Snowday!

Working through a backlog of fun work today -- including photographing a million things for etsy, and I rediscovered this fantastic Dutch snow scene. Looks pretty much like the view from my window right now!

Less silence in the near future, promise.

Kanye's Tiepolo Fantasy

I've been fascinated for weeks by one of Kanye West's newer videos -- his cracked-out tribute piece to the glorious work of Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, rendered in weirdly baroque CGI:









Reminds me in particular of the staircase frescoes completed in Würzburg, Germany, that show Apollo and an allegorical depiction of the continents.





"Giambattista and Domenico designed each section to be viewed from specific 'stopping points' specified by the patron. Here visitors climbing the staircase could pause to admire the work, and appreciate how the perspective of the fresco seemed to adjust to their position in the room. This imaginative use of perspective helps the allegorical image come alive for viewers, but can make this three-dimensional painting look awkward in two-dimensional photographs."
here

Perhaps learning a lesson from this utterly modern problem faced by the Würzburg Tiepolos, Mr. West decided to adopt an awkwardly flat composition in his video.

What do we think? I can't be the only person who sees a resemblance.

Rateau, Again

Ah, my desire for all things made by Rateau and associated to Lanvin continues unabated, apparently. But seriously, who could avoid being seduced by this languorous sconce? Christie's describes its form as a butterfly, but to me this looks very much like the folded moths I run into on very early morning walks through the woods, sleeping and phosphorescent in the morning twilight:




"Maison Bagues has confirmed that this sconce was designed by Rateau and executed by Bagues. It was originally conceived as a ceiling light. Bagues also installed this lighting fixture in the Pavillon de l'Elegance at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes." How delightful is that! It was originally conceived as a giant bug crawling across the ceiling! And even more appropriate that it be a moth, prone to attraction to sources of light.

Goes to the hammer on the 15th, and it will be expensive, yes, but I'd rather have this sleeping moth than a lousy car or a time share in Miami, and in 50 years the sleeping moth will be worth many times more than either. Now I find this sconce very charming and can conceive of owning things of this calibre in the future, but this chair, I acknowledge, is in another class and utterly beyond me:



Linked bronze. Lovely. 1.5 to 2 million. "This stunning armchair is one of eight recorded examples of the model. Six were originally created by Armand Albert Rateau for the wealthy American collectors Florence and George Blumenthal and it is from this group that the present armchair originated.

In 1919, Rateau and the Blumenthals happened upon each other while aboard the ocean liner La Savoie traveling between the U.S. and France and it was from this meeting that the Blumenthals became Rateau's first clients. The three had worked together previously, before the war while Rateau held the position of creative director in the prestigious French decorating firm Alavoine & Cie. However, in 1919, when they became re-acquainted, Rateau had set out to work independently.

Shortly after their transatlantic encounter the Blumenthals commissioned a suite of furniture for the patio surrounding the indoor pool at their sumptuous Manhattan townhouse. Taking his cue from the elaborate aquatic murals featuring mermaids swimming below the ocean amongst sea creatures and sea life, Rateau created his magical bronze suite (consisting of six armchairs, two tables and one lamp) with an intricate shell and marine life theme."

Found and greatly admired at one of my favorite blogs, Aestheticus Rex. Available here and here.

Places of My Youth: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump

Sweater purchased by friend and coveted by me:



Sadly, it's a sweater for small boys and waifish ladies. But it did start the gears in my head, and with a flash I remember the wonders of Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, which is a place I visited as a child in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada (it's also the first Unesco World Heritage Site I experienced firsthand, inspiring my goal to visit every single one over the course of my life).

Rome has been inhabited for 2,500 years; the cliffs at Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump were used continuously by native peoples for at least 5,000.

Beginning miles from the cliffs and at progressively greater speeds, hunters would carefully guide herds of buffalo over the shallow drop, to the plains far below.



Bones lie at the foot of the cliff over 30 feet deep, which is quite a few buffalo. But if the stakes are high, perhaps just once in 5,000 years, a buffalo could fly ...



... though it's unlikely.

Is There Anything Sadder in the Annals of Daily Life Than Broken Dishes?

Discuss.

i Due Gattopardi

My disdain for anything leopard is well documented, but I think I'll make an exception for these two Italian examples. I'd be quite happy with either one -- and one of them is actually available here.

Transient Comforts: Paul Redier Ladd Senior

Silence, silence. I know, it's been far too long, and for that I have no excuse but a crazy schedule of late. But! A special treat: my good friend Eva's great grandfather Paul Redier Ladd Senior's photos. Eva has easily the most beautiful family photos I've ever seen; I've often thought of posting them.

Presumably her great grandfather's bedroom, which looks precisely as I wished my teenage bedroom to look, complete with Stickley:



And camping -- what I love about this photo is that it's clearly play-camping -- note the crenelated roof of a mansion with mansard roof in the background, peeping over the tent. And the furniture! I'm all about this type of rustic:



And later, on his grand tour, in Capri. Blue grotto, anyone?

