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French postcard by EPC, no. 225. Photo: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Luise Rainer in The Great Waltz (Julien Duvivier, 1938)
German-American-British film actress Luise Rainer (1910-2014) was the first to win multiple Academy Awards and the first to win back-to-back for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). At the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her 105th birthday, she was the longest-lived Oscar recipient, a superlative that had not been exceeded as of 2020.
Luise Rainer was born in 1910 in Düsseldorf, in then the German Empire (now Germany). Her parents were Heinrich and Emilie (née Königsberger) Rainer. Her father was a businessman who settled in Europe after spending most of his childhood in Texas. Rainer's rebellious nature made her appear to be a "tomboy" and happy to be alone. She started her acting career in Berlin at age 16, under the pretext of visiting her mother, she traveled to Düsseldorf for a prearranged audition at the Dumont Theater. In the 1920s the theatre director Louise Dumont separated from her husband. Dumont was attached to a number of young actresses including Fita Benkhoff, Hanni Hoessrich, and Rainer. It has been presumed that Dumont was bisexual. Rainer later began studying acting with the leading stage director at the time, Max Reinhardt. By the time she was 18, several critics felt that she had an unusual talent for a young actress. She became a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardt's theatre ensemble. She also appeared in several German-language films. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by MGM talent scout Phil Berg, who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935. He thought she would appeal to the same audience as Swedish MGM star Greta Garbo. Mayer assigned actress Constance Collier to train her in speech and dramatic modulation, and Rainer's English improved rapidly.
Luise Rainer's first American film role was in the romantic comedy Escapade (Robert Z. Leonard, 1935) with William Powell. It is a remake of the popular Austrian Operetta film Maskerade/Masquerade (Willy Forst, 1934). The film generated immense publicity for Rainer, who was hailed as "Hollywood's next sensation." The following year she was given a supporting part as the real-life character Anna Held in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), featuring William Powell. Despite her limited role, her emotion-filled performance so impressed audiences that she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. She was later dubbed the "Viennese Teardrop" for her dramatic telephone scene, attempting to congratulate Ziegfeld on his new marriage, in the film. On the evening of the Academy Award ceremonies, Rainer remained at home, not expecting to win. When Mayer learned she had won, he sent MGM publicity head Howard Strickling racing to her home to get her. She was also awarded the New York Film Critics' Award for the performance. For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced, despite the studio's disagreement, that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife opposite Paul Muni in The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937), based on Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. The humble, subservient, and mostly silent character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous vivacious character that she again won the Oscar for Best Actress. Rainer and Jodie Foster are the only actresses ever to win two Oscars by the age of thirty.
However, Luise Rainer later stated nothing worse could have happened to her than winning two consecutive Oscars, as audience expectations from then on would be too high to fulfill. A few months before the film was completed, Irving Thalberg died suddenly at the age of 37. Rainer commented years later: "His death was a terrible shock to us. He was young and ever so able. Had it not been that he died, I think I may have stayed much longer in films." After four more, insignificant roles, MGM and Rainer became disappointed, and she was dubbed "Box Office Poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Adding to her rapid decline, some feel, was the poor career advice she received from her then-husband, playwright Clifford Odets. She ended her brief three-year Hollywood career and returned to Europe where she helped get aid to children who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. Nevertheless, she was not released from her MGM contract and, by 1940, she was still bound to make one more film for the studio. Some film historians consider her the "most extreme case of an Oscar victim in Hollywood mythology". Rainer studied medicine and returned to the stage. In 1939, she made her first appearance at the Palace Theatre, Manchester in Jacques Deval's play 'Behold the Bride', and later played the same part in her London debut at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Returning to America, she played the leading part in George Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan' in 1940 at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C. under the direction of German emigrant director Erwin Piscator. In 1943, she made an appearance in the film Hostages (Frank Tuttle, 1943). Rainer abandoned film making in 1944 after marrying publisher Robert Knittel. She made sporadic television and stage appearances, appearing in an episode of the World War II television series Combat! in 1965. She took a dual role in a 1984 episode of The Love Boat. She appeared in the film The Gambler (Károly Makk, 1997), starring Michael Gambon. It marked her film comeback at the age of 86. Luise Rainer passed away in 2014, in Belgravia, London, England. She was 104. Rainer married Clifford Odets in 1937 and they divorced in 1940. Her second husband was publisher Robert Knittel. They were married from 1945 till his death in 1989 and lived in the UK and Switzerland for most of their marriage. The couple had one daughter, Francesca Knittel.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
In order to convert the Bertin to a 650B I exchanged the Mafac Racer brakes for a set of long reach Lam sidepulls of the same type that work very well on my 650B porteur. As it turns out, the large, stiff springs on these brakes are nearly impossible to operate with road brake levers. Neither the CLB's that were on the bike already or the Mafacs that I tried were up to the task, so I've installed the guidonet levers that were on my Urago instead. These levers are perfectly matched to the brakes and are easy to operate with good modulation. An additional bonus of the levers is to streamline the top of a bike that has a lot going on visually as it is. Now for those British fenders...
Preview 01 here
Preview 03 here
Preview 04 here
For the past two and a half months I have been developing my first, cursive Arabic (and a Latin) typeface.
Normally, type designers tend to raise the Arabic characters upto the Latin x-height - which in my view distorts the letterforms from their true, cursive, fluid and diversified beauty. I understand the reason behind this though - it is to harmonise two alien scripts - and more often than not - it is the Latin script which was developed first and so the Arabic must follow suit.
As such, on this occasion, I began with the Arabic - and in doing so retained all its' calligraphic character without the calligraphic embellishments. It is essentially a monoline font - clean cut and simple - with minor but very necessary modulation (mostly on terminal endings) - which makes it perfect for use as a contemporary, Modernistic typeface.
The Arabic featured here has a fluid beauty to it resonant and respectful to the centuries of character development and handwriting systems developed through the many lifetimes of Master Khattats (calligraphers) around the world.
I am currently in the process of developing a matching Latin with the help of Swiss typographer, Bruno Maag, and his associates at the infamous type house, Dalton Maag, in London.
More will be revealed very soon :)
Period-adding route to chaos in a diode-inductor circuit - or, how to make clean frequency dividers for 5 pence.
The frequency dividers also preserve modulations, up to a point. Here we see the drive frequency at the bottom, and waveforms of divide by 2,3,4 and 5 as the amplitude of the drive is progressively increased. The maximum division ratio which has been observed is a divide by 41 waveform.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however, Lettice is far from Cavendish Mews, back in Wiltshire where she is staying at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his wife. The current Viscount has summoned his daughter home, along with his bohemian artist younger sister Eglantyne, affectionately known as Aunt Egg by her nieces and nephews.
Through her social connections, Lettice’s Aunt Egg contrived an invitation for Lettice to an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Caxton, who are very well known amongst the smarter bohemian set of London society for their weekend parties at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, and enjoyable literary evenings in their Belgravia townhouse. Lady Gladys is a successful authoress in her own right and writes under the nom de plume of Madeline St John. Over the course of the weekend, Lettice was coerced into accepting Lady Gladys’ request that she redecorate her niece and ward, Phoebe’s, small Bloomsbury flat. Phoebe, upon coming of age inherited the flat, which had belonged to her parents, Reginald and Marjorie Chambers, who died out in India when Phoebe was still a little girl. The flat was held in trust by Lady Gladys until her ward came of age. When Phoebe decided to pursue a career in garden design and was accepted by a school in London closely associated with the Royal Society, she started living part time in the flat. Lady Gladys felt that it was too old fashioned and outdated in its appointment for a young girl like Phoebe. When Lady Gladys arranged for Lettice to inspect the flat, Lettice quickly became aware of Lady Gladys’ ulterior motives as she overrode the rather mousy Pheobe and instructed Lettice to redecorate everything to her own instructions and taste, whist eradicating any traces of Pheobe’s parents. Reluctantly, Lettice commenced on the commission which is nearing its completion. However, when Pheobe came to visit the flat whilst Lettice was there, and with a little coercion, Pheobe shared what she really felt about the redecoration of her parent’s home, things came to a head. Desperately wanting to express herself independently, Pheobe hoped living at the flat she would finally be able to get out from underneath the domineering influence of her aunt. Yet now the flat is simply another extension of Lady Glady’s wishes, and the elements of her parents that Pheobe adored have been appropriated by Lady Gladys. Determined to undo the wrong she has done by Pheobe by agreeing to all of Lady Glady’s wishes, in a moment of energizing anger, Lettice decided to confront Lady Gladys. However unperturbed by Lettice’s appearance, Lady Gladys advised that she was bound by the contract she had signed to complete the work to Gladys’ satisfaction, not Phoebe’s.
Thus, Viscount Wrexham has contrived a war cabinet meeting in the comfortable surrounds of the Glynes library with Lettice and Eglantyne to see if between them they can work out a way to untangle Lettice from Lady Gladys’ contract, or at least undo the damage done to Pheobe by way of Lettice’s redecoration of the flat.
