Vladimir Kagan's Blog

The Super Star Syndrome

 

The Age of the Super-Star
Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 29, 2012

 

When good is not good enough – even the best is not good enough.... You have the birth of a Super Star! He or she stands alone on a pedestal. In tennis, be it Bobby Riggs, Roger Federer or Serena Williams: Baseball’s Hall of Fame touts Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson while the Yankees have Derrick Jetter. American’s love affair with Football gives us Aaron Rogers and Victor Cruz: Hillary Clinton gets it as a Diplomat, General Patton and Eisenhower were bigger than life Soldiers. And in Architecture, you can’t find better celebs than Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry. Among designers it is hard to top Mark Newson or Ron Arad and Wendell Castle.
 
To reach the pinnacle of stardom, it takes training, courage, audacity, and good luck. Staying on top of the heap is big work…Fallen Super Stars quickly vanish into oblivion: Tiger Woods, David Petraeus, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Lance Armstrong.

 
Athletes become stars by their incredible performance, strenuous training, and diligent practice. Diplomats, soldiers, movie stars get there with their dazzling performances. Architects and Designers fortunately can bypass such drudgery. Super Stardom for them is achieved through daring aptitude and a willingness to explore new frontiers. The key to stardom is the importance of being different! These Stars do not play by the confining rules of their game. Logical considerations are cast aside. A good starting point is a healthy disregard for cost followed by a jaundiced approach to practical applications. The criterion for success is non-conformity. While these Stars may conceptualize their ideas on a paper napkin in a restaurant or the back of an envelope, their computers are king! They “type” their designs on a keyboard, distort their images into daring and unrecognizable shapes and create the 21^st Century’s new Parthenons. It takes a genius to master these skills. Designers and architect rise to Stardom by having more bravado than their colleagues.

This astounding realization came to me on my recent travels through London and Paris. In London, I was struck by Renzo Piano’s Shard – London’s tallest tower, an impudent needle piecing the skyline. Mr. Piano, can do no wrong. His client’s blissfully underwrite his bold ideas, regardless of their practical application.

The Shard - A 1,016 foot tall multi-use tower in London by Architect Renzo Piano - It will be the tallest building in Western Europe

In Paris, Ron Arad’s show at the Gallery Downtown sparked this little reminiscing. Arad is a master of daring design. He expertly throws caution to the winds and lets his artistry fall where he chooses. In his show there were two rooms filled floor to ceiling with trapezoid sheets of shining stainless steel mounted on spindly black rods pretending to be tables and selling at $5,000 a pop!



Ron Arad's wall to wall dazzling steel slab tables at the Gallery Downtown in Paris - in the window was one of Arad's famous chairs

 

 
Chairs that have made Ron Arad famous - works of art in stainless steel. He recently reached his pinacle with a one-man-show at New York's MOMA

 


Ron Arad is a multi-talented designer. As an Architect, he has just completed The Design Museum in Holon Israel

I am afraid, that once you get past its ribbons of sculpture the museum looks, to me, more like a beached rusting freighter

My favorite Architect, Zaha Hadid has achieved Super Stardom by her ingenious use of the computer. (Few know that she is also a gifted painter and often first visualizes her imaginative designs as a work of art on canvas.) Her results are dazzling, but a far stretch of the imagination from the basic rule of the game: “Form follows Function”.

Zaha Hadid's latest masterpiece - Michigan State's Broad Museum

(You might get a bit disoriented when you walk though the interior galleries.)  

When Zaha gets into product designs, she really lets her imagination fly


 

Frank Gehry, another Super Star, contorts sheet-titanium slabs into malleable clay shapes that effectively camouflage the building’s interior. His buildings adorn city skylines around the world and are prime examples of “design for the fun of design”… utility be damned.

 

I think this is Frank Gehry's' Experience Music Museum in Seattle... but it really doesn't matter where it is - his buildings all look alike.

 

Furniture is a favorite playground for creative minds. My friend, Wendell Castle, is the undeniable master of the wood chisel. His current exhibit at the Barry Friedman Gallery in New York show exquisite rocking chairs that are truly works of art as long as you don’t try to sit in them.