Kicking. My. Self.

Okay. Every Sunday, Steven & I go to what I believe to be one of the great undiscovered flea markets in America. It's tiny and very hit or miss, but I consistently find wonderful things that I sell through my Etsy shop, and things that I keep for myself. This morning my run of luck continued at the market, but I made a stunning, unaccountable error -- I failed to buy these:



What was I thinking? Or not thinking? When I first saw them, jumbled in a box on the ground, I assumed they must be old Spode or Wedgwood, the precision and complexity of the decals used was so high. But no, Villeroy & Boch (the Anjou pattern); perhaps it was bourgeois snobbery, in discovering that they were what I consider a lesser maker than I assumed, that led to my stupidity.

The coffee cups:



I know hunting isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I certainly wouldn't partake in the activity. Though the idea of accounting personally for one's source of food is appealing -- and I like that this set points out where the meat being served came from! At least if you're having squirrel, fox, venison, hare, etc. At last, dishes that acknowledge the chase that feeds us.

It probably bothers me less than most. I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin growing up, where a deer strapped to the top of a car or hung from the basketball hoop on a family garage is a common autumnal sight. Moose antlers, collected from the source by my grandfather in Jackson Hole, adorn the top of a hutch at the Red House. Anyway, off topic: dishes.

Luckily, I pointed the set out to Steven's mother (who likely would have found them herself anyway), who was also out this morning, and she immediately fell for them, and wisely claimed the lot, for less than the price of the cheapest set of dishes at Wal-mart. I'm happy they're in the family, and look forward to seeing them at Thanksgiving. The enormous tureen (curiously identified as a vegetable dish):



But really, this has led to a crisis of conscience: do names carry such weight in my appraisal of objects? Gross.

The seller told Ellen (Steven's mother) that she bought them directly from the factory during a trip to Munich with her mother in 1972 (just before the massacre at the Olympics). Portentious pottery?

Mistake. Mistake!

Christmas Comes to Nick, c/o Swedish Classical Modernism

So, my mailbox and email have been overloaded lately with fan mail demanding to know what I would like for Christmas. I'm hard to shop for, and I'm not at all surprised that you, my savvy readers, have stepped up to the bar and begun to plan your gift giving to me before Black Friday. I really respect you for it. And to that end, I've decided to simply come out and tell you what I'd like for Christmas, just to make your lives easier.

I'd love it if you could pool your funds and pick this up for me:





Sublime, coolly elegant and even a little whimsical (the curved pom over the glass shade, looking everything like a dandelion pod), this lovely object was created by one of the most important, least well known designers of the 20th century, Gunnar Asplund. Consummate classicist, with the heart of a modernist (or vice versa), Asplund's works have literally brought me to tears, on multiple occasions (Skogskyrkogården and the Stockholm Public Library and the Gothenburg City Hall, each one separately, first in Winter 2006, then Summer 2008. Six weep sessions).



His interiors are simply flawless. And so, dear readers, I must have this chandelier. Or, alternately, this sconce, which is definitely a second choice, but lovely nonetheless:



Subtle detailing throughout:



It's almost as though the light has taken blob-like form and is being wrung through the arm of the sconce.

Both the chandelier and sconce are up for auction in Chicago at Wright, on November 18th. I'm anxious to see how they fair -- he's not at all as well known as most of the big Scandinavian architects, but objects associated to his work almost never come up for auction. It could go either way, but whatever way it goes, they are way out of my league. Sigh.

Rare and Subtle Creature of Sky and Tree

Spied this summer, at long last and after years of effort on the part of some of our party, I present the Boreal Chickadee:



They travel in flocks of plane-jane chickadees, but are rare in the extreme, and nearly impossible to see. Boreal Chickadees go about life discreetly, unaware of their celebrity in certain circles of bird watchers -- pursued and desired, ever elusive and seemingly pedestrian.



When finally we saw them, flitting through a copse of trees near the edge of a cliff overlooking the Bay of Fundy, it felt invasive and satisfying at once -- like peering into the windows of a house a dusk. I would love to see the little beasts again.



How sweet and secretive they are. I very much admire their subtle coloring and incognito ways.

All photos taken this summer on Grand Manan Island by Steve Thompson Sr.

The Flat Files, Part 1: Princess Diamantine

A recent upgrade in furnishings threw off my schedule the last few weeks, and caused disorganization in our house the likes of which I've avoided for months. But it did lead to the emptying of drawers and clearing of boxes and tabletops, and in the process I discovered things I'd forgotten for years.



