I Had A Dream....

A lot of people say, "One day I am going to (fill in the blank)!", but few people actually fulfill those long held fantasies.


From the moment it was announced that Washington would have its own baseball team, my friend, Catherine, was in line to buy season tickets. She has been a faithful fan.



On Saturday, she fulfilled a childhood fantasy when she got the chance to throw out the opening ball at the Nationals game.


She stood on the pitcher's mound and threw the ball across the plate to the short stop. I, for one, am inspired.


President William Howard Taft started the American tradition of throwing out the opening pitch. In 1910 he threw out the opening pitch for the Washington Senators. Every President since Taft, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, has thrown out at least one ceremonial first ball or pitch, either for Opening Day, the All-Star Game or the World Series. (Clearly, Carter thought he would get re-elected and have time during his second term.)

Here's to fulfilling dreams.

Women In Art

Philip Scott Johnson took hundreds of images of women in art and morphed them to create this video. It is mesmerizing and a bit creepy. But worth the watch.

Mix Tape -- Armageddon

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no,
not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

Mark 13:32

I do hate false prophets, but I love a good mix tape. The folks over at Death + Taxes have assembled a rather zippy End of the World Mix. They, however, left off one of my favorites: Freakwater's Are You Ready?

Happy Birthday Levi's

Levi Strauss

Jeans come and jeans go but nobody outlasts Levi's. On May 20, 1873, Levi Strauss and his partner Jacob Davis introduced the world's first blue jeans. And the rest, as they say, is history...

Jennifer Anniston wearing Levi's that look like they might actually be from the very first shipment!

Johnny Depp dressed up for a movie premiere. He went to the trouble of patching his Levi's for this glamorous occasion.

Barack Obama's Levi's seem nicely pressed as he pitches out the first ball of the game. He doesn't get to wear his jeans too much, so they are in pristine shape.

The Hogarth Press

The Hogarth Press

And speaking of The Persephone Post...

They recently published a painting called The Printer c. 1915 by Laura Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968) and asked: "Can anyone tell us if this unwieldy looking machine is the same kind of thing as the 'small handpress' Leonard and Virginia Woolf bought in Holborn one March afternoon in 1917 in order to set up the Hogarth Press?"



Well it was not as large and unwieldy as the image in The Printer, but it was a good-sized platen jobber, probably the Minerva. There is some confusion as Leonard Woolf wrote in a letter that he believed the press was an "Eclipse model" which was a much smaller press.



The actual Hogarth Press press now resides at Sissinghurst Castle. When Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson bought Sissinghurst, Leonard and Virginia gave them the press as a housewarming gift. It was the first piece of furniture installed at Sissinghurst.

Virginia Woolf Setting Type: ink and graphite drawing, n.d. Richard Kennedy

Richard Kennedy began working at the Hogarth Press at age 16 and worked there from 1926 to 1930. In the above drawings, Virginia Woolf is seen setting the type for Herbert Palmer’s poems. In 1972 Kennedy compiled his memories and drawing of that time into a book entitled, A Boy at the Hogarth Press.

During the heyday of the Hogarth Press 525 books were published. Of those books only a scant 34 were actually published on the platen jobber. The rest were published by commercial publishers.

If you are interested in the Hogarth Press, J.H.Willis published an exhaustive study entitled Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-41.

Edith Olivier at the Persephone Post

The Persephone Post is a great blog run by the Persephone Press in London. We have mentioned them before in our post on Daisy Ashford. At Cookbook Of The Day we have posted about several of their cookery books including; Good Food on the Aga, Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll, and They Can't Ration These.

The blog features a picture an a blurb about it. Quite simple but always thought provoking. They very often feature something near and dear to the hearts and minds of Lucindaville.

This painting of Edith Olivier is one of them. Not only is it Edith Olivier but it was painted by Rex Whistler. And in the painting Edith Olivier is surrounded by books and we love images of women reading!

Enjoy.

Cecil Beaton in New York

I got an e-mail from Andrew Ginger from Beaudesert LTD. They are the English company who makes bespoke beds and hand printed fabrics. One such line includes bewitching Cecil Beaton fabrics.



