What Satan's Wife Would Wear to the Opening of the MOMA

This, my friends, is a batflower. I first saw them at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco. If you think the photos are strange and wonderful, you should see the blooms in real life. The ones in SF are an irridescent green and purple, a color combination you would swear was unearthly, unnatural even, until you actually saw it for real in nature.



I immediately imagined them in a sartorial context, something lush, romantic, diabolically seductive. Of course, Madame Lucifer would need a scent to match, and from what I've read (apparently it's not so easy to obtain unless you order it on the internet) that perfume would be Rose Poivree.

Which is how I came up with the title for this post to begin with . . . in winter 2007 the NYT style magazine ran a piece on civet and other exotic perfume ingredients. The writer, Chandler Burr, opined that of the civet scents on the market today, the most extreme might be Rose Poivree, created by The Different Company. According the Burr the scent is "Pungent with decay . . . unsettling and gorgeous, the perfume that Satan's wife would wear to an opening at MoMa."

Along with a strategically placed Batflower.







Sources include: Here

Blooming Books

This has made some rounds in the blogosphere, but if anyone hasn't seen it, they must. Book sculpture by Su Blackwell. You can visit her website at: http://www.sublackwell.co.uk/

The Vanished Gardens of Cordoba

Cordoba is a place . . . a dream of itself, a once-real place in Andalusian Spain. Before Ferdinand and Isabella, it was ruled by the Caliphate of Cordoba, and before the Caliphate, the Romans.

Gardens from the time of the Caliphs still remain, terrace after terrace of pools, citrus trees, date palms, roses. The oldest walled garden in Europe is in Cordoba, an orange grove besides the mosque. In the garden of the Prince of Viana, in the most ancient part of all, is the Patio of the Lady where clipped cypresses arch over a statue of a woman.

I know this because of a piece of music that captured my imagination . . . a piece of music called The Vanished Gardens of Cordoba by the composer Ray Lynch. You can hear it here: http://www.last.fm/music/Ray+Lynch/_/The+Vanished+Gardens+Of+Córdoba

I would gladly . . .

make a spectacle of myself wearing these.




19th. century Chinese tortoise-shell spectacles. From the collection of Laurie Slater on http://www.phisick.com/index.htm

The sweetest art of all

(photo of Saint Honore Religieuse pastry from the Laduree website)

Do you eat your peas with a knife . . .

or perhaps you'd prefer a bit of a leaf or an insect wing?

This is, sans doute, the most gorgeous flatware ever. Created by Claude and Francois Xavier Lalanne, a pair of French artistes who specialize in magic. I expect the Forest Sprite and Mozart Fowl dine with cutlery like this as a matter of course . . . and equally fantastic china, naturellement.

When something so wrong is just so right . . .

This has been making the rounds on the internet, but I find it so funny I just can't delete it. So I'm sharing it.