Palladian perfection

Seeing the Boston Restoration Hardware flagship store all lit up at night like a golden treasure gives me goosebumps—it's so gorgeous! If you're a regular reader of this blog you know I lust over all thing RH. 

This photo of the store got me thinking about the Palladian architecture of the building, and I remembered a great book I once read called Palladian Days, about an American couple who buys and restores one of the few original homes that was designed by Renaissance architect Andreas Palladio in the Veneto region of Italy. Only a handful of these 16th-century villas by Andrea Palladio survive, but his symmetrical style will live on forever. 

Palladio used the mathematics of the golden ratio—the true Golden Section spirals, or the myth of the nautilus shell—which above all uses symmetry, proportion, and harmony.

A Fibonacci spiral approximates the golden spiral using quarter-circle arcs inscribed in squares of integer Fibonacci-number side, shown for square sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and 34. It's sort of over my head now but when I was an art student in college I used to understand it!

Below is a sketch by an ancient Greek 

named Marcus Vitruvius Pollio 

that illustrates this golden ratio.

 It's the same golden ratio that Leonardo da Vinci 

used when proportioning out his Vitruvian Man. 

Below are books of 

Palladian architecture.

French dirt

For gardeners and Francophiles alike, French Dirt
is a great summer read!

Lichens: Nature's little beauties

A combination of a fungus and an alga, lichens have a symbiotic relationship of both elements that create their unique look and structure. Even more exciting (admit it, this is exciting stuff!) is that lichens appear in colors ranging from brilliant, flaming hot reds, oranges and yellows, to more conservative grays, browns and sea-foam greens. Texturally lichens can be mossy, crusty, leafy, shrubby, or even jellylike.

We've all seen lichens on rocks in our back yards, roofs, woodland rocks, coastal rocks, wooden fences and even on trees, but have probably rarely taken a very, very close look at them. I think all lichens are beautiful works of art, so of course I just had to have this whopping 828 page reference book—Lichens of North America—that shows them up close. Lichens really are nature's little beauties! 

Wondrous Strange

This beautiful book shows the magical paintings of four legendary artists; Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. Inside Wondrous Strange you'll find swashbucklers, pirates, soldiers, and all sorts of mysterious, fantastical and romantic images. If you enjoy paintings, you'll adore this wondrously strange book. On the cover, shown above, is Lighthouse, by Jamie Wyeth.

Clockwise from upper left:

An Attack on a Galleon by Howard Pyle

Captain Bill Bones, by N. C. Wyeth

Adrift, by Andrew Wyeth
Orca, by Jamie Wyeth

Gondolas, palazzi, + amorous trysts

Got your attention, didn't I? I just got this juicy new historical novel that's set in Venezia! I was attracted to the book because of its title, of course, but I am hoping that it's much more than a mere lusty bodice ripper. Carnevale is about a woman--a portrait painter--who has a reputation of being the last woman to be loved by Casanova. Yowza!  

Wild thing

Maurice Sendak, the award-winning writer and illustrator of children’s books who died yesterday at 83, created wildly fantastic worlds of fantasy and imagination that appealed to young and old, I fall in the latter category. I loved his illustration style—especially loved his Nutcracker and Where the Wild Things Are books—and I'm so glad that his unique vision and creativity will live on forever. You can read about his Nutcracker book and ballet production here. RIP, wild thing!

Nutcracker smackdown

Maurice Sendak's beautiful book cover of the classic Christmas fairytale

What's a Christmas season without seeing the Nutcracker Ballet, whether it's live in a theater or watching a film version at home?  E.T.A. Hoffman's story of a little girl named Clara who encounters wild and imaginative characters (including those oversized mice) is a Christmas classic... because nothing says "Christmas fairytale" like a giant Mouse King with seven heads, right? I jest of course—the waltz of the snowflakes alone more than makes up for the mouse bits. Then there's all the lovely twirling and  pas de deux-ing with the Sugar-Plum Fairy and the Prince...not to mention all the beautiful set backdrops and costumes... all set to the playful music of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Scrumptiousness! So which ballet company does the best rendition of the Nutcracker? The Ovation TV Channel is doing its fifth annual Nutcracker Ballet competition to try and find the answer.

