True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Richard III, 5. 2
4 years ago
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Friday, February 27, 2009
Richard III
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Richard III, 5. 2
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Address At The Heavenly End
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then this weekend I've caught up on months worth of posts. I hope you don't mind a few more.
I love cemeteries. Either you love them too, or you think I'm weird. There isn't much in between. I've always found them to be peaceful and fascinating places. Back in Utah I used to take friends around on cemetery tours in the fall and tell stories about all the interesting people. Now that I've moved I'm cut off from the familiar names and traditions I know. Near my home in Denver is a large cemetery named Fairmount, and last week I spent an afternoon wandering through. Apparently it's a popular thing to do because there were many others walking or biking along the lanes. There was even a group of people sitting next to a grave playing the guitar and singing.
I was also joined by a bus from a retirement center. The bus slowly drove around and stopped in front of a monument. Then a minute later it would drive around the corner and stop again. No one ever got off, but it slowly made the rounds as each person inside must have had a turn giving directions.
It was a beautiful fall afternoon. The weather was perfect.
According to the Fairmount's website, the 285 acres was opened in 1890.
It does, indeed, have sweeping vistas and some very curious monuments. There is also a different section for every religion and affiliation you can think of. There is a section of physicians, of veterans, of Catholics, of Greeks, of Jews, of Elks. If you belonged to it, you could be buried among it. Here are a few of the more interesting things I came across.
Most unusual monuments, in a contemporary art sort of way.
The inscription ad astra per aspera is Latin for "through adversity to the stars".
(The white building in the back is the mausoleum. It's huge!)
Best Nick-Names
Furthest Distance Travelled to be Here
Most Melodramatic Carved Image
Most Apropos Decoration
Idea I'm most likely to steal
Most "Colorado"
If this were Utah it would be red rock.
Most Cliche, but Still Touching
Coolest Headstone Calligraphy
Accompanied by
The Most Poetically Over-wrought Inscription
It's a little hard to read but it's by Tennyson.
Loveliest Carving
Best Name - Ever!
Most Intriguing Offerings
At the base of the candle is a pile of coins. Does anyone know the meaning behind this?
Coolest Religious Offerings
Most of the Jewish headstones were covered with rocks.
Best Monogram
Best Carved Name
Oddest Headstone
Cheesiest Amateur Poetry
Best Inscription and Carving Combination
Most Overly Sentimental Sentiment
I wish I knew some of the stories of the people buried here. I bet they are fascinating.
I love cemeteries. Either you love them too, or you think I'm weird. There isn't much in between. I've always found them to be peaceful and fascinating places. Back in Utah I used to take friends around on cemetery tours in the fall and tell stories about all the interesting people. Now that I've moved I'm cut off from the familiar names and traditions I know. Near my home in Denver is a large cemetery named Fairmount, and last week I spent an afternoon wandering through. Apparently it's a popular thing to do because there were many others walking or biking along the lanes. There was even a group of people sitting next to a grave playing the guitar and singing.
I was also joined by a bus from a retirement center. The bus slowly drove around and stopped in front of a monument. Then a minute later it would drive around the corner and stop again. No one ever got off, but it slowly made the rounds as each person inside must have had a turn giving directions.
It was a beautiful fall afternoon. The weather was perfect.
According to the Fairmount's website, the 285 acres was opened in 1890.
Designed by German landscape architect, Reinhard Schuetze, the layout incorporates sweeping vistas in broad curved lanes thus creating a beautiful and serene park like setting.Brett, is this the type of work you want to do?
It does, indeed, have sweeping vistas and some very curious monuments. There is also a different section for every religion and affiliation you can think of. There is a section of physicians, of veterans, of Catholics, of Greeks, of Jews, of Elks. If you belonged to it, you could be buried among it. Here are a few of the more interesting things I came across.
Most unusual monuments, in a contemporary art sort of way.
The inscription ad astra per aspera is Latin for "through adversity to the stars".
(The white building in the back is the mausoleum. It's huge!)
Best Nick-Names
Furthest Distance Travelled to be Here
Most Melodramatic Carved Image
Most Apropos Decoration
Idea I'm most likely to steal
Most "Colorado"
If this were Utah it would be red rock.
Most Cliche, but Still Touching
Coolest Headstone Calligraphy
Accompanied by
The Most Poetically Over-wrought Inscription
It's a little hard to read but it's by Tennyson.
"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,Most Appropriate Landscaping
and slips into the bosom of the lake."
Loveliest Carving
Best Name - Ever!
Most Intriguing Offerings
At the base of the candle is a pile of coins. Does anyone know the meaning behind this?
Coolest Religious Offerings
Most of the Jewish headstones were covered with rocks.
