It's A Nice Day for a White Wedding

1840 - Victoria

 1863 - Alexandra

 1893-Mary

 1923- Elizabeth

 1947 - Elizabeth

 1981 - Diana

 Kate - Today, 2011.

Thanks to all the photographers who took these photos. 

Wow Meow!

Toronto has an incredible street-style photographer and blogger named Nigel Hamid. His blog TorontoVerve features fashionable people on the streets of Toronto and he makes Toronto look gooood.

Although from Vancouver here's a couple of photos of Sam channeling her inner Cat Woman.The scale of prints and the monochrome of the leopard upon leopard upon leopard makes this ensemble work. She's mature and dresses with confidence and a sense of humour. I love this and I'm threatening to get my vintage 50s leopard coat from out of the cupboard.

Photos: Nigel Hamid/TorontoVerve

Courage My Love - Men's Style

I’m a big proponent of men dressing better, with more creativity, more flair and more colour. Jimi Hendrix’ drum major’s coat fills me with delight. Bob Dylan’s polka-dotted shirts are spot-on.

Casual Friday doesn’t have to mean “dress” pants and golf shirts. That’s just gruesome. So when I read that portraits of Mick Jagger from the 1960s would be on display at London’s National Gallery, I just had to get on my bandwagon again.

The exhibition will include portraits of Jagger by Gered Mankowitz, which will highlight the effect of pop art and psychedelia on Jagger’s clothes. Gered Mankowitz (who was just 18 when he became the Rolling Stone’s official photographer) is also responsible for an iconic photo of Jimi Hendrix wearing the military jacket he bought at the boutique I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, in London’s mod Carnaby Street. The store specialized in movie costumes and military gear. The designer of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album cover was inspired while walking past the shop.

Again the Beatles circa 1968 demonstrate a male style of dressing that exhibits originality, a sense of confidence and above all, a sense of humour. Known as The Mad Day Out, Don McCullin’s photo session of July 68 show the Beatles as colourful as the flowers surrounding them. Love it!

I see a profound lack of confidence and of humour in clothes both male and female now that I’m back at school. The thousands of university students I pass everyday are as colourless and uniform as a swarm of black ants.

So turn off your mind, relax and flow downstream. Add a little velvet to your life. Dress like the Beatles, not beetles. Start with striped socks, or a bow tie. You’ll feel better too.

Courage My Love, refers to a vintage shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Maybe one could pick up a nice striped waistcoat there.

Mick Jagger: Young in the 60s will be at London’s National Portrait Gallery starting May 3. npg.org.uk.


Photo 1 and 3: Gered Mankowitz
Photo 2: Colin Jones
Photo 4 and 5: Don McCullin

Beatrix Potter's Cottage

Hilltop was one of the homes of children's author, Beatrix Potter. As requested in her will, the interior has been left as if she had just “gone out to the post" with a fire burning in the hearth, and cups and saucers at the ready for visitors. It’s a time capsule of Beatrix Potter’s full life. Every room contains a reference to a picture in a 'tale'. The lovely cottage garden is a delightful tumbledown mix of flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables.

Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top in 1905 with the royalties from her first few books. She wrote her early books from her parents home in London, but they were inspired by her annual holiday visits to England’s Lake District.  Although almost forty, she could not stay in her beloved new home because she was expected to take care of her parents in London. She visited it whenever she could. After her marriage to William Heelis in 1913 she was able to settle in the Lake District permanently. Beatrix wrote many of her famous children's stories in the small 17th century stone house. Characters such as Tom Kitten, Samuel Whiskers and Jemima Puddleduck were created here, and the books contain many pictures based on the house and garden.

Eventually Beatrix  went on to own 15 farms and over 4,000 acres of land in the area. Beatrix loved animals and went on to be a farmer and a well-known breeder of sheep.

