In Remembrance

.
Emily Dickinson referred to it as the hour of lead.
This autumn has been shrouded in that kind of grieving.
My family lost one of its own- twenty seven years in our society-then gone.

Loving-and Beloved, life's partner-brother-son-uncle, we called by name as Jon.

On such a day as this- of family, of giving thanks, of gathering together-to remember him is fitting.

Another chair is empty this year at our table.
A place is set that it will go unused.

Gathering together as we love to do-none loved it more than Jon.
He loved the cooking-and He loved  serving it beautifully-and He did it with great Joy.
It was his gift-and It was bounteous.

These delicates he heap'd with glowing had

On golen dishes and in baskets bright

Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand

In the retired quiet of the night,

Filling the chilly room with perfume light. ~John Keats

,

really something

The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope-Poems by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner a limited edition artist book of Emily Dickinson's  compositions on envelopes-there are 50ish high-resolution double-sided color reproductions with visual transcriptions.





.

turning the page

.
nothing would ever be the same-but she had Life to live.
after the blood stained strawberry pink suit came off-something she wore until she returned to Washington on Air Force One-a widow, Jacqueline Kennedy gave her son a birthday party, orchestrated the most glorious wake in history, and etched her own legacy-and that of her husband into the American psyche. that is all that remains of her Camelot-and a daughter who must be made of steel, a very American metal found in great women across the country-something she must have inherited from her mother-something that gives her the quiet dignity few exhibit in the public eye.

what will we remember 50 years from now? how far away from Camelot will we have wandered?

VOGUE May 1967






.

the ELEVENTH Hour

...

I can not think of a happier collaborative effort than what I offer today-the evocative photography of Carolyn Quartermaine-artist and textile designer, & Philip Bewley, art consultant and interior designer. I can only make the introduction-and savor their offering-with gratitude.

The Eleventh Hour

“I think always, always of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...and there is All Saints and All Souls at the beginning.

Such a month...
almost pierced by things...more than any other … I used to hate it and now its turned into something extraordinary…” -Carolyn Quartermaine

 
with thoughts from Philip: 
The month of November is the season for poets –and for painters and photographers. There is an exquisite ineffability, a gentle melancholy and yearning inside this time of year that is the culmination of all that has come before. Jane Austen mused that autumn was “…that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness…that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”

 Jane Austen could have described Quartermaine with her camera in hand, eye attuned to her November surroundings on her London rambles or in the countryside, when she wrote this passage in Persuasion, her final novel: “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges.”

Interdisciplinary artist and designer Carolyn Quartermaine’s recent album of original photography, The Eleventh Hour . is a visual poem to this season, self-described as “…being the real time and place for novels and films.... where roads lead to leaf -filled tracks and misty mornings.  
The Eleventh Hour could be written by Daphne Du Maurier; it could be a fragrance by Shalimar.” 

As a fine art advisor I look at a lot of contemporary photography and I've discovered fine art photography to be the “It” medium for artistic expression today. Quartermaine has it –that arresting, singular quality in her photographs that turns my head and engages my mind. Arranged in albums, each photograph complements the other in the series, capturing fleeting impressions of sparkling light and shadow, evanescent fragments of observation and memory.

 Looking at Quartermaine’s photographs one experiences the history of photography distilled. In these images I see the legacy of 19^th century French photographers such as Gustave le Gray who defied photographic convention by pointing his camera into the light of the sun in the forest of Fontainebleau; I see the haunting elegance of Eugène Atget at Versailles; and the 20^th century work of Sarah Moon and the late, great Deborah Turbeville. 

“There is a resonance there of all the memories” says Quartermaine about one of the settings for The Eleventh Hour. “The road photos were taken at Chelsea Royal Hospital, next to the Chelsea pensioners and this in itself is lovely. 

There is something about that alley-way of plane trees and those stripy shadows and the rhythm of an autumn walk there: the stripes of long shadows that break the way people step…and the steps themselves, with that crunch of leaves and the footfall on the pavement. I went into Royal Hospital, and the graveyard… the green moss was startling on the stones, the leaves huge, the sky piercing blue.... everything swirling…swirling around.”

