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From the Ragamala performance at Fort Worth's Main Street Arts Festival.

Mohiniyattam, also spelled Mohiniattam (Malayalam: മോഹിനിയാട്ടം), is a traditional South Indian dance from Kerala, developed by the great Tamil nattuvanar (dance master) Vadivelu,one of the Thanjavur Quartet. It is one of the eight Indian classical dance forms. It is considered a very graceful dance meant to be performed as a solo recital by women. The term Mohiniyattam comes from the words "Mohini" meaning a woman who enchants onlookers and "aattam" meaning graceful and sensuous body movements. The word "Mohiniyattam" literally means "dance of the enchantress".

 

Source: wikipedia

Sculpture spotted at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cliveden (pronounced Klivd'n) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Burnham and Taplow. The main house sits 40 metres (130 ft) above the banks of the River Thames, and its grounds slope down to the river. Cliveden has become one of the National Trust's most popular pay-for-entry visitor attractions, hosting 524,807 visitors in 2019.

 

Cliveden has been the home to a Prince of Wales, two Dukes, an Earl, and finally the Viscounts Astor. As the home of Nancy Astor, wife of the 2nd Viscount Astor, Cliveden was the meeting place of the 'Cliveden Set' of the 1920s and 30s—a group of political intellectuals.

 

Later, during the early 1960s when it was the home of the 3rd Viscount Astor, it became the setting for key events of the notorious Profumo affair.

 

After the Astor family stopped living there, by the 1970s it was leased to Stanford University, which used it as an overseas campus. Today the house is leased to a company that runs it as a five-star hotel.

 

This is part of a set of ancient glass drinking vessels in the collection of the Archaeology Museum in Axum, Ethiopia.

 

I love the contrast between the restrained, classical shape of the basic vessel, including the fillet below the rim, and the lively decorative loops that dance their way around its circumference.

 

I'm also impressed by the consistency in shape and size between and among the individual pieces in this set.

 

The Axumite Kingdom maintained extensive trade ties with other parts of the ancient world, so this item could have come from any of several far-off markets. One of my viewers kindly let me know these pieces are believed to have been imported from Alexandria.

 

As different as the Axumite world was from ours, I'd like to think the excitement of unpacking these exotic goods and using them for the first time would have been the same in both societies.

 

While these pieces are probably well over a thousand years old, they look as fresh as anything you'd find in one of the hip art glass galleries in the Seattle area.

 

I'll take a dozen, thank you!

 

The Axumite Kingdom evolved from a city-state to a regional power between the second century before the current era and the second century of the current era.

 

At its peak between the third and sixth centuries of the current era, Axum controlled inter-regional and Red Sea trade. Axum is believed to have traded widely, with contacts in Byzantium, Alexandria and southern Europe.

 

Axum began to decline in the seventh century with the spread of Islam, which severed the trade routes that had been Axum's economic lifeblood.

 

A remnant of the Axum Kingdom persisted in the Blue Nile region until a rebellion finished it off in the tenth century.

 

I've complied with restrictions on the use of flash, and taken photos only when permitted by the museum.

 

Fine Art Ballet Photography: Nikon D810 Elliot McGucken Fine Art Ballerina Dancer Dancing Classical Ballet Seascape Landscape Photography!

 

Fine Art Ballet Photography: Nikon D810 Elliot McGucken Fine Art Ballerina Dancer Dancing Classical Ballet Seascape Landscape Photography!

 

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"RAGE--Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. " --Homer's Iliad capturing the rage of the 45EPIC landscapes and seascapes! :)

 

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The Birth of Venus! Beautiful Golden Ratio Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess! Helen of Troy! She was tall, thin, fit, and quite pretty!

  

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Angkor Wat or "Capital Temple" is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world. It was first a Hindu and later a Buddhist temple. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, present-day Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum.

 

Breaking from the Shiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early Dravidian architecture, with key features such as the Jagati. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.

