Skip to content

Posts from the ‘muse’ Category

The Natural History of Birds

November 14th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

1. Swallow tailed flycatcher. 2. Arkansas flycatcher. 3. Say’s flycatcher. 4. Female golden crested wren. 

“Birds are very frequently used to symbolize human souls, some of the earliest examples being found in the art of ancient Egypt… Generally speaking, birds, like angels, are symbols of thought, of imagination and of the swiftness of spiritual processes and relationships….Thus, Odo of Tusculum, describes in his sermon XCII, different kinds of spirituality in men in terms of the characteristics of different kinds of birds. Some birds he says, are guileless, such as the dove; others, cunning like the partridge; some come to the hand, like the hawk, others flee from it, like the hen; some enjoy the company of men, like the swallow; others prefer solitude and the desert, like the turtle dove….” (p.46)

Objects

September 28th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

While it seems to be good to get what one desires, the greatest good is not
to desire what one does not need.

Guillaume Budé, the 16th century Humanist and founder of the library at Fontainebleau was on track with his words. This quote could be read in many ways. It could be interpreted in praise of the life of an ascetic. It could help someone to promote an agenda of fear and the idea of lack in the world. But to me, the quote pulls out the seemingly disparate worlds of desire and need and brings them together with our every present wants.
Beauty is something I need. I also desire and want it. The colors, textures, materials in their many different forms are reminders of transcendence.
In interior design, beauty can quickly lose out to interest, but it is beauty that will stand in the long run; not function and not utility and not a program, because those concepts always change. Beauty will always be beauty (beauty doesn’t change the narrative does) in its very essence it has a function, utility, and a program and no others are needed. Let’s start by drawing from nature a rich rebirth of narrative.
Image from color lovers.

Imaginary Bedstead

September 7th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

A bed can contain the whole life story. From the welcoming of love or death or birth, to everything in betweeen. The bed functions as an object of utility as a place to work to play to rest. In thinking about where I could sleep in my Imaginary Home, I am torn between a massive bedstead, and something perhaps simpler and more modern–an upholstered day bed. I have a warm regard for daybeds. Idling away hours, paging through my dictionary, staring out my window, sipping a milky cup of coffee, what could be better–if only a servant to bring food. As a former client Miss. M said of her own idling and work habits in bed, “If I can be horizontal, I am.”
A bedstead of course allows for curtains where as a daybed does not. As an object of the imagination, I have always loved the romance and secrecy of a curtained bed. They further enhance a beds general suggestion of safety, warmth, comfort, & separation–one could imagine embowered in cloth, in an other world of aerial dreams.
The answer maybe an alcove bed. It typically has the 3 sides of the daybed and they often have curtains. A notable alcove bed is Mr. J’s hybrid-alcove at Monticello. (Some might think having access to both sides novel but he like many politicos, wanted to have his cake and eat it too).
I love the tradition of the alcove bed as it is slid into the wall and is almost hid away. Mine, I think must have windows–at the foot and at the side–and cubbies within arms length at the peripheral.
Photos:
1. “Room from the Hart House,” 1680, Ipswich, Massachusetts.
3. “Birth of the Virgin” Vittore Carpaccio, 1504–8, Oil on canvas.

Jean Lurçat

August 25th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

The image at top is Lurcat’s,”Paysage à Smyrne, l’arbre mort,” 1926. Now at the St. Louis Museum of Art. Below it is my Lurcat lithogaph purchased at a flea market in Florida. The paintings title is translated as something like, Dead tree in the landscape at Smyrne.

The www says: JEAN LURÇAT (French / 1892-1966) Painter, lithographer, and tapestry designer. During WWII Jean Lurçat was active in the French Resistance, sending out radio messages every night at 10:10 p.m. from a hidden transmitter in the 12th-century fortress the Tours Saint-Laurent in Saint Céré. Jean Lurçat’s revival of French tapestry in the war years made him a symbol of aesthetic and moral defiance of the Nazis. As Jean Cocteau wrote, “It required this man, Jean Lurçat, to say ‘No.'”

Smyrne was an Ancient city near the modern Turkish port of Izmir. It was founded by the Ionians (Greeks) as a stategic location because of its port and ease of defense. By the 8th century BC the city had a circuit of defensive walls. (Helicon).

The Great Fire of Smyrne (Sept 13-17th 1922) occured after the Turks took control of the city. There is still great dispute as to how the fire started: Turks, Greeks or Armenians, it ended the four year Greco-Turkish War (Wiki).

Perhaps the painting shows a landscape–real or imaginary–of the after effects of fire. I’m quite excited to have found some information on it.

Lily Photos

August 20th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

5 year old Lily was my offical photographer while I was in Bellingham. These are some of my favorites.

08-08-08

August 8th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

For the last week or so I have had a mysterious email on Yahoo. Somewhere a new message exists but is hiding itself from me. It is driving me a little batty. I have emptied my INBOX I have searched through Spam and Drafts, and there is just not anything there. Regardless, my INBOX still says 1 new message. I am certain it is a very important; news I have been waiting for, a sign from the universe? But what? Maybe it will reveal itself on this auspicious day.

