This post is to commemorate the life of a good friend and a fellow collector and design historian who did a great public service not only to the graphic design community but to all modernist collectors and enthusiasts. He was the originator of the #thriftbreak tag which was one way of him looking to help out anyone in the collector world by creating a community to ID design pieces as well as a platform for people to share their finds. This is something that a lot of knowledgeable dealers would look down on. He believe in making design accessible to anyone and he documented his finds and research on his blog Ars Longa.
He later started New Documents AKA dcmnts which was an account created to share important 20th century graphic design objects as well as some pieces he was selling but eventually he closed his shop and decided to make it an archive of his personal collection which eventually led to a great exhibit called the Shape of Sound curated by him for Civilization which I wish I had seen in person. As a fellow blogger and researcher I know the amount of work it takes to acquire, research and document each piece and it’s important that people do that. Dcmnts is his imprint on design.
We connected very early on through this blog as we both were graphic designers collecting similar design ephemera as well as other modernist pieces of art, homewares, etc. We shared many conversations around it and we also traded records and book covers (even some punk tapes). At that time we might have been the only ones interested in Joseph Low‘s work when I first unearthed some records as we shared back and forward thoughts and pieces from our collections. He also contributed by sharing info and ID-ing many pieces on this blog.
Scott, passed away April 27, 2020 due to cancer. He was a kind and giving person and his work will endure in our minds (and in the hard drives of designers) and hopefully in the formation of future designers and enthusiasts as it provides a great source of design history. He donated his collection to The letterform Archive in San Francisco and will be available for viewing soon.
Rest in peace dear friend.
Here are a few records from his collection.
