Wednesday 28 April 2010

If you are responsible for a dog...


Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside 3rd


read this about nail bed tumors. It may not be easy, but forewarned is forearmed.



Now playing: Shane Mack - More Than This

Avec plaisir



A George III mahogany dressing mirror - the moulded rectangular swing arm mirror with gilt lining, raised on serpentine moulded uprights with brass acorn finials, over a pierced fretwork panel, the moulded rectangular top over three frieze drawers, raised on ogee bracket feet.


Goodbye aching regret, hello gorgeous. And, you will actually work much better with the chair.




A mahogany elbow chair, c.1760, the arched back carved with flowerheads, leaves and husks over a pierced waisted splat worked as an anthemion and scrolls. The moulded and scrolled arms carved with acanthus leaves on scrolled supports. The over-stuff seat on shell carved and moulded front legs.



Now playing: Rick Astley - Together Forever

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Fit



American Beauty by Patricia Mears

...the first to examine the relationship between innovation and aesthetics as expressed by American couturiers and fashion designers from the late 1910s to the present day. The book, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, reveals that great design and great style were consistent elements in the work of American’s best fashion designers.



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Now playing: Diane Birch - Valentino

Friday 23 April 2010

Muse



She enjoyed the attentions of painter Gustav Klimt, composer Alexander Zemlinsky and painter Oskar Kokoschka. But she married composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius and writer Franz Werfel. Some she inspired and some she tortured. She being, Alma Maria Mahler-Werfel (née Schindler), the most beautiful girl in Vienna.





Danae by Gustav Klimt.





Double portrait (Kokoschka and Alma Mahler), 1912-13
Museum Folkwang, Essen




Alma Mahler, 1912
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo




Bride of the Wind, Kokoschka's self-portrait expressing his unrequited love




Two Nudes (Lovers), 1913
Self-portrait of Kokoschka with Alma Mahler


Kokoschka and Alma Mahler: Testimony to a Passionate Relationship




The polydrama Alma by writer Joshua Sobol and director Paulus Manker.



My Life, My Loves: Memoirs of Alma Mahler, out of print

Diaries 1898-1902 by Alma Mahler-Werfel



Thursday 22 April 2010

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Je regrette



An early 18th century walnut dressing table mirror with shaped cross grain moulded border and gilded leaf work edging above a stepped shaped base of three short and one long drawer; on ball feet


Should not have let you go. If only you had come up after the inlaid table you were meant to sit upon. Then it would have been a fait accompli instead of this nagging regret.



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Now playing: John Waite - Missing You

Monday 19 April 2010

Sunday 18 April 2010

1979


Patti LuPone appears on the September cover of After Dark



Shah of Iran is deposed



Margaret Thatcher elected Prime minister in UK


It snows in the Sahara Desert




Pink Floyd release The Wall



Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe.



Lord Mountbatten is assassinated by the I.R.A.




China institutes its One Child Policy



Sony introduces the Walkman





Andy Warhol shows Male Models on Manhattan Cable


YMCA sues the Village People for libel



Trivial Pursuit is launched


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Now playing: Smashing Pumpkins - 1979

Friday 16 April 2010

1979







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Now playing: David Bowie - Fashion

Tuesday 13 April 2010

The picture and the lady



Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), the German born naturalist who defied social conventions and produced some of the most beautiful insect studies of the 18th century.





Two plates from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705)




Insects and Flowers: The Art of Maria Sibylla Merian






Now playing: The Ugly Bug Ball

Monday 12 April 2010

The lady in the picture


In 1934, Bobsy Goodspeed, seated beneath a portrait of her by Bernard Boutet de Monvel, relaxes at her lush Lincoln Park apartment; the architect David Adler designed the space.


Portrait of a Lady

By Geoffrey Johnson

Between the world wars, a beautiful, artistic woman named Bobsy Goodspeed stood at the heart of Chicago's social and cultural scenes. Now, prompted by a salacious if glancing remark in a recent book, this forgotten woman re-emerges and opens the door on a vanished era peopled by painters and pianists, plutocrats and politicians—and an irresistible force named Gertrude Stein


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Now playing: All That Jazz
via FoxyTunes

Thursday 8 April 2010

Worlds end




Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

Lost and found



Recently reissued, La Lampe Gras makes its Australian debut at this month's designEx.

Originally created in 1921 by French engineer Bernard-Albin Gras. Production ceased at the outbreak of World War II.



Found via World Interior Design Network's blog.


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Now playing: Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings - Are You Gonna Give it Back
via FoxyTunes

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Putting my money where my mouth is

Without even knowing the man, this is what I would have done for Gerard Butler.


An Arts and Crafts oak centre table, circa 1900, with lotus capped square legs joined by stretchers.



A three seat version of Hickory Chair's Knole Sofa. The"updated finials" would most certainly need to be covered in the Mulberry slubbed velvet.


Mulberry's Foxslub Velvet in Berry, as he seemingly likes red.




A Victorian mahogany long stool, circa 1860, with bobbin-turned legs and stretchers. The squab cushion replaced with a horsehair covered pad seat.





Antique leather covered armchairs.







If only for its relevance, a rare and unusual early 19th Century Scottish laburnum armchair. The drop in seat would be done in a dark green horsehair.







A Gothic Revival oak side table, cica 1880, with pierced frieze, on square legs.


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Now playing: Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
via FoxyTunes

Monday 5 April 2010

Inspired



Please Don't by David Byrne & Fatboy Slim feat. Santi White

From the album Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim chronicling the rise and fall of the... notorious Imelda Marcos. Due for release April 6, 2010.

Thursday 1 April 2010