Hill Top

Near Sawrey, Hawkshead, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 0LF
Telephone: 015394 36269 Fax: 015394 36811 Email: hilltop@nationaltrust.org.uk

top image: geograph.uk 

2nd image: Stephen Robson for the National Trust Properties

3rd. The World of Peter Rabbit, Frederick Warne and Co. Copyright 2002

Eggs

While in Germany and Austria in the Spring of 2003 we were pleased to see the breakfast rooms of the pensions we stayed in were nicely decorated for Easter. Pink and yellow puffball chicks, rabbits with barrows and twig trees decked out with eggs made an Easter tableau in each window sill. Nothing could compare however to the shop window we saw in Salzburg. At the corner of Judengasse and Getreidegasse, probably less than a minute’s walk from Mozart’s birthplace, was a shop that sold only Easter eggs.

These weren’t chocolate Easter eggs (though I wish they had been) but dozens after dozens of perilously delicate eggs shells, each one hand-decorated to suit just about any taste.

The shop called Easter in Salzburg sold eggs for Halloween, eggs for Christmas, eggs for birthdays. Personalized eggs. Some were very elegant; others just for kids. The deceivingly large store showcased over a hundred thousand of these little oval beauties over two floors. An ostrich egg bearing a picture of Mozart cost €150, but a modestly decorated chicken’s egg was priced around €2. Despite the reasonable price, I had content myself with some photos. I wouldn’t have managed to get a single egg back to my hotel room.

Yo! Mama!

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art by Philip Scott Johnson

Steampunk meets Peter Rabbit - the Art of Stephen Appleby Barr

 Resembling a collision of  Beatrix Potter and Steampunk, Toronto artist Stephen Appleby-Barr’s oil paintings are charming on the surface but after looking for a few seconds something is obviously quite rotten in the state of Denmark. It’s like realizing that your great grandfather was an opium addict.

Appleby-Barr’s paintings are rendered exquisitely in the style of Old Masters like Velazquez. His technique references the rich and luminous qualities found in 18^th Century artwork. Some of Appleby’s paintings are based on old found daguerreotypes and others he stages in the same tradition. He inserts people he knows and interweaves secret symbols to create a personal mythology. 

He has also invented a hidden underworld called the Invisible College in which his paintings develop the imaginary histories of secret societies such as the Blind Oarsmen of Buchan. Appleby-Barr’s work is so very beautiful and interesting but also very unsettling. 

 

Stephen-Appleby Barr is respresented by the Nicholas Metivier Gallery

More of his work can be seen here. 

All artwork is copyright Stephen Appleby-Barr.

Canadian Painters - Ozias Leduc

The Young Student, Ozias Leduc, 1894

Ozias Leduc (1864-1955) was born the son of an apple grower in the small Quebec village of St. Hilaire, about 40 kilometres from Montreal. Leduc lived there all his life. He built his own studio by hand and dedicated his life to painting and poetry. Apart from managing his father’s orchard, he painted church murals for his income and his easel work for his own personal pleasure. He chose simple everyday objects around him and people who were close to him. An aura of calm surrounds his subjects as does a feeling of dignity.

Leduc received many church commissions. Of the thirty churches he decorated , he is best known for his murals at the Notre-Dame-de-la-Présentation church in Shawinigan South, a project which took him thirteen years to complete.

Ozias Leduc learned his craft under an Italian artist, Luigi Capello was married to Leduc's cousin, and an artist from Bécancour, Adolphe Rho. Capello, who had studied at the Turin Academy, introduced Leduc to the great European works. Rho, an inventor and an artist helped him develop his technical and manual skills.

Leduc worked slowly and meticulously, with intense concentration. He was a man who was  intellectually curious. He read many art journals, American, British, French, as well as those from Canada and Quebec. He had a large library and brought the world to his tiny village through his reading. He tried to surround himself with people who could stimulate him intellectually.

Boy With Bread, Ozias Leduc c.1892

Leduc made one trip to Paris in 1897 and although spending eight months there, he continued to paint according to his own personal vision upon his return to Quebec.

Portrait of Gertrude Leduc, Ozias Leduc 1940

mmmm…choooocolaaaaate

Mmmmmm.

I walked part the way home today. It was the first day that really felt like Spring and the first day where the wind did not cut me in half. I treated myself at Magnolia Fine Foods, on College Street, as I hadn’t done anything nice for myself in several minutes. I picked up some onion compote and some peanut satay sauce and I bought two small chocolate bars.

