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Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Dec 8, 2006 11:01 AM
subject [Vsg] Seth Mydans on Bradford Edwards and his Zippos
Hi all,
Yesterday's NYT had a half-page article by Seth Mydans on the artist
Bradford Edwards with three good photos of the Zippo lighters he has
been collecting and making since I met him in Ha Noi more than ten years
ago.
I'm not sure what the occasion of the article is. From one of the photo
captions, there may be somewhere an exhibition titled, "Vietnam Zippos:
American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories 1965-1973." There is a book
in the works from Asia Ink, London, titled "Vietnam Zippo."
If there isn't a Zippo cluttering up the rag and bone shop of your
heart, someone needs to tell you that Zippo is the brand name of the
steel cigarette lighter such as one may see igniting the thatch of a hut
in a newsreel from the war. Fellows would do scrimshaw on them.
Brad, now in his fifties, son of a fighter pilot over Viet Nam, is a
fine artist with good, clear Keith Haring-like things of his own to draw
and as well a talent for what he and people on the production side of
art-worlds call appropriation.
If it was your neighbor you'd say he had a collection. Brad's been in
and out of Viet Nam doing his art for as long as Americans have been
allowed to do that, and he's been picking up Zippos of the war era and
the tourist era all that time. Now he is displaying them attractively,
and making his own work out of new Zippos.
It's a nice long interviewish article about an interesting man and his
Zippos, resonant both of daily life in the past and present-day desire
for it. Lots of good quotes from the lighters themselves as well as
from Brad.
Dan
Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
date Dec 8, 2006 11:35 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Seth Mydans on Bradford Edwards and his Zippos
What an interesting day to read VSG! I've sometimes thought that after the helicopter, the Zippo was the just about the most potent symbol about the US military presence in Vietnam. Though first popular during WWII, it was the association to thatch-burning and pot-smoking in Vietnam that made it stand out. Yet, also a deeply personal artifact. It's a perfect topic waiting for an academic PhD in American Studies or cultural history.
~Tuan
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