Photos by Dustin Wax

These are pictures taken in Rhyolite, Nevada.  If you had visited Rhyolite in early January of 1905, you would have found nothing more than two dudes living in a tent. If you had visited Rhyolite two weeks later you would have found a town of 1,200 people hoping to strike it rich. Why the big boost? Gold. The town flourished during a gold rush after high quality ore was discovered at a nearby mine. The town added another 1,200 people over the next six months, and by that point the town was home to “50 saloons, 35 gambling tables, cribs for prostitution, 19 lodging houses, 16 restaurants, half a dozen barbers, a public bath house, and a weekly newspaper.”

Of course this rush could not last. The ore that was once so golden was soon used up. The new ore was crappy. What stands now in the once booming town of Rhyolite is actually barely standing these days. There’s a open air museum just south of the city now, the Goldwell Open Air Museum that has a series of sculptures that look like ghosts (as well as a giant, naked lady made from concrete pixels). The ghostly sculptures seem oddly at home in the desert. But one days these sculptures will rot as well, joining the remains of the town in a scattered heap of dust on the ground.

Bree Lundberg

Since we’ve devoted this week to gold it was only fitting that this week’s wallpaper fit the theme as well. I asked Bree Lundberg, a Florida based illustrator, to create a wallpaper that embodied our theme and bring it to life. She decided to take a classic quote and change it up a bit, making it more appropriate for our current times.

I wanted to take an antiquated quote about gold and update for our contemporary times which I thought was fitting for the theme. Silence is no longer golden because I think everyone should speak up/speak out for what is important to them.

Simple, clean, and beautiful, not to mention a good reminder to be proactive.

I was skimming through the Behance network earlier when I came across this wonderful calender made by the Ukraine designer Yurko Gutsulyak. Gutsulyak’s design is a unique gift calender for the Pivdennyi Bank, one of the largest domestic commercial banks in Southern Ukraine. Printed on golden sirio pearl aurum and foil stamped, the calender is devoted to the subject of gold, with each month getting a special design inspired by the element.

Taking an Art Deco inspired look, the calender explores 12 facts about gold, with each month telling a fascinating fact about the precious metal. As seen above, Gutsulyak has created unique icons for each month and the one seen here is for the month of October. Gutsulyak’s gold fact for that month is:

About 100 millions tons of gold is dissolved in the worlds oceans. But as of the moment there is no efficient technology of its extraction.

To view all twelve months and learn some cool new things about gold you should definitly check out the full project here.