Best Monogram
Best Carved Name
Oddest Headstone
Cheesiest Amateur Poetry
Best Inscription and Carving Combination
Most Overly Sentimental Sentiment
If Tears Could Build a Stairway
And Memories Were A Lane
We Would Walk Right Up To Heaven
And Bring You Back Again
I wish I knew some of the stories of the people buried here. I bet they are fascinating.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
A History Lesson
This was our day to explore Paris as Seth took us on a walking tour. I will now amaze and astound you with my knowledge of the city. Not only did I get three-quarters of the way through a history degree, I also took a class on the history of Paris. I did double check a few of the following facts on Wikipedia.
Our first stop was the Eiffel Tower. It was built in 1889 as the entrance to the World Expo celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution. When it was built it was the tallest structure in the world and remained so until the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930. The tower was built as a temporary structure and many in Paris were upset when it wasn’t disassembled. It was almost universally hated by Parisians. It later proved to be valuable as a radio tower and was allowed to stand.
[Eiffel sketch ]
We all sat on the Champ de Mars and quickly sketched the tower. The Champ is named after the Roman god of war because it was used for military exercises conducted at the Ecole Militaire at the far end. This is also the site of a massacre. In 1791 the military opened fire on a crowd who had gathered with a petition to remove Loius XVI from power. Fifty people died.
In June a new museum opened nearby. The Musée du quai Branly was designed by Jean Nouvel to house a collection of tribal and indigenous art. It features a wall covered in plants. As much as I love art, history and culture, I get excited by contemporary architecture! This building is incredibly cool.
In Paris you don’t walk along the Seine, you stroll. The walkways and streets are wide and comfortable, thanks to Baron Haussmann. In 1853 under the direction of Napolean III, Haussmann began a massive rebuilding of the city. At that time Paris was a still a medieval city plagued by crime, disease and decay caused by decades of revolution. The narrow winding streets had proved the perfect defense for revolutionaries as barricades were built in battles with authorities. Haussmann’s plans demolished large sections of the city, replacing them with wide, safe and indefensible streets. He created the long, dramatic avenues that connect major sites. The look we associate today with Paris was created by him. But “Haussmannisation” wasn’t without criticism. It destroyed the historic Paris and displaced all but the bourgeois.
The Champs-Élysées is French for the Elysian Fields, the place in Greek mythology where the righteous dead went to rest. The tree-lined avenue runs from the Place de le Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. We crossed the Seine on the Pont Alexandre III, passing the Grand Palais on the way to the Champs-Élysées.
You never know what you’ll find on the streets.
This was our first view of the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to celebrate his victories, but not completed until the 1830s.
I took this picture while crossing the street, but everyone else was willing to risk their lives for the perfect shot.
Today the Place de le Concorde is a busy square full of tourists, but it has a sordid and gruesome history. The Place was first designed in 1755 to hold an equestrian statue of King Louis XV. The statue was torn down during the French Revolution and a guillotine was erected. In this spot Louis XVI, Marie Antionette, Robspierre and thousands of others were executed during the Great Terror. The obelisk that is now the center of the Place once stood at the Temple of Luxor in Egypt and was presented to King Louis-Philippe in 1833.
To the west is the Tuileries Garden. The garden was part of the Tuileries Palace originally built by Catherine de' Medici. When Louis XIV completed Versailles the Palace in Paris was left vacant and the gardens became a resort for Parisians. After the revolution the Tuileries became the primary home of Napolean and Josephine. The Palace was finally destroyed by arson in 1871 as a political protest. It once made up the fourth side of the Louvre and there is some talk of rebuilding it to allow the museum to expand. The formal gardens today still reflect the original plans from 1664 and are a beautiful spot to sit and watch the crowds.
At the far end of the gardens stands the largest museum in the world, the Louvre. The building began it’s life as a palace for Philip Augustus in 1160. The oldest part of the existing building dates back to the 1500s and sections were built over the centuries by different monarchs. For many years artists were allowed to occupy parts of the palace and it began it’s life as museum began during the French Revolution. The Pyramid was designed in 1989 by I.M. Pei when the museum was renovated.
Northwest of the Louvre is Les Halles, considered by my guidebook as the “heart of contemporary Paris”. It was once the location of a vast covered market and today it is a bustling shopping district. We spent the rest of the afternoon here, exploring the streets.
Art nouveau accents are everywhere, from the Metro stations to building details.
This is a recycling bin. Not much chance of missing it, is there?
Each Arrondisment has a distinct feel, and Les Halles, bordered on the north by Montmartre, is full of life. This is the bohemian, artistic area, full of musicians and street performers. As we ate at a little café a pair of flautists serenaded us with a piece from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” I sat and sketched, and for once I didn’t call attention to myself. This is the area to find great deals in the little shops that line the streets. Audrey, Brighton, Marty and I had fun exploring. On the way back we came across St. Eustache and I had another chance to sketch.