Being early autumn, the library at Glynes is filled with light, yet a fire crackles contentedly in the grate of the great Georgian stone fireplace to keep the cooler temperatures of the season at bay. The space smells comfortingly of old books and woodsmoke. The walls of the long room are lined with floor to ceiling shelves, full thousands of volumes on so many subjects. The sunlight streaming through the tall windows facing out to the front of the house burnishes the polished parquetry floors in a ghostly way. Viscount Wrexham sits at his Chippendale desk, with his daughter sitting opposite him on the other side of it, whilst Eglantyne, a tall, willowy figure and always too restless to sit for too long, stands at her brother’s shoulder as the trio discuss the current state of affairs.
“So is what Gladys says, correct, Lettice?” the Viscount bristles from his seat behind his Chippendale desk as he lifts a gilt edged Art Nouveau decorated cup of hot tea to his lips. “Did you sign a contract?”
“Well yes of course I did, Pappa!” Lettice defends, cradling her own cup in her hands, admiring the beautifully executed stylised blue Art Nouveau flowers on it. “You told me that there should be a formal contract in place ever since I had that spot of unpleasantness with the Duchess of Whitby when she was reluctant to pay her account in full after I had finished decorating her Fitzrovia first-floor reception room.”
“And I take it, our lawyers haven’t perused it?” he asks as he replaces the cup in its saucer on the desk’s surface.
“No Pappa.” Lettice replies, fiddling with the hem of her silk cord French blue cardigan. “Should they have?”
The Viscount sucks in a deep breath audibly, his heckles arcing up.
“Cosmo.” his sister says calmingly, standing at his side, placing one of her heavily bejewelled hands on his shoulder, lightly digging her elegantly long yet gnarled fingers into the fabric of his tweed jacket and pressing hard.
The Viscount releases a gasp. He looks down upon the book he had been pleasurably reading before he summoned both his sister and daughter to his domain of the Glynes library, a copy of Padraic Colum’s* ‘The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles’** illustrated by Willy Pognay, and focuses on it like an anchor to manage the temper roiling within him. Trying very hard to suppress his frustration and keep it out of his steady modulation, the Viscount replies, “Yes my girl,” He sighs again. “Preferably you should have any contracts drawn up by our lawyers, and then signed by a client: not the other way around. And if it does happen to be the other way around, our lawyers should give it a thorough going over before you sign it.”
“But a contract is a contract, Pappa, surely?” Lettice retorts before taking another sip of tea.
The Viscount’s breathing grows more laboured as his face grows as red as the cover of ‘The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles’ on the tooled leather surface of the desk before him.
“Cosmo.” Eglantine says again, before looking up and catching her niece’s eye and tries to warn her of the thunderstorm of frustration and anger that is about to burst from the Viscount by giving her an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
The Viscount continues to breathe in a considered and deliberate way as he tries to continue, his deep voice somewhat strangulated by his effort not to slam his fists on the desktop and yell at his daughter. “A contact varies, Lettice. It depends on who has written it as to what clauses are contained inside, such as Gladys’ condition that she is to be completely satisfied with the outcome of the redecoration, or she may forfeit any unpaid tradesmen’s bills, not to mention your own. You should have read it thoroughly before you signed it.”
“Oh.” Lettice lowers her head and looks down dolefully into her lap.
The Viscount turns sharply in his Chippendale chair, withdrawing his shoulder from beneath his sister’s grounding grasp with an irritable shake and glares at his sister through angry, bloodshot eyes. When she was young, Eglantine had Titian red hair that fell in wavy tresses about her pale face, making her a popular muse amongst the Pre-Raphaelites she mixed with. With the passing years, her red hair has retreated almost entirely behind silver grey, save for the occasional streak of washed out reddish orange, except when she decides the henna it, and she still wears it as she did when it was at its fiery best, sweeping softly about her almond shaped face, tied in a loose chignon at the back of her neck.
“I place the blame for this situation solely at your feet, Eglantyne!” the Viscount barks at his sister.
“Me!” Eglantyne laughs in incredulity. “Me! Don’t be so preposterous, Cosmo.” She grasps at one of the many strings of highly faceted, winking bugle beads that cascade down the front of her usual choice of frock, a Delphos dress***, this one of silver silk painted with stylised orange poppies on long, flowing green stalks. “I call that most unfair!” she complains. “I’m not responsible for Gladys’ lawyers, or their filthy binding contract.”
“No, but you’re responsible for introducing Lettice to that infernal woman!” the Viscount blasts. “Bloody female romance novelist!”
“Language!” Eglantyne quips.
“Oh, fie my language!” the Viscount retorts angrily. “And fie you, Eglantyne!”
Always being her elder brother’s favourite of all his siblings, and therefore usually forgiven of any mistakes and transgressions she has made in the past as a bohemian artist, and very seldom falling into his bad books, Eglantine is struck by the forcefulness of his anger. Even though she is well aware of his bombastic temper, it is easier to deal with when it is directed to someone or something else. This unusual situation with his annoyance being squarely aimed at her leaves her feeling flustered and sick.
“Me? I… I didn’t know that… that Gladys was vying to get Lettice… before her so… so.. so she could ask her to redecorate her ward’s flat, Cosmo!” Eglantyne splutters. “How… how could I know?”
“Coerced is more like it!” Cosmo snaps in retort. “And you must have had some inkling, surely! You were always good at reading people and situations: far better than I ever was!”
“Well, I didn’t, Cosmo!” Eglantine snaps back, determined not to let her brother get the upper hand on her and blame her for something she rightly considers far beyond her control. “I mean, all I was doing was trying my best to get Lettice out of her funk over losing Selwyn.” She turns quickly to Lettice and looks at her with apologetic eyes. “Sorry my dear.” Returning her attention to her brother, she continues, “I didn’t want her wallowing in her own grief, something you were only too happy to indulge her in whilst she was staying here at Glynes with you!” She tuts. “Feeding her butter shortbreads and mollycoddling her. What good was there in doing that?”
“She was staying with Lally.” the Viscount mutters through gritted teeth.
“Same thing really.” Eglantine says breezily. “Like father like daughter. Lettice needed something to restore her spark, and quiet walks in the Buckinghamshire countryside weren’t going do that. I knew that Gladys enjoyed being surrounded by London’s Bright Young Things****, and she had spoken to me about Lettice’s interior designs.”
“Aha!” the Viscount crows. “So, you did know she had designs on Lettice!”
“If you’d kindly let me finish, Cosmo.” Eglantyne continues in an indignant tone.
The Viscount huffs and lets his shoulders lower a little as he gesticulates with a sweeping gesture across his desk towards his sister for Eglantine to continue.
“What I was going to say was that Gladys telephoned me and asked me about Lettice’s interior designs after she read that article by Henry Tipping***** in Country Life******, which you and Sadie, and probably half the country read. How could I know from that innocuous enquiry that Gladys would engage Lettice in this unpleasant commission? She simply telephoned me at just the right time, so I orchestrated with Gladys for Lettice and the Channons to go and stay at Gossington.” She folds her arms akimbo. “Lettice was stagnating, and that is not good for her. As I said before, she needed to have her creativity sparked. I thought it would do Lettice good to be amongst the bright and spirited company of a coterie of young and artistic people, and I wasn’t wrong, was I Lettice?”
Startled to suddenly be introduced into the heated conversation between her father and aunt about her, Lettice stammers, “Well… yes. It was a very gay house party, and I did also receive the commission from Sir John Nettleford-Huges for Mr. and Mrs. Gifford at Arkwright Bury, Pappa.”
“That old lecher.” the Viscount spits.
“Sadie doesn’t think so,” Eglantyne remarks with a superior air, a smug smile curling up the corners of her lips. “She seemed to think he’d be a good match for Lettice two years ago at her ludicrous matchmaking Hunt Ball.”
“Now don’t you start on Sadie, Eglantyne.” the Viscount warns with a wagging finger, the ruby in the signet ring on his little finger winking angrily in the light of the library, reflecting its wearer’s fit of pique. “I’m in no mood for your usual acerbic pokes at Sadie.”
“Sir John is actually quite nice, Pappa.” Lettice pipes up quickly in an effort to defuse the situation between her father and aunt. “Once you get to know him.” she adds rather lamely when her father glares at her with a look that suggests that she may have lost all her senses. She hurriedly adds, “And that’s gone swimmingly, Pappa, and as a result, Henry Tipping has promised me another feature article on my interior designs there in Country Life.”
“There!” Eglantyne says with satisfaction, sweeping her arm out expansively towards her niece, making the mixture of gold, silver, Bakelite******* and bead bracelets and bangles jangle. “See Cosmo, it’s not all bad news. An excellent commission right here in Wiltshire that guarantees positive promotion of Lettice’s interior designs in a prestigious periodical.”
“Well, be that as it may,” the Viscount grumbles. “You are still responsible for dismissing Lettice’s justified concerns about Gladys and her rather Machiavellian plans to redecorate her ward’s flat to her own designs and hold Lettice to account for it. You told me that you aired your concerns with your aunt, Lettice. Isn’t that so?”
Lettice nods, looking guiltily at her favourite aunt, fearing disappointment in the older woman’s eyes as she does.
“Well,” Eglantyne concedes with a sigh. “I cannot deny that Lettice did raise her concerns with me when we had luncheon together, but her concerns did not appear justified at the time.”
Ignoring Eglantyne’s last remark, the Viscount continues, addressing his daughter, “And that was before she commenced on this rather fraught commission wasn’t it?”