The chocolates made by Dolfin were intriguing. They’re a Belgian company that prides themselves in their blends. Dolfin team the most unexpected flavours together. Today I had two liiiitle 30g.bars; a dark chocolate with white pepper and cardamom from Guatemala, and a milk chocolate bar with Konacha green tea from Japan. To quote a phrase, these chocolates “are like a mini-travel diary, capturing the atmosphere of far-off horizons….”. The pepper and cardomon chocolate was almost a delicious as my all-time favourite Dallmayr Weihnachts chocolate which is fragrant with anise, cloves, cinnamon and coriander plus a hint of vanilla.(I discovered that in the Christmas hamper provided by my husband's German-based employer.)

Other exotic spices, peels and essential oils are used in Dolfin’s chocolates. For example Dolfin makes milk chocolate with salted caramel and milk chocolate with Sri Lankan cinnamon; dark chocolate with lavender and dark chocolate tablets of with violet, rose or verbena.

Dolfin’s master chocolate makers are interested in the flavours of the world and so far I have to agree that the surprising combinations are quite harmonious.

You should check them out next time you’re in the gourmet section.  You  know you deserve it.

Here's  a link to their English site.

The Lady with the Ermine

Art conservators Janusz Czop, left, and Janusz Walek open a box containing the Leonardo da Vinci painting Lady with an Ermine during a press presentation at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, April 12, 2011.

AP Photo/Alik Keplicz.

I find Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine more beautiful and much more interesting than his Mona Lisa. The lady is  Cecilia Gallerani, (1473-1536) a  young woman who entered the court of Milan around 1490. She became the mistress of Duke Ludovico Sforza and bore him a son.  Ludovico Sforza was one of the wealthiest and most powerful princes of Renaissance Italy. He commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint The Last Supper. Sforza also commissioned Leonardo to paint the portrait of his mistress. At the time of the portrait, Cecilia was about seventeen. She was born into a large family and her father served for a time at the Duke's court. Cecilia was renowned for her beauty, her intellect and her poetry-wrting. At around ten she was promised to a young nobleman of the house of Visconti but the marriage was called off. Cecilia then became the mistress of the Duke but, alas, Ludovico chose to marry a girl from a nobler family, Beatrice d’Este. Duke Ludovico received the insignia of the chivalric Order of the Ermine from the King of Naples in 1488, and was nicknamed Italico Morel bianco ermellino ("Italian Moor, white ermine") because he was sort of swarthy.  The ermine became the heraldic animal of the Sforzo clan. The ermine in Cecilia’s arms represents the couple’s relationship. It is written of him that he was an “unscrupulous intriguer” Was he a weasel as well?

Here's a painting of Sforza from his family's altarpiece at the time of the relationhip.

Cecilia Gallerani lives on in posterity in the painting exhibited in the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. The Polish Culture Ministry and a board of conservators will soon be deciding whether Leonardo da Vinci’s painting is fit to be out on a prolonged tour of Europe’s galleries. The Czartoryski Foundation, which owns the work, wants to show it at three major exhibitions – in Madrid, Berlin and London. But the plans for the painting  to leave Poland have sparked anxiety among art conservationists According to the chief conservator of the National Museum in Kraków, the Lady with an Ermine should undergo further research studies and should not travel to foreign exhibitions. Art conservationists warn that plans to transport the painting might cause damage to Poland's most precious picture.

With files from the Associated Press and www.thenews.pl

Polka-Dots

My husband likes Bob Dylan very much. I think he’s got everything ever recorded by him, legit or not. Together we’ve seen Dylan about 5 times.
Always one to break the mold, he asked me if I would keep my eye out for an iconic Bob Dylan-style polka-dot shirt for him. I looked for years but I’ve had no luck except to find 3 for myself.
In my neighbourhood lives a man who looks a little like Dylan; shortish with a mop of curly graying hair plus bushy sideburns and a predominant nose. He’s aware of the resemblance because every day he dresses like Dylan circa 1964 - wearing men’s boots with Spanish heels, the ubiquitous Ray-Bans, and tight little black blazers over top of a selection of Dylanesque polka-dot shirts. So that’s where all the polka-dot shirts went! He's been one step ahead of me all the way!
He’s always in costume. When he’s not in Dylan polka-dots, he and his girlfriend dress up like the cover of Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.