Wendell Castle's magnificent wood sculptures that might also be furniture

 
Mark Newson is a gifted young designer, who cut his teeth in the aviation industry. His chairs and lounges are often reminiscent of their flying machine antecedents. At Sotheby’s and Christies’ they have fetched the highest prices ever paid for a piece of contemporary furniture.

Mark Newson's Aluminum Lounge and side chair - The Lounge sold for $968,000 at a recent auction at Sotheby's

A chair is a chair is a chair…. But not in the hand of these Stars: a chair is an object coincidentally for, but not necessarily for sitting. I admire their leap of imagination and the willingness of collectors to encourage and support these Super Stars.
 
It all comes down to the primal argument: is it Art or is it Design? The distinction evaporates!

 
I regret that I am earthbound designer creating furniture for the simple purpose of comfort (and hopefully attractive to live with). My designs are recognizable vessel to sit on… Alas, Super Stardom eludes me!

 

 

A Christmas Story By Your Music-Loving Curmudgeon

How I’ve Learned To (almost) Hate Classical Music

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 24, 2012

 

“T’was the night before Christmas,

and all through the house,

only the ‘telly’ was stirring,

no sign of a mouse”

In my sister’s household, a classical version of MTV is playing all day long on a huge TV screen. The decibels are kept discretely low so that the music won’t intrude too much on the daily routine of the house. 

             
What is left is a silent film version of musicians playing their instruments, led by a superfluous conductor, twisting his body, facial expressions and hands with the rhythmic flow of the music. It becomes apparent that the musicians don’t really give a damn for the conductor as their faces are deeply immersed in the sheet music in front of them. For the viewer’s entertainment, some very fine camera work is concentrated on the grimaces of the musicians struggling with their violins tucked under their chins, then to the wind instrumentalists puckering their faces to emit the proper sounds on their piccolos, oboes and clarinets and finally to the horn players as they puff out their cheeks, while their fingers are deftly fluttering over the buttons of their trumpets.

With a full symphony orchestra this visual experience is intensified. Now the camera sweeps over twenty violinists, each with a pained look of concentration, then onto four French horn players all emitting the same sound, the timpanist is standing at the ready with his muted hammers, waiting to make a loud boom or alternately holding a delicate steel triangle to be tapped gently with a thin metal rod, once, twice, thrice, producing the tingling sound as the composer indicated. All the while, the conductor prances up and down, side to side, gesticulating with a thin wand in one hand and cajoling the orchestra with the other, for pianissimo, presto or ----. Occasionally the camera lights on the complex sheet music that, to all normal people is gibberish, but to musicians is the gospel, then pans to the dancing fingers of the pianist, with a peek inside the piano to see the hammers hitting the taught steel wires…. and then the camera glides to his or her face with its alternately pained or satisfied smile, entranced by the work.  All through this you might be questioning the need for an eighty-piece orchestra when all the instruments are carefully tuned to sound as one.
                   

Next we are treated to the smaller Chamber orchestra, where the number of similar instruments is kept to two or three. The camera now has more time for an intimate look at the faces and deft hands dancing on their strings, flutes and trumpets. There are occasional shots of the glamorous interiors of the palaces or concert halls where the performance is taking place. Now the camera moves slowly back to the conductor struggling for the attention of the orchestra.
                                          

This morning we were treated to a rare sight of a lady conductor, delicately waving both hands, (she dispensed with the baguette). The orchestra obediently started playing at her command, but after a few notes she abandoned her task as conductor and turned to the audience and started to sing: she metamorphosed into a vocal soloist!… In spite of the missing conductor, the musicians continued to play without missing a note.
 
 
Finally, we are treated to the chef d’oeuvre of music: the String Quartet, four instruments competing for attention, sometime in harmony, other times in a constant squabble: the equivalent of a musical conversation. The music is always segmented into four movements: Allegro, adagio, minuet and Rondo…  God forbid, if an uninitiated listener claps before the conclusion of all four movements.
 
