I, Blogger

Self-portrait by Jean-Michel Basquiat

The lovely Borjana Eghbalian of the blog Green and Stylish has tagged me for the Kreativ Blogger award, which requires me to reveal 7 things about myself in this post and pass the award on to 7 bloggers that I admire (and secretly want to know more about) and then leave a post on their blogs to let them know. I will also proudly display the Kreativ Blogger award image. Thank you Borjana!

So, about me..

Image here

1. As a child, I fell in love with an abandoned, octagonal house (with remnants of a wrap-around porch) seen at some distance from the road on trips to visit my grandparents. I wanted this abandoned house to be mine, to rescue it, bring it back to life, but my parents would never stop to let me go explore it. This is certainly a clue as to why I am here now, at Garvinweasel.

2. I like to write and sketch ideas and images in a Moleskin carnet with my Lamy Safari fountain pen, black ink. I have a sketch of the four acre garden plan for Garvinweasel in my current book, along with some information architecture and cloud computing diagrams with notes on predictive analytics algorithms.

3. I am incomprehensibly crazy about the nine dogs that live at Garvinweasel (Lady, Bigfoot, Daisy, Bear, Penny, Beatle, Missy, Dudley and Lucy). We have fostered twenty-five dogs over the past four years.

4. I like to read. I found a pre-publication copy of Susan Minot's first book, "Lust", in a loft I once rented on Grand Street (in New York's Soho), left there by the previous tenant, who seemed to have moved out in a hurry. I mailed the book once from Paris to girl in Seattle, along with, for some reason, a tie from Barneys NYC. She returned the book, but I can't find it now, and I sometimes miss my tie.

5. Once a month, usually on a Saturday, I drive my '67 Ford pickup to town and get my haircut in the old barbershop on the town square, across from the courthouse. Sitting in that barber chair within the tobacco smoke-stained walls, warm shaving foam around my ears and on my neck, the smell of Barbicide in the air, I feel like I have been given a Valium IV and dropped into the set of a grainy movie adaptation of a southern gothic novel.  If I was very rich, I would buy a big painting by Basquiat every March at the fair in Maastricht, and I would get a haircut and hot-shave in this barber shop every Saturday.

 Photo of Joni Mitchell by Jack Robinson 1969

6. I like to listen to the music of Hildegard Von Bingen, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Brian Eno, Joni Mitchell and Iggy Pop (from whom I have a hand-written letter, but that's another post). I usually listen on last.fm, but if no music is available, I can hum Mozart's "Requiem".

7. My personal style is basically white linen or cotton shirts, hand-made cuff-links, vintage Rolex Air-King, my French muck boots (Le Chameau), khakis or Levi's and a hint of Hermès Bel Ami.

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My blogger tags...

I pass the Kreativ Blogger award to these 7 bloggers in appreciation:

Wendy at Little Chapel on the River
Jane at My Pear Tree House
LeAnn at Linen and Lavender
David at The Neo Lifestyle
Desiree at Vosges Paris
Shawn at Country French Antiques
Julie at The Provence Post

A Green and Stylish Thank You!

Checking my email this morning, I was surprised and delighted to find that I have been tagged, by Borjana of the wonderful 'Green and Stylish' blog, with the Kreativ Blogger award. Seeing Borjana's lovely wellies in her post, I decided to set up a quick shot of my own (Le Chameau 'Country Walkers'), with some of the Garvinweasel pack and their green and stylish winter house providing an appropriate background. If I am at home, it is most likely these boots are on my feet, and I took them off for a few minutes this morning to snap this picture (some of you may recognize the hay bales from an earlier post). Thank you Borjana... I will return with my list of personal revelations and blogger tags in the next day or two.

Garden Journal

The groves were God's first temples.  
~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Thomas Jefferson kept a garden journal for sixty years. I've been meaning to start one for the past four. Not that I've done much in the garden. I sometimes spend an entire weekend picking up sticks and branches, and though it is a necessary task, it hardly seems worth writing down.  I find the time I spend outdoors doing these seemingly menial or trivial tasks actually provide a space in time that is otherwise difficult to find in the everyday sense. 

I enjoy being out there with the birds and the dogs, and I am constantly looking around the property while performing needed chores, dreaming about what I could do here or there, envisioning a pond or an orchard, a vineyard or a hedgerow. My perspective on much around gardening and property management has changed. I used to rake leaves; now I am gathering raw material for organic compost, for use in a future kitchen garden. My compost heap is several hundred cubic feet, and will eventually yield a ton or more of the stuff each year.

