Friday 21 December 2012

Dear Diary... Wild Cat

The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  

As far as wallpapers go a repeat pattern of a rearing cheetah may be a little much for some but The Curiosity Cabinet is wildly excited by this exotic animal print by Thibaut! With just the right measure of glitz and glamour, it is a gorgeous way to add a little excitement to your interior environment. The muted foliate background provides a jungle setting for gold cheetahs to pop out from and come alive in your living room.




Thibaut, Cheetah, in metallic gold

Thursday 13 December 2012

Dear Diary... The Eccentrics


The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  

By following their own aesthetic instincts, the women below have chartered the most individual, creative and inspiring course for fashion from the 1970s until today. Eccentric, theatrical, unique and a law unto themselves, they have inspired and directed style by not following the crowd. They are artists of fashion. 

"Exaggeration is my only reality.
Diana Vreeland



Diana Vreeland: the infamous and eccentric fashion editor in her New York all-red apartment which she wanted "to look like a garden, but a garden in hell."



The legendary and often feared Harpers Bazaar and Vogue editor and later Curator of Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art helped change the domain of fashion from that belonging to 'society ladies' to that which existed within the sphere of culture, art and creativity.


Iris Apfel for MAC

For Iris Apfel the worlds of art and fashion have always collided. From an Art History student who won the Vogue writing prize to a textile designer and business woman that reproduced antique fabrics for interiors, Iris Apfel became recognised as a New York style icon much later in life. 



Impossibly hip: At 90 Iris Apfel graces the cover of Dazed & Confused for November 2012


Challenging Italy's classic, chic style Anna Piaggi's column for Italian Vogue was a precursor to the blog - conversational, personal and witty.



Karl Lagerfeld's muse and Vogue Italia's creative consultant, Piaggi was a style icon who championed the theatrical in her dressing. 


Isabella Blow: the ultimate of the British eccentrics, Isabella Blow will forever be remembered for discovering Alexander McQueen and always bedecked in a Philip Treacy hat.


Isabella Blow in her signature style, a Philip Treacy hat



Peggy Guggenheim: the New York art collector and gallerist accessorised with lap dogs and exaggerated, winged glasses. She even incorporated art in her dress by wearing Alexander Calder earrings to the opening of her first gallery Art of This Century.



Peggy Guggenheim in her Venice Palazzo which later became an art gallery.


"Style is everything. It helps you get up in the morning. It helps you get down the stairs. It's a way of life. Without it, you're nobody."

Diana Vreeland





Monday 10 December 2012

Dear Diary... Decadent Creatures

The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  

Today we're loving the printed fabrics by House of Hackney.

Sloths smoking hookah pipes, monkeys shotting tequila, a pirate badger sipping a mojito, a dandy frog wearing a bowler hat... these cheeky animals make up the Hackney Empire print for House of Hackney. Launched in 2011, House of Hackney's decorative prints are a witty, playful and ultimately decadent addition to an interior. A maximalists dream. 




Hackney Empire print











Flights of Fancy print





Saturday 1 December 2012

Curiosity Shop #11

 Moths to a Flame

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”  
  
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby




Evoking old world glamour, decadent garden parties and beautiful creatures shimmering like moths at dusk, F. Scott Fitzgerald really knew how to pen the style of an era the whose popularity has never waned. Through the swish of their damask, the softness of their velvet and the sparkle of their beaded gowns, the style of the Jazz Age is deliciously imagined in the description of his characters in The Great Gatsby. His novels call to mind the fashions of the Art Deco era - motor cars, the Charleston, the Manhattan, flappers and the geometric precision of Art Deco design - capturing the very spirit of the era. In this hedonistic post-war period it felt, especially in America, as if anything were possible.
 
If Gatsby’s words were to be illustrated, the Art Deco fashion illustrations of this epoch would be fitting.  More than just a sketch for clothing, they transport you to the dazzling Jazz Age where fashionable women take centre stage. These detailed drawings of the latest fashions are contextualized in gardens and interiors where the likes of Jay Gatsby himself might be found. The decadent and flamboyant atmosphere of this time is magically construed by the use of symbolic elements in the picture landscape. By including interior objects, tassled lamps, statues, splendid gardens, intricate bird cages, exotic birds, handsome men to dance with and women lounging nonchalantly on chaise longues, to name a few, they become portraits of an age as well as illustrations for the famous fashion designers such as Poiret.
 
The colours and composition draw your attention to the central focus – women’s dress. Turbans, long strings of sparkling beads, fabulous patterns, and backless couture are intricately drawn within a flat, two dimensional space. Outlined in black and peppered with Eastern images, the taste for Asia is present in the imagery as well implied by the outlines and the two dimensional style reminiscent of 19th century Japanese woodblock prints.
 
 Two of the most skilled illustrators of the era, Georges Lepape and George Barbier, produced the beautiful creations below. 

Let these Parisian artists seduce you into the 1920s and decade preceding with champagne, garden parties and twinkling stars...

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.





















Illustration by Georges Lepape, circa 1910, of a Paul Poiret design











Illustration for Nijinsky’s Scheherazade, by Georges Lepape, 1910



Fashion plate from Journal des Dames et des Modes (1912-1914). No. 46


Monday 26 November 2012

Dear Diary... strike a pose there's nothing to it!

The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  


Greta Garbo, and Monroe
Deitrich and DiMaggio
Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean
On the cover of a magazine...
Come on Vogue. Let your body move to the music!