“Well Pappa, as I told you, I had already agreed in principle to accept Gladys’ commission at Gossington. Gladys is a little hard to refuse.”
“Bombastic!” the Viscount opines.
“Pot: kettle: black.” Eglantyne pipes up, placing her hands on her silk clad hips.
“Don’t test my patience any more, Eglantyne!” the Viscount snaps. He returns his attentions to his daughter. “But you hadn’t signed any contracts at that stage, had you, Lettice?”
“Well no, Pappa.” Lettice agrees. “But I think that Gladys was having the contracts drawn up by her lawyers at that time.”
“Why didn’t you intervene when Lettice spoke to you, Eglantyne?” the Viscount asks his sister.
“Because I didn’t see any cause for alarm, Cosmo.” she replies in her own defence.
“But Lettice told you that Gladys coerced her into agreeing to redecorate the flat, didn’t she?”
“Well yes,” Eglantyne agrees. “But as I said to Lettice at the time, Gladys wears most people down to her way of thinking in the end. It is a very brave, or stupid, person who challenges Gladys when she has an idea in her head that she is impassioned about.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t think it was a bad thing necessarily, Cosmo. Not only was it not unusual for Gladys to get her way, but at the time, Lettice needed someone to take the lead. Her own initiative was somewhat lacking after all that business with Zinnia shipping Selwyn off to Durban. So, I wasn’t concerned, and I doubt that you would be concerned about it either, were you in my shoes.”
“Well I wasn’t.” he argues. “What about Lettice’s other concerns about taking on the commission?” he softens his voice as he addresses his daughter, “What did you say to your aunt again, my dear?”
“I said I was concerned that Gladys had ulterior motives, Pappa.” Lettice replies.
“Which she did!” the Viscount agrees. “Go on.”
“I illuded to the fact that I thought Gladys saw her dead brother and sister-in-law as some kind of threat to her happy life with Phoebe, and she wanted to whitewash them from Phoebe’s life.”
“And I suggested to Lettice that that was a grave allegation to make without proof, Cosmo.” Eglantyne explains. “And all she had to back her allegations up were some anecdotal stories, which count for nothing.”
“You accused Lettice of overdramatising.” the Viscount says angrily.
“I know I did, Cosmo.” Eglantyne admits. “I did assuage Lettice of the concerns she had that Gladys was going to insist on making changes Phoebe or she didn’t like. I admit, I was wrong about that. I assured Lettice that Gladys adores her niece, and whilst in hindsight I may not now use the word adore, I’m still instant that Gladys only wants what she thinks is best for Phoebe. Phoebe is the daughter Gladys never planned to have, but also the child Gladys didn’t know could bring her so much joy and fulfilment in her life, as a parent. And to be fair, Cosmo, if you’d ever met Phoebe, you’d understand why I said what I did.”
“Go on.” the Viscount says, cocking his eyebrow over his right eye.
“Well Pheobe is such a timid little mouse of a creature. She seldom expresses an opinion.”
“That’s because Gladys has been quashing those opinions, Aunt Egg.” Lettice adds.
“Well, we know that now, but from the outside looking in, you wouldn’t know that without the intimate knowledge that you have now received from Phoebe, Lettice.”
“So what you’re implying Pappa is, that I have to see through the redecoration to Phoebe’s pied-à-terre******** to Gladys’ specifications, even if Pheobe herself doesn’t like them?”
“It does appear that way, my dear.” the Viscount concedes.
“Even if it is plain that Gladys is bullying her and taking advantage of the situation for her own means?” Lettice asks hopefully.
“It’s a sticky situation, my dear.” the Viscount replies consolingly. “I mean, you don’t actually have to go through with it. It isn’t like you need her money. If she doesn’t pay the tradesmen’s bills you’ll be a little out of pocket, but it won’t bankrupt you.”
“But,” Eglantyne says warningly. “You do run the risk of Gladys spreading malicious gossip about your business. Whatever Gladys may or may not be, she’s influential.” She sighs deeply. “It would be such a shame to ruin the career you have spent so long building and making a success.”
“And your mother wouldn’t fancy the trouble and scandals this poisonous woman could create, either.” adds the Viscount as an afterthought. “Especially when it comes to your marriageability.”
“Are you suggesting that Selwyn isn’t going to come back to me, Pappa?” Lettice asks bitterly, unable to keep the hurt out of her voice as colour fills her face and unshed tears threatening to spill fill her eyes.
“No,” the Viscount defends. “You know your happiness and security is of the utmost importance to me, Lettice my dear. No, I’m just being a realist. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Zinnia doesn’t have something nasty up her sleeve to spring upon the pair of you, even when he does come back. If there is even the slightest smear on your character, Lettice, she will use that against you. Zinna hasn’t spoken to you since that night, has she?”
“No, thank goodness!” Lettice replies.
“Well, that may not be such a good thing.” the Viscount goes on. “Zinnia enjoys playing a long game that can inflict more pain.”
“Your father speaks the truth, Lettice, and he is wise to be a pragmatist.” Eglantyne remarks sagely.
The older woman reaches into the small silver mesh reticule********* dangling from her left wrist and unfastens it. She withdraws her gold and amber cigarette holder and a small, embossed silver case containing her choice of cigarettes, her favourite black and gold Sobranie********** Black Russians. She depresses the clasp of the case and withdraws one of the long, slender cigarettes and screws it adeptly into her holder. She then withdraws a match holder and goes to strike a match.
“Must you, Eglantyne?” the Viscount asks. “You know Sadie doesn’t like smoking indoors.”
Eglantyne ignores her brother and strikes a match and lights her Sobranie, sucking the end of her cigarette holder, causing the match flame to dance and gutter whilst the paper and tobacco of the cigarette crackles. Whisps of dark grey smoke curl as they escape the corners of her mouth.
“I’m in your bad books, Cosmo, so I may as well be in hers too.” she says, sending forth tumbling clouds of acrid smoke. “No-one will deny me my little pleasure in life.” She smiles with gratification as she draws on her holder again. “Not even Sadie. And correction: Sadie only dislikes it when a lady smokes.”
“Well, I can’t stop you any more than I seem to be able to stop Gladys from forcing Lettice to decorate this damnable flat the way she wants it, rather than the way Phoebe wants it.” the Viscount replies in a defeated tone.
The three fall silent for a short while, with only the heavy ticking of the clock sitting on the library mantle and the crackle of the fire to break the cloying silence.
“What about Sir John?” the Viscount suddenly says.
“Sir John Nettleford-Hughes?” Eglantyne asks quizzically, blowing forth another cloud of Sobranie smoke.
“No, no!” he clarifies with a shake of his head. “Not that Sir John: Sir John Caxton, Gladys’ husband. Surely, we can appeal to him. He wouldn’t want Pheobe to be unhappy.”
“He’s completely under Gladys’ thumb***********.” Eglantyne opines.
“Aunt Egg is right, Pappa. The day I went to Eaton Square************ to have it out with Gladys, I saw John, and he couldn’t wait to retreat to the safety of his club and leave we two to our own devices. He’s as completely ruled by Gladys as Phoebe is.”
“I suppose you could turn this to your advantage and have Phoebe commission you to undo your own redecoration.” the Viscount suggests hopefully.
“I don’t think that would work very well, Cosmo.” Eglantyne remarks.
“How so?”
“Well, I don’t think Gladys would take too kindly to Lettice and Phoebe going behind her back, and we’ve just discussed the difficulties a scorned woman could cause to Lettice’s reputation, both personally and professionally.”
“Besides,” Lettice adds. “I don’t think the allowance Phoebe inherits from her father’s estate is terribly large, and I don’t imagine it will be easy as a woman to win any garden design commissions to be able to afford my services.”
“There’s Gertude Jekyll*************.” Eglantyne remarks.
“Yes, but she has influential connections like Edward Lutyens**************.” Lettice counters. “And as you have noted, Aunt Egg, Phoebe is rather unassuming. She doesn’t know anyone of influence, and wields none of her own. Besides, I’m sure Gladys won’t pay Phoebe to pay me to undo her prescribed redecorations.”
“You could always redecorate the pied-à-terre without charge,” the Viscount suggests hopefully.
“As recompense for the damage I’ve done redecorating it now, you mean, Pappa?”
“In a sense.”
“The outcomes would be the same unpleasant ones for Lettice as if Phoebe could afford to commission her to do it, Cosmo.” Eglantyne warns.
“Gerald was right.” Lettice mutters.
“About what, my dear?” her father asks.
“Well, Gerald said that Gladys was very good at weaving sticky spiderwebs, and that I had better watch out that I didn’t become caught in one.” She sighs heavily. “But it appears as if I have become enmeshed in one well and truly.”
“Well, however much it displeases me to say this to you Lettice, let this be a lesson to you my girl! In future, make sure that you engage our lawyers to draw up the contracts for you.”
“But I didn’t have this contract drawn up, Pappa,” Lettice defends. “Gladys did.”
“Well, make sure our lawyers review any contracts created by someone else before you undertake to sign one if future.”
Eglantyne stares off into the distance, drawing heavily upon her Sobranie, blowing out plumes of smoke.
“So, I’m stuck then.” Lettice says bitterly. “And its my own stupid fault.”
