Trying to Capture the Spirit of the River

This is a detail of the painting I made from our Thames odyssey.
I am rather fond of cows at the water's edge. This may not be the last.


©Rosie West 09

Boxing Clever : The Most Famous Cat in Japan

Maru has already gone viral on You Tube but if you haven't already discovered this most nosy cat with a box fetish, do have a look. It's beautifully filmed in Japan. Check out Maru's many other performances and try not to laugh. Even if you're not a cat-person.









Thanks to Tony at The London Lifedrawing Society who recommended Maru to me last night at The Star of Bethnal Green, our Monday night venue.

Thames Odyssey I

We have just come ashore from our river odyssey. The Thames has many faces and many moods but was benign for us. I am now happily sifting through my photos and will have to restrain myself from boring the pants off everyone. Meanwhile I made a note of the best/daftest CarryOnBoating names:

WEE-KEN-DOFF

"HI! JACK"

NAUTI GIRL

SUITSUS

WATERTIGHT ALIBI

LAUGHING BUOY

Looks as if I'm dreaming of being Hepburn and Bogart in my very own African Queen. (Forgot to take the pearls off from the night before? One must have standards ha.)

Jolly Good Boating Weather I hope

I am not sure if anyone will notice if I disappear for a week but we're off boating on the River Thames. We set out from Wargrave (in whose churchyard Madame Tussaud is buried) and potter westwards to Lechlade where the Thames is first navigable. It's an open boat with canvas dodgers and, I confess, a diesel engine. I wish we were repeating our Three Men In A Boat style rowing adventure of a decade ago.



We shall pass gorgeous Cliveden House at Taplow which sits atop a 200ft cliff, its Italianate tower visible through the trees. Famous for entertaining the raffish 'Cliveden set' of the 20s and 30s and political heavyweights like Roosevelt and Churchill, it is probably best known as one of the settings for the Profumo Affair. Government Minister John Profumo, Call Girl Christine Keeler, Stephen Ward a society osteopath and Captain Ivanov a Soviet spy are all said to have frolicked in Bill Astor's swimming pool in the early 1960s ooh!! Cliveden is now a recherché hotel and we probably won't be, we definitely won't be smart enough to pop in.








There is a much quieter house almost at our destination which I can't wait to visit. It's Kelmscott Manor, chosen by William Morris as his summer home in 1871, signing a joint lease with pre- Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Now owned by The Society of Antiquaries, the house promises an outstanding collection of furniture, metalwork,textiles and ceramics associated with Morris and his contemporaries. There are "quaint garrets amongst great timbers of the roof where of old times the tillers and herdsmen slept"; also, beautiful gardens, with barns, dovecote, a meadow and stream.

KELMSCOTT MANOR. Watercolor [ca. 1905?] by Marie Spartali Stillman here

My illustration top © Rosie West

Paul Outerbridge: formal beauty

Images de Deauville c. 1936


"What makes a still life good instead of mediocre is the quality of vision and imagination employed by the photographer, and especially his reaction to his subject material"

Not only did American photographer Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) have the vision and creativity of an artist, he was technically meticulous and imaginative.

Party Mask with Shells 1936

Outerbridge was at the height of his powers in the period between the two world wars and embraced the project of modernism with extraordinary diligence and elan. He had many friends in the avant-garde, including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Archipenko and Max Ernst and their influence is felt in his intense black and white images of everyday objects. They all have a sense of abstract and geometric design, a formal beauty and, frequently, a surreal quality.


Ide Collar 1922

The Ide Collar is perhaps the most iconic of his work. A brilliantly conceived advertisement, Marcel Duchamp tore it from the November 1922 issue of Vanity Fair and tacked it to his studio wall. To Duchamp it was a 'Ready Made' in his own tradition.

I am focusing on his colour photography because it has an exceptional quality of its own.



Chair with materials 1936


Not only did Outerbridge have state-of-the-art lighting equipment and legendary preparation for every shoot, he developed a method of printing that was terrifically complex and labour intensive. The tri-colour Carbro process used three separate glass plates for each image and involved precise timings and conditions. He wrote about it in a collection of essays entitled Photographing in Color [New York: Random House, 1940] and it wouldn't be for the faint-hearted.


Wallpaper Design 1936




Beach Equipment c 1936


It would be hard for digital photography, I imagine, to achieve this translucence.





Window with Plants c 1937

I cannot do justice here to Outerbridge's intellectual and creative instincts or put him more squarely in the context of his time. For a superb essay and many more stunning photographs I recommend the book that I have referred to. It is Paul Outerbridge by Elaine Dines-Cox with Carol McCusker pub. Taschen 1999 My copy has on the cover what I can only describe as an artistically soft-porn nude although he would have objected to that description.
I haven't mentioned his nudes. Blatantly erotic in soft lighting. Of their time?




Terrace c 1938





Father and Son in Kitchen 1941

Small is Beautiful : The Ashes

Is this the smallest sporting trophy in the world?



Victorious England captain Andrew Strauss holding a replica of the precious urn today. The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of international cricket's most celebrated rivalries and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in Australia and England. Don't ask me to explain the intricacies of Test match rules to my American pals (or even to some of my British ones) save to say that one match will last up to 5 days and may often end in a draw, sometimes occasioned by the intervention of rain.

The term 'Ashes' was first used after England lost to Australia - for the first time on home soil - at The Oval on 29th August 1882. A day later, the Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded that: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The concept caught the imagination of the sporting public. A few weeks later, an English team, captained by the Hon Ivo Bligh [later Lord Darnley], set off to tour Australia, with Bligh vowing to return with "the ashes"; his Australian counterpart, WL Murdoch, similarly vowed to defend them.


