Friday, 20 November 2009
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
retro messaging
Heady days when postcards were the preferred means of communication from foreign parts. Today we expect a net connection and send our photos into the ether, so Print your own postcards
Friday, 13 November 2009
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
The color of art is #A79F94
JT Nimoy calculated that the average colour of modern art is the pantone colour #A79F94
This worked out from 26,000 images from MoMA
Monday, 9 November 2009
Sunday Morning 7:10
Regular readers will be familiar with Lushlight towers aka Westdowne House- I inhabit the first floor of a house that has remained fairly unchanged for 150 years. I love it- the Georgians had a sense of space and the larger the better. The ceilings are around eleven foot high and the windows huge- its why I moved in - the light is magnificent- even on dull days.
The space is accommodating and though I share, it still feels that I am able to ‘swing large cats.’ For sure I should love to inhabit it all by myself but needs must. One thing I have to do before Christmas is clean the windows and hang the gold velvet curtains- it is draughty. The light early Sunday morning showed them up.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Remembering the fallen......
Just what is it that we remember on this November Sunday? A few minutes a year to acknowledge the sacrifice of thousands of lives given in the name of Queen and Country? The horror of the 'Great War' where tens of thousands died in just hours? Some remember the futility and waste and I side with them.
My father served the Royal Welsh Fusiliers as Chaplain and proudly talked of his involement in the D day landings. Every Rembrance Sunday I would attend church with him and he talked of what he was remembering. Along with the memories of lost colleagues, heroic stories and brave deeds he had one over riding rememberance. The central rememberance for my father was the lesson to be learned from the 'war to end all wars' - sadly it didn't!
We still believe in wars, we still have faith in our ability to overthrow regimes and foreign governments- we call it the support of freedom - the defence of allies.
I remember the views of my Father who simply quoted 'thou shalt not kill' and 'love thy neighbour' - I completely accept that we need protection from evil and despotic regimes. But I fear for the soul of any nation or individual that takes the life of another under amy name.
Fallen-Saved- Glorious?
Grief Struck
Washington, D.C., circa 1915. "Grief monument, Rock Creek cemetery." Augustus Saint-Gaudens's ambiguously enigmatic bronze memorializing Clover Adams, the society hostess whose suicide led to its commission by her husband, the writer Henry Adams. National Photo Co. Collection glass negative.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Pericles
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others
Salvatore
Salvatore Ferragamo was born in 1898 in Bonito, near Naples, the eleventh of 14 children. After making his first pair of shoes at age nine, for his sisters to wear on their confirmation, young Salvatore decided that he had found his calling. He always had a passion for shoes. After studying shoemaking in Naples for a year, Ferragamo opened a small store based in his parent's home. In 1914, he emigrated to Boston, where one of his brothers worked in a cowboy boot factory. After a brief stint at the factory, Ferragamo convinced his brothers to move to California, first Santa Barbara then Hollywood. It was here that Ferragamo found success, initially opening a shop for repair and made-to-measure shoes, which soon became prized items among celebrities of the day, leading to a long period of designing footwear for the cinema. However, his thriving reputation as 'Shoemaker to the Stars' only partially satisfied him. He could not fathom why his shoes pleased the eye yet hurt the foot, so he proceeded to study anatomy at the University of Southern California.
After spending thirteen years in the United States, Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927, this time settling in Florence. In 1927 he returned to Florence and began to fashion shoes for the wealthiest and most powerful women of the century, from the Maharani of Cooch Behar to Eva Peron to Marilyn Monroe. In 1929 he opened a workshop in the Via Mannelli, concentrating his efforts in experimenting with design, applying for patents for ornamental and utility models and some related inventions. Forced to file for bankruptcy in 1933 due to bad management and economic pressures, Ferragamo nonetheless expanded his operation during the 1950 to a workforce of around 700 expert artisans that produced 350 pairs of hand-made shoes a day.
Ferragamo was always recognized as a visionary, and his designs ranged from the strikingly bizarre objet d'art to the traditionally elegant, often serving as the main inspiration to other footwear designers of his time and beyond. Salvatore Ferragamo died in 1960 at the age of 62, but his name lives on as an international company, which has expanded its operations to include luxury shoes, bags, eyewear, silk accessories, watches, perfumes and a ready to wear clothing line. At his death his wife Wanda and later their six children (Fiamma, Giovanna, Fulvia, Ferruccio, Massimo and Leonardo) ran the Ferragamo company. His most famous invention is arguably the "Cage Heel". Fiamma (Salvatore's eldest daughter prematurely died in 1998) inherited her father's inimitable talent and came up with the "Vara pumps" in 1978.
The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum opened in Florence in 1995. Located on the second floor of Palazzo Spini Feroni, the Museum extends over four rooms and comprises A collection of over ten thousand models of shoes created by Ferragamo over forty years, from the Twenties to his death in 1960. The Museum also has a small collection of period shoes (18th and 19th century), a collection of clothing from 1959 onwards, a collection of handbags from 1970, and a huge document archive.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
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