 

The modern name, Angkor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer; Angkor, meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ), which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara (नगर). Wat is the Khmer word for "temple grounds" (Sanskrit: वाट vāṭa ""enclosure").

 

HISTORY

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. It is in an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures. It is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

 

According to one legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to act as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.

 

According to the 13th century Chinese traveler Daguan Zhou, it was believed by some that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect. The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113-C. 1150). Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the king's state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished.

 

In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon respectively) a few kilometers to the north.

 

In the late 13th century, Angkor Wat gradually moved from Hindu to Theravada Buddhist use, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was somewhat neglected after the 16th century it was never completely abandoned, its preservation being due in part to the fact that its moat also provided some protection from encroachment by the jungle.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of."

 

In the mid-19th century, the temple was visited by the French naturalist and explorer, Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:

 

"One of these temples - a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo - might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged."

 

Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, found it difficult to believe that the Khmers could have built the temple, and mistakenly dated it to around the same era as Rome. The true history of Angkor Wat was pieced together only from stylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor site. There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of settlement including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing usually found at ancient sites. Instead there is the evidence of the monuments themselves.

 

Angkor Wat required considerable restoration in the 20th century, mainly the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation. Work was interrupted by the civil war and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period other than the theft and destruction of mostly post-Angkorian statues.The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States and its neighbor Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863. From a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937. Angkor Wat's aesthetics were also on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called musée Indo-chinois which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from C. 1880 to the mid-1920s. The splendid artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins. This quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of the country that had been under Siamese (Thai) control since 1351 AD (Manich Jumsai 2001), or by some accounts, 1431 AD. Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time.

 

ARCHITECTURE

SITE AND PLAN

Angkor Wat, located at 13°24′45″N 103°52′0″E, is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire's state temples and the later plan of concentric galleries. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean. Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple.Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction - prasavya in Hindu terminology - as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services. The archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower. It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.

 

A further interpretation of Angkor Wat has been proposed by Eleanor Mannikka. Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, she argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under King Suryavarman II: "as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power and to honor and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above." Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles. She distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.

 

STYLE

Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture - the Angkor Wat style - to which it has given its name. By the 12th century Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested. The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity and style." Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.

 

FEATURES

OUTER ENCLOSURE

The outer wall, 1024 by 802 m and 4.5 m high, is surrounded by a 30 m apron of open ground and a moat 190 m wide. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge. There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points; the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper. Under the southern tower is a statue of Vishnu, known as Ta Reach, which may originally have occupied the temple's central shrine.Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as they are large enough to admit those animals. These galleries have square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner (east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth. The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres, which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets. Most of the area is now covered by forest. A 350 m causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself. The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure.

 

CENTRAL STRUCTURE

The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu.

 

Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points, and the two inner galleries each have towers at their corners, forming a quincunx with the central tower. Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides.

 

The outer gallery measures 187 by 215 m, with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called Preah Poan (the "Hall of a Thousand Gods"). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water.

 

North and south of the cloister are libraries.

 

Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The second-level enclosure is 100 by 115 m, and may originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru.

 

Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery. The very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers. The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises 43 m to a height of 65 m above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains, the central tower is raised above the surrounding four. The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism, the new walls featuring standing Buddhas. In 1934, the conservator George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.

 

DECORATION

Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these, "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving".

 

From the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hindu mythology.

 

On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92 asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst"). and a battle between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna. Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory. Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images (30–40 cm) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95–110 cm) more prominently at every level of the temple from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewelry and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.

 

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find. The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm in diameter and 3 cm deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place. The monument was made out of millions of tonnes of sandstone and it has a greater volume as well as mass than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The Angkor Wat Temple consumes about 6 million to 10 million blocks of sandstone with an average weight of 1.5 tons each. In fact, the entire city of Angkor used up far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined, and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids which use limestone quarried barely half a km away all the time, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 km to the northeast. The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres upstream and against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres. However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2012 a shorter 35-kilometre canal connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead.

