JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Overall Post 5137
This is a pretty unassuming pamphlet, judging from outward appearances (see below)1. It is an advertising promotional published in 1924 for Armstrong Cork Company of Lancaster (PA) pushing their extensive selection of linoleum flooring. (Linoleum, by the way, was created in the 1850s and was a constant source for durable and inexpensive floor covering for about 100 years…the first linoleum factory established in the U.S. was on Staten Island, NYC, with the company settled into a town they called Linoleumville, which was later renamed “Travis”. Anyway, I digress…) I’m drawing attention to the publication because of the illustrations, which are no doubt standard for the time and made to be complimentary, though they look a lot different from their intentions looking at them today–at least to me. There’s a LOT of distortion in the perspective, some of it from the camera angle and some of it, well, from the highly repetitious designs in the flooring, as you can see here:
As you can see below in the montage (larger images follow) the rooms seem to be distant, cool/cold, removed, surgical. Neat and clean, of course, but elegantly perfunctory. And then there’s the polygons, the advancing retreating squares and rectangles that number in the hundreds and thousands, and are headache-invoking. I can’t tell if these images would be more or less of what they are if the photos were in color. (Keep in mind some of those colors were bright red, bright yellow, shout-out-loud blue…) 