Eglantyne’s eyes flit in a desultory fashion about the room, drifting from the many gilt decorated spines on the shelves to the armchairs gathered cosily around the library’s great stone fireplace to the chess table set up to play nearby.
“Unless your aunt can come up with something, I’m afraid I don’t see a way out for you, Lettice.” the Viscount says. He then adds kindly, “But I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself, my dear. We all have to learn life’s lessons. Sometimes we just learn them in harder ways.”
Eglantyne continues to contemplate the situation her niece finds herself in.
“Well, I’ve certainly learned my lesson this time, Pappa.”
Eglantyne withdraws the nearly spent Sobranie from her lips, scattering ash upon the dull, worth carpet beneath her mule clad feet. “I may have one idea that might work.”
“Really Aunt Egg?” Lettice gasps, clasping her hands together as she does.
“Perhaps, Lettice my dear.”
“What is it, Eglantyne?” the Viscount asks.
“I don’t want to say anything, just in case I can’t pull it off.” Eglantyne contemplates for a moment before continuing. “Just leave this with me for a few days.”
*Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.
**“The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles” was a novel written by Padraic Colum, illustrated by Hungarian artist Willy Pognay, published by the Macmillan Company in 1921.
***The Delphos gown is a finely pleated silk dress first created in about 1907 by French designer Henriette Negrin and her husband, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. They produced the gowns until about 1950. It was inspired by, and named after, a classical Greek statue, the Charioteer of Delphi. It was championed by more artistic women who did not wish to conform to society’s constraints and wear a tightly fitting corset.
****The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s Londo
*****Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
******Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
*******Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, teapot handles, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.
********A pied-à-terre is a small flat, house, or room kept for occasional use.
*********A reticule is a woman's small handbag, typically having a drawstring and decorated with embroidery or beading. The term “reticule” comes from French and Latin terms meaning “net.” At the time, the word “purse” referred to small leather pouches used for carrying money, whereas these bags were made of net. By the 1920s they were sometimes made of small heavy metal mesh as well as netting or beaded materials.
**********The Balkan Sobranie tobacco business was established in London in 1879 by Albert Weinberg (born in Romania in 1849), whose naturalisation papers dated 1886 confirm his nationality and show that he had emigrated to England in the 1870s at a time when hand-made cigarettes in the eastern European and Russian tradition were becoming fashionable in Europe. Sobranie is one of the oldest cigarette brands in the world. Throughout its existence, Sobranie was marketed as the definition of luxury in the tobacco industry, being adopted as the official provider of many European royal houses and elites around the world including the Imperial Court of Russia and the royal courts of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Spain, Romania, and Greece. Premium brands include the multi-coloured Sobranie Cocktail and the black and gold Sobranie Black Russian.
***********The idiom “to be under the thumb”, comes from the action of a falconer holding the leash of the hawk under their thumb to maintain a tight control of the bird. Today the term under the thumb is generally used in a derogatory manner to describe a partner's overbearing control over the other partner's actions.
************Eaton Square is a rectangular residential garden square in London's Belgravia district. It is the largest square in London. It is one of the three squares built by the landowning Grosvenor family when they developed the main part of Belgravia in the Nineteenth Century that are named after places in Cheshire — in this case Eaton Hall, the Grosvenor country house. It is larger but less grand than the central feature of the district, Belgrave Square, and both larger and grander than Chester Square. The first block was laid out by Thomas Cubitt from 1827. In 2016 it was named as the "Most Expensive Place to Buy Property in Britain", with a full terraced house costing on average seventeen million pounds — many of such town houses have been converted, within the same, protected structures, into upmarket apartments.
*************Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over four handred gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over one thousand articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson's The Garden. Her first commissioned garden was designed in 1881, and she worked very closely wither her long standing friend, architect Sir Edward Lutyens.
**************Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings in the years before the Second World War. He is probably best known for his creation of the Cenotaph war memorial on Whitehall in London after the Great War. Had he not died of cancer in 1944, he probably would have gone on to design more buildings in the post-war era.
Cluttered with books and art, Viscount Wrexham’s library with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The majority of the books that you see lining the shelves of the Viscount’s library are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. So too are the postcards and the box for them on the Viscount’s Chippendale desk. Most of the books I own that Ken has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print, as can be seen on The Times Literary Supplement broadsheet on the Viscount’s desk. I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. “The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles” by Padraic Colum, illustrated by Willy Pognay, sitting on the Viscount’s desk is such an example. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really do make these miniature artisan pieces. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
On the desk are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles and a blotter on a silver salver all made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from tiny faceted crystal beads and have sterling silver bottoms and lids. The ink blotter is sterling silver too and has a blotter made of real black felt, cut meticulously to size to fit snugly inside the frame. The silver double frame on the desk also comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniature Collectables. The bottle of port and the port glasses I acquired from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay. Each glass, the bottle and its faceted stopper are hand blown using real glass.
Also on the desk to the left stands a stuffed white owl on a branch beneath a glass cloche. A vintage miniature piece, the foliage are real dried flowers and grasses, whilst the owl is cut from white soapstone. The base is stained wood and the cloche is real glass. This I acquired along with two others featuring shells (one of which can be seen in the background) from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in the United Kingdom.
The teapot and teacups, featuring stylised Art Nouveau patterns were acquired from an online stockist of dolls’ house miniatures in Australia.
The Chippendale desk itself is made by Bespaq, and it has a mahogany stain and the design is taken from a real Chippendale desk. Its surface is covered in red dioxide red dioxide leather with a gilt trim. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.
The beautiful rotating globe in the background features a British Imperial view of the world, with all of Britain’s colonies in pink (as can be seen from Canada), as it would have been in 1921. The globe sits on metal casters in a mahogany stained frame, and it can be rolled effortlessly. It comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniature Collectables in Lancashire. The silver double frame on the desk also comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniature Collectables.
In the background you can see the book lined shelves of Viscount Wrexham’s as well as a Victorian painting of cattle in a gold frame from Amber’s Miniatures in America, and a hand painted ginger jar from Thailand which stands on a Bespaq plant stand.
The gold flocked Edwardian wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Back in my late teens through my mid 20's my big hobby was amateur radio. I had a Yeasu FT-2400 and hung out on the 2 meter FM band. Most of the time I would just chat with other local hams and developed a couple of friendships. The 2 meter band with repeaters would usually get you a range of 50 miles or so from your location.
This QSL card is from the night of September 14th 1997. A night I will never forget as both a ham radio operator and a scanner and radio enthusiast. It started as I left work at midnight, I turned on the radio as I started the car and I could tell that something was going on over 2 meters..
I got this call from friend of mine on the Hampton Minnesota Repeater (147.360 K0JTA)
N0ZBM to N0RCX, ya out there Scott?
Go ahead Mark!
Scott 2 meters is going insane, lets meet at the field day location and see what we can get for signals above the fog bank
"Sounds great, I'll meet ya there".
I always carried my radio log in the car incase something ever good happened and that night was the night. Repeaters were transmitting over each other, if you would "key up" you could trip 5 or more repeaters.
This night I had many out of state contacts, I made contacts with people in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, This is record of a contact I had with KB0ZIX, Darrell in Harper Kansas.
Not was the amateur bands going crazy but so were other parts of the VHF band. I was listening to fire departments in Iowa and Missouri being paged out. Skip was competing with our local radio stations also.
The coolest thing I heard that night was on our local National Weather Service channel KEC65 out of Chanhassen Minnesota. When I tuned in I was receiving KIG76, the National Weather Service out of Paducah Kentucky transmitting on a transmitter out of Evansville Indiana over our signal and it was just as loud and clear as ours, completely overpowering our signal for a couple of minutes. It was unbelievable
A Place to Bury Strangers graces us with their presence once again. I'm still surprised this avant garde experimental band comes to St. Louis. The crowd, though not large, understands and appreciates this unique band. You have to see them to understand their artistry and power.
The subtitle of this series is the "madness of photographing in stobe lights". I asked Oliver Ackermann before they played if they were going to have strobes likes the first time I saw them. I just wanted to be ready for them. He laughed and, "Maybe." Oh yes there were strobes and they were even more intense than last time. It was a smaller more independent venue this time and maybe that made it easier to put on the show they REALLY wanted to. Though 60% of my shots were black, I managed to get a few.
#amy buxton
#Fall
#St. Louis
#A Place to Bury Strangers
#band
#music
#noise manipulation
#Off Broadway
#wave modulation
#Death By Audio
#Dion Lunadon
#Oliver Ackermann
#experimental rock
#space rock
#strobe light
#strobe
#concert
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
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Realistic Navaho TRC-441 Base CB, manufactured in 1978. This model is similar to the TRC-440, but has an LED channel display and Modulation indicator LED. Both models were great basic CB base stations.
A nerdy challenge: how to portray the Servitors of the Outer Gods while avoiding their popular representation playing incongruous flutes. They emit high-pitched ululating sounds, according to Lovecraft, but I don't think he was referring to them being cosmic flutists and pipers. Initial stages of a work in progress: prior photo documentation and first sketches inspired by it, including details of the modulation of a wheezing respiratory system.
