Driving around on Friday afternoon, I was so hungry that I couldn’t decide where to go. I was lost in San Diego then suddenly there was a Greek Restaurant on the right. A lamb burger sounded delicious. After some tricky parking maneuvers, I was inside. It was painted the colors of the Greek flag, so I sat outside. I wanted a lamb burger like I used to get in Seattle; uninspired gyros instead–sometimes you can’t wait. I used to go to the Greek in Seattle because it took me back to Greektown, Chicago. The mnemonics of place. The restaurant in Chicago was blue and white as well.
Flowers in Carlsbad were a hope of something new. I have seen masses of flowerbeds. At the time they seemed like masses–a huge geranium bed my grandfather grew for cuttings. His greenhouses would be full up during Flower Season. But Carlsbad became more a reminder, of noisy trips in grade school. There were no greenhouses to report, I did at least once smell the musty fragrance of wet dirt.
Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those who Pursue Them. Is a brilliant book. (Brill if I were a Mitford). The whole book is about beauty and how it develops, and as with many things through time and money.
Highlights:
1. Fine Points of Furniture, 1950 which created a code of beauty. The book diagrammed pieces into: Good or Better or Best which helped to develop a whole new code of beauty in Early American Furniture–revolutionary really.
2. The Palladian Architect, Robert Adams was said to have said that what is important is the idea of a chair, not the chair itself.
3. The idea of an object rising to “an appropriate level” in the market.
PS. The photo of me chasing the Peacock was at Kedleston hall, I think, but I could be confusing the possiblity of peakcocks on that property with the Lady Curzon Durbar’s Peakcock Dress–which would mean that photo was taken at some other English Country House. Where ever it was, I recall there was a tea shop.