In another setting for her album, Quartermaine turns her focus inside to the interior of her studio, capturing expressionistic vignettes in dramatic light and shadow that evoke the Baroque paintings of Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Quartermaine adds, “we want to be out of doors and yet…we also want to be inside to catch the morning light through windows, which make everything sparkle in a new way, to see the light through a prism of a chandelier... One wants to walk more this time of year... almost hurry ...and I think there such a profound memory of leaf crunching, of conker bashing, and then getting inside to a place of warmth.”

Artist and textile designer, Carolyn Quartermaine, divides her time between London and the South of France. Conversation Piece, an exhibition she curated for the Costa family, was recently on show at the Musee Fragonard in Grasse. 

Carolyn Quartermaine Here
Philip Bewley Here




 

MET meets Twelfe Night, Or What You Will

.
A week long trip to New York culminated with a trippingly on the tongue production of Shakespeare's Twelfe Night on Broadway. The Globe Theatre's troupe is putting on a show-and I do mean a show-it's stellar- exultant.

Time at the Met is always important when I'm in New York. I never cease to be awed by the collections. Their Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 Exhibition is one not to be missed. I am often discussing the overlap-the sharing-the trading of countries to my clients. China creating Chinese porcelains for the French- Palampore textiles sent from India to the European market.  
It's the exchange of these cultural gifts that makes a room-a design- exciting-and invariably authentic. 

"When in France-do as the Chinese do"-or something like that. 

AT the MET

(all selections below are from the MET Exhibition site, and linked to each work in my text)

 

Joshua Reynolds paints Mrs Baldwin, British subject born in Turkey, in the style popular with women of the 18th century- a la Turk.

 Mirror with intricate stitching framed in tortoise-English 1672

The power of  the Past-the AUTHENTIC-is, well-powerful. Surprisingly, this is the Met's first major exhibition devoted to the grand tour of textile design over three centuries. 
It is something to see-it is stellar- exultant-
 

 Chinese hanging made for the European market, second half of the 18th century, Qing Dynasty

Morning gown made in Japan especially for Dutch traders, early 1700's

Robe à la Française, 1755 French or Dutch, restyle in 1770.

A rare silk European quilt with a masted ship in its center, 17th century

Robe à la Française,Chinese silk made for the French market, c. 1770

AT the THEATRE

 

Paul Chahidi as Maria in Twelfe Night at the Belasco Theatre

Get thee to the Belasco-and get there early. The Globe Theatre's Shakespearean troupe is getting into costume and makeup on stage in front of the audiences very eyes each night before one of their two alternating productions at the Belasco Theatre. A sight to behold, the company is doing it all authentically-just as if Shakespeare was watching from the wings. It's mesmerizing to see the pains these actors-an all male cast-go through to become the ladies of Shakespeare's Twelfe Night. Dressers discreetly tuck, trim, sew and lace actors into ruffs, cuffs, skirts-not to mention spackle and powder them into mask like Elizabethan maquillage. There's no other way of saying it-it's as authentic as it gets.

 Mark Rylance being womanized

Before...

and Aft.

"And all is semblative a woman's part." WS- Twelfe Night

Mark Rylance as the mourning and lovesick Olivia

The costumes-too-are equally authentic-painstakingly so. All the materials for them have been matched closely in fiber content to what was available in London during the 1590's and 1600's. Layers-linen to start for both men, and men playing women- followed by a farthingale, a silk petticoat, a corset, a gown, a neck ruff, wrist ruffs, a girdle, stockings and garters but only for the lady men. They must feel duly womanized by the time the play begins.

 In addition to these trappings-Countess Olivia-played by Rylance, a performance not to be topped I say, dons a silk veil, coronet, lace hat, a jeweled head-tyre, a wire rebato, white gloves with jet beading, a silk velvet cloak, sleeve panels and an embroidered  forepart-hand made, or hand stitched or both-of course.

