When I Grow Up I Want To Be Like Tziporah!

This woman is fantastic! A walking work of art. When I grow old(er) I want to dress like this and act like a character from a Woody Allen film. Maybe I can start today.
I found Tziporah and other ladies with an equally great attitude at the blog Advanced Style.
She has her own website at Tziporah Salamon.com
Thanks Sandra Leigh for introducing me.

If You're Young at Heart

For it's hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind, if you're young at heart.

 

A dozen fantastic 40+ women in my neighbourhood meet Spring and Fall to exchange our gently used clothes. We have such a laugh trying out looks that we may never have thought of before, or snapping up that coveted coat from a friend. It's always a positive, warm and mind-opening evening. November will be our 8th go-round. In another 40+ years we can only hope to be as wonderful as the women included in this video. My mum would have been 85 today and she fooled people about her age until the end.

  thanks Laurie, for passing this on to me. 

Around My Home - Green and Leafy

Winter Light

Around My Home - Turkish

Every Kitchen Needs One

And I'll take two. Not in my wildest dreams unfortunately. But any of these posters would trump the somber Schiele reproduction we bought for our kitchen. Four hundred food- and wine-related vintage posters will go under the hammer in New York on February 12. Hosting this sale is  Poster Auctions International and it should be a smorgasbord of food and drink advertising. The culinary arts will be celebrated through posters from the eras of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modern design. 

150 years of gastronomy will be covered in these original advertisements for wine, beer, liqueur and chocolate plus a myriad of other household staples. Some of these iconic images include those designed by Cappiello, Nizzoli’s Campari poster, menu designs by Alphonse Mucha, and a unique image by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for a celebratory banquet. Wonder how much that will go for?

This show will be on view, free to the public beginning Friday, January 27 through Saturday, February 11. For those of us not lucky enough to live in NYC the 160-page catalogue ($40) is available at www.posterauctions.com.  

Vintage posters can also be purchased through the auction' parent site, The International Poster Center. Prices range from the low thousands to the many thousands. Trial proofs of Toulouse-Lautrecs iconic posters are offered in the $30,000 range

Although without a website in this day and age, Alternative Arts at 491 Bloor Street West in Toronto have catalogues upon catalogues of reproductions of this stuff. I'm guessing the end result would be cheaper. Just guessing. Another website for vintage art posters is vintagearte.artehouse.com and there are thousands to pick from at allposters.ca. 


with thanks to artdaily.com for the images and the original article

Shabby Sheesh!

We are finally getting around to stripping off this grimy wallpaper, much to our neighbour's chagrin. I'm sure the scritch, scritch is quite audible to the people living on the other side of the wall.

This 1970s French Provincial-style wallpaper covers the halls and stairwells on all three floors of our house. This summer removing it is a make-work job for my under-employed son. It's a daunting task.

When we first saw the house almost 14 years ago we noted the dated wallpaper but thought it added a shabby-chic touch. Now after a decade+ more of dirty hand-prints it's just shabby. We're finally getting around to removing it. And...the walls underneath aren't so bad.

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.

A Jewel of A House - from Elle Decor

Giulia Geranium's human friend brought my attention to this beautiful house in Morocco.
Please click here for more

The photographer, Simon Upton...wasn't he on Doctor in the House?!

Vivienne Westwood's London

I watched the first installment of Vivienne Westwood's London on CTV on Saturday. Really, who has the TV at 7 on a Saturday? I had to rearrange my dinner schedule. Any way the show garnered a "nudity warning" and it made me wonder.

The aim of the program was to  persuade visitors to London to eschew the tourist route of Madame Tussaud's, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben/Westminster Abbey.

It was great fun as slightly-barmy Westwood dragged us around to her favourite London haunts. She showed us incredibly famous art at a couple of less well-known institutes;The Wallace Collection and the Cortauld. At the Wallace she showed us one of her favourites whose name I've forgotten. Very dark, she said, but it contained all the colours in the world. It also contained a nipple. Was this the reason for the nudity warning at every ad break. She focused on Fragonard's The Swing, and said that the joke was that the girl didn't have her knickers on. Vivienne Westwood frequently goes about without her knickers on. Is this the nudity?

Then Westwood took us to the Cortauld where she waxed poetic about Renoir's La Loge.

