The · Affected · Provincial’s · Almanack

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Visited my old hometown recently to see old friends, and took photos of some of the old neon signs that have become local landmarks. Can't imagine the place without neon lobsters.

What sort of textures did you grow up with?

Adam's show (wish NY Mag would have spelled his name correctly) is now up at Jonathan LeVine Gallery (Hi, Jonathan!). The piece featured above is named "Lady Pinkwater". For those of you unable to have seen the show, here are some shots sent to me by Adam...

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( Part four of Charles Bird King's portraits )

( Part three of Charles Bird King's portraits )

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It's somewhat fitting that a man named Charles Bird King--a name both eminently European yet vaguely Amerindian--would depict the natives of the American East (Creek, Crow, Seminole, Cherokee, Choctaw, Iowa, Fox, Winnebago, etc) at a time when there was a semblance of parity (parody of parity?) between the Old and New Worlds. This was expressed in the dress of natives as well as many whites who lived among them: European brass gorgets and artfully knotted cravats around the neck of a men with painted faces and feathers in their hair. The synthesis is breathtaking: both fierce and fey. It's a damn pity the European influence eventually crushed the Native--this could very well have become our national mode of dress.

( Part one of Charles Bird King's portraits )

One of my absolute favorite periods in male dress is the Regency-Napoleonic era. I like the simplicity of material, the elegance of form, the swagger, and the Apollonian flaunting of the male body. It is both rugged and pavonine.

So: what's in your fantasy closet?

In my previous post we saw Adam's chandeliers, but he and his lovely lady Jodi have also been tinkering with the house's interior as well. Here are a few extra shots I had from this weekend. Enjoy.( Read more... )

I dropped in on my good friend Adam Wallacavage over the weekend, who is currently putting his finishing touches on the handmade chandeliers he'll be showing at Jonathan LeVine Gallery starting June 28th. Behind the cut is a sneak peek at a few of the new pieces. ( Read more... )

Futurist and illustrator Syd Mead always caught my imagination when I was young. His vision of the future was sleek, poised, colorful, and inviting. I've always thought he and Frank Lloyd Wright had a lot in common. Maybe it was his flawless sense of dramatic form, scale and proportion that made me feel that way. I can't say for sure. To me, both feel refined and groovy. (Yes, 'groovy' is a cherished value around here. Groovy has light and Eros in it; if it isn't groovy, it isn't for me.)

Anyway, here's a Flickr account offering a selection of high resolution scans of his work. Enjoy.

Enric Ruiz-Geli's Villa Bio echoes its hillside setting. I'm not enamored with his more gimmicky scifi pod buildings, but I think this house is wonderful.

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Here's another example:

Turner Castle was employed to build a summerhouse for a family with two small boys. The client needed additional space in his North London house. Rather than extend, they decided to build a summerhouse at the bottom of their very long garden. The idea was that this small building was to perform a hybrid function: combining art studio, playroom, tool shed and kitchen.

Aside from a long low steel frame raising it off the ground, the structure is entirely timber. The building is clad in birch-faced plywood and the north elevation features a mirrored wall of stainless steel, which reflects the adjacent garden.

Built for the 1876 World Exhibition, Horticultural Hall was built on the site where the modest Horticultural Center now sits today, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. (Attended a rather nice wedding there once. Great buffet by the succulents. Tell a friend.)

Horticultural Hall was designed by Hermann J. Schwarzmann. Schwarzmann, an engineer for the Fairmount Park Commission, had never designed a building before. Horticultural Hall had an iron and glass frame on a brick and marble foundation and was 383 ft long, 193 ft wide and 68 ft tall. The building was styled after twelfth-century Moorish architecture and designed as a tribute to The Crystal Palace from London's Great Exhibition.

The structure was certainly designed with an eye towards showmanship: In true high Victorian form, the elegant, functional qualities seen in earlier and later greenhouses were obscured by themed ornamentation, giving it an air of fantasy. A German architectural critic described it as “the true embodiment of Arabian Nights”.

Unlike most of the buildings constructed for the Exposition, Horticultural Hall was meant to be permanent. The building's exhibits specialized in horticulture and after the Exposition it continued to exhibit plants until it was badly damaged by Hurricane Hazel in 1954 and was demolished.