Lynne Koester by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Italia, 1984

Loving the 1980's power posing by Lynne Koester for Vogue today! Talk about nostalgia. I say bring back heaving gold earrings and Madonna's vogueing*.  

*The vogue femme dance or vogueing, actually began in the 1960s in Harlem and later incorporated several styles of dance. Through improvisation, voguing requires dancers to keep track of the beat of the music, while displaying distinct arm and head movements.

Sunday 25 November 2012

Dear Diary... walk this way

The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  


As Tim Walker's fantastical photographs are currently exhibited at Somerset House, London, we thought a sprinkling of his fairy-dust, surrealist shoots for Vogue will set us on our way for a dreamy Sunday.

















Saturday 24 November 2012

Dear Diary... Les Ballets Russes


The Curiosity Cabinet's daily dose of inspiration for the aesthetically inclined...  

 Today we're bejewelled and theatrical with Les Ballets Russes






 

Thursday 22 November 2012

Curiosity Shop #10





All that Glitters...

Is GOLD!

Pre-1900, before the sharp edges of Modernism simplified our consciousness, the world was steeped in a tradition of visual opulence. The Baroque and Rococo periods looked back to the classical age for ideal images of beauty and reinterpreted these in the most decorative of ways. They created a world that literally glittered in ostentation.

You only have to visit the Palace Versaille in the Paris sunshine to see a monument to ornamentation at its finest. At Versaille, the 18th century French aesthetic style transcends into otherworldly phenomenon. Just like the copious, gilt mounted furniture and objects that inhabit the interior, the palace itself is highlighted with tips of real gold, which make it shimmer and gleam in a most extraordinary way. Versaille is a prime example where the more extreme and lavish the display of ornamentation, the more power the monarchy seemed to portray. Religious ritual power and political autonomy seemed to shine out of the most elaborate monument to wealth the world had ever seen.





From Versaille's glittering exterior to the furniture within, gilt mounts (called Ormolu) adorned almost everything to create a powerful visual effect or éclat. As candlelight danced over such an 18th century interior, the gilt mounts and frames glowed with an enchanting golden reflection that lit up an entire room. 

A fabulous example of a golden 18th century interior in London is the Wallace Collection pictured in the first image above and directly below. The Wallace Collection was established between about 1760 and 1880 by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. They amassed an incredible collection of 18th century art and furniture which now exists as a public museum.


 
 
As trade between Europe and Asia boomed in the 18th century, porcelain and objects from the East became increasingly sought after. That these objects had travelled from far and distant lands made them all the more desireable.The vogue for Asian objects increased as people found their presence in interiors exotic and fascinating. 

Ormolu mounts were added to porcelain and furniture to satisfy the Rococo taste for gilt and glitz. While the unusual beauty of these Eastern objects was appreciated, their aesthetic was essentially Europeanised to suit French taste.



This pair of of gilt-bronze-mounted Chinese celadon vases aux tritons, with mounts attributed to Pierre Gouthière (1732-1813) sold at the Sotheby'sTreasures, Princely Taste sale in London on 4 July 2012 well above their estimate of £150,000-300,000 for a staggering £577,250.

The combination of faultlessly crafted ormolu mounts and Chinese porcelain designed and painted to perfection makes them an incredibly rare and sought after pair.



Design for a Mounted Chinese Vase, ca. 1750-1785

Porcelain had an almost mythic quality in the 18th century. This was in part due to the secret recipe which the Chinese had hidden from the French for years. How porcelain was actually made and what it comprised had puzzled Europeans for centuries. Before discovering the chemical composition of porcelain there were many theories that proposed it evolved organically - it was even thought it may have been created from shells. Such notions were prevalent because for a long time after porcelain was manufactured in the late 6th century, China held the monopoly on its production. Its secret recipe provoked myth making to ensue. It was not until the 1760s that France discovered the essential component of porcelain, kaolin, which meant that true, hard-paste porcelain could be manufactured.


The recipe for porcelain manufacture was contained in the letters of the Jesuit priest Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles (1664-1741), who resided and worked at the Chinese centre for porcelain manufacture, Jingdezhen. After spying on the process he wrote letters back to France on accounts of Chinese ceramic practices.[1]


[1] These letters, written in in 1712 and 1722, were in turn published in Paris in 1717 and 1722 and were then incorporated in Jean Baptiste Du Halde's Description geographique de l'empire de la Chine, Paris, 1735.




This pair of Chinese porcelain vases with French gilt-bronze mounts, ca. 1740–50 can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The typically Rococo mounts with scrolling fronds and central cartouches hide the fact that these blue-green celadon vases have been cut down and reduced before being mounted. The Chinese character shou, which means long life, is in low relief on their body.




Like the Met example above the watery, translucent glaze of this ewer from the Wallace Collection is contextualised in oceanic imagery as it was set in gilt-bronze mounts that are bulrushes, shells and algae - perhaps an allusion to the myths of porcelains organic origins that perpetuated in the 18th century.


In the 18th century it was popular to display such ewers en garniture. Garniture usually adorned chimney places and was typically produced in odd-numbered sets, as it was believed that this was most pleasing to the eye. Most commonly comprised of three items but sometimes sets of five, types of vessels included clocks, vases, pitchers or ewers, as well as urns.


The Queens Chamber, Versaille

Gilt-mounted porcelain was just one component that made up the Rococo interior. However, it remains one of the most intriguing adornments. The dual components of gilt-mounted porcelain, Eastern ceramics and Western gilt-bronze, make them visually complex and provocative objects. This geographical and material dichotomy enables them to provoke questions of place, belonging and even cultural power within the framework of 18th century decorative arts.