In the meantime, I’ve changed my mind about buying my husband a polka-dot shirt. After all, one can’t stay forever young.




Thanks to new-pony.com for the pictures.

Valmont vs Dangerous Liaisons

My most-read post of all time. Thanks Colin!

Milos Forman’s film Valmont came out in 1989, the year after Steven Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons. Both are based on Chloderos Laclos' scandalous 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Both feature rich and bored aristocrats and are set in Baroque France prior to the guillotine.

A scheming widow, the Marquise de Merteuil, and her sometimes-lover Valmont make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married and very pious woman. Valmont wagers that he can seduce the newlywed, even though she is very honourable. If he wins, the Marquise promises him one last night with her. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.

I prefer Valmont to Dangerous Liaisons. Colin Firth as Valmont does the "wet puffy shirt" before Mr. Darcy strips off in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice. Firth is passion and charisma to John Malkovich’s reptilian cold-bloodedness. I know who I’d rather snog with.

This was the first role I saw Annette Bening play. She’s ripe, peachy and pretty and looks too nice to play Madame Merteuil but she’s just as evil as Glenn Close.

Pretty Meg Tilly played the pious Madame de Tourvel. Well and truly seduced, Firth moved to the forests of Canada to be with her.

Here’s a list of the major players in Valmont and their equals in Dangerous Liaisons.

Colin Firth – John Malkovich
Annette Bening – Glenn Close
Meg Tilly – Michelle Pfeiffer
Fairuza Balk – Uma Thurman
Henry Thomas ( Elliot from ET) - Keano Reeves.

And the 1989 trailer.

Recovery

I saw a BBC drama yesterday called Recovery starring David Tennant (Dr. Who) who receives a personality-changing head injury that affects the lives of everyone around him. This portrayal, originally aired in 2007, was so similar to what happened to my father in 1979, that it felt as if it had been written by my mother.

My father was plowed into by a driver heading to our town to face dangerous driving charges. How about that for irony? It was the first snowy day in November and she skidded off the road only to drive straight into Dad’s lane upon correcting herself.

What happened in the TV dramatization was like reading a diary. It was like reliving those days at the end of '79.

The doctors saved my father's life but they didn’t save my “father”. After a coma that lasted three weeks, he was better and recovering but he had lost his “Raymond-ness". Dad was a librarian for a huge swath of northern Ontario. He was an active member of our small town’s cultural community. He was well-liked. People thought he was funny; his British sense of humour won over many.

But people thirty-years ago didn’t understand head-injuries very well. They didn’t “get” what had happened to Dad. There was no psychiatrist in our small town of 5,000; no therapist that could be objective. Despite the smallness of the community I grew up in, people seemed to forget that Dad had been injured. Six months later they expected him to be normal again and couldn’t understand when he didn’t recognize them on the street.

In the dramatization, when Tennant’s character Alan comes home he  appears to be fit,  but things don’t fall into place for him. He doesn’t understand how to unlock the car. He sets fire to the kitchen because he can’t remember how to use the toaster. Sentimental songs have no meaning for him any longer. He acts inappropriately and his sense of decorum is shot. He's suddenly furiously angry and doesn't understand how this affects those around him.

My father was unable to drive. He set fire to the lawn and had no idea how to put it out. Simple tasks like changing a light-bulb were beyond him from then on. People were backing off of committees he was on because of his sudden temper. He couldn't add much to a conversation. Jokes and puns were strange and esoteric. What he did want to talk about, and he did incessantly,  were reminiscences of his life in England shortly World War II.

The thing that affected me most in the movie was the teenage boy. He was exactly the same age as I was when my dad was involved in the accident. Like me, he had enrolled in post-secondary education and couldn’t wait to get out of the tinder-box of tension at home. He was charged with looking after his Dad when his mother wasn’t at home. It's tough situation going from child to care-giver when you’re that age. It’s your Dad for heaven’s sake, he’s supposed to look after you.

