean Haspiel for Outstanding Main Title Design (Bored To Death). And Todd Levin for Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series (The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien).

2) Meghan O’Rourke had a long review in the July 12 New Yorker of Anne Carson’s Nox, which is itself a significant object: “The contents arrive not between two covers but in a box about the size of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Inside is an accordion-style, full-color reproduction of the notebook, which incorporates pasted-in photographs, poems, collages, paintings, and a letter Michael once wrote home, along with fragments typed by Carson.”

* For more Author Updates, click here.

Andrea Magnani and Giovanni Delvecchio of the Italian design collective Resign claim theirs is a methodology “for all the designers who believe in magic and symbolic value of things.”

Via Cool Hunting

Twelfth in an occasional series.

1) Rick Moody will publish his new novel, The Four Fingers of Death (Little, Brown), on July 28.

2) Margot Livesey says: “I adored David Malouf’s new novel, Ransom. Malouf approaches the death of Patroculus, and Achilles’ response to that death, from his own unique angle. The result is beautiful, moving and, dare I say, elevating.”

3) Naomi Novik’s latest novel, Tongues of Serpents, comes out on July 13. She’ll be touring around the US from July 13-22.

* For more Author Updates, click here.

It had to happen eventually.

In September 2009, I noticed that a modern smartphone or PDA of some sort had somehow ended up in a photo on the cover of the 1960 French edition of Chester Himes’ Imbroglio negro (All Shot Up). So I posted my discovery to HiLobrow.

After that, without even looking for them, I found anachronistic smartphones/PDAs in two pre-1950s films — Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) and Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde (1931).

My discovery of these time-traveling devices has obviously inspired San Francisco-based artist Alex Varanese, who recently unveiled “ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME TRAVELERS,” a series of images in which he imagines how an mp3 player, a laptop, a mobile phone, and a handheld video game system would have been designed — and advertised — if they’d been invented in 1977.

(Happy Video Games Day, today.)

It’s a fun conceit, and it’s brilliantly executed. I particularly enjoy the sly shout-out to yours truly in Varanese’s rendering of the MobileVoxx…

What an honor!

The Index — a storefront gallery in Brooklyn — is a collection of materials and objects whose purposes, characters, and origins are fascinating to curator Jonathan Roquemaure. As Cool Hunting recently explained:

While each object’s uncommon looks are compelling enough on first blush, the history behind their materials and past utility often requires a little digging. Reflecting Roquemaure’s own ingenuity in finding and learning, his catalog comprises a carefully considered index of objects—from an eerie surgical table to children’s fencing masks and rare Mexican pottery (recently acquired through an iPad swap) to an 18th century Japanese dye-shop ledger, and so much more.

Eleventh in an occasional series.

Oil Spill Crisis: New York

June 5th is the deadline to enter HiLobrow’s OIL SPILL — WHERE YOU LIVE short-short story contest. Prize money will be donated to a good cause!

THE CHALLENGE: Write a story set in the town or city where you live, but imagine that it (and its surrounding area) has been flooded with several hundred thousand gallons of crude oil daily, because of a drilling-related crisis some weeks earlier.

THE PRIZES: HiLobrow will donate $100 in honor of the contest winner to the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit which seeks to prevent offshore oil spills. (Two-time Significant Objects author Lydia Millet is on the organization’s board.) The winner will also be sent a HiLobrow t-shirt (all sizes except Men’s Large available), and his or her story will be published on HiLobrow.com. Three finalists will also be selected; HiLobrow will donate $50 apiece to CBD for these.

GUIDELINES, HOW TO SUBMIT, ETC.: Click here.

Between October of last year and February of this one, the curators of Significant Objects parsed the data from the project’s first, experimental phase in the following thirteen ways.

1. We classified the 100 object-stories in our experiment as talismans, totems, evidence, and fossils.
2. We presented the raw original price/final price data.
3. We listed the week in which each story was published, and its associated object listed for auction on eBay.
4. We neutralized the Duration Factor by adding $18.00 to the final sale price of each item in Week 1, $17.00 to the final sale price of each item in Week 2, and so forth through Week 18 of 19. The resulting Adjusted Final Prices have been used in our figuring ever since.
5. We presented the experiment’s overall, week-to-week mean and median price data.
6. We compared the Final Prices and Adjusted Final Prices, and made it possible to rank sales data by either factor.
7. We presented the experiment’s Top 25 most significant object-stories (according to adjusted sales rank) in a visual manner, and invited readers to point out aesthetic considerations that might explain the objects’ popularity (i.e., independent of the associated narratives). We also invited readers to point out aesthetic considerations that might explain the unpopularity of some objects.
8. We analyzed the effect of CATEGORY on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: inconclusive.
9. We analyzed the effect of FUNCTION on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: inconclusive.
10. We charted CATEGORY and FUNCTION on pie charts. (OK, we didn’t use the VISTA 1.0 for that.)
11. Before leaving the question of FUNCTION behind, we asked readers to vote on whether particular objects were a novelty, or houseware.
12. We started analyzing the effect of EXPOSITION STRATEGY on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: not in yet.
13. We started analyzing the effect of HOT and COOL narrative modes on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data, and (what’s more) correlated with CATEGORY. Result: not in yet.

Then, in early March, our VISTA (Verifiable Insignificant-to-Significant Transubstantiation Analyzer) 1.0 threw a rod, and our parsing efforts ground to a halt.