Someone gave me a $50 Visa gift card as a Christmas gift, and I will use it to order 500 pine tree seedlings from the state's forestry service today, for delivery in February. I will soon learn something about tree planting, and plan to capture some reflections of the experience and post some images here.

Image: here

Happy New Year

“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul”

 -G. K. Chesterton quotes (English born Gabonese Critic, Essayist, Novelist and Poet, 1874-1936)

Many thanks to Eve, from the German blog Unikum,for sending this Irish New Year Blessing:

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!

A Christmas Story

"I'm ready for my close-up", our little table top Christmas tree seemed to say. With the Canon G11 Santa left for me, I too, felt ready, and set the scene by randomly placing votive candles among freshly cut evergreen branches (a la Axel Vervoordt) and snapped this photo, and the one below.

When I was little, my mother told me about what Christmas had been like for her as a child, the youngest of five born to farmstead parents in the Mississippi delta. Growing up during the Great Depression, Santa Claus would bring her a pair of new shoes... and an orange. I remember her telling me that she always really looked forward to getting that orange at Christmas.

I didn't understand when I was kid, it just seemed so weird to me, a child of the suburbs, used to seeing oranges piled high in the produce section of every grocery. Somehow, now, it seems to me a perfect memory... a Christmas story from another era, yet one that resonates deeply for me today.

I lost both my parents this year, and the holidays brought bittersweet reminders of Christmas past. We listened to Dad's favorite Christmas music (he loved Nat King Cole's versions), watched classic movies like "White Christmas" (she loved Danny Kaye) and "Christmas in Connecticut" (he really liked Barbara Stanwyck),  and we placed some oranges around the base of our little tree... for my Mom.

Tangled Up In Blue Christmas

... is what they should have titled the new Bob Dylan collection of holiday melodies. I consider myself a Dylan fan, so I happily snapped the above iPhone pic of his image on the wall of an alley during a recent trip to Brussels. Discovering his newest music offering on Amazon.com this morning while doing some last minute shopping, I thought 'oh, this might be good' and clicked on the the 'preview all songs' button. After few bars of the first couple of numbers, I was transported, as if by a Dickensian ghost, to a vision of sitting on a barstool in a dark and smoky crosstown joint on Christmas Eve, befriended by a few lonely kooks out of a Charles Bukowski novel, a malfunctioning jukebox rotating this CD all night while a gravely voiced bartender entertains us by alternately coughing up his versions of a duet and blowing Lucky Strike smoke rings. If you should give it a listen, please let me know... do you hear what I hear?

Here's a happy alternative... how about Diana Krall singing 'Jingle Bells' and other holiday standards while sharing champagne and foie gras at home with friends and family... and may Messrs. Dickens and Bukowski, merry gentlemen, rest in peace.

Good Weekend!

image: here

Patina

"Monuments are anchors in time. Epochs pass, weather erodes, people lose interest. This cannot be helped. But patina itself is worth appreciating. Patina is the value that age puts on an object. It’s what makes an antique antique. It is experience, maturity, the soft sheen of time. Patina wasn’t present at the spanking-new creation. It comes from a life lived."

- John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, in his "open source" column for November 22, 2009, "On Thanksgiving: the memorial that time forgot"

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I need to install a gate soon, across the drive entrance, in conjunction with the installation of 2000+ feet of underground electric fence for the dogs. Garvinweasel sits on about four acres, but the dogs can disappear for hours, exploring hundreds of acres of an adjoining pastures and forests, returning with barbed-wire scratches, deer legs (they love these) and other assorted artifacts from their adventures. Every day I worry that they may not all make it back in one piece, so I ordered the underground fence wire, training flags, transformers (one backup) and six collars... all still in the box waiting on me to find a spare weekend or two. These fences have a special, twisted wire that don't send a signal to the collars, made for secured pass-through areas, like the driveway gate. All that to say I have been browsing gates on the web. Tonight I came across this jewel, and wanted to share it with you.

Gate image: here  Quote: here

Life Imitates Art... An Ephemeral Sundial

Image: James XVI

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)

"Look" said Ms. XVI... "a sundial". Made of ice. Functional... but flawed. Imperfect. Impermanent. An accidental discovery, captured in a moment, Sunday morning at Garvinweasel. Beauty can be found everywhere you look, it depends only on how you 'see'. 

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The back-story... Hand-painted ceramic bowl: $11. Large dog kennel (with black plastic removable floor): $115. iPhone 3G: $199. Stepping outside on a freezing cold morning to find an ice 'sundial' in the dog water bowl sitting next to the  kennel with a camera  in your pocket: priceless. 