In a hidden folio I discovered a group of scraps I picked up while living in Rome, which I bought because they were so strange and out of place; they appeared to be American, and I was missing home something fierce. Pages of newspaper clippings from the second half of the 19th century, text relating humor that is in no way humorous (ex: the comedic trials of a minister named Cleveland living in the city of Cleveland), with one dazzling exception:

"A BLAZE OF DIAMONDS --At a ball recently given in the
Fauxborg St. Germain, at Paris, the diamonds outshone every
specimen of Parisian splendor which has yet been beheld.
One lady, who stood for a moment motionless in a doorway,
forced thither from the crowd, forming the focus upon which
were directed the rays of the waxlights in the chandelier op-
posite--literally produced an exclamation of surprise from the
whole company from the absolute blaze of light which she
seemed to project from head to foot. This lady is the wife of
a Brazilian gentleman, the owner of the most productive dia--
mond mines in the world, and, for many years, it has been his
custom to bestow opon his wife the whole produce withdrawn
from the mine during the whole month of the year in which
they were married. The number and value of the ladies jewels
have thus gone on increasing until the collection she owns at the
present moment is said to throw that of many crowned heads
completely in the shade. To give an idea of that quantity of
diamonds which decorated her person we can only say that the
whole stomacher of the dress, and the quilles on each side of
the skirt, were formed of a net-work pattern of diamonds ;
while the corsage was surmounted with a row of larger size,
and the headdress composed of resille of the same, from
which, of either side, and down the back of the neck, hung
tassels, entirely of diamonds. The lady has received, ever since
the display, the sobriquet of the Princess Diamantine."



The absurd thing is that I briefly dated the son of a Brazilian gem magnate, and can't help but wonder if I could have been Prince Diamantino. But more importantly, I love Princess Diamantine's confidence in the credo "more is more," and the hoarded-splendor of her person makes me worry less about the absurd accumulation of things in our apartment.

Greg's House in Colombia: Part I

It all started with blackberry jam. After a difficult first year in Colombia, a year of odd jobs, false starts, and trying to settle in, life was becoming more stable for us. My wife had found a secure, well-paying job, I was starting to get some interesting professional leads, and we had organized a routine of shared housework. The prior year, among our many nascent enterprises, we'd started a jam company, Manjares Caseros Caro y Greg. We produced two types of blackberry jam, as well as strawberry and Cape gooseberry jam, pesto, and tomato sauce. Our products were delicious, a big hit, but we could never produce large quantities or sell beyond friends and family, because our home kitchen operation didn't qualify for an official sanitary certificate. If we wanted to make a major run at the handmade jam business, we needed an industrial kitchen, clearly separated from our normal, family kitchen.



This condition coincided with our newfound economic security. Now that we could actually meet our monthly expenses comfortably, my wife wanted to invest in something, a common enterprise that would unite the two of us even as our work kept us from spending all our time together. We knew we'd probably only be in Colombia for another few years. My wife sagely argued that it would be a shame if when we left we had nothing to show for our time here. No capital built up, just a few thousand dollars paid in rent to our landlady and her horrid baboon family.

Thus arose the idea of investing in something. From before we arrived in Colombia we'd dreamt of starting our own farm, but our urban livelihoods precluded that now. The natural idea was to get the jam business up and running in a bigger way, or ideally to invest in a locale for our jam business, preferably in the small town where we went to buy berries direct from the farmers.





So we spent a few weeks scouting possible locations in the small town. One place was a dilapidated rural house for rent, but the landlord seemed to want us as tenants mainly so we'd tend his dairy herd for free. Another property was a lovely piece of land for sale, but the price was too steep for us.



After a few weeks of playing with the idea of investing in the small town, we realized it would be a hassle to put all of our work and resources in a place other than where we lived. That's when we began to think of buying and rehabbing an old house in our own city, which we'll call Alto Macondo:



I must admit that most of the prodding in this whole process came from my wife. I am a very methodical, slow-moving person when it comes to big life changes, and I always seek a comfortable routine to follow. I probably would have been happy to continue renting in our same old apartment. At least our income was sufficient to live on, even if we weren't building up our capital.

That said, among the millions of ideas I'd had before and after arriving in Colombia was to rehab old houses. This is something I'm relatively proficient at. At least I was proficient at house repair years ago, the last time I lived in a house that I had some authority to fix up. And in our town there are lots of beautiful old colonial houses that people don't appreciate. They prefer to rip down the traditional adobe architecture and build ugly cinderblock apartment buildings. Even now that there are historical preservation laws in place, developers will often buy an old house, neglect it until it falls down, and then claim that they aren't obligated to preserve the house, since it's not even a house anymore, just a lot with ruins on it. In the worst cases, they turn beautiful old houses into parking lots, maintaining only the original facade.