At the conclusion of each song or musical composition, soloists, conductors and the full orchestra, with instruments in hand, face their audience and take their awkward bows often struggling with the proffered plastic-wrapped bouquets of flowers that a grateful audience (or the impresario) offer to the soloist.

Because we are listening to these concerts with the volume turned low, the music emitting from the television’s poor sound system is very distorted. What we hear most clearly are the squealing high notes of the strings or the low boom, boom of the kettledrums. The rest of the music is left somewhere in the outer space of modern broadcasting.
 
Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart all fade into one cacophony of sound, not unlike that of a rock band….
 
But the truth be told, I LOVE classical music… just as long as they don’t play too many Jingle Bells or Pachelbel’s Canon in C for the holidays!
 
Have a Merry Christmas, Everyone!

                                             

                                a "Little Night Music" - written in the only language that is universal
 
 
 

 

My Christmas Card for You

 

 

 

Paris on the run

Paris – Our Home Away From Home

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 17, 2012

When Jessica was six or seven years old, (that was back in the 60s) she went to a little private school. The headmistress, an English educator, (Erica liked her for her Englishness) had a husband, an English Francophile, who rambled on about building a tunnel under the English Channel to France! No one could imagine a more harebrained idea. He held an influential position in England and campaigned hard to bring this wacky idea to fruition… Thirty-one miles under water? No way! It will flood. It will be a target for Russian sabotage. No one will use it.  England will be overrun by illegal refugees.  The thought that England’s cherished isolation could be destroyed by a tunnel was unthinkable.  And so it came to pass, they started digging in 1987 and completed it in 1994; three tunnels, two for trains, one for passengers (the Eurostar). The third tunnel is for maintenance. (For lovers of statistics; it cost $16 billion to built, employed 15,000 workers, and takes half an hour to cross the Channel, and two hours to get from London to Paris)
 
Since then England has been overrun by illegal immigrants, Russian oligarchs, investment bankers, and other undesirables.  But none came through the “Chunnel” as it is officially called.  It’s the most convenient way to travel to and from the Continent, quicker than by air when you factor in the time going from town to the airport, through security, and actually flying.
 
On November 14h, the 20th anniversary of the Eurostar, Jessica and I took the 4:20 train: London to Paris, arriving before 7:30 to meet with friends for dinner at 8. How’s that for convenience. (Thank you Mr. Whatshisname (his name escapes me) for being so persistent in following your dream.)
 
We stayed in the fashionable heart of the 7th Arrondissement, Hotel de Vendome on place Vendome, a charming boutique hotel.  It was exquisitely furnished with elegant furniture, inlaid marble ornamentation, and architectural details. (A departure from our usual stay on the Rive Gauche (Left Bank).
             
                             Our Boutique Hotel de Vendome - the view out of our window

Paris is where friends often meet by choice or by accident and so it was that we caught up with my son-in-Law, Matt Diserio, who was on a whirlwind European tour expounding his passion for water… Water Asset Management llc, a company that he started some ten years earlier and who is now one of the leading authorities on the conservation, recycling, storage, and desalination of this precious commodity.
 
The next morning, we wasted no time in getting into high gear. Our first stop was a must-see photography show at the Grand Palais. It was a perfect excuse to see this magnificent glass structure from the inside, having driven past it for so many years. The photo show was impressive with galleries from around the world selling their images. But it was the architecture that was most dazzling. Construction was started in 1897 for the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris; it stands with the Eiffel Tower as a monument to the grand period of the Beaux-arts.

              

The entrance to the Grand Pallais with signs announcing the photo exhibit inside

                
                               Opposite the Grand Palais, it's grandiose sister The Petite Palais

                  
                  

                 
                

               
               
What makes the Grand Palais grand is its magnificent architectural details - here I am inundating you with photos of this architectural treasure
                                            

What we ostensibly came for was a photo exhibit - below are some of the images that most interested Jessica and me

              
I thought catching this moment in time, with a fire extinguisher in the corner, made a poignant picture

               

                 
                  

                  
        
                 The last two photos are my contribution to the exhibit taken on my iPhone camera

Paris, like London, starts its Christmas frenzy early and all along the Champs-Elysées vendors in prefab kiosks were peddling their Holiday ware to the gullible tourists.
           