Winner of 'Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors'

Image: amazon.com

Congratulations Albarosa,  from Brillante Home Decor, on leaving the third comment on the contest post!!!

Thanks to everyone who entered, I enjoyed revisiting the castle with you and reading all of your comments.

Have a great week and check back tomorrow for a post about life imitates art.

-James

Meeting Axel Vervoordt

Photo: Architectural Digest

I walked up the stairs from the cellar at Kasteel Gravenwezel which led to the entry hall (below), famously depicted on the cover of 'Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors'. 

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

This room, at the top of the exterior staircase landing seen in last week's post, leads to Axel Vervoordt's office (via doorway above) and study (doorway below). This airy,  light-filled room, with a black-bordered white marble floor, has earth from the property mixed with linseed oil and pigment to create the glowing color on the walls.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

Stepping into Axel's office, one of the first things I noticed were sixteen (I counted) orchids in old clay pots in each of the two window sills on either side of the fireplace. In front of each window was a small sofa, as shown in the image below (from the Axel Vervoordt Home Collection web site), though the orchids were replaced in the catalog shot by some books and objects. 

The first time I saw Axel Vervoordt, he was standing in the center of his office and speaking with people he seemed to know, offering them something to drink from the bar hidden behind a closet door in a corner of the room.  I found the wonderful illustration (watercolor?) of the office (below) some time ago and had it stored on my computer, but I don't know who created it. If it is yours, or if you can identify it, please email me so that I can update the credit.

Image: ?

Through a doorway to the conference room (below), a long table was lined with art books and blueprints of projects underway.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

The chapel (below), in the tower room at one corner of the conference room, was roped off but allowed visitors a peek inside.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

The next room on the tour was the much photographed ground-floor study, its walls lined with bookcases filled with beautiful collections  of pottery, sculpture and books. This Chesterfield-back sofa,  is quite deep and also from the AV Home Collection. Its unusual shade  of purple lends an element of surprise on entering the room.

Image: here

The Lucio Fontana painting, above the fireplace mantel in the study, was purchased by Axel Vervoordt in 1969 and is said to be one of his favorites.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

The stove in the ground-floor kitchen gave off much warmth, but I'm not sure if it was wood or gas. Who wouldn't enjoy preparing a meal in this room with its thick wood trestle-table, crystal chandelier, white marble floors and counter tops and blue pigment paint.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

The next doorway in the kitchen led to the dining room, it's silvery light blue walls displaying an arrary of 17th century Chinese porcelain raised from a sunken ship by the Hatcher expedetion. Axel Vervoordt bought the expedition's entire trove of this porcelain and displayed it in his first Paris antiquarian exhibition, which brought him world attention.

Photo: here

Taking the portrait-lined staircase up to the next floor, I found several very serene rooms that seemed to be lived in. In the Oriental Salon, the low table in front of the sofa had some magazines and newspapers on it.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

Just behind the this Oriental Salon was the Venus room, lined to the ceiling with bookcases filled with Axel Vervoordt's archives,  catalogued files of research materials related art, history and furniture. With this bed from the Axel Vervoordt Home Collection, it could serve double-duty as a guest room. Notice the burgunday-colored faux marble bath through the doorway at left.

Photo: Axel-Vervoordt.com

The red room, on the next  floor up, was one of my favorites.

Photos: Axel-Vervoordt.com

As I walked toward the tower room doorway, seen above to left of the bed, I heard an ancient floorboard let out a little squeak. Happy in the knowledge that I knew the exact spot in the floor of the castle that had a squeak, I stepped on it again on my way out, to be sure.

On the second weekend of the exhibition, I returned to see the castle one more time, arriving late, around 6:oo pm. This time, when I entered Axel Vervoordt's office, he was alone in the room, sitting at his desk and focused on some papers in his hand. He looked up and smiled as I walked over, and stood up to shake hands as I introduced myself. I told him a little about my projects at home and that he was my primary source of inspiration. Nodding as I spoke, he said that he knows of some very nice houses in Tennessee. I noted how many people the open house drew, and he told me that some of the visitors were even clients with whom he had projects underway, hence the blueprints on the conference room table. I told how much I had enjoyed touring the castle and thanked him for opening his home. He graciously responded 'with pleasure' before  returning to his desk and his work. 

Photo: MarieClaireMasion.com

As I walked across the bridge towards my car, I stopped to look back and take in the image of the Kasteel s-Gravenwezel against the dark sky, and hoped that one day I would see it, and Axel Vervoordt, again.

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Axel and May Vervoordt open the Kasteel s-Gravenwezel to the public for twice yearly exhibitions, summer and winter. For dates and details, please visit the official web site.