January 1963
Peter Blake, managing editor of Architectural Forum at the time, wrote of this cover: “Ray disappeared for a week or two, very mysterious in his elegantly Asian way, and made everyone extremely nervous; was he going to meet our printer’s deadlines? And what on earth was he going to produce? With a few minutes to spare before the printer threatened to shut down the presses, Ray Komai walked into our offices and unwrapped what looked like an odd sort of pillow: he had sewn together a wonderfully zany fake ‘souvenir’ — a kind of pillow case of the sort that souvenir peddlers might (but never did) sell to Washington’s millions of tourists.”
Former staff designer Peter Bradford, then no longer at Architectural Forum but working nearby, wrote of this cover: “…they called me and I ran over. I laughed at the thing, it was so silly, so thoroughly apt. I stood there, still wondering after so many years, who was this guy anyway? Who would go to such lengths and pains to embroider a once-and-gone cover?” Full issue