                                                 Christmas kiosks on the  Champs-Elysées

The frequency of Jessica’s and my visit to Paris has made this magical city feel like our second home. Happily it does not diminish the rush of excitement with each visit.

                  

                  

                  
                                                       The eternal thrill of being in Paris

 
Paris is the Mecca of woman’s fashion… what woman can resist it… Jessica left me happily at home with my beloved computer, working on my next Blog, while she set forth on her tour of discovery and returned laden… (I dared not ask what or how much!) Though the day was gray and drizzly, it did not stop us from enjoying the sights, including a visit to the elegant Luxury Living store at 18 Avenue George V, the showcase of my furniture in Paris. 

                              

                 The Luxury Living Store on Ave. George V with room settings showing my furniture


The next day was my turn to follow my muse and we visited the Musée des Arts Décoratifs to get my fill of design culture, while Jessica pursued her quest for Jewelry.

                      
I'm always "blown away" by grand architecture... here's the entrance to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and a detailed painting of a filgreed church steeple

                                              

                 

              I can "worship" medieval art all day long... but my mission was finding the decorative arts

                 
                                          

              I am a devotee of Art Nouveau as it is the inspiration for my organic designs

                

                                                              ....As well as Art Deco

               

               

We had lunch at the indomitable Brasserie Lipp with my friend India Mahdavi, whose two small boutiques are “les must- see” in Paris, 5, Rue Las Cases - 75007

                                               

We visited two art galleries that were on my priority list; the Gallery Downtown, on Rue de Seine, where in one space was an exhibit of Oscar Niemeyer’s little known furniture designs (most prophetic in the face of his death only a few weeks later) and in the other a brash exhibition of the showmanship of Ron Arad. (I am working on a separate Blog on the designer/architect as celebrity) followed by cocktails with my best Parisian fan, Chahan, (who sells more Kagan furniture than I do), and finally a divine dinner at La Fontaine de Mars, an intimate Rive Gauche bistro (made momentarily famous by our President Barrack Obama, who snubbed a state dinner in favor of a little family dinner there.)

              

      
                        Oscar Neimyer and Ron Arad at Gallery Downtown on Rue 18 $ 33 Rue De Seine

 
Saturday morning was spent frantically packing all of my paraphernalia plus Jessica’s added loot, which entailed sitting on suitcases to crush them to a manageable size before our next train trip to Geneva.

              

                        Me,he eternal train buff at Gar De Lyon ready for our trip to Geneva

                                            
                                                      All luggage accounted for!

 

Next, I will take you on my tour of Geneva.....

A farewell to Erica Wilson Kagan

In Memoriam to a departed Angel

Erica Wilson Kagan

October 10, 1928 – December 13, 2011

 Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 13, 2012

 
How the World remembers Erica

I believe all cultures celebrate the anniversary of the passing of a loved one. And so the time has come for me to reflect on the sudden death of my darling wife Erica, just a year ago tomorrow.

 

The time has not gone quickly. My life is bereft of the daily joys of being together. My incapacitation had never been an issue, now it is. The little joys, the good things she did uncomplainingly and selflessly are daily missed. Life has become exponentially more difficult. Everything a little more curtailed – less enjoyable.

 

It now seems all about me. I miss the unspoken togetherness, the little kindnesses that went unacknowledged; these are the voids in my life. Lamentation is self-pity. Does life go on? A resounding YES. Is it nicer, unfortunately NO.

 

Reflecting on her sudden departure… yes, it was gentle for her. Was it ordained to happen? Possibly not. She prided herself in not taking any medicine…not even an aspirin. Might she have lived had she taken her cardiologist’s advice of a baby aspirin daily? It is conjecture and no one can guarantee results.

 

Erica was a gentle creature, always kind, always considerate. It is trite to say that she loved her family. Her life orbited around us all. She was Selfless. Her reputation as the Queen of Embroidery was sung worldwide. Her countless fans will miss her kind responses to their queries. She personally answered them all in her beautiful monastic handwriting, no matter if it was for the lost instruction to a kit purchased thirty years earlier, or the missing three strands of wool to complete a design. She never learned to use the computer or typewriter… all of her books were written longhand. We have assembled her beautiful work into archival storage awaiting a suitable museum to expose it to the public.

