Work brings me to Paris. I have a store to supervise, an event to help prepare and a our works fashion show to enjoy. These are busy times but walking Paris streets is always a wonderful indulgence. I have photos of lampposts as my souvenirs.
I spent a day thinking about the photos I had taken of the Macellaio restaurant front on Exmouth market to try and describe why I found the images both powerful and yet so familiar. Eventually out of the dusty recesses of my past memories came a visit to the Lumiere cinema in 1989 to see the Peter Greenaway film The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover. Greenaway uses framing and frames within frames to both focus the viewer and capture the reference of the work (often a painting). The framing can be literal i.e. enclosure or phenomenal i.e. suggestive or referential. In the image of the hanging carcasses with the sofa we have a double frame. First the Chesterfield leather sofa placed in the street below a canopy captures a space to focus the viewer, a suggestive frame of an interior space. Second the hanging meat is behind the window to a butcher’s refrigerated store, a second framed interior space set deep within the first. Both spaces are private spaces inverted to become public spaces and in so doing create an intimacy with the viewer through suggestive enclosure. Phenomenal space is referenced through subjective association, for me this was the films of Peter Greenaway. The frame within a frame and the inversion of most private to public domain are well-used techniques in Greenaway films. The impossible panoramic scenes supposedly shot in the back of a meat van from The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover immediately come to mind as do the food still life paintings of the 17th Century Dutch Baroque.
Back at the V&A again, probably my favourite place at the moment the collection here is endless. Today I am in the Ironwork Galley looking at iron lacework. Simple techniques such as bending, spitting, upsetting, twisting, punching, tapering and drawing applied numerous times on reiterated shapes and fused together make exquisite patterns. To see how a recurring twist or knot can overlay the grammar of a diagonal grid or the endless meander of leaves and volutes.
I’m in Tokyo this week preparing for the Alice In Wonderland book launch (see spatial tab). For the diary I decided to collect some Tokyo graphic art in combined 2D and 3D in the form of vending machines. Here are some samples.
Toc Toc
A final check in the store, then I head off to Fondazione Prada in the south of Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas. Coffee in Bar Luce by Wes Anderson and I feel as though I have been transported onto the set of the Royal Tenebaums.
I met James Goldstein at a work event last night and have been invited to James Goldstein’s home when next in LA. The Sheats house by John Lautner of 1963 has been an inspiration since I first saw it when I was a student.
My work brings me to Verona for a factory visit to check on the new display cases that are destined for the Paris and New York stores. Late afternoon allows me time to soak up the setting of the greatest love story of them all, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In the low evening sun Verona is a stunning tapestry of textures. A city crammed with details all beautifully aged with time. A city built in soft earthly shades with a counterpoint of dark opulent shadows. A city of two halves, of dark and light where sun kissed streets and shadows dance an endless tarantella.
A blaze of interwoven words inked on the walls beneath that famous Romeo and Juliet balcony shows that romance still runs strong.
Today is a rare exclusive, breakfast at The John Soane’s Museum. The event marked the opening for the first time of 3 private rooms, including Soane’s model room following a complete restoration. Bibliomania at its very best.
Today I am having a meeting at Aqua Shard to discuss a collaboration project between Vivienne Westwood & Cool Earth. The heady view from Aqua Shard sadly all too soon I am back at ground level, weaving in an out of the City workers on my walk across London Bridge, a complete contrast to the floating feeling from a moment ago.