 

Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels even roofs are carved. There are miles of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hair styles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1000 square metres of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a prime target for robbers. While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 m, this took about 60 days to carve. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. The labor force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artifacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.

 

ANGKOR WAT TODAY

The Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992, which has provided some funding and has encouraged the Cambodian government to protect the site. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas and other bas-reliefs which decorate the temple from damage. The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts. Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team completed restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005. World Monuments Fund began conservation work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008 after several years of conditions studies. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces. The main phase of work ended in 2012, and the final component will be the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in 2013. Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor. The dehydration and radiation resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 2004 and 2005, government figures suggest that, respectively, 561.000 and 677.000 foreign visitors arrived in Siem Reap province, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia for both years. The site has been managed by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance - as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples - although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams rather than by the Cambodian authorities. Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organized seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasized the importance of providing high quality accommodation and services in order for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture. In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist City" which would be developed with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large amounts of tourists. The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features. Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems. It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat. Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern over the charming nature and atmosphere of their town being compromised in order to entertain tourism. Since this charming local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture. At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, both parties have agreed Borobudur and Angkor Wat to become sister sites and the provinces will become sister provinces. Two Indonesian airlines are considering the opportunity to open a direct flight from Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Siem Reap.

 

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All my photography celebrates the physics of light! dx4/dt=ic! Light Time Dimension Theory: The Foundational Physics Unifying Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: A Simple, Illustrated Introduction to the Physical: geni.us/Fa1Q

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca: On entering a temple we assume all signs of reverence. How much more reverent then should we be before the heavenly bodies, the stars, the very nature of God!

 

Ave Canora classical made of Cocobolo sides and back, Englemann Spruce top, Ebony binding, fretboard, and headplate, Maple purfling. Rosette is made of sixteen Cocobolo tiles with Maple and Holly purfling.

Classical Alice vs Nanette

Both got very detailed fine and long lashes

arhitecture in paris france

This is NOT a self portrait........

 

Thanks to Les Brumes for the texture.

 

This image can be purchased at Imagekind

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Colour version at

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LA Beautiful Ballerina Dancing Ballet Levitated Mass LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art! Nikon D810 70-200mm VR2 F2.8! Fine Art Classical Ballet in Pointe Shoes Slippers Leotard Tutu Photography! High Res Model Portraits Professional Arabesque!

 

Epic Art & 45EPIC Gear exalting golden ratio designs for your Hero's Odyssey:

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Support epic fine art! 45surf ! Bitcoin: 1FMBZJeeHVMu35uegrYUfEkHfPj5pe9WNz

 

Exalt the goddess archetype in the fine art of photography! My Epic Book: Photographing Women Models!

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Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype: How to Shoot Epic ...

 

Epic! Beautiful Surf Fine Art Portrait Swimsuit Bikini Models!

 

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Some of my epic books, prints, & more!

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Exalt your photography with Golden Ratio Compositions!

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Golden Ratio Compositions & Secret Sacred Geometry for Photography, Fine Art, & Landscape Photographers: How to Exalt Art with Leonardo da Vinci's, Michelangelo's!

 

Epic Landscape Photography:

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A Simple Guide to the Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography: Master Composition, Lenses, Camera Settings, Aperture, ISO, ... Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography)

 

Enjoy my physics!! Light Time Dimension Theory dx4/dt=ic: The Foundational Physics Unifying Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: A Simple, Illustrated Introduction to the Physical

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Ralph Waldo Emerson. “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship”

 

At the CityArts festival, Dallas

This was commissioned by the music department when I was on staff at Barnes & Noble's product development department. It was to be used on some gift packaging, but I left soon after this and don't know how or when it was finally used.

 

I have long loved to draw portraits with Prismacolor pencils, so this was sort of a fun twist on that ... not quite portraits, but more still life. I believe this was the last commercial piece I did in colored pencil. I'd like to do more as it's my favorite media. As with most of my colored pencil pieces, I snuck my name into part of the design. ;-)

 

Colored pencil on paper.