William Basinski
Book :
Modulations
Une Histoire De La Musique Électronique
Peter Shapiro & Caipirinha Productions
Éditions Allia
2007
CD :
Frank Bretschneider & Peter Duimelinks
Fflux
Brombron
BROMBRON10
Design . Lenno Verhoog
iMusic :
Ryoji Ikeda
Variations For Modulated Sinewaves
Raster - Noton
RN20TO2000
GMAhz ...
Furniture sized radios came with presets for your area. This one was original to the Pittsfield, MA area. You can tell by the call letters on the bottom button, WBRK which is still on the air today. It also had regional stations from Hartford, Albany, NYC, Baltimore, & Waterbury.
From Wikipedia;
James Deering (November 12, 1859 – September 21, 1925) was an industrial executive in the family Deering Harvester Company and subsequent International Harvester, a socialite, and an antiquities collector. He is known for his landmark Vizcaya estate, where he was an early 20th-century resident on Biscayne Bay in the present day Coconut Grove district of Miami, Florida. Begun in 1910, with architecture and gardens in a Mediterranean Revival style, Vizcaya was his passionate endeavor with artist Paul Chalfin, and his winter home from 1916 to his death in 1925.[1]
Early life
James Deering was born in 1859 in the western Maine town of South Paris. He was the son of William Deering and his second wife, Clara Hammond Deering. His older half-brother was the arts patron Charles Deering.[2]
His father, who had inherited the family woolen mill and was landowner in the Northeast, invested in a farm-equipment manufacturing company, renaming it the Deering Harvester Company. In 1873, he moved the family to Chicago, Illinois. New 'Deering Harvester Company' reaper machinery enabled Midwestern United States farmers to harvest an acre of grain per hour, a substantial increase in productivity that increased the profitability of Midwest agriculture significantly. The Deering Harvester Company grew in value, so that by the end of the 19th century, the Deerings had become one of America's wealthiest families, although his father William was conservative in family spending. His parents did acquire a residence in St. Augustine, Florida, for the winter season. James Deering's older brother Charles joined the family business in the 1880s, after attending the United States Naval Academy and nine years in the Navy. James Deering attended one year each at Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before also joining the company at the same time.
Career
James joined the Deering Harvester Company in 1880 as treasurer. In 1902, with the Bank of J.P. Morgan purchasing Deering Harvester Company and McCormick Reaper Company, a resulting merger formed the International Harvester corporation and the largest producer of agricultural machinery in the nation. James Deering became vice-president of the new corporation, responsible for the three Illinois manufacturing plants. In 1909, he was phased out of daily company affairs by J.P. Morgan interests.
By the turn of the century, James Deering owned homes on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, in the countryside near Evanston, Illinois, in New York City, and in Paris, France. His name appeared in social columns as an arts connoisseur, socialite, international traveler, and cultural ambassador. He hosted events for French dignitaries at his New York and Chicago residences. In 1906, for Deering's work in promoting agricultural technology development in France, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur ("National Order of the Legion of Honour").
He retired from the vice-presidency of International Harvester, with his health weakening due to pernicious anemia, so in 1910, Deering purchased land in Coconut Grove, south of Miami and north of his brother's Charles Deering Estate. James Deering and Paul Chalfin then partnered to travel and create 'Vizcaya' there.[3] James Deering never married.
James Deering built Villa Vizcaya between 1914 and 1922 with visionary mastermind of the project, designer Paul Chalfin, his collaborator companion. The architect was F. Burrall Hoffman Jr.. The estate's landscape master plan and formal gardens were designed by Colombian landscape designer Diego Suarez. Paul Chalfin had attended Harvard, trained as a painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was an associate of renowned decorator Elsie de Wolfe. She introduced Chalfin to Deering for the interiors of his Chicago home in 1910. In 1910, Chalfin and Deering traveled through Europe together for the first trip of many over the years, in part to collect ideas and begin acquiring art, antiquities, and furnishings for the new Florida estate. The culmination of their shared effort and lasting memorial to their creative relationship is Villa Vizcaya, the Miami estate created between 1914 and 1923.[4]
The Villa Vizcaya is distinguished for its Italian Renaissance-inspired Mediterranean Revival architecture, its huge Italian Renaissance revival gardens, and sumptuously designed, detailed, and executed interior architectural elements with European, Asian, and American furnishings, and art and antiquities that span two millennia. The numerous sculptures in the gardens and villa are of ancient Greek, Greco-Roman, and Italian Renaissance origins and styles.[5]
for example, one element is altar-like in white marble, featuring the carved heads of goats, cattle, and lions, and flanked by coral stone pillars with carving of the 'Oak Tree of Gernika', symbolizing the freedom of the Basque Vizcaya in Spain.
The gardens are notable for introducing classical Italian and French design aesthetics into a subtropical habitat's plant palette and context — a new approach. This resulted in ongoing garden experiments with many tropical plants new to American horticulture. While Vizcaya's landscape design style evokes other periods and places, the use of native stone, plants, and light modulation reflected Deering's desire to showcase the indigenous natural beauty. By 1922, the 180-acre (0.73 km2) estate included large lagoons and new islands down-coast south of the villa and its formal gardens.
On the estate's western acreage, across present day South Miami Avenue, were the produce gardens and grazing fields. A village compound was designed and built to the west, also. These endeavors were done with the intent of making Vizcaya primarily self-sufficient, modeled on European estates to compensate for the limited commodities and services of early 1920s Miami. The village buildings housed the property's staff quarters, auto garages, equipment sheds, workshops, and barns for the domesticated animals.
Deering spent winters there beginning in 1916, when the residence was sufficiently complete. Among James Deering's closest friends were painter Gari Melchers and his wife Corinne. Through his brother Charles, also a patron of the arts and collector, he had friendships with the painters John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn. Sargent visited Vizcaya in March 1917 and produced a series of watercolors of the estate, as well as portrait of James. After the extensive gardens were completed in 1923, Deering's health began to weaken. Nonetheless, he traveled and entertained guests, including the silent film stars Lillian Gish and Marion Davies. Deering was described in his later years as "a reticent man with impeccably proper manners, leavened by a sense of humor." He was not unlike a 'Jay Gatsby' figure of the 'Roaring Twenties' era. In 1923, he opened the gardens to the public on Sundays, and Deering reportedly watched the visitors from his balcony, curious about who came, but not wanting to be recognized for his hospitality. In this period's personal letters, he expressed the hope that his nieces and nephews would enjoy coming to Vizcaya, so tennis courts, a bowling alley, a billiard room, and a swimming pool were part of the estate to encourage their visits.
Death and legacy
James Deering died in September 1925, on board the steamship SS City of Paris en route back to the United States. The philanthropic beneficiaries of his estate were Wesley Hospital, founded by his father in Chicago; the Visiting Nurse Association; the Children's Hospital of Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago, which received several significant paintings: the Édouard Manet "Mocking of Christ" and three by Italian master Giambattista Tiepolo of Rinaldo and Armida based on scenes from the 16th-century epic Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso.
Following the death of Charles Deering, Villa Vizcaya passed to his two nieces, Marion Deering McCormick and Barbara Deering Danielson. Over the decades, after hurricanes and rising maintenance costs, they began selling the estate's surrounding land parcels. In 1952, at a below-market price, they sold the villa and formal gardens, and in 1955 the village 'core estate' to Miami-Dade County for a museum and gardens to be open to the public. With the initial sale, they donated the antiquities and furnishings to the County Museum.
Museum and gardens
Unlike many other historic house museums, Vizcaya contains the original antiques and furnishings, giving continuity to experience Deering's era. His brother Charles Deering's nearby estate, now named 'The Deering Estate at Cutler', is also open to the public and owned by Miami-Dade County, but without art and furnishings. James Deering's estate, now named Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, is an accredited museum and National Historic Landmark. The villa, gardens, and village are under ongoing restoration. The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens mission is "to preserve Vizcaya to engage our community and its visitors in learning through the arts, history, and the environment."
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
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I am looking for more information on this 1960's artifact used for Earth-to-CSM-spacecraft communications testing for Apollo.
The original “USB” (Unified S-Band) was a common communication channel used during the Apollo missions. With just 20 Watts, they could communicate with Houston from the moon (across 239,000 miles). And a single antenna combined voice, television, command, tracking and ranging.
After nine months of effort, the incredible team of Curious Marc, Ken Shirriff and Mike Stewart have revived my 50+year-old Apollo S-Band communications system, using my ground support equipment and the vintage Apollo CSM transponder. In the most recent episode, they powered it up and got the Apollo transponder to lock bidirectionally, with the original NASA test transmitter and receiver, which we both restored to their original Apollo frequencies.
An artifact from the Future Ventures’ 🚀 Space Collection.
A stylus gauge from Weathers Industries, used to measure stylus tracking force of a phonograph tone arm.
Weathers Industries was founded by Paul Weathers in 1950. He was an engineer who developed a turntable with an exceptionaly light tone arm using FM modulation and a stereo speaker system using a subwoofer. He manufactured his high end turntables and speaker systems first in Collingswood NJ, then in Barrington, then Cherry Hill Industrial Park. He later moved his operation to 1006 Route 73 in Mt. Laurel. Weathers was last located in Marlton Sqaure (today Staples Plaza) in Marlton, where it moved to from Mt. Laurel in the late 1970s. It is said Mr. Weathers kept this small shop open for his customers who purchased his equipment, but they also serviced other brands. Shortly before his death in the early 1990s the shop became Fidelity Stereo and TV Service Center.