Other places Westwood introduced us to were an outdoor market underneath the railway arches. It reminded me very much of Toronto's St. Lawrence Market. With the aid of her former muse and model, Sarah Stockbridge, we visited notorious White Chapel and walked down Brixton's Electric Avenue.

Vivienne Westwood loves the Barbican and carried on a bit about how important live theatre is. She loves Henry the VIII's Hampton Court and the authentic kitchen. Me too. She was also intrigued by one of the historical interpreter's cod piece. That must have been the annoying nudity even though he was covered in layers of red felt.

For somebody who is known as one of the architects of  the punk movement, her being so enamoured with the past is strange. Over lunch at the Wallace Collection she said to the Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Renzetti,

"The 20th century was a mistake,” she says. “There was nothing produced in the 20th century, no ideas. There’s not one person alive who could paint one flower on that porcelain” – again, the hand flutters toward the Wallace galleries – “or anything that’s in there.”

Wow, that sort of negates punk, and grunge and the way clothing, music and art have evolved over the past 35 years. Hmm.

I never had much time for Westwood, being much too much of a flake. She has always been too outre for me. But watching this programme I grew to really like her. She had boundless energy for someone about to turn 70. She bikes all over London.  Although I was mentally combing her bright red hair through most of the show I really admired her nutty, eccentric style.

Vivienne Westwood's had a major impact on the 20th Century despite that she now says "no ideas were produced in the 20th Century."  She and her spouse of the time, Malcom McLaren made the Punk movement happen. Doc Marten owes her a debt of gratitude. Now I know that she loves good art makes me like Vivienne Westwood even more. Maybe she's one of my red-headed muses - Although with Vivienne I don't think the red hair will last.

I was able to find this video of VW at the Wallace. In this video she is actually much more subdued than the one I watched thanks to FashionTelevision.

The Strike Turns the Clever Pup into a Flaneur Once Again

Galeries Lafayette

Just like dominoes... I saw a boy, 9 or 10,  trip into a display of mannequins at Galeries Lafayette and bang, bang bang, bang, bang - all five plaster ladies toppled onto the floor; their arms and legs falling off in the process. The poor kid. In passing I whispered, "C'est OK", but he started to cry despite his age. He told his mum he was hurt, but it was just his pride. The day before, my minibus driver told me that the word "gendarmes" meant "people with arms". Now these mannequins were "gens pas d'armes"

I started late. I was in no hurry and  prepared for the strike. After taking a video inside the Pantheon of  Foucault's original pendulum, I headed off to the Musee du Moyen Age (also known as the Musee Cluny) to see the tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn, but I guess that will have to wait for next time because this Tuesday the Cluny was closed.

Interior of the Pantheon

Foucault's Pendulum tells me it's 11o'clock

I carried on across the Seine via the Petit Pont and was surprised to see the area south of the Pompidou on Rue Saint-Martin was a very pleasant pedestrian area.

Boulangerie, Rue Saint-Martin

North past the Pompidou and the punks with their dogs intent on chasing the pigeons into the trees, and left on Rue Rambuteau. Onward past Les Halles. Les Halles looks dramatic on the outside, especially from the bird's eye view I've seen  in Paris from Above, but it's just a big mall - I gave it a pass.

I stopped and collected my thoughts, organized my photos and checked my map on the terraced steps by Saint-Eustache with its adjacent labyrinth and giant buddha-like head.

The farthest point of today's orbit was the Galeries Lafayette, Paris's grand department store and by mid-afternoon I made it there.  But there's so much to see on the journey. Near Saint-Eustache is the Bourse, the Paris Stock Market with many well-heeled people lunching nearby. I came across Dehillerin, a fantastic cookware shop that Clotilde Dusolier mentions in Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris. A giant copper rooster was in the window. Was it a weather-vane or just a really cool objet d'art for the kitchen?

Coq of the walk

On my journey I found two covered galleries, or shopping arcades, Galerie Choiseul and Galerie Vivienne that I had made a mental note to find.  I actually did some browsing in a shop in the Galerie Choiseul and Galerie Vivienne is a splendid, glass-roofed place with great swathes of mosaic floor. I'd bought a book at the D'Orsay about Paris's covered passages because I didn't think I'd have to time find them. So I was pleasantly surprised when I did.