Cerise silk tutu with white net. Decorated with white lace, silver appliques and cerise crystals.

an architectural detail of the public library in Cooperstown NY; Ernest Flagg (1857-1947) was the architect of this classical building completed in 1898

4th January 2013 - 4/365

 

I don't really know what classical homoeopathy is or why it's different from regular homoeopathy but I like the skeptical character above the cafe next door showing his disdain for the practice.

 

Also if you look closely you may be able to see the reflection of a 365er snapping his photo...

Much more Modern than Classicalhttp://www.behance.net/gallery/Classical-No/6035229

"Zephyr Dancing with Flora" 19th-century sculpture by Giovanni Maria Benzoni, with ancient Roman sculptures in the background; in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Pretty Ballerina Dancing Ballet Griffth Observatory Los Angeles City Skyline! Nikon D810 70-200mm VR2 F2.8! Fine Art Classical Ballet in Pointe Shoes Slippers Leotard Tutu Photography! High Res LA Model Portraits of Professional Ballerina! Jette Jump!

Built in 1901, this Hawaiian Gothic-style hotel, mixing elements of the Queen Anne, Classical Revival, Beaux Arts, and Renaissance Revival styles, was designed by Oliver G. Traphagen and built by the Lucas Brothers for Walter Chamberlain Peacock as the first large hotel on Waikiki. Expanded in 1918 with the addition of two six-story concrete wings and a large rooftop addition on the original building, the hotel has changed scale and massing considerably from its original design, but maintains its original facade, roof, and decorative trim and ornament. The first hotel on Waikiki, the Moana featured 75 guest rooms with bathrooms and telephone service, a main parlor, salon, billiard room, and library, and a main reception area on the first floor, a grand staircase, ionic fluted columns inside the main lobby, an electric elevator, and an open two-story portion of the lobby ringed by balustrades on the second floor, with the hotel being considered very modern and luxurious for its time. In 1904, a banyan tree was planted in the courtyard on the ocean side of the hotel by Jared Smith, Director of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, which has since grown to be 75 feet tall and 150 feet wide. The hotel proved a bit too ambitious for the investment Peacock had put into it, and it was sold to Alexander Young in 1905 after encountering financial difficulties. Following Young’s death in 1910, the building became the property of the Territorial Hotel Company, founded by Young, which expanded the hotel with two wings in 1918, but went bankrupt during the Great Depression, with ownership then coming under the Matson Navigation Company. Various famous guests stayed at the hotel over the years, including the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VIII in 1920, author Agatha Christie and her husband in 1922, and Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, whom mysteriously died of strychnine poisoning in the hotel, though her murder remains unsolved. The original building features lots of classical Ionic columns, a hipped roof with broad overhanging eaves and brackets, clapboard siding, arched openings at the lanais with fleur-de-lis motif panels between them and supported by doric columns, decorative balustrades, one-over-one double-hung windows in singles and groups. In the center of the building is a tower with oxeye windows below the main roofline, doric pilasters on the corners, a lanai on the sixth floor with arched openings and a long row of french doors, and a tall porte cochere in the center of the first and second floors of the tower with fluted ionic columns, a roofline wrapped with a decorative balustrade, and an architrave featuring festoons, dentils, and brackets. The building also features lanais on the fifth floor below the roofline with decorative columns and sawn balustrades supported by brackets and featuring decorative trim, lanais with arched openings and sawn balustrades on the ends of the fifth floor of the original side wings, large arched openings at the base of the original side wings with large windows and juliet balconies, accented with circular panels featuring fleur-de-lis motifs, and crowned with another juliet balcony supported by columns, hipped dormers, and a multi-tier lanai on the rear of the building facing the ocean. The hotel was expanded with two Renaissance Revival-style six-story wings on either side in 1918, which featured concrete construction and stucco-clad exteriors with arched and rectangular double-hung one-over-one windows with decorative trim surrounds, open staircases on the front and rear facades with arched exterior openings, juliet balconies, small ionic columns, brackets, and corner pilasters, a hipped roof with broad overhanging bracketed eaves, small rooftop towers with hipped roofs, and arched vents, and pilasters at the corners of the wings themselves, dividing the side facades into three segments. After the construction of the wings in 1918, a large breezeway with double-hung windows making up most of the exterior was constructed across the ridge of the hipped roof of the original hotel building, running straight through the original building’s tower in the middle, which saw the addition of a similar rooftop tower with arched vents to the two 1918 wings. The hotel was renovated multiple times in the 20th Century, with the loss of the original porte cochere, reconfiguration of the interior, and the addition of bungalows across Kalakaua Avenue in 1925, which led to the hotel becoming known as the Moana-Seaside Hotel & Bungalows during the period between the 1920s and 1950s. A new hotel, known as the Surfrider, was built immediately Diamond Head of the Moana Hotel by the Matson Navigation Company in 1952, which stood 8 stories tall, towering over the older hotel next door. The hotel’s bungalows were demolished the following year and replaced by the Princess Kaiulani Hotel, with the Moana Hotel, Surfrider Hotel, and Princess Kaiulani Hotel being sold to Sheraton Hotels and Resorts in 1959. The Moana Hotel and Surfrider Hotel were sold to the Kyo-Ya Company, led by Japanese industrialist Kenji Osano, in 1963, but remained under the Sheraton banner. In 1969, a new and much taller Surfrider Hotel was built immediately Ewa of the Moana Hotel, with a new taller tower being added to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in 1970. After the completion of the new Surfrider Hotel, the old Surfrider, built in 1952, became the Moana Ocean Lanai, and later, the Diamond Head Tower of the Moana Hotel. The Moana Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1989, the Moana Hotel was restored under the direction of architect Virginia D. Murison to its 1920s exterior appearance, with the restoration of deteriorated exterior elements, interior common spaces, and reconstruction of the original porte cochere, as well as better integration of the historic hotel with the adjacent 1952 and 1969 buildings on either side. Now known as the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, the resort maintained the historic charm of the original Moana Hotel and conserved the hotel’s iconic banyan tree, while boasting 793 modern guest rooms, a new pool, with the project winning many preservation awards. The hotel has since been rebranded as the Westin Moana Surfrider Hotel.