[sketch]
These lamposts illustrate the different personality each district of Paris has.
I can't take this one seriously. It looks like a giant cactus.
We walked all the way back to the Eiffel Tower and at a crepe stand nearby Brighton introduced us to a French delicacy, banana nutella crepes.
Our first stop was the Eiffel Tower. It was built in 1889 as the entrance to the World Expo celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution. When it was built it was the tallest structure in the world and remained so until the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930. The tower was built as a temporary structure and many in Paris were upset when it wasn’t disassembled. It was almost universally hated by Parisians. It later proved to be valuable as a radio tower and was allowed to stand.
[Eiffel sketch ]
We all sat on the Champ de Mars and quickly sketched the tower. The Champ is named after the Roman god of war because it was used for military exercises conducted at the Ecole Militaire at the far end. This is also the site of a massacre. In 1791 the military opened fire on a crowd who had gathered with a petition to remove Loius XVI from power. Fifty people died.
In June a new museum opened nearby. The Musée du quai Branly was designed by Jean Nouvel to house a collection of tribal and indigenous art. It features a wall covered in plants. As much as I love art, history and culture, I get excited by contemporary architecture! This building is incredibly cool.
In Paris you don’t walk along the Seine, you stroll. The walkways and streets are wide and comfortable, thanks to Baron Haussmann. In 1853 under the direction of Napolean III, Haussmann began a massive rebuilding of the city. At that time Paris was a still a medieval city plagued by crime, disease and decay caused by decades of revolution. The narrow winding streets had proved the perfect defense for revolutionaries as barricades were built in battles with authorities. Haussmann’s plans demolished large sections of the city, replacing them with wide, safe and indefensible streets. He created the long, dramatic avenues that connect major sites. The look we associate today with Paris was created by him. But “Haussmannisation” wasn’t without criticism. It destroyed the historic Paris and displaced all but the bourgeois.
The Champs-Élysées is French for the Elysian Fields, the place in Greek mythology where the righteous dead went to rest. The tree-lined avenue runs from the Place de le Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. We crossed the Seine on the Pont Alexandre III, passing the Grand Palais on the way to the Champs-Élysées.
You never know what you’ll find on the streets.
This was our first view of the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to celebrate his victories, but not completed until the 1830s.
I took this picture while crossing the street, but everyone else was willing to risk their lives for the perfect shot.
Today the Place de le Concorde is a busy square full of tourists, but it has a sordid and gruesome history. The Place was first designed in 1755 to hold an equestrian statue of King Louis XV. The statue was torn down during the French Revolution and a guillotine was erected. In this spot Louis XVI, Marie Antionette, Robspierre and thousands of others were executed during the Great Terror. The obelisk that is now the center of the Place once stood at the Temple of Luxor in Egypt and was presented to King Louis-Philippe in 1833.
To the west is the Tuileries Garden. The garden was part of the Tuileries Palace originally built by Catherine de' Medici. When Louis XIV completed Versailles the Palace in Paris was left vacant and the gardens became a resort for Parisians. After the revolution the Tuileries became the primary home of Napolean and Josephine. The Palace was finally destroyed by arson in 1871 as a political protest. It once made up the fourth side of the Louvre and there is some talk of rebuilding it to allow the museum to expand. The formal gardens today still reflect the original plans from 1664 and are a beautiful spot to sit and watch the crowds.
At the far end of the gardens stands the largest museum in the world, the Louvre. The building began it’s life as a palace for Philip Augustus in 1160. The oldest part of the existing building dates back to the 1500s and sections were built over the centuries by different monarchs. For many years artists were allowed to occupy parts of the palace and it began it’s life as museum began during the French Revolution. The Pyramid was designed in 1989 by I.M. Pei when the museum was renovated.
Northwest of the Louvre is Les Halles, considered by my guidebook as the “heart of contemporary Paris”. It was once the location of a vast covered market and today it is a bustling shopping district. We spent the rest of the afternoon here, exploring the streets.
Art nouveau accents are everywhere, from the Metro stations to building details.
This is a recycling bin. Not much chance of missing it, is there?
Each Arrondisment has a distinct feel, and Les Halles, bordered on the north by Montmartre, is full of life. This is the bohemian, artistic area, full of musicians and street performers. As we ate at a little café a pair of flautists serenaded us with a piece from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” I sat and sketched, and for once I didn’t call attention to myself. This is the area to find great deals in the little shops that line the streets. Audrey, Brighton, Marty and I had fun exploring. On the way back we came across St. Eustache and I had another chance to sketch.
[sketch]
These lamposts illustrate the different personality each district of Paris has.
I can't take this one seriously. It looks like a giant cactus.