Well it would seem that the Museum of the City of New York is opening a show on Beaton in October. The show will feature a new book by Donald Albrecht. In addition Beaudesert will be launching a new collection of New York inspired Beaton fabrics. I am so looking forward to the new line.


To check out Beaton fabrics past and present check out their web site: www.cecilbeatonfabrics.com.

Balloon Over Opelika

Harry Lowe was going through some stuff a while back and he came across a little scrapbook his mother made when she was a child. The book appears to be an old, discarded account book that she appropriated for her own personal use.


In the book she pasted pictures of ladies in dresses and...


advertising labels...


and other things that struck her fancy.


One of her pages included an advertisement for a grand balloon ascension to take place on Tuesday, December 16, 1884. A Professor Fisk would ascend on his monster balloon being 60 feet high and 150 feet in circumference. He would ascend on a single trapeze bar and give a daring trapeze performance which, according to Fisk, is a wonder to behold.


While aerialists could astound crowds, especially in small towns, no one could actually steer a balloon and "fly" it. In April 1900, the Aéro-Club de France's founder, Ernest Archdeacon and his partner Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe offered $10,000 for a gas powers flying machine that could make a a one kilometer circle without falling from the sky. In September 1901, Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont won the money in 30 minutes and 42 seconds when he circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. While Santos-Dumont was acclaimed as the first man to fly he holds another distinction. After complaining to Louis Cartier that with both hands "driving" his balloon he was unable to get to his pocket watch, Cartier came up with the first wristwatch for men aptly named the Santos.



So the next time you check the time, remember that you have Alberto Santos-Dumont to thank for it. Nancy Winters has a lovely little book filled with great pictures of Santos-Dumont. (And one or two of his namesake watch.)


Little did Lois know when she cut out the advertisement for the trapeze aerialist what would transpire in the next decade with balloons or flying machines or time pieces or even Opelika.

Alabama Tornado

While we have been writing about Royal weddings and fashion, the phone lines to Alabama (when they were working)have been buzzing. The good news for me: All my friends and family are fine, alive and well with minimal damage.



But 285 people lost their lives and countless others lost everything they own. When I first heard the weather report, I called my BFF Beverly who reported everything was fine. A few hours later I picked up my messages to find a wild and almost unintelligible call -- the tornado had gone over Beverly's house and she was calling from the central bathroom, decidedly upset. The tornado didn't pick up anything from her house but it did deposit debris. Later, they lost electricity and phones. They are still without power with no end in site.




But everyone is alive and well. CNN is features a great "How To Help" list. I know times are tough, but if you can, help out.

Inspiration Dior

Everything that has been part of my life...

has expressed itself in my dresses.
Christian Dior

On February 12th, 1947 Christian Dior presented his first collection and the New Look was born.

At the Pushkin Museum in Moscow the inspiration for many of Dior's iconic designs is being explored.

"Inspiration Dior" looks at the internal visual dialogue between designer and artists, such as Picasso, Renoir, Modigiliani and Hokusa and how that vision is externalized into couturier.

The dresses juxtaposed against the art are sublime and I only saw them in video on TV5!

This tradition of art into fashion has followed the great designers of the house of Dior.

From Dior, himself, through Yves Saint Laurent , Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre and John Galliano, each designer has manifested Dior's vision that everything in life eventually becomes a dress.

Here are several prime example of of painting transformed into fashion.

This embroidered grey pinstriped jacket from Fall-Winter 2003-2004 is worn over yellow velvet bra. It is shown next to John Singer Sargent's La Carmencita.

Suzurka-San coat from Spring-Summer 2007 is embroidered white linen which has been hand-painted.
It is shown with Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa.

Kazimir Malévitch's Woman with a Rake bears a striking resemblance to this 2002 black-and-white silk faille coat worn over a white leotard and black-and-white white linen skirt.

Another view.

I am not off to Moscow anytime soon, but truly these pictures are worth at least a thousand words.

Here is a short introduction.