Hay Wagon Fugitives...

Nelson Rockefeller, erstwhile governor of New York and famous patron and collector of modern art, was embarrassed by the slums of Albany back in the 1960s, when he had to drive through them with the Queen of the Netherlands. This Plaza was his answer. (Albany is the state capitol, by the way). Goodbye slums; hello monument to Rocky. The art critic and historian Robert Hughes's famously commented that the place was terrifying and he could imagine a swastika on the top of any of these skyscrapers. I have been coming here my whole life, and now, although I can't really argue with Hughes, I like it. The sunshine helps; of course. We had the whole freakin' place to ourselves this Saturday when we went to visit the fabulous New York State Museum located here (a museum every weekend, that's us). The day was perfect; Kid 1 had a new outfit (so Rhoda Morgenstern); it was just time for a photoshoot; time to unleash my inner surrealist, who has so little play in Vermont. (You may think that's a good thing after viewing the video.) If you have forgotten de Chirico from your art history class, here are some refreshers. I never go to this place without thinking of him.




Giorgio de Chirico, Nostalgia for the Infinite (ca. 1911). From http://www.colchsfc.ac.uk/art/cities.htm.



Giorgio de Chirico. Piazza d'Italia. 1913. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. Image from www.abcgallery.com

Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia article about him:

De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures.

Woolfooting Through Old Schenectady

General view of the General Electric Plant in Schenectady, New York. From the Library of Congress Digital Images collection; Anonymous c. 1907

(Sorry to go all autobiographical on you but this happens when one goes to one's old hometown...)
I am at a borrowed computer some five hours from the Last House; my Dad's computer, to be exact, at the home he shares with my Stepmother and their two terriers in Albany County, New York.

I was born a few miles from where I now sit, back in darkest 1965. I entered this world at the Albany Medical Center Hospital, where my 23-year-old mother had recently completed her nursing training. I was Kid 2 for my (unbelievably) young parents (Kid 1, my sister, is two years older). Dad was working on his PhD at RPI in nearby Troy, New York when I arrived. After he finished that (still in his mid 20s) we moved to Syracuse, New York so Dad could work with General Electric there. We all came back to the Albany area, however, when I was nine and Dad took it into his 30-something head to go to medical school. (It was one tourist hot-spot after another for our family!) He chose Albany Medical Center (I remember visiting New York University, another place he was considering, but someone told him during his interview he could never afford to send his kids to private school in NYC and he wouldn't want us in the public schools). So, back we came to one of the amorphous suburban towns that characterize this part of New York state.

Dad did his MD and continued to work for GE, like about half the dads in the "town" where I then grew up. (Niskayuna, New York). Town is in quotation marks because Niskayuna is, and was, mostly a collection of subdivisions with a few old farms near the Mohawk river: no main street or town center to speak of. My parents split up when I was 12 and Dad moved to downtown Schenectady; a place with a real identity (even if it is mostly as a gag line for old Vaudevillians). I spent a lot of my growing up years in the midst of this iconic rust belt town and it will always have a place in my heart. It is different now, as I discovered again driving around today. I think it is both worse and better than it was when I was hanging out with Dad in his various apartments in the historic part of the city called "the stockade." There are some new buildings downtown, including a big movie theater, (the downtown peaked around 1940), but there are more scary people, too. GE is still here; toujours GE.

I dragged the kids on a tour around the Old Lady today; pointing out, like a budding old person myself, where we had the ceremony when I graduated high school; the bookshop me and Grampy used to go to all the time; a building that isn't there anymore where I used to work. They appeared to be mildly interested, but not very. A guy on Erie Boulevard in a hotdog suit holding a sign for Dinky Dogs was a much greater source fascination than any landmark I tried to explain. I don't fault them.





One of the old glories of the town, Proctor's Theatre; a survivor from 1926.

You can't go home again and I don't want too. (Thank You Know Who for Vermont!) But may You Know Who bless old Schenectady as well. As during my whole childhood in the 70s and early 80s, it is obvious that Schenectady still needs all the help she can get. For those who are trying, really trying to lift the old broad up again, and those who have kept faith with her all dark years; I salute you. Loyalty counts for a lot.