Like Alan in the movie, my father could never make any attempt to help himself because he never understood he was different, despite trips to doctors, neurologists and worker’s compensation boards. Alan starts back to work to find that he can’t cope. My dad managed to work for another 4 years with others propping him up until he was given the golden handshake.

Alan’s wife Tricia, played by Sarah Parish, sounded just like my broken-record of a mother. My mother’s incessant cries of “It’s like I’ve been widowed already”,  “I didn’t want a third child”,  “The man I know is gone” were echoed throughout the film. He was a different, strange Raymond. They never shared a bed again.

Dad wasn’t the most emotional of men to begin with but we were left with someone who didn’t care. If someone was sick, or a long-discarded friend had died or if we had personal trouble, he didn’t flinch. When my mother fell down the stairs he barely looked up from his crossword. Alan in the film left us with the hope that he would try to be a better husband. That didn’t happen in our family. To carry on with this depressing theme, my house was filled with another thirty years of acrimony, cold-shoulders, dinner time arguments. My mother was the worst of all possible "nurses". She never gave up the notion that Dad was doing this to her deliberately.

If anything positive can come of this, I was thrilled to see that my story is out there being told so accurately by others and that I wasn't the only one who had suffered the effects of a brain-damaged relative.

Tim Mälzer – Germany’s Delicious Dish

The first time I watched Tim Mälzer on Bavarian television I didn’t know if I was watching a chef or an ex-con. With his stubbly scalp and his rascally looks Tim Mälzer was no Jamie Oliver but while I watched, he prepared a 3-course meal in 30 minutes.

Mälzer was born in Hamburg in 1971. He is inevitably compared to his English friend Jamie Oliver as both are brash young celebrity chefs; Oliver - world-wide and Mälzer - Germany, but just for now…

Mälzer is probably Germany’s most influential chef. 1.5 million viewers tune in nightly to his show on Germany’s Vox network. Although I can only understand one word in 100, I can tell that he’s witty, hip and fast. He cooks meals in real time at break-neck speed. His popular, albeit, bad-boy image has derived from his devotion to Rock & Roll and customized pick-up trucks. On a DVD I have of Mälzer, he actually has the F-word on his tee-shirt. Oh, those crazy Europeans! His 3rd restaurant (in the works) is rumored to be in a former prison.

His avoidance of things “gourmet” has won him fans while critics steer clear. Mälzer’s motto is “fast, easy, delicious.” On his TV show, "Schmeckt Nicht, Gibt´s Nicht" (roughly translated: “We don’t do tasteless”) he favours simple dishes that can be cooked at home by anyone with the slightest interest in food. I hear that at one of Mälzer’s Hamburg restaurants, the lunch menu is only €8 because that’s what his customers can afford. At his most famous restaurant, The White House (Das Weiße Haus), he dispensed with a menu and prepared what he felt like.

He met Jamie Oliver in 1997 when the two of them worked at Carluccio’s Neal Street Restaurant in London. He spent 18 months in London which included a short stretch at the Ritz Hotel, which he says he quit the day after a badgering head chef caused a sous-chef to have a nervous breakdown. “I cannot stand bullies in the kitchen”, says Mälzer. Gordon Ramsay beware. You catch more flies with sugar.

A multiple award winner, Tim received the Golden Camera prize in 2006, as Germany’s most popular television chef. He’s sold millions of books and DVDs. The Rosenthal china company has developed a “Tim” collection of tableware called "Mahlzeit!". He is widely parodied on YouTube.

Today he’s grown his hair back and he’s really quite handsome in a gapped-tooth kind of way. I bought myself a DVD set from Amazon.de and every time I watch it, I learn a little more German. There is so much more to Germans than just beer and sausages.

Here’s a link to Tim Mälzer’s website. It’s in German only but I would recommend having a look. http://www.tim-maelzer.de/

schmeckt gut, Tim

Tschüss

photos were borrowed from http://www.tim-maelzer.de/ . Danke

Desperately Seeking Mona - Some Mysteries Should Remain Mysteries.