studio: Fusion

model: Hannah

make-up: Tina

11th Asia Pacific Dance Competition

July 17-19, 2009

Bangkok, Thailand

 

Please Do Not Use Without Permission.

12/6/15 with Albita Rodriguez in the GC Ballrooms

Bespoke pattern of crystals and rhinestuds on ivory net. Designed to echo the patterned fabric of the bodice. Nine hours work on this part of the tutu alone!

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The Joseph B. and Josephine H. Bissell House was originally constructed as one of five Italianate style brownstone row houses designed by architect Thomas Thomas and built in 1869 by owner and builder John W. Stevens. When the Bissell House was initially constructed, many row houses were being built on the side streets in the area below Central Park while larger mansions were being constructed along Fifth Avenue. By the early 20 century this area was the city’s most prestigious residential neighborhood and was known as Vanderbilt’s Row because of that family’s involvement in maintaining the elite character of the neighborhood. The house was purchased by Josephine H. Bissell in 1903 and she hired prominent architect Edward L. Tilton to alter the house by removing the traditional Italianate style brownstone facade and its high stoop and replacing it with a more fashionable neo-Classical style brick and limestone facade with an American basement plan.

 

The Bissell House facade is a rare example of a private residential commission by Tilton, who is particularly associated with the design of libraries. The facade features a bowed front, red and black brick laid in a Flemish bond pattern and limestone details including two prominent cornices with block modillions and scroll brackets. Mrs. Bissell lived in the house with her husband, Dr. Joseph B. Bissell, and their children and sold it shortly after his death. Dr. Bissell was a surgeon who did pioneering research in the treatment of cancer with radium. Several prominent physicians lived in the house in the first half of the 20century. The next owner was Dr. James Ramsay Hunt who lived and maintained an office in the house. Dr. Hunt was a preeminent neurologist who is known today because several neurological disorders bear his name. In 1943, Drs. Harry Sidney Newcomer and Marian Anastasia Staats Newcomer purchased the house. Dr. H. Sidney Newcomer was an inventor as well as a physician and his wife, Dr. Marian Newcomer, was the author of a book that provided medical advice to laypersons. Gradually the house went from residential to non-residential use and it is currently owned by a clothing manufacturer based in Italy.

