After work today, I continued tearing planks of wood out of the walls upstairs in preparation for the tradespeople to soon start their work. As I have mentioned, because they are charging extravagantly by the hour, I am trying to make their job as easy as possible and I don't want to be paying professional rates on work I can do myself. Sweat equity includes savings.
The walls and ceilings are packed with sawdust for insulation and when they filled it originally, they layered newspapers and magazines to stop the dust transfer through the many gaps. As a result of the sawdust keeping things very dry, there is a bit of a time capsule of the printed past from the period the house was built.
As I was finishing the walls, I noticed the corner of one of these protruding from under the ceiling panels, that will get removed tomorrow - "Neuvostolitto" means Soviet Union. These are both from 1960 (No. 38 and 41) and are in very good condition, considering that they are literally 60 years old.
I am hoping there are more treasures to find as I continue digging that I can share along the way, as I think that these are really interesting and there is stuff in there like, "sounds from space" and "honor for work". I think some of the images are also really powerful, like the rescue miners and the husky and baby polar bear.
The way images are used and laid throughout the magazines is gorgeous and the washed out colours of the past adds to the appeal. The imagery is bold with a lot of right-angles, that adds to the strength of the images chosen. There is something both classic and ultra modern about the set, something that designers could look back into and likely learn a lot from.
Here is the article about the sounds heard from space, I haven't had a chance to try to read it all yet, but I think I will sit down over breakfast tomorrow and give it a go. My Finnish isn't great, but I can likely decipher something.
This last image speaks about how the Soviet Union is taming space and building better rockets for exploration. The mark on the map is where the last piece of the rocket fell into the Pacific. Remember that in 1960, the space race was definitely in full swing and the US and USSR were hard at it in a cold war.
One thing I can say about the magazines is that while the fonts are a bit messy, they layout itself is quite beautiful and the images are well placed and set for making an impact. I am collecting these together so that I will eventually go through and photograph properly and perhaps compile a book of what we have found here.
It is interesting to me how things that were so normal once upon a time, seem to be far more exotic once enough time has passed. Remember that these particular magazines were printed 15 years after the second world war ended, a war where Finland fought against the Soviet Union. The area I live has been known to be quite a "red" area and perhaps this find is indicative of the post-war times.
Hopefully, you have enjoyed this latest installment of "the old stuff I find in my house" - and note, the ceiling isn't iron, it is wooden - but that wouldn't have made for a great title.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]