18 April 2010

a stitch in time II

a pair of Louis XV Chairs

needlepoint executed by Alice B. Toklas, designed by PICASSO



image from the book Picasso and the Lure of Language.
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9 comments:

  1. I love these chairs and was talking about them recently with a friend of mine. They are (or were) on display at the Beinecke Library at Yale, in the manuscripts division. I used to gaze upon with quite covetously whenever I was there buried in research.

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  2. What a relief from silk damask or unbleached linen. I like the the complexity of the Braque perhaps more than the Picasso, but all are inspired combinations of pattern, form and history.

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  3. Have never before seen this heavenly chairs! Inspired!

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  4. I hope this is going to be a long series as I am head over heels.

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  5. alice and pablo. imagine.

    (& how fabulous it would be to gaze upon the real thing with one's own eyes!)

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  6. I wish I had the patience to do something substantial like this-no great needleworker though and oh so not the master Picasso-but something. Mrs. B. you have it in you to do something monumental in thread, and yes feed me any inspirations for a stitch in time. Mz Zhush-yes indeed. Aesthete,it would be hard to gaze upon these and not covet. Victoria-see, just ask the Aesthete,I think He has seen lots. Blue, me too-on all counts,but to my mind Givenchy could do NO wrong (I feel a post coming on-)

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  7. I first came across these chairs as a boy when attending a monumental show at MOMA on the Steins (Gertrude and her siblings) as collectors, and was quite captivated by them. Aesthete is correct, they were once displayed at the Beinecke Library at Yale, where they are part of that university's astounding collections. As an undergraduate there I, too, would go into the library to look at them from time to time. The lust in my heart for them was tempered, somewhat, by their diminutive size. For only someone as tiny and birdlike as Ms. Toklas could sit in one of them without shattering it.

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  8. Reggie,They do seem smallish, that visual of the birdlike Toklas perched in one will now be an added reference! pgt

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  9. Every time I see these, I want them more than the time before....

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