 

Early History of the Site and House

 

The site of the Bissell house was part of the common land of New York City until 1851 when the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality of the City of New York sold it to Stephen V. Albro,a grocer who had his business and residence at 328 Bowery at the time.The land remained vacant until 1869, when owner and builder John W. Stevens constructed five Italianate style brownstone row houses designed by architect Thomas Thomas at 44-52 West 55Street.The first owners of No. 46 were Felicia S. Lowndes and Louise A. Alker,who appear to be related,although it appears from the Trow’s City Directories that Lowndes did not live in the house. Members of the Alker and Lowndes families lived in the house until 1886.By 1900 subsequent owners, who do not appear to have lived in the house, rented the house to Maria L. Grouard and her sister Elizabeth P. Grouard. The Grouard sisters lived and ran a school for girls in the building.Blondelle Malone, an artist from South Carolina, was also living in the house in 1899-1900.

 

Joseph B. and Josephine H. Bissell

 

The house had a number of owners before Josephine H. Bissell purchased it from Sadie S. Dearborn in early 1903. Mrs. Bissell hired architect Edward L. Tilton to completely alter the front facade of the house by replacing the Italianate style brownstone facade and its high stoop with a more fashionable neo-Classical style facade with an American basement plan. The alteration was carried out between May 21, 1903 and June 27, 1904.Josephine H. Bissell and her husband, Dr. Joseph B. Bissell lived there with their four children and two female servants.Joseph B. Bissell was a surgeon who did pioneering research in the treatment of cancer with radium and was visiting surgeon for many years at Bellevue and St. Vincent’s Hospitals. He graduated from Yale University and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. In July 1915, he opened the Radium Sanatorium of New York at 203 West 70Street.

 

Earlier that same year, the Bissell’s eldest daughter Eugenie married Lawrence Millet, son of the late American artist Francis D. Millet, in the drawing room of the house.Dr. Bissell, a major in the U.S. Army during World War I, died in December 1918 while working as chief surgeon at Fort McHenry near Baltimore, Maryland. In the following year, Josephine Bissell sold the house to Dr. J. Ramsay Hunt.She later moved to Great Neck, Long Island and married William Bradford Merrill, general manager of the Hearst newspapers and the uncle of her son-in-law Lawrence Millet.

 

The Bissell house is a rare example of a private residential commission by Tilton. There is one other known example of a row house that was altered with a new front by Boring & Tilton. The house at 132 West 72 Street (within the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District) was one of five Renaissance Revival style brownstone row houses built in 1883-84 and designed by Gilbert A. Schellenger. In 1901-02, the front was replaced by Boring & Tilton’s design for a new brick and ashlar facade that featured a bowed front at the third and fourth storiesand stone details such as quoins and keystones.

 

Subsequent History

 

James Ramsay Hunt bought the house from Josephine Bissell a few months after being discharged from the military in 1919, and lived in the house with his wife Alice St. John Nolan Hunt and their two children until his death in 1937. He was a preeminent neurologist who is known today because several neurological disorders bear his name.Dr. Hunt was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and was stationed in France in the medical corps of the U.S. Army during World War I. The Hunts hosted dinner parties each week in their home that were attended by others within the medical profession and wealthy members of the business world, according to their daughter, Alice Hunt Sokoloff.During this time, he was a professor of neurology at Columbia University and had consulting privileges at several hospitals. He eventually moved his office to the ground floor of the house. He recorded his experiences with private patients from 1903 to 1937 in what are known as the James Ramsey Hunt Casebooks. The Hunt family continued to live in the house after his death; however, the house was foreclosed by the Bowery Savings Bank in 1940 and then sold by the bank to Drs. H. (Harry) Sidney Newcomer and Marian Anastasia Staats Newcomer in 1943.