~W

bricology has written a great post about early twentieth-century engineer, architect, and designer Gabriel Voisin. A very worthwhile read about a nearly forgotten genius. Features many images of elegant and incredibly rare antique cars!

#857: VALLERYSTHAL Rare squat vase acid-etched with intricate leaf design in pink and orange, against a frosted and gilded ground with floral etched design. Gilded signature together with acid-etched, pressed mark. 5 1/2" x 4 3/4"

#854: EMILE GALLE Cameo glass pillow vase with cupped rim, decorated with ferns in shades of green. Cameo signature Galle. 12 1/4" x 9 1/4". Small chip to body, slight polishing to rim.

#459: ZSOLNAY Organically-shaped vase with eight reticulated handles, covered in lustered blue-green glaze over a burgundy base. Five churches medallion. 7 1/2" x 6 1/4"

#144: MERRIMAC Ovoid vase covered in bright yellow and orange peel matte glaze. 1 1/2" line from rim. Mark obscured by glaze. 6 1/2" x 3 1/2"

#452: ADELAIDE ROBINEAU Exceptional and tall ovoid vase with fully-blown white crystals on ivory ground. (One of the best examples of Robineau we've sold.) Excised AR, incised 48. 10" x 4 3/4"

My friends at Rago Arts and Auctions have been generously sending the new catalogs to me, which allows me to indulge in fantasy as I kick back on my daybed in a house robe, and tick off my favorites with a pen.

So: Have a favorite?

"Yancy Chapel,, located on Morrison Farm in Hale County, Alabama, is a thesis project designed and built by architecture students Ruard Veltman, Thomas Tretheway, and Steven Durden unter the guidance of the late Samuel Mockbee, founder of the Rural Studio in Alabama and partner in Mockbee Coker. Concerned with being environmentally friendly and cost-efficient, the students decided to build the walls of the chapel out of recycled tires. The tires were filled with dirt excavated from the site, packed down, and then stuccoed over. A nearby tire dealer donated the tires to the project. The roof is covered with tin, with the roof beams salvaged from a barn. Rock, which constitutes the floor of the chapel, was taken from a nearby riverbed. The chapel is set into the side of a scenic overlook, and blends beautifully with the surrounding woods."

"Thorncrown Chapel is located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and designed by the late E. Fay Jones. Thorncrown Chapel sits in the Ozark woods, inspired by Wright, Bernard Maybeck, and the Japanese tradition, and most of all Paris’ light-filled Gothic chapel, Sainte Chappelle. Jones referred to Thorncrown’s style as “Ozark Gothic” since he wanted to use solely native woodland elements to form the chapel structure matched to its natural setting. Constructed of southern pine beams, the simple, gabled shed rises from a stone base into the tree canopy. Early in the design process, the architect determined that no trees should be cut; trusses, assembled in situ, were simply lifted into place. From the interior, the visitor is both bound within nature and set apart. Jones espoused an organic architecture that emphasizes clarity of structure while achieving a sense of the infinite through repetition and detail. Particularly noteworthy is the steel oculus that links high cross-braced members, substituting void for mass, light for substance."

A megachurch is a blaring obscenity in comparison to the work left behind by these two men, no?

I'm not a christian (agnostic epicurean with celtic/amerindian pagan sympathies, blah blah), but I find both of these structures very moving. If one is to commune with the divine, this seems the proper architecture for it: modest, sympathetic to the setting, and deferential to the Great Author's works. They feel reverent in both form and function, and are the next best thing to a Church Not Made With Hands.

~W

PS: For their European counterpart, look to the Chapel St. Mary of the Angels, in Rotterdam. Interesting use of natural light. Far more cool, detached and abstract. Very different vibe, more about cogitation than contemplation. Distinct lack of heart in the design, if you ask me; I don't get a sense of any humility or acquiescence to the natural world, to which the departed return. Wonder if they serve those Swedish meatballs you get at Ikea during services. Probably have minimal flat-pack caskets in primary colors for sale in the back. Probably a good idea to bring an allen wrench to the funeral.

Earlier this week, a lovely gentleman known here as pomposa (Yes, it's tongue-in-cheek) was kind enough to share photographs of his home in rural France. The photo you see above was particularly appealing: sunny, unstudied, cozy, improvised, casual, light, welcoming, textured, playful, and eclectic. The old plaster walls and lovely latched windows make a warm backdrop for the gentle chaos that pervades the space, which is peppered with unassuming couches and mirrors, lending a humble charm that more grand, exquisite items wouldn't. It's tasteful, not tight; comfy, not correct.