 

She visits me daily on my computer when the day’s work is done and the screen saver takes over. Up pops Erica, laughing, always laughing, and photos of us enjoying the world, our family and each other.

 

Since her passing there is one song that has personified our life together, its beautiful lyrics say it all.

 

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU

There will be other lips to kiss

They won’t thrill me like yours used to do

I may dream a million dreams

But how can they come true?

There will never be another you!

 

 

A photo album of our life together

Where we first met: The Architectural League of New York ca. 1954

Our honeymoon on the S.S.New Amsterdam 1955

Portofino 

Our family growing up on Nantucket - Jessica, Vladi, Illya, Vanessa, Erica

Fun together in Thailand 2009

The night before Erica died

Erica's memorial service in Nantucket this summer

A cheerful farewell

Our favorite Bluegrass band playing Erica's favorite songs at the memorial

 

A family farewell - Erica laid to rest in the Wall of Remembrance in the Sconset Chapel on October 7th 2012 (the day before her 84th birthday)

Goodby my darling Erica

An Ode to Oscar Niemeyer and Dave Brubeck

 

 

Two of my legendary heroes died last week

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 10, 2012

 
Oscar Niemeyer, whose lyric architecture was influenced by Brazil’s Samba beat, articulated the spirit of “Form follows Beauty” (his description of his work). It’s where I have found my life’s creativity
 
Dave Brubeck’s rhythmic jazz always sparked my best moods and inspired my designs. “Take Five” still makes my heart beat a little faster and my creative juices flow easier.
 
Their stars will shine forever. Both lived fulfilling lives to a gracious age (Niemeyer 104 - Brubeck 91), which gives me hope that there might still be some good years of creativity left in me as well.
 
When it comes to musical preferences, mine is a short list. I love Baroque; I can listen to it day and night. I detest atonal music: Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartok. I love jazz! Not the whining, wailing of today’s saxophones, nor the electronic thump favored by the present day’s hip generation.  I dislike the music my children love.  When they go to a concert, what they really mean is Madison Square Garden, filled with pulsating, earsplitting amplified booms that pass as music accompanied by senseless lyrics.  I lament the passing of Dave Brubeck, whose syncopated rhythms filled rooms not stadiums.
 
This quote from the New York Time’s obituary, best describes Dave Brubeck’s lasting appeal:

“In a long and successful career, Mr. Brubeck <http://www.davebrubeck.com/live/> brought a distinctive mixture of experimentation and accessibility that won over listeners who had been trained to the sonic dimensions of the three-minute pop single.
Mr. Brubeck experimented with time signatures and polytonality and explored musical theater and the oratorio, baroque compositional devices and foreign modes. He did not always please the critics, who often described his music as schematic, bombastic and — a word he particularly disliked — stolid. But his very stubbornness and strangeness — the blockiness of his playing, the oppositional push-and-pull between his piano and Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone — make the Brubeck quartet’s best work still sound original.”

Modern architecture, like its musical counterpart, has taken a dissonant turn, no longer creating structures of enduring beauty. It has become self-aggrandizing, producing monuments akin to The Tower of Babel.  These structures are today’s version of Victorian Follies. They are rampant departures from architecture’s prime criterion: Form follows Function. (And in the words of Oscar Niemeyer “Beauty follows Function”
 
Oscar Niemeyer was a giant amongst architects. If there were a Mount Rushmore for architects, he would certainly be amongst its leading stars. He was the last of the great Modernists of the 20th Century. His lyric, flowing lines have been my inspiration for years.
 
Once again, The New York Times Obituary says it better than I ever can:
 
“Mr. Niemeyer was among the last of a long line of Modernist true believers who stretch from Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe to the architects who defined the postwar architecture of the late 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. He is best known for designing the government buildings of Brasília, a sprawling new capital carved out of the Brazilian savanna that became an emblem both of Latin America’s leap into modernity and, later, of the limits of Modernism’s utopian aspirations.
His curvaceous, lyrical, hedonistic forms helped shape a distinct national architecture <http://www.youtube.com/channel/HCal4opBd0tRw>  and a modern identity for Brazil <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/brazil/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  that broke with its colonial and baroque past. Yet his influence extended far beyond his country. Even his lesser works were a counterpoint to reductive notions of Modernist architecture as blandly functional.”