 

Dr. Marian Newcomer was educated at the Syracuse University Medical School and was best known as the founder of the Mater Christi Guild, a Catholic guidance center for the assistance of young people in family difficulties, and as the author of a 1936 book, Bewildered Patient, which provided medical advice for laypersons. She maintained an office in the house.Her husband, Dr. H. Sidney Newcomer, developed a three-stage amplifier using thermionic valves that amplified nerve action currents with fellow Johns Hopkins School of Medicine student Herbert S. Glasser in 1921.Newcomer also invented and received several U.S. patents for optical devices. In 1930 he exhibited an anamorphic lens that was used as a projection device. Similar research was being done in France by Henri Chretien at the same time. This technology developed into Cinemascope in the 1950s.Newcomer was associate medical director of the pharmaceutical company, E. R. Squibb and Sons, when they lived in the house. According to a Certificate of Occupancy issued in 1944and the New York Telephone Company Address Directories, there were non-residential uses in the building while the Newcomers lived there; these included Marian Newcomer’s Mater Christi Guild, Dioptric Instrument Corp., a manufacturer of precision lenses, and Reach Yates Matton Inc., an advertising firm.

 

In 1954, H. Sidney Newcomer sold the house to Edward A. Viner and it served as the main office of Edward A. Viner & Co., Inc., an investment firm. In addition to offices, a Certificate of Occupancy dated 1954 indicates that there was a laboratory in the cellar and a duplex apartment at the fourth and fifth stories.After the building was sold by the Estate of Edward A. Viner in 1956 it housed a variety of commercial firms, mostly in the garment industry.The owner Jean Robert Ltd., a clothing retailer, altered the building by replacing the windows and enlarging the door opening in 1987 and received a new Certificate of Occupancy that did not include any residential use.Les Copains, a manufacturer of women’s clothing based in Italy has occupied the premises as its U.S. headquarters since purchasing the building in 2001.

 

Design and Construction

 

In the late 19 century, the New York City row house began to be transformed by architects and housing developers interested in moving beyond the traditional form to achieve a more “scientific division of space,” while at the same time effecting an “artistic disposition” on the interior as well as the exterior.One of the most notable solutions was what came to be called the American basement plan. According to architectural historian Russell Sturgis, the American basement plan was first introduced around 1880. It gained widespread popularity during the 1890s and first few years of the 1900s, when it was promoted in the architecture and real estate press as a practical, stylistic, and even social improvement over the speculatively built brownstone row houses that had predominated into the latter half of the 19century. In the traditional row house plan, the main entrance was reached by a tall flight of stairs—the stoop, from the Dutch for “step”—which was set to one side of the facade. The main reception hall shared the first floor with the parlor, beyond which was usually another parlor, a library, or sometimes a dining room. More often the dining room was located in the front of the raised basement, which was entered via a short flight of stairs sunk beneath the stoop; visitors to the house would therefore enter on the level of the family’s main living space. The Bissell house, when constructed in 1869, was a traditional row house.

 

The entrance to an American basement plan row house was instead lowered virtually to street level, and was often centered on the facade. The resulting changes in the interior arrangement of space were quite dramatic; the main entrance hall and stair now occupied the front of the ground story with the kitchen behind, and on the first floor the parlor now occupied the entire building frontage, separated from the rear dining room by a stair hall that functioned as a secondary reception hall. Moving the entrance to the center of the ground floor created the possibility of a generous foyer leading to a grand main stairway, and a larger, better lit parlor occupying the entire building frontage on the first floor.Architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler summed up the innovations embodied by the “New New York House,” writing in 1906 for Architectural Record that “…there is a practical consensus to the effect that the “American basement,” with the full frontage available on the second floor, is the most convenient arrangement, and the most economical in reality in spite of the ‘waste’ of the entrance hall. And the narrower the front, the more desirable it is, practically and especially architecturally, that the entrance be at the centre.”