We are always the same age inside. -G.Stein

August 5th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

Bibelots Design is back after a much needed respite from the last 8 month’s respite. And now, Dearest Reader, I am back to work. It seems that my external hard drive that the kid at Staples sold me on buying instead of CD’s is no longer working (will a refrigerator magnet erase everything?) and with that, gone are all of the pictures that I’ve been saving to share with you. Nonetheless, new beginnings.

I spent the last week in Bellingham, Washington at the farm of my oldest friend, Tina. Perhaps it was the quickness of the decision to go and the short 2 hour flight but the whole trip seemed otherworldly and I kept thinking of what Jane Bowles said when she moved to Morocco that they whole experience seemed like a dream. I milked a goat, I collected eggs, and we ate off the grid, which is what my hosts and her family’s goal is: self sufficiency growing all of their own food. I must say that I had the most delicious pork chops there and one fabulous meal after another. Read Michael Pollan’s, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Composition as Explanation

June 29th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

The La Jolla public library is a charming little building. Having an hour or so to spare a couple weeks ago I found myself there skimming Fritijof Capra’s book, Uncommon Wisdom, Conversations with Remarkable People. If you were wondering what it would have been like to have a private sit down with Krishnamurti, this is the book. On page 22 Capra writes about he and his wife’s move in 1969 from France to Berkley:

“We were enchanted by the physical beauty of California but also amazed by the general lack of taste and esthetic values in the straight culture. The contrast between the stunning beauty of nature and the dismal ugliness of civilization was strongest out here on the American West coast, where it seemed to us that all European heritage had long been left behind. We could easily understand why the protest of the counterculture against the American way of life had originated here, and we were naturally drawn to this movement.”

Contrast will always be with us. It clarifies who we are; it helps us to realize the long view. It helps us to make our choices: I want this not that. Contrast is always part of the composition. It is the contrast that bands and drives into the fold similar view points and creates agreement of outlook of what is important and what is not important creating a sense of purpose and time. Of what is fashion and what is not fashion. Of what is style and what is not style. Of what is art and not art. Of beauty and what is not beauty. Most start with what is already accepted and then talk about it from there. To look at everything and wonder about it’s beauty is something else. But surely that is the point. It is all beauty. Gertrude Stein lectures:

“Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it so much more difficult to realise its beauty when the work is being refused and prevents every one from realising that they were convinced that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with the acceptance of the time-sense comes the recognition of the beauty and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails any one. Beginning again and again is a natural thing even when there is a series. Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing. It is understood by this time that everything is the same except composition and time, composition and the time of the composition and the time in the composition.”

-Desk Sir Edward Maufe, 1925. Mahogany, camphor wood and ebony, gessoed and gillded with white gold; ivory and rock crystal; silk handles.

The New Desk

June 20th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

I am slowly starting to furnish my imaginary home. I’m not sure where I’ll place my new desk, but I had to get it. Bachelard in The Poetics of Space wrote something about that when we think of home, we have an idealized imaginary home in our minds, and if we try to leave this place to have it built, it moves into the area of a psychological project. Can’t you imagine running your fingers along my desk’s lovely curves? Opening a drawer for a paper clip? I think my little lap top fits nicely. I must find a chair, sit up straight, and not cross my legs.

Desk, France, 18th century 1750-1775.

Gertrude 101: “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”

Böttger and Beyond

June 18th, 2008

Daniel Pontius

1740. Harlequin and Pug as Hurdy-Gurdy. His Face!

c.1750 Italian. The Alchemist & his Assistant.

Orientals with an Artichoke as a Perfume Burner. Model by Johann Friedrich Luck. German, Frankenthal, ca. 1766.

Indiscreet Harlequin. Model 1740. The shoes!

The Muse Thalia with Infant. Model after Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775).

Pantaloon. Meissen. Böttger period. (1710-1719). The Trinket Seller. Meissen. After a model 1738. Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775).
If you are interested. Here is an overview of the tumultuous beginnings of Meissen. It goes something like this:

Chinese porcelain had been coming into Europe since the 16th century. By the beginning of the 18th century certain Europeans were enamored– in love & going crazy for porcelain but no one in Europe knew how to make it. King August II of Germany decided he wanted to be the person to figure out how to do it. He did what he could. Johann Böttger was an apothecary’s assistant in Berlin who came to Saxony. Johann claimed he had the secret to making gold. The King decided Johann must then be able to make porcelain, so in 1705 he had him imprisoned in a fortress in Meissen until he figured it out. Johann wasn’t particularily happy about this. He had a sign put above his door which said something like: I used to make gold and now I make pots.

After several years, Böttger finally figured out how to make a dark red colored porcelain-like material. A step in the right direction so they set up a factory in 1710. Johann had a bit of an epiphany around 1713 and tried making porcelain out of his hair powder which worked. Everyone was happy although I’m not sure what happenend to Johann.