Last minute xmas gift tips

Typical 1970s hobby books, seen at thrift store.

Cross-Stitch; Printing on Fabric;

Handicraft Woods, a creative leisure amusement; New Straw Stars.

Stay tuned for my xmas gift to you, dear readers. Will be up just in time.

Pharma records: Geigy Documenta diagnostics records

Another beauty from the graphic design studios at Geigy pharmaceuticals, Basel, Switzerland, ca. 1960s. This is from a series of records accompanying films made by the company. It contains recordings of heartbeats with various defects.

Previous posts with Geigy pharma records: here and here.

Pharma records: Geigy Medomin picture flexi

Swiss pharma company Geigy was famous for its graphic design, with Karl Gerstner, Armin Hoffmann and other "Swiss Style" masters working for them. Here's a flexi-disc from one of their promo record series for Medomin sleeping pills (designer not credited). More Medomin-records in my next post.

Pharma records: Vifor 7" picture discs

Records seem to have been a favored promotional gift of the pharmaceutical industry. Over the years, I have acquired a little collection from different companies (I also happen to live in a city that is the home of big pharma companies). Here's a first selection, the picture 7" records from the Vifor company.

Update: A friend just told me there's a work by Swiss artist Francis Baudevin based on exactly these records, and he seems to have one more!

Fiske 71

and other books I saw in the cabin on the Swedish countryside last week.

The Simenon cover was designed by Herbert Lindgren (the others uncredited).

Atelier Heinrichs und Bachmann

The covers for Heyne's Horror anthologies from 1974 (German translations of texts compiled by Kurt Singer) are so good, I couldn't resist buying the four volumes I recently found. The design is credited to Atelier Heinrichs, Munich. I didn't find much information online, but more covers for another Heyne series of the late 60s and early 70s, Science Fiction, credited to Atelier Heinrichs und Bachmann or Atelier Heinrichs (found on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database).

BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Dr Who Sound Effects (from Doctor Who Weekly, 1980)

 The information value of this article is rather limited. But this Doctor Who magazine somehow found its way to a charity shop in Switzerland and into my hands and probably some of you like both the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Doctor Who (about the latter I know very little I must confess) so I thought I share it with you.

At the Maison d'Ailleurs

The Maison d'Ailleurs, the Museum of science fiction, utopia and extraordinary voyages in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland is based on the collection of Pierre Versins, who donated his tens of thousands of science fiction books, comic books and many other sci-fi related documents to the city in the 1970s. Central parts of the collection are the work of Jules Verne, French series of Sci-Fi books, but also American pulp novels.
I had the pleasure to accompany my friend Dave Tompkins on a research mission to their book collection. We had very little time, but I'm glad I sneaked away from the study desk to take some pics of amazing covers.

Related post: the library of Andreas Züst