Inspired by our new idea, my wife and I set out to see as many old houses as we could. Many were small and of odd dimensions, the result of centuries of add-ons and divisions. Most were offered to us as potential teardowns so we could join the ranks of the cinderblock builders. And few were really suited for our plans, which were to rehab and subdivide into two or three units, one for ourselves and the rest to sell. There were two amazing, huge houses we saw, but both came with a $100000US price tag. One of them was literally falling to pieces, with holes in the second floor, rotting columns, and the like. If we ever rehab another old house, I'd like it to be that one, but for our first project (which also is sort of time-sensitive, since we intended to move in within the year), such a complex, big, expensive project wouldn't have been appropriate.

Finally though we found a house that really caught our eye. Perhaps more than the house itself was its location on a lovely little square, unlike any other neighborhood in Alto Macondo. The square was next to a 17th-century church, faced by a forested park, and had views of the distant western mountains. And the house was right on the square.

The house itself was a bit odd. The front part looked very old, almost colonial, with 14-foot-high ceilings. However, the traditional patio was bordered by reinforced concrete roof beams instead of typical wood columns and joists. There were a series of funny, tiny rooms in a row, with a dark semi-hall leading to another back patio with two shack-like rooms on it. Both patios had been defiled with bathrooms built right into the middle. The back part of the house faced onto another street, but the street level was so much lower than in the front part that the back had a garage below the living area. Everything in the back part was relatively new, built in cinderblock instead of adobe.







For some reason we were taken with the house. The size and the price were just about right for us, though the long, narrow floor plan made us puzzle as to how we might arrange multiple living units. But the kitchen had an old coal-burning stove that probably sold the house for us.

We told the owner that we were interested, and the negotiations began from there. But that is a story unto itself.

To be continued ...

For Steven, With Whom I've Survived Five Years Today

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


--e e cummings

another like it HERE.

O Captain! My Captain!

His virtues were grafted
on his affections,
and sprung warm and
operative from his heart.

Without question, this is my favorite grave inscription ever. I think of it often when looking over my life, hoping that I will earn it myself. Loved ones, take note: those four lines above, on a nice dark slate.

I love how visceral the phrasing is, sprung warm and operative; it so effectively suggests the life of a person now dead. I feel as though I can see Captain Seth Davis' emotions springing warm and operative from him, and wish I knew then man now.

Leni Riefenstahl

She's probably roasting on a spit as we speak, but good God the woman was a genius with film.



It's impossible not to wonder what went wrong, after her Body Beautiful days (or really, it probably all makes sense) ...



... and in her transformation from leading experimental filmmaker to mouthpiece of the Third Reich.



And most disquieting is how superb her films for the Nazi's are; you can certainly find flaw in her character and choice of message, but the artistry is unmatched. It's so depressing.



Led astray from those heady days of freedom in 1920s Berlin, shown here with fellow hedonist, Marlene Dietrich:



And here at her summer villa, showing unerring taste in striped sun shades, but a less discerning eye in selecting her company:

South American Correspondent

I have some very exciting news about the content on Nick Haus: I am soon to be joined by one of my oldest buddies, Greg, who will chronicle the renovation of his historic adobe house in a beautiful mountain town outside of Bogota, Colombia.

I have long dreamt of shaping Nick Haus into a home renovation blog, but unfortunately that is hard to do without a home! Luckily, I was able to spend a few weeks with Greg this spring, and together we drew up plans for the renovation of the large house that he and his wife bought in their town's historic center. It's a beautiful, very simple adobe structure that was built piece by piece over time -- it has a lovely almost neoclassical facade, made entirely of formed mud:



(the idea of classical works in mud perversely reminds me of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, which at one point in it's tumultuous history had a neoclassical statue of Venus sculpted in terra cotta at its center, wittily termed by critics "Venus in Mud." Another Venus in Mud:



It's best to ignore everything in that video save the first clip.)

Oh, tangents. I have a great talent for losing my point. Getting back to Greg, I've known him as long as I've known anyone ... our parents were friends when we were born, and Greg and I grew up in tandem. Our families are so close that we share a country house (the Red House), where Greg and I ran around together in the woods and built things and made potions and gardened:





Greg grew up and studied agricultural engineering, and has lived, worked and studied all over the world: Spain, France, Benin, Haiti, and now Colombia with his wife. He has his own blog, Agrarian Ideas for a Developing World, which takes on complex, serious matters and talks about them in an informed way. Even more impressive, he often translates his articles into Spanish, French, and Creole. (He is far too modest to mention any of these facts, but luckily can't do much about me bringing them up).



Greg lives a considered life, and the house he is renovating for his family (bambina coming in December) will be no exception: in addition to acknowledging the historical importance of the property, Greg's renovation will bring together a host of green features, and "will incorporate garden and livestock space so [he and his family] can eliminate more pesticides from [their] food." Not to mention that it will be beautiful. There are two courtyards, and you can see mountains from both the front and back of the house:





Excited yet? I am. You will not be disappointed.