Working around the clock, while also publishing our third volume of stories and holding down day jobs, we’ve finally managed to repair and upgrade the VISTA (now 2.0); on Monday, Rob Walker trotted out the first new analysis in fifteen weeks. Rob noted:

Object-stories sold in v1 were valued by the free market (meaning thrift store and yard sale sellers) at a total of $128.74. After our contributing writers converted these thingamabobs, via invented back stories, into Significant Objects, they sold through our eBay shop for a grand total of $3,612.51. The second 100 object-stories (v2 and v3 combined) were purchased for $134.89, and sold for $3,992.93

Despite the slightly higher cost-of-doodads, the Significance Premium also increased: v1 objects rose in value by a total of 2,706% thanks to our contributors’ stories. The second 100 object-stories sold in v2 and v3 combined jumped in value by 2,860%.

Rob’s finding prompted me to return to an adjustment I’d made to the v1 sales totals back in November. As I explained at the time, the Significant Object experiment’s duration affected sale prices. News about the project didn’t spread widely for the first week or three — so object-stories auctioned off early in the experiment sold for less, on average, than did object-stories auctioned off for the remainder of the experiment’s duration.

The first adjustment made to SO v1 sales totals — I added $18.00 to the sale price of each item in Week 1, $17.00 to the sale price of each item in Week 2, and so forth through Week 18 ($1.00 added) — helped neutralize the Duration Factor. However, the first Duration Factor adjustment didn’t change the overall results that much. A few object-stories from Week One (Necking Team Button, Smiley Mug, Halston Mug, JFK Bust, Creamer Cow, Miniature Bottle, Chili Cat Figurine, Sanka Ashtray) jumped in the rankings, while a few object-stories from late in the project (Flip-Flop Frame, Umbrella Trinket, Toothbrush Holder, Swiss Medal) dropped quite a bit. But object-stories that had ranked in the unadjusted Top Twenty, Thirty, Forty, and so forth, tended to remain in those brackets. In the Top Ten bracket, object-stories no. 1,2,3, and 8 remain the same, while the no. 4 and 5 object-stories, and no. 6 and 7 object-stories, respectively, merely swapped places. All of which suggests that SO v1’s intramural Duration Factor might not yet be entirely neutralized. Object-stories from the project’s earliest weeks (which weeks, exactly, will be analyzed below) didn’t have the fighting chance object-stories from subsequent weeks did to make it into the top quartile of sales rankings — or, at least, out of the bottom quartile.

At the same time, Rob’s findings suggest that the Duration Factor caused SO v1’s sales price total to be less than it otherwise might have been. Subtracting the SO v1 total from the So v2+v3 combined total, we get an exact figure: The project’s intermural Duration Factor robbed $380.42 from SO v1.

So — we’re trying a new adjustment method for SO v1 sale prices, one intended to neutralize the Duration Factor both inter- and intramurally. We’re adding $380.42 to the sale price of the 18 object-stories sold in SO v1’s first two weeks.

Why the first two weeks only, this time? Our decision was influenced by Mimi Lipson’s Metal Boot Peak Effect theory, which claims “there was a tipping point in Week 4 after which some process of disinhibition caused the possible peak price to shoot up for those [object-stories] with a certain X-factor.” (SO v1’s 24th object-story was Bruce Sterling’s Metal Boot.) However, according to our calculations, the upsurge in possible peak prices came with Stewart O’Nan’s Duck Tray. See the table below.

The Duck Tray, from SO v1’s third week, sold for $71. The highest sale price for any object-story from SO v1’s first and second weeks was a little more than half that amount: $36.88. Instead of the Metal Boot Peak Effect, we’re looking at a Duck Tray Peak Effect.

In order to give Week One object-stories the fighting chance they deserve, while still increasing the sale price of all pre-Duck Tray items, we’ve decided to assign $285.30 (3/4 of $380.34) to the sale price of our thirteen Week One items, and $95.10 (1/4 of $380.34) to the sale price of our five Week Two items. Each Week One object-story’s sale price will be adjusted upward by $21.95 (instead of $18.00); and each Week Two object-story’s sale price will be adjusted upward by $19.02 (instead of $17.00). The sale prices of object-stories from other weeks will remain unadjusted.

Here are the results of this second adjustment:

Have we neutralized both the intermural and intramural Duration Factors? Your comments are encouraged.

THE CHALLENGE: Write a story set in the town or city where you live, but imagine that it (and its surrounding area) has been flooded with several hundred thousand gallons of crude oil daily, because of a drilling-related crisis some weeks earlier. You might find using the interactive Gulf Coast Oil Spill Map helpful in this eco-catastrophic exercise, but it’s not a requirement.

THE PRIZES: HiLobrow will donate $100 in honor of the contest winner to the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit which seeks to prevent offshore oil spills. (Two-time Significant Objects author Lydia Millet is on the organization’s board.) The winner will also be sent a HiLobrow t-shirt (all sizes except Men’s Large available), and his or her story will be published on HiLobrow.com. Three finalists will also be selected; we’ll donate $50 apiece to CBD for these.

THE GUIDELINES: No more than 250 words. Only one story per person. Stories featuring explicit/hardcore/extreme sex and/or violence will not be considered. Curse words OK, though, if necessary. Stories replete with spelling and/or grammatical errors will not be considered. Do not include a title.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR STORY: Post it to the comments section of “City on a Spill,” a story I wrote last week. The deadline is 5 p.m. (EST) on June 5th. NOTE: Content published on HiLobrow.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

THE JUDGES: The stories will be judged by HiLobrow.com editors Matthew Battles and Joshua Glenn, and HiLobrow’s Magister Ludi, Patrick Cates.

Oil Spill Crisis: New York