I’m in LA right now, helping to get stuff ready for the looming Monterey Car Week, where we will do our best to be your eyes, ears, noses, and throats, as well as shooting some video stuff, including driving some interesting Porsches over at Galpin’s Porsche dealership in Santa Clarita. That place is pretty incredible, the sort of place that would ordinarily do all it could to keep deadbeats like myself out, but I, you know know a guy.
Anyway, this dealership has a sort of museum in its lower level, and while I’ve seen some of the things contained in those illuminated vitrines before, this time I actually really looked into one of them, and was delighted by what I saw within. And now I want to share it with you, because only jackasses hoard delight.
Also: feels good to use the word “vitrine.” I get the opportunity so rarely. Too bad it sounds so much like “latrine.” Though, to be fair, “latrine” is maybe the prettiest word for a toilet, with the least pretty (non slang) term being “commode,” I think.
Anyway, what was in that vitrine was Porsche-related, but nothing you could drive, at least not easily. They were a series of plates, Porsche promotional plates, dating from the early 1960s, each painted with a little scene of people living what appear to be pleasant lives of leisure, with their Porsche 356s nearby.
I did a little research and found that these were factory gifts, given to some employees and bigshots that visited the factory. They may have been available for purchase, but I’m not certain about that, not only not having been alive then, but even if I was, I’m not sure I’d have what the Porsche factory considered VIP status.
They were made by the firm Ulmer Keramik, which started making hand-painted ceramics, and then later moved into screen printed works for larger production runs. These Porsche plates are clearly screen printed ones, and for me at least, that’s where their charm comes from. The hand-painted ones are lovely in their own way, sure, but they’re more traditional and ornate, and I’m kind of a sucker for the sorts of restrictions imposed by screen printing and the way that affects the resulting aesthetic.
It seems an artist named Ernst Konrad did most of the company’s screen printed designs, so I think we can safely attribute these works to him. He’s a master of his craft, at least based on these. I mean, just look at them:
Look at this beach scene, for example. Sure, that’s a pretty improbable parking spot they got in their 356, but we can look past that. I think this is using six screens: purple, blue, yellow, red, black and orange. The shapes are simple, but evocative, there’s some nice texture work in the mountain’s reflection on the water and in the shadows, and I love the way the sailboats are simply defined by the absence of any color.
The Porsche, understandably, gets more detail than the rest of the scene, with a license plate that suggests these are from 1960. I also like how you can see the exhaust tips exiting through the rear bumper guards (first seen on 356s in 1958.)
This ski scene is nice, too, though I question that driver’s judgement, driving around with the top down on a snowy mountain. I mean, it does feel good to do that, if I’m honest, with the heater cranked and the top down, making you feel like you’re driving around in a little bathtub of hot air.
I take that back, then. I get why that driver is driving with the top down.
Also interesting is how the details on the Porsche are picked out in white, with no use of, say, the black screen to show the cutlines or other details or even tires. I like the purple shadows, too, though the shadows of those skis are a bit odd.
This one of that nightclub named for a black cat is charming, too, with a multiheaded streetlight by that 356, and a nice starry sky and some Mondrian-ish architecture of that club. Note how nicely minimal the lady’s dress is, too, just two lines/squiggles on a bit of negative white space. This guy Ernst knows his shit.
These plates are just really nice, cheery examples of good midcentury screenprint design, and I get why they’re so coveted by collectors. Oh, and that vitrine had one more thing that I couldn’t initially identify. Let’s see if you can:
I thought at first this might be a ski pole or a walking stick kind of thing, but in some ways, it’s actually the opposite. It’s a seat! It’s for watching polo matches, apparently, which don’t tend to have grandstands or anything like that. If you want a seat, I guess it’s either on a horse or something like this. The top butterfly part folds closed into a sort of handle. It’s cool!
I think this is the most non-license plate plate-related content we’ve had on the site so far. Big day!
Those are also called shooting sticks over in Blighty. George V had his own design.
I used to have a rare Lotus-Renault plate from the most recent F1 debacle in my vitrine at home. I couldn’t afford another one, or to replace the one I had, so it just got looked at occasionally.
Since they binned my career I’ve stuck it in the kitchen cupboard so I’ve got something to serve food on the next time I have to look after someone else’s cat.
The vitrine is now entirely full of my wife’s royalist crockery collection, which would have been several million things down the list of things I might ever have in my house. I also didn’t expect her to have a royalist crockery collection.
That stick/seat combo is called a shooting stick in the UK.
OK, the beach and the Chat Noir are AMAZING. I would absolutely buy a repro set. Oh wait, Porsche would charge $1800.
It’s nice how that portable seat/stick thingy would leave impressions on your butt suitable to guide a friend to your backdoor later in the jacuzzi.
