Atomica Journal

What We Look For: Restoring a 1930s Berkel and Parnall's Slicer
Every piece we list here has already been through a kind of quiet scrutiny - condition checked, history researched, wear described honestly rather than hidden. But every so often something comes along that asks for a different, slower kind of attention. Recently, that was a 1930s Berkel and Parnall's flywheel bacon slicer, found sitting neglected in Westonaria.Berkel and Parnall's isn't a name most people recognise today, but it should be. The company was the British manufacturing arm of the original Dutch Van Berkel's Patent slicing machine business, operating out of... Read more...
SA's Own Mid-Century: The Furniture Makers Nobody Outside the Country Knows
Mention "mid-century modern" and most people picture the same handful of names — Eames, Nelson, Saarinen, Jacobsen. Names attached to companies most South Africans never actually bought from, because as we've written about before, almost none of that American and Scandinavian original production ever made it into this country. What did make it here, in real volume, was something else entirely: a genuinely South African furniture industry working in the same modernist language, often self-taught in it, and almost completely unknown outside our borders.If you've spent any time hunting deceased... Read more...
The Real Environmental Case for Buying Vintage
The environmental case for buying vintage furniture isn't just sentiment — it's straightforward arithmetic about where furniture's carbon footprint actually comes from, and where fast furniture actually ends up. Read more...
Why You'll Rarely Find a Real Nelson Clock in South Africa
Why You'll Rarely Find a Real Nelson Clock in South Africa
Original George Nelson/Howard Miller starburst clocks are essentially unheard of in South Africa — here's the real design history behind them, and why Seth Thomas's own starburst clocks, like the... Read more...
Everyone Knows the Chair. Who Knows the Maker.
South African furniture maker Lubis produced beautifully faithful reproductions of Ercol's iconic spindle-back chairs through the 1960s — yet almost nothing is known about the people who made them. Read more...