(A short aside: when I say 'tasteful,' I mean the kind of laid-back taste that gently tweaks the nose of convention with art and wit. The safe, bland, predictable, vulgar, plodding correctness of herd-minded conventional taste is rarely ever truly good taste--it's no taste, a thing far worse than bad taste, which at least has the occasional merit of being delightfully exuberant. Rant over!)

My hope is that my own mannered surroundings will over time become more lived-in and gracious like this. In fact, that's always been my plan: start tight and precious, then let everything loosen into threadbare, slightly rumpled but tidy charm with age (one can tell when this process is inorganic and forced, so I must exercise some patience for the depth of detail and texture to slowly assert itself over time). I've always loved the homes of old people who've led interesting lives, and I aspire to be among them one day (A good book to read in this vein is Conversation with Max by Mr. S. N. Behrman, who interviwed Max Beerbohm often during his last years at his modest but gracious villa in Rapallo, Italy).

The home is modern in the sense that it is a deftly improvised mix of old and new (notice the groovy 70's floor lamp and mid-century electric fan). There's a rhyme going on among it all: look at how the emu skeleton forms a wonderfully surreal tableau with the bright, lush plants at its feet. But like any successful aesthetic undertaking, it remains hard to pin down with any certainty--it's an organic, live room in a continual state of change. This is the rustic home of an urbane man with a nimble mind and a love of creature comforts, as well as creatures. An exemplar of Affected Provincialism--clearly, I've been outdone yet again!

Just look at the wonderful blue plaster against the brown shiny flounder floating over seashells of the most deliciously warm ivory, which create a swirling pattern when grouped together in a procession on the mantle. There's a sensibility at work, but nothing as heavy and methodical as a theory is ever imposed upon us visitors. This isn't calculated, but intuitive--and each tableau is a lovely little world of it's own. The house is full of such moments.

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Thank you for sharing with us, pomposa. I'm grateful that I have so many lovely and interesting people who bother to frequent this half-baked journal.

~W

I cannot recall who on my Friends List had posted this, but I've been captivated by it ever since: The textures; the subtle colors; the composition; the quality of the light; the oddly drab, gauzy dress with delicate lace; the heavy rings on the delicate hand; the mane of red hair and otherworldly face; and the marvelously Elizabethan, artless way in which the rouge and white foundation has been applied, not to mention the deft nod to Pre-Raphaelite painting and ancient Northern European lore. Beauty of a certain quality can shock, and this certainly does.

Brings to mind the rant in my book on Retrosexuality.

This Sunday night we had the pleasure of having our friends Jennifer and Nic stop by on their way home to New York. With them they brought two small, neatly wrapped boxes. Inside were five hundred calling cards that they had made with Nic's hand-cranked letterpress--and they are magnifient.

Nic has found a vendor that does a wonderful job of converting digital art files into metal plates suitable for letterpress printing. This of course opens up all sorts of possibilities, which is exciting for an old print goat like myself, as I'm in love with the visual and tactile results one gets with letterpress: the highlights and shadow on the type, the feel of the impressed image in the paper, giving it dimension rather than treating it as mere substrate--even the smell of the ink. Offset is a pauper's ghost in comparison.

Over tea and coffee, Jen and Nic mentioned a current project for which they are binding books by hand, which is also an exciting prospect. Like many designers, it's my dream to take a sabbatical from the offset ghetto and do a personal book project with letterpress and hand binding, as I've seen the lasting satisfaction on the faces of those who have completed such projects. It's the bespoke tailoring of graphic design.

A little about my kind benefactors:

A former Elle girl advice columnist, Jennifer Brandt-Taylor is currently finishing two books on vintage style, due out next spring on Harper Collins: "Vintage LA" and its followup "Vintage NY", which will be out later in the year.

Nic Taylor is a crack designer and type afficionado, and his entertaining and informative journal, People For The Ethical Treatment of Typography, is essential reading for any typographer, designer or maven of visual culture.

Contact their venture Thunderwing Press for any letterpress or bookbinding projects you might have in mind--it's fine work.

Thank you, Nic and Jen!

~W

Order now--Ewoks are standing by.