Here are the five contenders this year: Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, London's Royal Opera House Ballet, Russia's Mariinsky Theatre's Ballet, the Berlin's State Ballet, and Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker (which is meant to be more funky and contemporary, though not quite as avant-garde as Mark Morris's Nutcracker Ballet). Each production has something different to offer and although they are all quite enchanting and delightful, for my money the 1986 Nutcracker: The Motion Picture film version—danced by The Pacific Northwest Ballet—is the very best version. They had me at the imaginative sets and costumes, which were designed my Maurice Sendak himself, and the cast includes a really wild looking Herr Drosselmeier (Clara's Godfather), with an eye patch and long white hair. If you love Maurice Sendak's Nutcracker book, you'll love this film because it's like a giant, pop-up-version of his book that comes alive!

Watch out for those giant mice Clara!

The Wind in the Willows

"Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing—about—in—boats; messing—" 

One of the most delightful books I have ever read is the annotated Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Graham. What a story teller! All of the characters are mischievous and heaps of fun, but Rat and Toad are my favorites—Toad because he is a natural bon vivant, and Ratty because he's a die hard epicurean. Just listen to this—Rat description of a typical lunch for a boating excursion on the river ...

The rat fetched a wicker picnic basket... "What's inside?""There's cold chicken inside," said Rat, "cold-tongue-cold-ham-cold-beef-pickled-onions-salad-french-bread-cress-and-widge-spotted-meat-ginger-beer-lemonade — "Oh stop!" cried Mole in ecstasy. "This is too much!""Do you think so?" said Rat, seriously. "It's only what I always take on these little outings."

Is that not fabulous? This book is best enjoyed out of doors, if possible—languishing on the grass or in a hammock on a lazy summer's day—and preferably with and ice cold ginger-beer-lemonade.

All things exquisite

Here's a fun book—the Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights. It will enlighten you about the history and origins of such things as the Bartlett pear (Louis XIV was mad for them), champagne (the bubbles were first thought to be a bad thing, quelle horreur!), the topper (quite shocking when it was first introduced, and made of beaver skins, ew!), keeping a cricket as pets (for their cricket "songs," which sounds quite vile to me), and Japanese pillowbooks (a place to stash secret stuff—ok, that I like). Exquisite delights... what's not to love?

I am only up to the Ds in the book, but so far it has informed me of so many interesting tidbits that I didn't even know that I wanted to know. If you love exquisite things (and who doesn't, darling?) then you need this book on your bookshelf. You'll most certainly want to (in this order) eat a Bartlett pear, drink champagne, put on a top hat, then run outside to catch a cricket to put in your pillowbook. Don't say I didn't warn you.

More on marshes

If you truly love salt marshes then you must check out a gifted local photographer named Dorothy Kerper Monnelly. By the way, her husband Ed is a brilliant photographer as well. Dorothy has published a book about the marshes which is filled with her beautiful photography and lovely writing called The Great Marsh. If you are trying to buy local she sells the book on her website and at Russell Orchards in Ipswich, but of course Amazon has a good price on it. Of her work, the Essex National Heritage area writes this:

"Award-winning photographer Dorothy Monnelly captures the yet-unspoiled beauty of one of the last natural ecosystems in the Northeast. In this collection of 57 large-format, black and white photographs, the salt marsh is a solemn force rendered dramatically with crisp reproductions of Monnelly’s original gelatin silver prints. As a native of Ipswich, MA, Monnelly executes her work with a familiarity and grace evocative of Ansel Adams. Her work is described in the foreword by Jeanne Adams, manager of The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite National Park, as capturing the marsh’s “amazing sculptural quality.”