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
A Place to Bury Strangers graces us with their presence once again. I'm still surprised this avant garde experimental band comes to St. Louis. The crowd, though not large, understands and appreciates this unique band. You have to see them to understand their artistry and power.
The subtitle of this series is the "madness of photographing in stobe lights". I asked Oliver Ackermann before they played if they were going to have strobes likes the first time I saw them. I just wanted to be ready for them. He laughed and, "Maybe." Oh yes there were strobes and they were even more intense than last time. It was a smaller more independent venue this time and maybe that made it easier to put on the show they REALLY wanted to. Though 60% of my shots were black, I managed to get a few.
#amy buxton
#Fall
#St. Louis
#A Place to Bury Strangers
#band
#music
#noise manipulation
#Off Broadway
#wave modulation
#Death By Audio
#Dion Lunadon
#Oliver Ackermann
#experimental rock
#space rock
#strobe light
#strobe
#concert
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
Auguste Rodin, 1840 - 1917
L'Age d'Airain model 1875-1876, cast 1903-1904
This cast was purchased by the original owners in 1905 from the artist. I have questions about how involved Rodin was in the creation of the reductions. In the normal course of events the artist would produce a maquette for a sculpture. It would be enlarged or reduced by artisans working under his supervision. The subtlety of surface modulation is mostly lost in the reduced version. flic.kr/p/y3BKJt
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1182. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
German-American-British film actress Luise Rainer (1910-2014) was the first to win multiple Academy Awards and the first to win back-to-back for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). At the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her 105th birthday, she was the longest-lived Oscar recipient, a superlative that had not been exceeded as of 2020.
Luise Rainer was born in 1910 in Düsseldorf, in then the German Empire (now Germany). Her parents were Heinrich and Emilie (née Königsberger) Rainer. Her father was a businessman who settled in Europe after spending most of his childhood in Texas. Rainer's rebellious nature made her appear to be a "tomboy" and happy to be alone. She started her acting career in Berlin at age 16, under the pretext of visiting her mother, she traveled to Düsseldorf for a prearranged audition at the Dumont Theater. In the 1920s the theatre director Louise Dumont separated from her husband. Dumont was attached to a number of young actresses including Fita Benkhoff, Hanni Hoessrich, and Rainer. It has been presumed that Dumont was bisexual. Rainer later began studying acting with the leading stage director at the time, Max Reinhardt. By the time she was 18, several critics felt that she had an unusual talent for a young actress. She became a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardt's theatre ensemble. She also appeared in several German-language films. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by MGM talent scout Phil Berg, who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935. He thought she would appeal to the same audience as Swedish MGM star Greta Garbo. Mayer assigned actress Constance Collier to train her in speech and dramatic modulation, and Rainer's English improved rapidly.
Luise Rainer's first American film role was in the romantic comedy Escapade (Robert Z. Leonard, 1935) with William Powell. It is a remake of the popular Austrian Operetta film Maskerade/Masquerade (Willy Forst, 1934). The film generated immense publicity for Rainer, who was hailed as "Hollywood's next sensation." The following year she was given a supporting part as the real-life character Anna Held in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), featuring William Powell. Despite her limited role, her emotion-filled performance so impressed audiences that she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. She was later dubbed the "Viennese Teardrop" for her dramatic telephone scene, attempting to congratulate Ziegfeld on his new marriage, in the film. On the evening of the Academy Award ceremonies, Rainer remained at home, not expecting to win. When Mayer learned she had won, he sent MGM publicity head Howard Strickling racing to her home to get her. She was also awarded the New York Film Critics' Award for the performance. For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced, despite the studio's disagreement, that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife opposite Paul Muni in The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937), based on Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. The humble, subservient, and mostly silent character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous vivacious character that she again won the Oscar for Best Actress. Rainer and Jodie Foster are the only actresses ever to win two Oscars by the age of thirty.
However, Luise Rainer later stated nothing worse could have happened to her than winning two consecutive Oscars, as audience expectations from then on would be too high to fulfill. A few months before the film was completed, Irving Thalberg died suddenly at the age of 37. Rainer commented years later: "His death was a terrible shock to us. He was young and ever so able. Had it not been that he died, I think I may have stayed much longer in films." After four more, insignificant roles, MGM and Rainer became disappointed, and she was dubbed "Box Office Poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Adding to her rapid decline, some feel, was the poor career advice she received from her then-husband, playwright Clifford Odets. She ended her brief three-year Hollywood career and returned to Europe where she helped get aid to children who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. Nevertheless, she was not released from her MGM contract and, by 1940, she was still bound to make one more film for the studio. Some film historians consider her the "most extreme case of an Oscar victim in Hollywood mythology". Rainer studied medicine and returned to the stage. In 1939, she made her first appearance at the Palace Theatre, Manchester in Jacques Deval's play 'Behold the Bride', and later played the same part in her London debut at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Returning to America, she played the leading part in George Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan' in 1940 at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C. under the direction of German emigrant director Erwin Piscator. In 1943, she made an appearance in the film Hostages (Frank Tuttle, 1943). Rainer abandoned film making in 1944 after marrying publisher Robert Knittel. She made sporadic television and stage appearances, appearing in an episode of the World War II television series Combat! in 1965. She took a dual role in a 1984 episode of The Love Boat. She appeared in the film The Gambler (Károly Makk, 1997), starring Michael Gambon. It marked her film comeback at the age of 86. Luise Rainer passed away in 2014, in Belgravia, London, England. She was 104. Rainer married Clifford Odets in 1937 and they divorced in 1940. Her second husband was publisher Robert Knittel. They were married from 1945 till his death in 1989 and lived in the UK and Switzerland for most of their marriage. The couple had one daughter, Francesca Knittel.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Sample image taken with a Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R mounted on a Fujifilm XT1 body; each of these images is an out-of-camera JPEG with Lens Modulation Optimisation enabled. These samples and comparisons are part of my Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R review at:
cameralabs.com/reviews/Fujifilm_Fujinon_XF_56mm_f1-2_R/
Feel free to download the original image for evaluation on your own computer or printer, but please don't use it on another website or publication without permission from www.cameralabs.com/
from Wikipedia:
The chapel combines harmoniously a variety of styles: the Norman architecture and door decor, the Arabic arches and scripts adorning the roof, the Byzantine dome and mosaics. For instance, clusters of four eight-pointed stars, typical for Muslim design, are arranged on the ceiling so as to form a Christian cross.
Saracen arches and Byzantine mosaics complement each other within the Palatine Chapel
The Palatine Chapel (Italian: Cappella Palatina[1]) is the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor at the center of the Palazzo Reale in Palermo, southern Italy.
The chapel was commissioned by Roger II of Sicily in 1132 to be built upon an older chapel (now the crypt) constructed around 1080. It took eight years to build and many more to decorate with mosaics and fine art. The sanctuary, dedicated to Saint Peter, is reminiscent of a domed basilica. It has three apses, as is usual in Byzantine architecture, with six pointed arches (three on each side of the central nave) resting on recycled classical columns.
The mosaics of the Palatine Chapel are of unparalleled elegance as concerns elongated proportions and streaming draperies of figures. They are also noted for subtle modulations of colour and luminance. The oldest are probably those covering the ceiling, the drum, and the dome. The shimmering mosaics of the transept, presumably dating from the 1140s and attributed to Byzantine artists, illustrate scenes from the Acts of the Apostles. Every composition is set within an ornamental frame, not dissimilar to that used in contemporaneous mosaic icons.
Other remarkable features of the chapel include the Carolingian throne, a low stage for royal receptions, and a balcony which allowed the king to view religious processions from above. In addition, the muqarnas ceiling is spectacular. The hundreds of facets were painted, notably with many purely ornamental vegetal and zoomorphic designs but also with scenes of daily life and many subjects that have not yet been explained. Stylistically influenced by Iraqi 'Abbasid art, these paintings are innovative in their more spatially aware representation of personages and of animals
Modulation level with a MAGIC EYE 6E5 Tube and "RECORD LEVEL escutcheon. This tube was used in many Radios and test equipment.
Webcor Tape Recorder reel-to-reel all-tube set in a case. This is the once ubiquitous 6E5 "magic eye". When I use my tube-tester, I make it wink with the turn of a bias knob. The tape recorder had a badly designed multi-point slide switch inside that was beyond repair.
Unit scrapped and tubes tested all ok. Unit salvaged for parts.
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Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
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I took this on it's maiden voyage today up Mt. Shasta, to almost 8,000
feet above the sea, then enjoyed a 14 mile twisty descent averaging 37mph. There was plenty of high-speed hairpinning to test a prototype brake...
My opinions: this brake is more powerful than the Racer (due to the shorter arms?), with at least the same smooth modulation, maybe better. There's never a point where you can't keep applying more power.
It eats a 40mm Honjo fender, no problem. 35mm cyclocross tires fit too, but not with what I'd call mud clearance. I imagine the sweet spot on this brake will be a 25-32mm tire with fenders.
There are still some design elements to tweak, but it's gettin' close. And nope, I've not a clue when they'll drop.