Old Postcards - Those Wicked Tempters!

I recently divulged my favorite Vermont antique store: M. Lewis in Waterbury.

Six months ago, when I discovered her store, I spent a happy hour or two looking through some of her big boxes of postcards at the back of the store. The last thing I need is to start another collection of things not very useful and infinitely available. I couldnt help acquiring at least a few. Some miscellaneous favorites appear above - western scenes, the Flat Iron Building in New York; a French Chateau, a watercolor of Venice. The real temptation was a set of Raphael Tuck postcards of England, unused, perfect and about a hundred years old. Someone else made their big trip to England, no doubt, and not having a digital camera came home with these. I bought them just before I made my big trip. See below. If you recognize them it may be because I posted them some time ago in my "Romantic England" post.

The Very Best Place in Vermont; Or, More About Rich People Behaving Well

Continuing with my theme of superlatives (see "The Single Most Beautiful Teacup in the World" a few posts back), I return now to tell you about the Shelburne Museum, an international treasure tucked between Route 7 and Lake Champlain in the tidy, inviting village of Shelburne, Vermont.

We (kids and I) hauled down there from the Last House yesterday (only 90 miles from our house but a world away culturally). We went partly because it was "lilac day", or whatever the musuem marketing people called it, and because, like almost all Vermont children, my kids love it there and the lilacs made as good a reason as any to go again. There are hundreds of lilac trees on the grounds of the Museum and they are just about at their peak right now. It must be smelled to be believed. And as if that weren't enough, well. I'll let the pictures do(at least some of) the talking.


One Room (of many) in One Building (of many) at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont


This Summer, the Museum has a display of 19th century carousel animals in the Round Barn Where You Buy Tickets (Vermonters Get 1/2 price tickets - Thank You Mrs. McClure.Another Vermont benefactor putting her money to good use)..


Oh the Pottery! So many place settings and so much Staffordshire on display all over. Here's Blue Tea Pot extraordinaire picturing Lafayette at Benjamin Franklin's tomb (ca.1820). It's on display this summer at a minty little exhibition on Old/New, called Design/Rewind in the Vermont House. Jenny, are you paying attention?



The Shelburne Museum is the creation of Electra Havemeyer Webb (more on her below). Mrs. Webb had buildings of historical interest moved from where they were and reconstructed on the grounds of her museum. Every building, at least those that aren't serving as art galleries, is full of artifacts appropriate to the building.






Does anybody else remember that Werner Herzog movie, Fitzcarraldo? Klaus Kinski plays a European megalomaniac who forces South American Indians to drag a steamship over some mountains. I was forced to watch it in a film class in college. (That's what you get for taking film classes, I guess). Well, the Ticonderoga, which is an enormous and real old steamship, was dragged miles from Lake Champlain over specially built train tracks to rest on the grounds here. I was actively hostile at 20 to Herzog after Fitzcarraldo, but I have gotten over it. (I heard him interviewed about Grizzly Man a couple of times and he was so intelligent, but that's another post). Mrs. Webb was right to save this boat which is truly beautiful and a great favorite of us all.


I have been to the Museum many times but I always passed this little place by, until yesterday. It's called the Stencil House - see the interior shot below. Mrs. Webb saved it from demolition in Sherburne, New York. The stencilling is amazing. The nice white-haired lady who was staffing the place explained that itinerant artists some times came back year after year to finish a job (for a few dollars and room and board). There was an unusual chair in a bedroom that I remarked about. She explained that it was an "invalid chair" and that its sturdy construction with a high, barrel-shaped back and substantial arm rests could be used to tie in an old person who might not be able to sit up or might wander... The things you learn about history at a museum.





