There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about recapturing the ethos of making things, of fixing things, partially out of thrift, partially out of a desire to make sure we own our stuff, not the other way around. One quick look at Curtis Gregory Perry’s photo of a Dodge A-100 van left neglected, presumably somewhere in the Nevada desert, shows us how far we’ve come away from that ideal in the last 50 years. Nowadays, you’ll never see hand lettering on a tradesman’s van – every commercial vehicle out there uses vinyl graphics that have almost entirely eliminated the craft of signpainting. Even more telling is the service the van offered – who nowadays bothers to fix busted radios or televisions, let alone call a serviceman to make a house call?