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
Citroen C2 VTS (2003=09) Engine 1587cc TU5 S4 16v
Driver Juozas (Joe) Meskauskas
Series Champion BTRD Rallycross - Production Class
CITROEN SET
www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623776731490...
Designed by Donato Coco as a replacment for the Citroen Saxo in the supermini category. Whereas its stablemate the C3 was aimed as a larger "family friendly vehicle", with its five doors the C2 was aimed at younger drivers with two doors and flatter styling. April 2007 saw Citroën Europe announcing a facelift for its C2 model, which had received a minor update in November 2006. The 2009 C2 featured a larger front bumper and restyled grille with a chrome surround.
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Available with 1.1, 1.4 and 1.6 litre petrol engines along with a 1.4 litre Diesel, the entry trim level the LX was strictly a no frills version, the L available 2003-05 came with black lower bumper and door handles, CD player, rear seat modulation and no fog lamps. The Design included body coloured bumpers and electric windows. The SX was the luxury spec.
There were three sports models the Furio, VTR and the VTS. The Furio has the same sports body kit as the more expensive VTR and VTS models but lacks their alloy wheels. except the pre-2003 cars which came with 15" Coyote alloys, The VTR also has a 110 bhp (82 kW; 112 PS) engine, whereas the VTS, the premium sports model, has a 125 bhp (93 kW; 127 PS) engine capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 8.0 seconds, it was intended that these cars attracted lower insurance premiums than some of their hot hatch rivals and the VTS came with security based additions including deadlocks and a Thatcham Category 1 alarm system which includes perimeter and volumetric detection as well as an engine immobiliser.
Many thanks for a Marmalising
52,510.429 views
Shot 15.06.2016 at the Coventry Festival of Motoring, Coventry REF 118-033
Il Campione: This Italian sensation reminds us that driving can indeed be joyous
It’s become de rigueur to declare driving dead. If we are headed for autonomous transport, ask the pundits, why bother having fun behind the wheel? Just clamber into your soulless people hauler, select “Stultifying Ambient Tedium” on your Pandora playlist, and tune out.
At Motor Trend, dear reader, we are not ready to give up the fight even if the morning commute is more slog than slalom, more torture than torque. We contend that a schlep through shoreline traffic should not extinguish individuality.
Driving great distances because you can is a deep-rooted American tradition. It is the declaration of independence of the industrial revolution. It is our automotive destiny. We embrace the decreasing-radius corner, the back road’s unexpected undulation, the hairpin with a dusting of gravel at the apex.
At a time when the formulaic commoditization of cars is not only expected but also a standard feature, we rebel. We are not ready to relegate our cars to the status quo of an A-to-B anachronism of conveyance. We believe in the necessity of passion and finding your heart’s desire. There is still time—time to instill joy, lust, rivalry, and good cheer.
For those who won’t settle for ubiquity, we present the 2018 Motor Trend Car of the Year: the Alfa Romeo Giulia.
No less a luminary than Henry Ford, the inventor of the mass-production automobile, once said: “When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.”
Mr. Ford knew there was something special about the car that carries the cross-and-serpent badge, the company where Enzo Ferrari proudly got his start in racing before hanging his own shingle.
Our international bureau chief, Angus MacKenzie, an axle-greased eminence of the auto industry, knows his Alfa history. In his London garage sits a 1967 GTV coupe—a rolling symbol of Alfa Romeo’s glory years. “Back in the early ’60s, Alfa occupied a niche that BMW later came to own—building fast, charismatic sedans, wagons, and coupes that looked good, weren’t stupidly expensive, and, most of all, were utterly delightful to drive,” he says. “This new Giulia recaptures the spirit of those 1960s Alfas but in a thoroughly modern manner.”
Anyone reading Motor Trend this past year shouldn’t be surprised. Each successive time we drove the Giulia, through summer’s ripening breath, our enthusiasm grew.
Alfa Romeo’s erratic legacy in this country might mean many Americans have limited knowledge of this brand and heritage. Consider the Giulia your introduction.
“There is sorcery in this car,” road test editor Chris Walton says. “The Giulia fills the space vacated by BMW. Yet even at the apex of its reign, a 3 Series never rode this well or cornered with such poise and precision simultaneously.”
When seeing the strength of the 2018 COTY field, some readers might feel our choice of the Alfa Romeo seems out of left field. The Honda Accord, Kia Stinger, and Tesla Model 3 all make strong plays for top honors (and received individual first-place votes among our judging panel).
But Alfa Romeo is dashing away with the prize—the first time an Italian brand has won COTY or our discontinued Import Car of the Year—and anyone who has been reading Motor Trend this past year shouldn’t be surprised.
Earlier this year, the base Giulia beat all comers in our Big Test of 2.0-liter compact luxury sedans—a field that included Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz, among others.
The Quadrifoglio version then eviscerated its rival BMW M3, Cadillac ATS-V, and Mercedes C63 S super sedan entrants in a four-way comparison on streets and at the racetrack.
And in Best Driver’s Car against 11 supercars, sports cars, and six-figure grand tourers, the Quadrifoglio (the lone sedan) finished in a respectable sixth.
Each successive time we drove the Giulia, through summer’s ripening breath, our enthusiasm grew.
“Best steering, best chassis—this car saves the sport sedan market,” says guest judge Chris Theodore—the former Ford and Chrysler product development executive who knows something about creating cars to make a soul ache.
“It was the only car that said, ‘You’re in charge. You want to be nice and tidy, I can be tidy. You want to be crazy and drift me wild, I’ll be right there with you,’” Theodore adds. “You fall in love with it.”
The top-trim Quadrifoglio, with its 505 fiery-footed steeds underhood, is blisteringly quick, especially in Race mode. Its 2.9-liter V-6 is a Ferrari engine with two cylinders cleaved off, for crying out loud. While punching out a 3.8-second 0–60 time and a 12.1-second quarter mile, this pazzo Alfa also carries asphalt-peeling lateral grip. Yet the car’s attitude can be adjusted on the throttle at will. In short, it goads expletive-shouting misbehavior while delivering a commute-friendly ride.
What clinched the Calipers was the base Giulia. Many brands make blazingly fast performance sedans, but when the exercise is reduced by mass-market pressures, the lesser version is often found lacking. Not so here. The $38,990 base Giulia achieves something Acura, Lexus, Infiniti, and Jaguar have tried futilely to do for decades: build a better compact sport sedan than the Deutschlanders.
The Giulia’s eager 2.0-liter turbo-four is no wisp of an engine. It cranks out a stunning yet tractable 280 hp and 306 lb-ft of torque. In testing, we admit to finding a hint of lag and lash, but when the powerband kicks in to second gear and the exhaust note awakens, your senses will revel in jubilation.
“This is a car that snorts and burps and gurgles,” Detroit editor Alisa Priddle says. “There is something visceral about hearing the car. There’s sheer fun in driving a car like that.”
Call it Italian finesse; Alfa understands the nuance that some drivers might desire, a racy engine response without turning the suspension into a kidney-beating nightmare—hence the option of a softer suspension setting while in Dynamic mode. Markus observed that some twisty roads benefit a car with a softer shock setting. Adds Ed Loh: “The Germans always say, ‘We make everything hard.’ No! Softness. Softness.”
Putting the power to the pavement is a proven ZF eight-speed with 100-millisecond shift times and the ability to skip-shift from eighth gear directly to second if instant hp is needed. If you are stuck in the typical morning snarl, a switch to “A” mode changes the shift logic to smooth and calm. So what if we Americans don’t get a manual version? One toggle of the cold, all-aluminum paddle shifters will make you cease yearning to row your own gears. The Brembo brakes, normally a sure thing, and brake-by-wire system earned some frowns for being mushy under pressure, though.
“It handles absolutely beautifully, with light, linear sports car–like steering,” features editor Christian Seabaugh says. “It rides like a luxury car with no impact harshness in the cabin, and it’s downright quick. This is a car that puts a smile on your face. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sitting at a stop light, bombing down a back road, or cruising on the highway. It just wants to please.”
Many luxury sedans have imitated the stark Germanic style. But Alfa retained its legacy of what an Italian car’s exterior and interior should look like. It is unmistakable and sensual, imbuing a cosmopolitan glamour to the driver.
“The design, packaging, and various visual elements seem to come together to complement each other,” former Chrysler design boss Tom Gale says, pointing to the shield grille, shrouded instrument cluster, and ’60s-inspired wood inlays as iconic Alfa styling points.
Alfa Romeo could have taken the cheap way out, relying on tacked-on pieces of faux heritage. But no, the whole car is heritage—swoopy, sexy, and more than a little brazen. The smooth detents of the buttons, the rheostatic clicks of the dials, and the swing of the stalks all carry a tactile elegance. The italic typeface on the instrument gauges connotes velocity. The back seats, though a tad tight on legroom, are draped in the same sumptuous leather as those up front.
This snazzy aesthetic travels into places most people won’t see (but Theodore did), such as the attention to detail in the chassis design—with stout spring perches, strut-tower braces, and shrouding of the cooling system.
Now let’s talk value. This segment is cutthroat, and Alfa has not flinched at what is expected. After following the industry-standard 36-month, $399/month lease deal, it launched a 24-month, $299/month lease deal that should get the attention of any individual with Maserati tastes but a Mazda budget.