There's a nice, readable Wikipedia article about E Havemeyer Webb from which I culled the following:

Electra Havemeyer Webb began to collect "in earnest" in 1911, more than a decade before the founding of Colonial Williamsburg and nearly a half century before authentic American antiques would return to the major rooms of the White House. When she began to gather the remnants of an earlier America there was no National Register of Historic Places. Americans had yet to understand that their heritage was interesting and worthy of preservation. Before there was Henry Francis Dupont's Winterthur, Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, or even the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Electra Havemeyer Webb was an ambitious and well-known collector of Americana. She worked with the finest antique dealers of the era, including Edith Halpert and Harry Newman, to assemble encyclopedic and irreplaceable collections of American material culture. The honesty of everyday objects spoke to Mrs. Webb, and she used her significant resources to ensure their preservation. Today the museum's Americana collection is one of the world's finest.



Portrait of Mrs. Havemeyer and Her Daughter Electra. 1895. Pastel on paper, Mary Cassatt. This picture is on view at the EHW Memorial Building on the grounds of the museum and the photo comes from the EWH link at St. Michael's College to the right.

A few months ago I wrote here about my admiration for Paul Mellon and the National Gallery. Mrs. Webb had a pedigree as good as his and the money to match. Like him, she had a gift for collecting, which is its own kind of art form and not one that many can practice the way they did. (Oh, how I would love the chance!) They didn't collect the same things, which is probably a good thing for the museum-going public. (Remember MTV's celebrity smackdown with claymation figures? Havemeyer Webb v. Paul Mellon? I would laugh at it anyway).

OK. Kid 2 is clamoring for Club Penguin. Superlatives continue next time when we take up a discussion of the two best movies ever made, and, the two best scenes in the two best movies ever made. I can hardly wait.

Vermont in Bloom. At Last.

I took these pictures over the last few days. These first two are around the Last House.

Yesterday, I accompanied Kid 1, to the Vermont State House in our little capitol city, Montpelier. The tour was great; given by a Montpelier native with a flair for the dramatic. I learned some things I didn't know about state government and lots about state history. I saw a photograph of a famous civil war general at the Vermont Historical Society (Stannard is his last name, first name George, I think, they named a Vermont town after him once he got back). The photo was great, just a little portrait, but capturing something really haunting about him. I must remember to do some research. The statue is Vermont's own Ethan Allen.

The World in a Teacup

My favorite blogger is Juliet Doyle. See her blog, "Musings From A Muddy Island," (link to your right). I think we both found inspiration in my last teacup posting and her comments on them i.e.("The Single Most Beautiful Teacup in The World"). So, in what is either an inspired bit of blogging or a disgustingly cloying display of 40-something tweeness, I am back with a few of my favorites from the China cupboard. I just checked on "Musings" and Juliet has not yet got her teacup photos and commentary going. I have faith however, that between us we can reveal the true and worthy fascination (and fun) of the teacup. Are you still in on this Juliet?



Leading off my teacup show are a few of my favorites. I am particularly fond of the one with the pine cones on it. It's got an American feel(though made in England). The one with the gold rim is just so elegant - I felt underdressed and clumsy just holding it. The black and white pieces photographed on the old chair are from a box lot of 27 that I picked up at auction a couple of weeks ago. The pattern is "Minuet" by WM Adams & Son England and my guess is they are from the teens or '20s. They are a little unusual because they are black transferware, not the more usual blue. I love the pattern and the style and also that these are meant for everyday as "genuine English ironstone" (a.k.a., "clay") not fine china. The demitasse cup is particularly fetching.






These next few are not properly mine; my mother and her husband asked us to store them some years back. It appears likely that I will be their next custodian, however. (Teacups outlive their owners, which is one of the great and sort of scary things about them). The "May" teacup is a little too sweet, but unashamedly so and I think it pulls it off. The others are just plain refined; real emblems of the pinnacle of western civilization that tea drinking represents (at least some of the time - like those times you bother to go to the China cabinet and get out the good teacups).

I know entire books have been devoted to exploring the great and overlooked contributions to the world of the simplest things; an engineer called Henry Petroski published a book in the early 90s about the pencil: The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. Has the teacup book been written? I searched Amazon.com and didn't find it - maybe Juliet and I could take it on? Or maybe a blog post or two, or five, is enough.