Portait of Anna Rosina Tanck,1642 painted by Michael Hirt, (in a wired rebato)

Authenticity is the byword of the Met's exhibition-Shakespeare's Twelfe Night, and this fall's New York trip on a whole.
Oh-
I did get to see her too-and it doesn't get much more real than that.
She, by the way, is playing at the Frick.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Vermeer

 "Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis."

about the play's costumes: from the Playbill notes by Jenny Tiramani, Designer
images of the play from Broadway.com, NY Times, NY Daily News, Portland Theatre Scene
Interwoven Globe at the Met here
Broadway's Twelfe Night  here



.

an Evening of Fifth Avenue Style

.
Last week I was in New York on business-and yes indeed pleasure. I spent an afternoon at Howard Slatkin's incredible apartment-visiting with Howard, a delightful host-and conversationalist.

No detail was spared in the apartment. I hope  you get Howard's book-it's truly a keeper. The rooms are stellar-and the book chronicles the project from conception to completion.

On Thursday, Harry and Laura Slatkin hosted-with a cast of other noted hosts-a fantastic celebration for Howard-and his Fifth Avenue Style. My great friend Jesma came up for a few days and took these photographs-and the photograph at right is one of many floral creations in at the party-thanks to Stacey Bewkes of Quintessence.

As the holidays get underway (how did we get here so quickly), Howard will be talking to me about how he celebrates the Season-and to put us in the holiday spirit will be giving away Fifth Avenue Style to several little augury readers.

More about the trip in future posts!

An Ideal Man, A House Beautiful

.
Imagine the ideal man, a Renaissance man.
Imagine reading about that man in his home-as inventor, designer, writer, collector, musician-a man who lived beautifully. Thomas Jefferson grasped the Art of Living~oh yes, he had his flaws-failures even, but no man is perfect.
For me Jefferson comes close.

Rembrandt Peale's 1805 portrait of Thomas Jefferson during his second term as President

I knew when I opened November's House Beautiful-with friend Charlotte Moss as its Guest Editor-there would be something special-something nowhere else to be found. To my pleasure- there are several somethings-but this- THE JEFFERSONIAN IDEAL was beyond. Pairing  Pulitzer-prize winning author of Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power, Jon Meacham, and House Beautiful is a match made in the lofty halls of an ideal place like- well, Jefferson's beloved Monticello-indeed it was-and the result is rare-not to mention grand. 
Leave it to Charlotte Moss to shape the issue into a memorable one to be savored, and saved.

Naturalist & Native, in the Entry of Monticello, Jefferson's Eclecticism On View

Jefferson wrote in 1819,

 " I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing... 

I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy...of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too..."

The photographs of Jonny Valiant accompany Meacham's Jefferson portrait. Not to put too fine a point on it-Meacham's account of Jefferson is poetry-or perhaps more lyrically put-words awaiting the strains of Jefferson's violin.
Too much?
If you think so-You have not read Mr. Meacham on Mr. Jefferson in House Beautiful, and I suggest, for the sake of history-knowledge-and for pure pleasure-You do so.

Monticello-a Reflection of Jefferson

Classic by Nature

Feeding the Soul, and Man, In the Garden and At Table

Charlotte Moss, a trustee of  The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, sets a table worthy of Jefferson in the "greenhouse," a loggia connected to his private rooms at Monticello.  With her eye for what is of the moment and of history, Charlotte uses Elsa Peretti, Tiffany and Co., Padova flatware, with sterling reproduction gold washed Jefferson cups from the Shop at Monticello.

Charlotte sent this collage of photographs from her Jefferson table setting-beautiful in its Classic simplicity.

Vladimir Kanevsky porcelain graces the table's center, set off by a ciel bleu Muriel Grateau tablecloth.

Charlotte writes of Jefferson's style & appetites, "Everything Jefferson did was simple, spare, and elegant. For him, the most important thing was the feeding of family and friends. I'd like to think he would have enjoyed dinner here himself."

I think Jefferson would have enjoyed it all. Today, his beloved Monticello feeds our Soul-and our desire for what is everlasting-and our quest for the Art of Living.



LINKS of Importance:

House Beautiful here
Charlotte Moss here
Jon Meacham here
read more about Muriel Grateau here