Carrying such a gutsy engine could tank fuel economy. But the Alfa is a miser. The rear-drive version of the 2.0-liter Giulia delivers 21.7/37.9/26.8 mpg city/highway/combined in our Real MPG tests, while the Quadrifoglio managed 15.8/28.5/19.8 mpg—in both cases, underperforming the EPA ratings slightly in city and combined and significantly exceeding them on the highway.
As for safety, the Giulia was rated a Top Safety Pick+ by IIHS, its highest rating, and earned top marks for its automatic emergency braking and headlamp systems. The Giulia carries a five-star rating in the European NCAP evaluation. It offers smart cruise control (down to a full stop), forward collision warning, pedestrian detection, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, and numerous other systems. And although other cars blare Klaxons to warn of a lane departure, the Giulia thumps a bass line more akin to a Deadmau5 beat.
As to the elephant in the room: Some readers with long memories will recall Alfas of yore as temperamental and unreliable—the main reason for its departure from this market in 1993. And upon Alfa Romeo’s return to the U.S., some early-build 2017 Giulias had issues with electrical gremlins. But in this year’s accelerated wear-and-tear Car of the Year testing of three Giulias, we found nary a glitch, hiccup, or bark of protest—while several cars from other luxury automakers had notable issues.
Is the Giulia perfect? No, but neither are any of its rivals. Tetchy brake modulation makes a gliding limousine stop a challenge. The fantastically supportive optional sport seats have imposing side bolsters that require the figure of a Milan runway model. The rear-seat footwells needed some sharp bits burred. The all-season tires on the all-wheel-drive Q4 version were a bit greasy. The infotainment screen could use a more complete user experience (Apple CarPlay is an anticipated rolling change) and a higher-resolution rearview camera. And for all the elegance of the interior, the plastic gearshift conjures a PlayStation joystick.
But those are minor points. Our peckish panel of judges had similar quibbles with every car in this year’s field. The Giulia was the only vehicle whose essence enraptured the jury with its charm and unbridled zeal for driving. Nearly every judge uttered the word “love” when describing this car. “I would be so happy if every day I got to be in this car,” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman says.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo told us that his shimmering Juliet “doth teach the torches to burn bright.” And so we compare thee, beautiful, passionate Alfa Romeo Giulia—your styling, road manners, and sheer sensuality of driving.
After we had tested all the finalists, we deliberated their attributes. MacKenzie noted, even to those who might not vote for Giulia in first place: “Look at all the smiles. This car makes you smile.”
A Car of the Year should evoke such strong emotion. For those who feel that the journey is as important as the destination, your chariot awaits.
New!!! Adventure Audio (@adventure_audio) Dream Reaper - Fuzzy Feedback Modulation Machine * * * bit.ly/2km14y6 * * * #adventureaudio #adventure #dreamreaper #fuzz #fuzzpedal #feedbackloop #feedback #feedbacklooppedal #feedbackpedal #effectsdatabase #fxdb, via Instagram: bit.ly/2kWkrRk
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Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
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bricolaged notes from STUDIO UNBOUND : Lane Relyea
Institutional Critique : Studio/Post Studio Activity
The Function of the Studio
Daniel Buren
The Studio is no longer as seen as belonging to a system.
No longer a retreat but it now INTEGRATES
It is all exterior.
The Network places the artist as a 'like item' within an integrative inventory or database.
Networks are both integrative and decentralizing in that they privilege casual or weak ties over formal commitments.
Being part of a network that privileges itinerancy and circulation over fixity, that diminishes hierarchies and boundaries in favour of mobility and flexibility across a more open extensive environment.
'The Studio made into a showroom display'
Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. 2004
Claire Bishop
The Individual and The Social
A place where meanings, properties and behaviors fluctuate radically.
Bennett Simpson. Can you work as fast as you like to think. 2003
The hosting/re-created artist's workspaces, like a threshold between private and public actuality and potentiality.
Spaces of Fluid Interchange Between Objects, Activities, People.
Today studio and museum are superseded by more temporal, transient events.
The Notion of the Evolutionary Exhibition.
Placing greater emphasis on INFORMATION, DISCUSSION and GATHERINGS
Establishing NETWORKS, fluctuating between highly specialized work by scientists, artists, dancers and writers
Obrist/Vanderlinden, Laboratorium, Antwerp. 1999
MODULATION, Deleuze
Immaterial Social Acquaintances/Information
Along with the rise of Networks comes a new Ideology, one that Advertises Agency, Practice and Everyday Life.
The Dividual (The New Mobile Creator) Deleuze
Someone who is 'UNDULATORY In ORBIT, in a CONTINUOUS NETWORK
Colour Nexus : Promiscuous Mobility
Material Flows 2007/2017 Towards Disentanglement
Social behaviour is trapped in inescapable patterns of interaction coded by techno-linguistic machines, smartphones, screens of every size, and all of these sensory and emotional devices end up destroying our organism's sensibility by submitting it to the stress of competition and acceleration.
Franco "bifo" Berardi
OBSCURED MATERIAL
The Modulation of the Image
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
This 8 channel PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) card using NE555 timers is based on a test circuit devised and published by Giorgos Lazaridis in 2009. It is part of enhancements to the exhibition "public control panel" to provide wired operation of signals and points (turnouts) on the 16mm scale exhibit using servos instead of solenoids. The aim is more reliable control with slower, more realistic movement - a sort of "fly by wire" for model railways...
It's @bonstewart's week for #change11!!!!!
These are just some very rough notes.
I insist you go read all about it here:
theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/05/06/digital-identities-s...
The live session was Wednesday May 9 at 11am. It was excellent.
You can even watch the recording. Although a lot of the fun was in the participation so I suggest you keep a pen handy and make some notes.
{Oh, and please note that BlackBoard Corroborate (and most synchronous tools) can mess with audio. So although I didn't hear it from my end LIVE on the day, the recording has added deceptive pseudo sibilant sounds to Bon's speech. Really, she does NOT have a lisp!
I do know that when bandwidth varies and this can cause a variety of voice modulations, usually it's "the chipmunk", which I find particularly entertaining.}
I really appreciate when facilitators approach "their" week early starting from prior weeks and end with a closing reflection post. Accordingly, I suggest you go read her great summary: theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/05/12/fleshing-out-the-dig...
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Limoges 1841 – Cagnes-sur Mér 1919
Der Spaziergang - The Promenade (1870)
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
In The Promenade, both figures are crucial to the scene, but they are treated very differently. Brightly lit and wearing a white dress, the woman is the dominant focus of the picture. Sporting a dark jacket and pressing back against the foliage, the man is a far more shadowy figure, only partially lit by scattered flashes of sunlight on his trousers, hands, collar, and hat. The trail into the depths of the wood may be well lit, but there is the hint, in the young man’s heavily shaded, almost caricatural features, that his intentions might be less than pure.
There is nothing in the painting that allows us to pinpoint the exact location of Renoir’s scene, but it’s clear from the dense, overgrown foliage and rough, uneven terrain that this is not the cultivated space of a park or garden.
The most telling clue is the figures’ relatively informal urban dress, which suggests that they are Parisian pleasure seekers on an excursion outside the city. The distinctive ribboned hat worn by the man identifies him as a canotier, or boater – a common sight along the Seine River valley to the west of Paris. Have these two just left their boat by the riverbank in a search for greater privacy?
The Promenade is considered a genre painting, meaning it depicts a familiar scene of everyday life whose characters are recognizable social types. The canotier can be imagined in his weekday life as a petit bourgeois, belonging to the lower-middle class and his companion as one of the legendary grisettes, the good-hearted girls common in the mythology of Parisian bohemian life who were interested in handsome young men for their charm, not their money. Together, these day-tripping Parisians evoke an easygoing, semi-bohemian world in which the pursuit of fleeting pleasures is paramount and social strictures are relaxed in the context of unbound nature.
The informality of the picture’s youthful, romantic subject is complemented by that of its lively, energetic technique. The Promenade rejects traditional notions of drawing and the imperative to clearly delineate and carefully model forms. Instead, Renoir works in a vibrant, painterly mode, animating the whole picture surface with fluid, broken brushstrokes and flecks and dashes of contrasting tone and color. Through brushwork and the modulation of light and color, he creates a dynamic interplay between the figures and their natural surroundings, responding in his way to one of the defining challenges of the Impressionist generation: how to depict large-scale figures outdoors in sunlight.
Despite the apparent informality and speed of Renoir’s loose, flickering technique, The Promenade is a work of great artifice, its composition is carefully framed and orchestrated. While dark foliage in the upper left corner sets off the woman in white, sun-dappled greens in the upper right corner set off the man’s dark figure.
In the bottom corners, the scene is framed by a delicate spray of leafy twigs and a massive tree trunk - contrasting natural elements that wittily echo the gendered opposition of Renoir's female and male figures.
And just as the man leads the woman up the path, so a sequence of pink and red touches lead the viewer’s eye across the composition from the woman's face and hat through the joined hands to the man's face and the remarkable red ribbon on his hat . and finally to his left hand, pointing to where he wishes her to go.
"I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.” Renoir
Source: "Taking a Stroll in Renoir's The Promenade" published online in 2021 via Google Arts & Culture, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.