 

The introduction of this new row house type coincided with increased stylistic experimentation by architects and developers seeking to create distinguished facades that would be readily marketable as private, upper-class residences. Fostered in part by the classical styles used at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, many of the row houses employing the American basement plan were given facades in a variety of architectural styles including Renaissance Revival, Modern French, Beaux-Arts, and Georgian Revival.

 

After the turn of the century, brownstone row houses throughout the city were remodeled by the removal of the stoops, rearranged of the interior floors layouts and, sometimes, the replacement of the whole front facade. In 1903 architectural critic Herbert Croly observed that high-stooped brownstone dwellings had become “extremely unfashionable, both in design and plan” and described a new movement “gradually gathering momentum toward the substitution of reconstructed American basement dwelling for old brownstone fronts.”There was also an increasing desire for individualized designs. Reacting against “the monotony of the once fashionable … brownstone-front, in blocks of a dozen of more houses exactly alike,”architects and developers entered into “a persistent and deliberate striving after individuality” using a variety of different styles, designs, and materials to create distinctive facades that would be readily marketable as private upper-class residences.

 

The facade alteration by Edward L. Tilton in 1903-04 for the Bissells altered the house from a traditional row house plan to an American basement plan row house and removed the Italianate style brownstone facade and replaced it with a then-fashionable neo-Classical style brick and limestone facade. Tilton employed red and black brick laid in a Flemish bond pattern with limestone details and a bowed front at the first through fourth stories. The house has two prominent limestone cornices above the first and fourth stories with block modillions and scroll brackets. The triple windows at the second and third stories have continuous limestone surrounds with pilasters between the windows and a paneled spandrel between the second and third stories. The Bissell house is a distinguished example of the fashionable townhouses that once characterized the neighborhood.

 

Description

 

The Bissell House is a five-story building that is situated on a rectangular lot measuring 20 feet by 100.5 feet. The front facade is constructed of red stretcher and black header bricks laid in a Flemish bond pattern above the first story; except that at the eastern and western lot lines, where the facade is slightly recessed, it is constructed of red brick and projects above the cornice forming side parapet walls that are capped by stone. There are two wide granite steps that lead to the front door. The first four stories have a bowed front. The first story is constructed of limestone with a wide molded door surround having the building number (“46”) at the center above the door and is surmounted by a prominent cornice with large block modillions and scroll brackets. The door and window openings at the first story were altered in 1987 to accommodate an enlarged door opening that has four paneled wood doors set within a wood return. Non-historic light fixtures and bronze plaques (“Les Copains”) are located on either side of the doors and there is a Siamese connection, two remote utility meters with exposed conduit and a metal plate to the east of the door. There is an intercom and card entry panel on the eastern end of door return.

 

A two-story molded limestone window surround at the second and third stories has square pilaster mullions with simple capitals, inset panels between the second and third stories and above the third story windows and is surmounted by a molded cornice. There is a molded limestone band between the third and fourth stories behind the cornice that forms a continuous sill for the fourth story windows. The second and third stories have triple windows with multi-pane wood casements and multi-pane wood transoms. A flagpole was attached to the sill of the center third story window after 1939. The fourth story has three multi-pane wood casement windows, above the windows is a prominent limestone cornice with block modillions and scroll brackets and a molded band beneath the brackets that form a continuous lintel for the fourth story windows. The fifth story is set-back from the bowed front of the lower stories and has three single windows with splayed red brick lintels and one-over-one double-hung windows that appear to be wood sash. The windows were replaced in 1987. The molded roof cornice is partially constructed of bronze and has four roundels. There is a non-historic metal rooftop railing and a metal leader at the western end of the facade.

 

The visible part of the western facade, which projects beyond the adjacent setback row house, is constructed of red stretcher and black header bricks laid in a Flemish bond pattern.

 

- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Underside of purple tutu, showing black and purple layers of net

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