Kindred Spirits

This issue of Casual Archivist was made in collaboration with New York creative studio Mythology, who are currently at work on a new project about the unruly history of what we call “branding”—not logos exactly, but the ways that symbols, rituals, and visual systems have signaled belonging across cultures and centuries (i.e. no identity guideline fetishization allowed!)

Today’s essay is a preview of the kinds of stories the project will explore, as well as a call for collaborators and pitches. The Mythology team is interested in connecting with designers, historians, writers, and archivists—especially people outside the US—whose research touches on the intersection between design systems and culture. Think: nihilistic sodas, identity systems that turned into protest art, fraudulent makers marks, and anything that kind of reminds you of Dr. Bronner’s. If you have expertise off the beaten path of design history, or if you know of archives, thinkers, or case studies that might fit the brief, the team would love to connect. You can reach out via email to caitlin@mythology.com.

Today’s collection is an archive of materials from the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a short-lived British youth movement founded in 1920 by John Hargrave, a Utopian polymath described as an “author, cartoonist, inventor, lexicographer, artist and psychic healer.” A former Boy Scout leader himself, Hargrave had grown frustrated with the group—founded in 1907 by Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell to drill discipline and patriotism into young men—after experiencing the horrors of World War I firsthand. In response, he set out to create a new, non-militaristic alternative. Where the Scouts were gender-separated, and stressed imperial duty, Hargrave’s co-ed, all-ages group was deliberately progressive, promising self-expression, creativity, and spiritual renewal through craft, ritual, and outdoor life. Members were asked to sign a covenant of pacifist ideals and together performed folk plays, participated in spring hikes, and gathered for Althings, an annual general meeting. Despite the inconvenient overlap between the initials of the group and the US far-right hate group the Ku Klux Klan, the name “Kibbo Kift” actually comes from a Kentish Old English phrase meaning a feat of strength (specifically, hoisting a heavy sack of grain onto one’s shoulders) as well as Hargrave’s own fascination with the “magical nature” of the letter K.

The Kibbo Kift produced a wide range of artistic objects, both for organizational use (uniforms, insignia, etc.) and as a natural extension ...