The velvet bag that originally held the urn




During that tour, Bligh and his players participated in a social match where he was presented with the small terracotta urn as a symbol of the ashes that he had travelled to Australia to regain. I was disappointed to find that it is only a myth that it contains the burnt remains of the bails that sit across the stumps forming the wicket. Well, to Bligh the urn was a personal gift and it stayed on his mantelpiece at Cobham Hall near Rochester, Kent until he died 43 years later. Then at his request it was bequeathed to the home of English cricket the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) and came to rest in their museum at the famous Lords ground.

In the 1990s, recognising the two teams' desire to compete for an actual trophy, MCC commissioned an urn-shaped Waterford Crystal trophy.



The new Waterford trophy dwarfs the original




Acknowledgments: Wikipedia and Lords

Esther Williams Does It For Me

When I reached a particular decade birthday, this was my wish - to be filmed swimming underwater in a sarong with a knife between my teeth. I could play the video on the tv instead of having a fish tank long into my old age.


I realised later that this insistent image of myself originated from the GIRL comic I loved as a kid. It was the one about the pearl diver who rescued the man with his foot stuck in a giant clam. Ok, so I'd leave out the heroics from my own film but, miserably enough, we never got round to making it. (Local swimming pool no good; South Seas good. South Seas out of the question.)



Imagine my joy when I discovered this medley of Esther Williams watery feats of grace and daring. It is all my fantasies rolled into one. For it, I must thank the deliciously eclectic blog Uma foca em Galápagos(click) with whom I share a love of glamorous vintage bathing costumes(click).

[Does anyone have the same problem/know why links don't show up in a different colour? For me, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't]

Air de Fête

Marie Daage Decoration - Creation sur Porcelaine Paris makes my pulse quicken. Many generations of the Daage family were painters of fine Limoges porcelain and Marie studied at the Louvre. Her heritage and education emerge in her ability to mix the traditional and the chic with great distinction. The sublime colour palettes, the circus stripes, the illustrative lightness of touch all give the work, in Marie Daage's own words, an air de fête

Drifting through her beautiful website in a kind of reverie, it occurred to me that you really should be properly dressed to appreciate these gorgeous things...












































Look at her achingly beautiful colour chart with names like coq de roch, absinthe, vert flamboyant, mandarine and bleu ardoise.

Smidgens of Family Wisdom

Last summer we were in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina and were introduced to Ferrell and Becky Shuford by our amazing hosts, Hugh and Bambi MacRae. As we spent most of the holiday swimming, it was a treat to be invited for a sail on the Shuford’s yacht. Hugh had told me that he wasn’t sure how old Becky was but she seemed extraordinarily youthful and this I can confirm. She is also very pretty. (Ferrell, you’re not so bad yourself!)
[Photo by Freda]





As I relaxed in the cockpit with the sun on my face and the salt breeze in my hair, Becky was all over the boat trimming the sails, keeping us ship shape. The Shufords spent many years ocean racing and she was a formidable foredeck hand.

Now as a grandmother, Becky has looked back over a fulfilling family life and pulled together a number of threads that are important to her in Smidgens – Bits & Pieces of a Southern Family’s Life. I have just received my copy.

Woven into anecdotes from her life is her gentle faith-based philosophy, advice on a happy marriage (‘share domestic tasks’), bringing up children, running a household and, most importantly, her love of entertaining.



Isn’t this picture great of her as a newly wed/novice cook and I love the anecdote about inviting her brother and his wife for an evening meal. Working full-time as a teacher she decided on a simple supper of her mother’s wonderful vichyssoise, hot herb bread and, wait for it, prune cake. Becky only found out years later why her brother turned down a second helping of soup. He was waiting for the entrée. It made them both laugh.

Since then her entertaining became more varied, more appropriate to family high days and holidays and more sophisticated.




Her formal table setting






I have been drooling over the good old-fashioned recipes and there are dozens of them. But let’s have that Vichyssoise:

4 leeks or 1 ½ cup chopped onion
3 cups peeled chopped potatoes
3 cups strained chicken stock or 3 bouillon cubes dissolved in 3 cups water
3 tablespoons Chicken fat, butter or margarine
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
1 tsp salt
About 1 tsp white pepper

Chop washed leeks and about 3 inches of their green tops into small pieces. Boil leeks and potatoes in stock from which fat has been skimmed until very tender (about 40 mins). Without draining, blend until smooth. Add fat, cream, milk, salt and pepper. Reheat in top of double boiler to blend flavors.

Vichyssoise should be thicker than the average cream soup and served thoroughly chilled, garnished with minced chives. In winter you may choose to serve hot, garnished with paprika.
Serves 6







One of the reasons I love the book's cover is the washing line! Since I don't own a tumble drier it gladdens my heart to see a line full of clothes billowing in the wind. It also appeals to my inner Mrs. Tiggywinkle: I mostly love doing the laundry. It is about my only domestic accomplishment. For that reason I was ecstatic that in her chapter on ironing, Becky described the production of a fragrant, pressed masterpiece of a shirt on a hanger. It had been washed, liquid starched (yes!) line dried, sprinkled with water and then rolled into a ball to allow an even dampness for pressing. Yes, again! Call me old-fashioned but that's how I do it (when I'm in the mood).

Smidgens is privately published and edited by Ferrell Shuford MD who admits that helping his wife put this book together has been one of the greatest sources of pleasure since his retirement.
To order a copy for $25 (including shipping in the USA) contact Boatshu Publisher, 2602 Oleander Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403-4037

LEAVES FROM MY SKETCHBOOK

All images © Rosie West