Mosaic Floor Galerie Vivienne

The Galeries Lafayette is a gem of the Belle Epoque. Its steel and glass dome rivals any kaleidoscope and has been designated as a historic monument.  I took a brass birdcage of an elevator up to the top level and walked the remaining way to the store's roof and found a smoggy (let's say steamy) panorama of the rooftops of Paris, with a view of the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Cour and the looming Opera ( which is much too big).

From the roof of Galeries Lafayette

Speaking of the Opera, the Galeries Lafayette itself resembles a giant theatre. Looking up, the the layers of floors with their brass railings and uniquely painted ceilings  resemble a turn of the century theatre. On the first floor I attempted to get to the balcony to take other photos but I was hindered by a champagne bar in the way!

Like a layer cake

After taking pictures of the superb stained glass dome, I needed sustenance and found a tea room to my liking on the third floor called Le Galfa.. I ordered something delicious that roughly translated into a beef muffin club sandwich and I ordered two macarons - A caramel and a pistacio. Yay. I gave in.

Le Galfa Tea Room, photo from Galeries Lafayette

The Hôtel du Panthéon

The Hôtel du Panthéon at 19 Place du Panthéon is where I chose to stay. It fit within my criteria of being small and close to the Seine. It was more than the $250 CA I had hoped to pay. But it was worth every extra penny. I had a beautiful safe room with an AMAZING view. Breakfast was meager, but healthy and included in my agreement.

Upon arrival I took a couple of pictures of the exterior of the Hôtel du Panthéon, not knowing which room was mine. Mine is the 2nd from the top on the far left.

The view from my bed

The view from my balcony.

I did have a balcony, although it was not wide enough for a table and the railing came up to about my hip-height. I wasn't sure if I actually should be standing on it or not. It was wonderful have windows that opened to freshen the room air and to hear the bustle below. The traffic, with it's occasional wee-ah, wee-ah of the police; later the skaters in the Place du Panthéon and the ravens making a nuisance of themselves along the railings of the Panthéon itself. I was tempted at night to leave the windows open - the weather was warm enough- but I've seen enough Cary Grant movies to know that probably wasn't a safe idea. Anyway, here's a mini-film from my mini-balcony.

I could see Sacre Coeur on the horizon if the weather was clear.

The Clever Pup's Paris Notebook - Day One, My First Morning

I started writing this in the sunshine at Crêpes à Gogo, just a few short steps from my hotel. I dropped off my luggage at the Hôtel du Panthéon at 11:00. I can check in for real at 2pm.

I ordered a Cafe Noisette and a Crêpe La Bretonne; a coffee with a dash of cream and a crêpe with real French vanilla ice cream, chantilly cream and salted butter caramel sauce. It was truly delicious, but I found an ant (dead) on the side of my plate. I gave the waiter 1€ for a tip anyway.

From here I started on my walk of Montparnasse. I've long been a fan of Paris in the 20s and Montparnasse is where it's at. (Or was). Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Stein, Foujita, Kiki de Montparnasse, Many Ray - they all hung out here.

On my way I passed the Jardin Luxembourg. I took a picture of this lovely sign, The Puppet Theatre of Luxembourg - Fun small and big - performing arts. "Email" in this case, means enamel.

Then walking down Boulevard Saint-Michel I came upon an elaborate fountain in the Jardin Marco Polo. I could only capture a bit of it. Around the corner was the La Closerie Lilas where the black-jacketed waiters were busy seating patrons. Far too posh for me, this restaurant was once they haunt of Hemingway, Sartre, Rimbaud, Man Ray, Dali to name only a few.

Then onto 29 rue Campagne-Première, and the Hotel Istria where Picabia, Duchamp, Man Ray and Kiki, Satie and Rilke all once had quarters. Next door at number 31 is a fantasic example of Art Nouveau architecture. Once artists studios, this building was designed by architect Alexandre Bigot and ceramist André Arfvidson.

I found the watering-holes of the denizens of Montparnasse, Le Dome, La Rotonde, Le Select.

I found Kiki's house and the apartment where Foujita lived.

On my way to 27 Rue Fleurus, once Gertrude Stein's house, a middle-aged French woman caught up to me on the street thinking I was I friend of hers. I guess I fit in alright if I can be mistaken for an inhabitant.

From there I sat and rested on a bench in the Jardin Luxembourg, the chestnuts and their leaves crinkly and crunchy under foot. I made a full-circle taking almost 2 hours. And I haven't even checked into my room yet!