Both Brubeck and Niemeyer will endure forever, while lesser mortals will fall by the wayside.
 
 
 

From the Bucolic to the Frenetic

 

 

From the Cotswold to London

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 8, 2012

 

What have New York, London and Paris got in common: they are beautiful cities! - They are all too big for me! As I am oblidged to hobble about on two ski poles, a walker and from time to time in a wheel chair, my range in a city’s peripheral has shrunk! – (Give me boring little Geneva or Palm Beach to tootle around in - more my speed these days.) That, however, doesn’t slow down my daughter Jessica, and when we travel together, she guarantees that we achieve 101% performance out of these behemoths.

 

Me,  being whisked around by Jessica, in my Ferrari Wheel chair in front of the British Museum

…And so we ventured from the Cotswolds into the heart of London. London is the most photographed city in the world… Not the tourist type, surveillance cameras! (George Orville’s 1984 come to reality.) Londoners are watched from every corner. Does this stop them? Hell NO. Not even the outrageous tariff on cars driving into the City will stop these stalwart citizens. (How does the government snag them? By camera, of course.) Smart cheats have found a wax to blur their license plates… that might work for a while, but the system will catch up.

In London, Christmas started weeks before our Thanksgiving: the city is a-glow with pretty decorations and Londoners are in a cheerful mood.

Jessica’s tactic for our two and a half days in London: See as many museum as we could digest, (we managed the V&A and The British Museum), See a West End theater that is guaranteed not to come to Broadway, (we did), now add a mandatory stop at Harrods’ food halls, (accomplished) sundry jewelry shops, fashion boutiques and gift emporiums for bobbles, (especially the Grail of all souvenirs: a jubilee trophy with the queen graciously waving, activated by a tinny solar panel. Only the last mission went unfulfilled (sold out… She ultimately found one on eBay!)

 

The waving Queen - Jessica's primary quest in London

 I managed meet with old friends for lunch and drinks, visit the empty home of a new client,  and tagged along with Jessica (who whizzed me through the crowds in my “Ferrari” wheelchair). This kaleidoscope of activities was duly recorded on our cell phones. As the saying goes, “one picture is worth a thousand words” This photo journey should keep you entertained.

 

Monday: Lunch with our old friends,the Barracloughs, who built their house on the Isle of Dogs,with historic Greenwich, the  Royal Observatory and the Cutty Sark directly across the Thames. (The Cutty Sark was not a naval ship, it was a fast clipper ship used in the China tea trade)

Michael Barraclough is astonishing- he is a physician, an architect and a City Planner - In his illustrious career, he has, singlehandedly, turned the Isle of Dogs into a showcase of intelligent urban development. In the process, he has saved hundreds of acres from developer’s desecration, created an urban park and farm and gave dignity to an abandoned and derelict part of London. (The Isle of Dogs was used by Queen Victoria to walk her dogs on… hence its name.) It was reached via a tunnel under the Thames, still a functioning pedestrian under path today. The Barraclough’s children used it daily to go to school in Greenwich… When they forgot their lunch all they needed to do was yell across the river for Mummy to bring it to them!

The Barraclough's house is cantelevered over the Thames. this is Jessica's photo taken at low tide

 
Jessica, always the scavenger, found this ancient chain amongst the rock and foundation of the house

The original ferry dock from Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs next to the Barraclough's house

Tuesday started with a shopping tour of Harrods and a nostalig visit to Erica's, my departed wife's home

Jessica did an early morning visit to Harrods' Food Hall (before the crowds arrived)

12 Priory Walk, Erica's London home for twenty years, looking great with the wisteria still in tackt

 

I visited a client's new empty house

An empty room is s sight to behold for a furniture designer!