We walked all the way back to the Eiffel Tower and at a crepe stand nearby Brighton introduced us to a French delicacy, banana nutella crepes.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Sambourne and Leighton
The advantage to spending three weeks in London is that it gives me time to visit some of the more obscure and less touristy places that I probably wouldn’t see otherwise. Today I had the chance to visit the Linley Sambourne and Frederick Leighton Houses in Kensington with Deann, Kelly and Una. These homes compliment Red House and gave me a more rounded feel for the life of an artist in the late 1800s.
Linley Sambourne was a cartoonist for the satirical Punch Magazine for almost 40 years. His friends included William Morris, Henry Irving and Oscar Wilde. He began his career as an engineering draftsman but the cartoon sketches he made for his friends got him noticed by the editor of Punch. Freelance work soon turned into a permanent position. Sambourne made up for his lack of artistic training by using photography to improve his illustrations. He had his family and friends dress up in costumes and pose, acting out the ideas for his illustrations. This soon led to a passion for photography which he pursued as avidly as he did his cartooning. Sambourne’s home, located at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington, is remarkable in that all the interiors have been preserved by his family. It looks much the same today as it did over 100 years ago. The tour through the home is also remarkable. You are greeted at the door by the Sambourne family’s housekeeper who over the next hour gives you a running monologue of their life based on journals they kept. The home is very Victorian, but modern in it’s outlook. William Morris wallpaper and stained glass windows remarkably similar to those at Red House are still in place.
Kensington and Notting Hill are beautiful residential areas and it was nice to spend an afternoon walking through them.
The shops are just as nice as those in the busier areas in London, but are less crowded and the atmosphere is more relaxed. We found an art store with remarkably low prices. I bought myself a new set of sketching pencils.
We also discovered Hotel Chocolat. Hotel looks like it’s name, a trendy boutique hotel lobby with sleek brown and black walls. The chocolates are displayed like artwork, making the store sensual on several levels. I splurged and bought a few to taste.
Next we walked to the Fredrick Leighton House at 12 Holland Park Road. Leighton’s Pre-Raphaelite style has seen a resurgence in the last few years and he is most know today for “Flaming June.”
Leighton was famous in his day and painted portraits of England’s nobility. Unlike Sambourne he was paid very well for his work and put much of that money into his house.
He created for himself a fantasy land similar in vision to that of William Morris, but very different in character. The main floor features the Arab Hall, a soaring Arabian inspired dome lined in gorgeous turquoise tile. It must have been incredibly exotic to his Victorian contemporaries. Leighton had a large studio here and renovated several times before his death in 1896. Today the home is a museum and outreach art center. The current exhibition upstairs features the work of a Muslim fashion designer.
Linley Sambourne was a cartoonist for the satirical Punch Magazine for almost 40 years. His friends included William Morris, Henry Irving and Oscar Wilde. He began his career as an engineering draftsman but the cartoon sketches he made for his friends got him noticed by the editor of Punch. Freelance work soon turned into a permanent position. Sambourne made up for his lack of artistic training by using photography to improve his illustrations. He had his family and friends dress up in costumes and pose, acting out the ideas for his illustrations. This soon led to a passion for photography which he pursued as avidly as he did his cartooning. Sambourne’s home, located at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington, is remarkable in that all the interiors have been preserved by his family. It looks much the same today as it did over 100 years ago. The tour through the home is also remarkable. You are greeted at the door by the Sambourne family’s housekeeper who over the next hour gives you a running monologue of their life based on journals they kept. The home is very Victorian, but modern in it’s outlook. William Morris wallpaper and stained glass windows remarkably similar to those at Red House are still in place.
Kensington and Notting Hill are beautiful residential areas and it was nice to spend an afternoon walking through them.
The shops are just as nice as those in the busier areas in London, but are less crowded and the atmosphere is more relaxed. We found an art store with remarkably low prices. I bought myself a new set of sketching pencils.
We also discovered Hotel Chocolat. Hotel looks like it’s name, a trendy boutique hotel lobby with sleek brown and black walls. The chocolates are displayed like artwork, making the store sensual on several levels. I splurged and bought a few to taste.
Next we walked to the Fredrick Leighton House at 12 Holland Park Road. Leighton’s Pre-Raphaelite style has seen a resurgence in the last few years and he is most know today for “Flaming June.”
Leighton was famous in his day and painted portraits of England’s nobility. Unlike Sambourne he was paid very well for his work and put much of that money into his house.
He created for himself a fantasy land similar in vision to that of William Morris, but very different in character. The main floor features the Arab Hall, a soaring Arabian inspired dome lined in gorgeous turquoise tile. It must have been incredibly exotic to his Victorian contemporaries. Leighton had a large studio here and renovated several times before his death in 1896. Today the home is a museum and outreach art center. The current exhibition upstairs features the work of a Muslim fashion designer.
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