Friday, July 19, 2013

The Museum of Flight!


Today's big Announcement is that my Different Worlds line has officially been picked up by the Museum Of Flight Store! I delivered the first order yesterday, and stuck around to explore the museum.


So, to be perfectly honest, I really thought I was going to spend a couple of hours looking at antique planes, get lunch and go back to the studio to work for the afternoon. It didn't really work out like that.  In fact, "a couple hours" turned into 6 hours, and I didn't leave the museum until 4:30pm! There are plenty of antique planes, but they're awesome antique planes.
I don't know if this ever actually flew, but wow.

wright bros. flyer repro
But the museum's strong point is that all the history surrounding the antique planes is made exceptionally clear with signage and multimedia presentations. This is not "book history," this is real, relevant, awesome history. I spent 6 hours happily learning things.
Things like:
When they talk about the "birth of commercial aviation," no one ever mentions that the midwife was the U.S. Postal Service

This is probably the type of helicopter my dad worked on most often in Vietnam.

Rosie the Riveter was a Seattleite...

and she came in ALL colors.

These amazing pilots would ferry military planes around during WWII, and would single-hand planes labeled "minimum crew: 3".
Russian space capsules are tiny
And history repeats itself. 


I also picked up a lot of reference pics for future projects (an awful lot of these guys include some enamel):








All in all, I had an incredible time, and I think everybody should visit this place.