Jessica and I caught up with each other at the V&A for Lunch and an afternoon of goggling

The V&A is the Grand-dame of museum spaces. There is no getting away from Dale Chilhully (from Seattle) hanging majestically in the entrance of the Museum

Jessica's mission wa doing research on iron jewelry - I revelled in the magnificent craftsmanship of the iron works on display - This modern bench was a commission to an America craftsman (whose name I neglected to note)

I am enamoured by iron work and could have spent days enjoying it

We met up with Jessica  in the jewelry sections where I found this glorious spiral staircase leading to more jewelry embedded in darkened display cases.

Touring through forbidden corridors of the museum we came across a battalion of British Bishops waiting to be displayed, - on the other side of the passage was this amazing collection of archives being restored

Erica and I have  always loved cameos - that delicate jewelry carved into conch shells

Wednesday was our departure day from London to Paris. We managed a quick visit to the British Museum before heading to the train station.

Disparate buldings were united under a glass dome

I was taken by this Sphinx looking at a Sphinx, while Jessica found more iron jewelry for her research

We made it in time for our Eurostar trip to Paris... as you can see, we travel light!!!

Our train to Paris

A Visit to the Cotswolds

A Day in the English Countryside

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, December 2, 2012

        

A one lane road in the bucolic countryside of the Cotswold

Dictionary description:

Bucolic, 1) of or characteristic of the countryside; 2) of or characteristic of shepherds and           their flock; pastoral (from the Greek boukolikos).

 

Bucolic is a word especially created for the English countryside. This fairytale landscape unfolds abruptly a few miles outside London, (if you can close your eyes long enough, past the dreadful council houses and pseudo-Tudor cottages with rows of pubs, small stores and multi-family housing, you’ll open them up in the country).  We were headed west, but it could just as well have been north or south. It makes no difference. The city ends and the bucolic rolling hills of England take over the landscape. Our destination was Burford, in what Londoners disparagingly refer to as the Midlands. It is located in the middle of the Cotswolds; a thirteenth century village where my friends own (or rather it owns them) the “Great House” built in the 1600s by a wealthy wool merchant.  It is a treasure-trove of English history and my friend’s are its best custodians. The original owner’s name was Castle so he duly glorified the house with a crenellated parapet added to the cornice of its roof.  

Arriving at The Great House in Burford

Only an hour and a half out of London, the Cotswolds is a tourist destination. We were blessed with a cloudless day (the only one out of the four spent in England). To enjoy this magnificent fall day, our hosts provided us with their driver to visit some of the quaint villages surrounding Burford. Slaughter, Upper Slaughter, Lower Slaughter; villages set into the hills, speckled with sheep that have made this part of England famous for its wool over the centuries.  

Slaughter with its Mill Stream running through the center of town

There is a narrow pedestrian walkway over the stream, but the main road for cars and motorcycles goes right through the stream

An ancient house with its pigeon coup. Pigeons were kept as much for food as for decoration

 
The old watermill

We were back in time for a proper English luncheon in the gracious dining room of the Great House.  Joining us for the Sunday feast were Ian and Peter, my two English companions in last June’s Model T trip. It was great to catch up with “the boys” on their own turf.

Peter, Ian and me enjoying reminiscences of last June's Model T tour

 

A quick picture tour through The Great House

Jessica's guest room - the sitting room

A secret entrance to The Priest's Room hidden behind the painting - My son Illya's sculpture of Samuel Johnson,commissioned by our host

The garden

In the evening Jessica and I went out in a futile search for Evensong, the last service on Sunday, in Buford’s picturesque church. It was not to be… there was no service! Instead, before returning home for Sunday supper, we found the next-door Pub for a jovial glass of bitter (the warm English beer that is an acquired taste). By then, Jessica and I were ready to while away the rest of our lives in the Cotswolds.

Jessica and I drinking a cheers to Old England

However, The next morning produced more typically English weather: fog, drizzle and bone-chilling cold, which somewhat damped our enthusiasm. It was a good day to leave this bucolic dream world and head for London to face new realities.  

 
Leaving the Cotswolds - Jessica in her newly acquired "must have" cap