Yesterday, Tuesday, April 5, 2011, Italian researchers unveiled a plan to dig up bones in a Florence convent in hopes of identifying the remains of a Renaissance woman believed to be the model for the Mona Lisa. The researchers, led by art historian Silvano Vinceti, hope that the project can answer the mysteries surrounding Leonardo da Vinci's painting, including whether the Florentine woman Lisa Gherardini, was the model. The excavations in the Convent of St. Ursula, in central Florence are scheduled to begin at the end of April.

Lisa Gherardini was the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. Tradition has linked Gherardini to the painting, which is known in Italian as "La Gioconda" and in French as "La Joconde." Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century biographer of Leonardo, wrote that da Vinci had painted a portrait of del Giocondo's wife.

Historian Silvano Vinceti cited documents showing that the Giocondo family made generous donations to the convent, and said the merchant’s will arranged for his wife's remains to be kept in the convent. Lisa's birthdate is known to be June 15, 1479. A few years ago, an amateur Italian historian apparently found a death certificate showing that Lisa Gherardini died on July 15, 1542, with her final resting place being the Convent of St. Ursula in central Florence.

Okay, enough said. It seems we know who the model for the Mona Lisa is and who paid for it. We know when she was born, when she died and where she’s buried. Vasari seals the connection. I’m content. But that’s not enough for Silvano Vincenti, the media-savvy art researcher is known as a bit of a showboater and he wants to take the research futher, much further.

Vinceti uses forensic methods in his art history. His group has already identified the bones of Italian poets Dante and Petrarch and those of Caravaggio, discovering a possible cause of death for the painter.

With poor old Mona Lisa, the researchers will first use ground-penetration radar to search for hidden tombs inside the convent. Then, they’ll  search the bones to identify ones that are compatible with Signora Gherardini's; bones of a woman about 60.

If such bones are identified, up they come. Researchers will conduct carbon dating and try to extract DNA, to compare it with the  bones of Gherardini's children, some of whom are buried in a basilica also in Florence ( I guess that means more exhumations). Finally, if well-preserved skull fragments are found, the researchers might attempt a facial reconstruction. Apparently this step will be crucial to ascertain whether Gherardini was the model for the Mona Lisa and thus the owner of that “famous smile.” Oh Mona Lisa, you cold and lonely, lovely work of art, it was your teeth, wasn’t it?  My dentist believes Mona is keeping her lip buttoned because of decaying, yellow teeth. Everyone had decaying, yellow teeth back then. No Renaissance portrait shows a full set of choppers.  Mona Lisa does have that enigmatic smile, but then again very many of Leo’s subjects have that cute little moue and we’re not busy surmising what secrets they’re keeping.

Vinceti contradicts himself. In January of this year he announced the theory that Gian Giacomo Caprotti, Da Vinci’s male apprentice and ambigious long-time companion was the main influence and the model for the Mona Lisa. (Please check out Caprotti as the model for John the Baptiste, and Angel Incarnate). Vinceti goes on to say that “The Mona Lisa must be read at various levels, not just as a portrait," and he has also said the artwork is likely not the physical portrait of one single model, but the result of several influences. So what is it that he’s trying to prove? And there is the theory that the Mona Lisa is really a secret self portrait of Leonardo himself.

If successful, Vinceti’s research may help ascertain the identity of the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece but so what? I say this has little to add to my appreciation of the art. Leave her alone.


With files from AP
top photo AP/Francois Mori

There was a Crooked House

One of the strangest buildings in the world is the  Krzywy Domek an irregularly-shaped building in Sopot, Poland, that makes you feel as if you're passing through the hall of mirrors in a funhouse. Built in 2004 the Krzywy Domek, whose name translates into English as the "Crooked House" is 4,000 square metres in size and is part of Sopot's Rezydent shopping center.

It was designed by Szotyńscy & Zaleski who were inspired by illustrations found in  fairytales. Here's link to the site.

Photo: Broca

April Fools!

For those unfamiliar with Toronto, this truck bursting out of a wall can be found at the CTV (formerly CityTV) building 299 Queen Street West. To check it out on Google maps, it's on the left or east side of the neo-gothic building. This installation is meant to represent that CP24 is extremely anxious to deliver breaking news. Its wheels spin all the time.

Photo: copyright The Torontoist