If these were AMG, they’d have incorporated dark logos to give your butt a proper brand.
they make more modern versions of these seats.
https://www.cvs.com/shop/v6co-heavy-duty-5-in-1-multi-function-seated-cane-with-adjustable-height-walking-stick-prodid-374634?skuId=374634&cgaa=QWxsb3dHb29nbGVUb0FjY2Vzc0NWU1BhZ2Vz&cid=ps_pla_fs_hm_hc_na_nab_na_mp_ggl_na&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21134059568&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkOvTBhDgARIsAKUNyRtgCuaA49n9DjxTMzzNvhUUYTDDz7SyYs2DNQ8jLyZJmyeOWjaZnKMaAnKcEALw_wcB
Man I’m really digging those plate designs. I don’t want them as, ya know, plates. But I’d take some prints of a couple to have up on the wall somewhere.
Full disclosure: I had to look up this definition 🙂
According to Merriam-Webster, a vitrine is “a glass showcase or cabinet especially for displaying fine wares or specimens”
As a museum exhibit designer, I just assumed everyone used the word “vitrine” in regular conversation. Silly me.
Those plates are definitely vitrine-worthy, though. Count on Jason to always bring the cool weird stuff. : D
The consortia of contemporary art plates and Porsche.
Brutish bowls for borscht.
Porscht?
These are the perfect plates for serving up a delicious Porschetta panino a delightful Italian sandwich featuring roast 911 seasoned with kosher salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic, olive oil and – the most important ingredient- wild Tuscan fennel pollen. It’s a bit of work carving off the Porsche belly, rolling the strips together and tying it up for roasting, but so worth it. Make sure you use authentic Italian bread (preferably unsalted) to make the best tasting panino ever! Buon appetito!
If only there were a diagram of the various cuts of Porsche.
That looks almost like an ice auger.
I’m a little disappointed that you won’t be our anuses at Monterey. I’m also a little disappointed that you didn’t make explicitly clear which end of the stick to sit on, and what might happen if you get it wrong.
Is Monterey the show where Autopian did the faux souvenir hats thing before? Or is that somewhere where they’re no longer invited?
1. If you had any question about whether you would have been posh enough to qualify for those pretty plates at the time, the adjacent polo seat would have removed all doubt.
2. How the heck do you screen print on a concave surface like that?
I believe those seats are traditionally known as Shooting Sticks and I can imagine one would store it in the back one one’s Shooting Brake, along with the picnic hamper, picnic blanket, Champagne and brandy.
The shadow of the skis is reflective of the curvature of the plate. A delightful joke.
That’s what I was thinking, too.
My Grandpa had an umbrella with a folding seat like that!
Vitreous China is the best material for a toilet, so you’re not far off.
I always thought the least elegant name for a latrine was the Crapper, even if it was the guys name…
I’ve always gone with Archie Bunker and ‘Turlet’ as the least pleasant name, but also super funny.
This needs to be on a t-shirt or something. Showing once more that after a millennium or so, English words can still be shuffled around to produce something new and…delightful.
COTD!
I saw a guy at the NASCAR race in Sonoma this year that was wearing a had that read “spread cheeks, not hate”. Made my day, made my entire summer so far! 🙂
Those midcentury-modern designs look like they could be brochure illustrations, the sort of thing that would be in the margins alongside photos of the real car.
They’d look great on T-shirts if anyone could arrange licensing, say, someone with an artistic eye who knows someone in the T-shirt business and someone else with connections to Porsche…if such a person exists.
I grew up on my grandmother’s farm in Virginia hunt country and saw shooting sticks like that one quite a lot at the big hunt meets (Opening Day and Thanksgiving) and the point-to-point races. Maybe at the county fair as well. Never tried sitting on one, though, and come to think of it I don’t remember seeing one actually being used, just carried.
We used to go to the hunts at Great Meadow, and at Glenwood Park, and Oatlands. Those seats were in use at all of them.
Saw them in use on the golf course during a PGA Tour event. No one using them looked comfortable at all.
I think the typical American butt has gotten bigger since these were designed…
I expect I just wasn’t paying attention–no point in carrying them around if you’re not going to use them.
Wry interesting Torch. I had a modernish version of the shooting seat. It had a cheap plastic seat and the mechanism broke. I’m sure it was due to poor materials and design and not the users weight. Never used it for shooting. Liked the plates too.
My mom was an antique dealer, so my brothers and I often got dragged along to auctions, estate sales, and big antique furniture shows. At one auction she bought us one of those pole seat things because it came across the block and we had been complaining about lack of seating. There was one for the three of us to share. It ended up causing more problems than it solved because we liked to fight over things.
It’s a win for her if you’re keeping each other occupied.