La Sicilia

This past weekend was spent visiting my friend's family in Agrigento.  Are there words to describe Sicily?  I think not, other than it was so much more than I expected.  Imagine a land of rolling hills like in Tuscany, but instead of the steady green found there, you find endless shades of gold, yellow, reds, and umber.  Being a volcanic island it's very easy still to this day to sea it's proof, with little volcanic peaks covered with fields of grain scattered here and there.  What Sicily is missing the most, is the annoying, fat, red, sweaty tourists who demand menus in their own language (cough cough english!).  I fell absolutely in love.  Especially since my friend grew up on a gigantic farm where her father to this day still makes organic....everything!  Cheese, milk, fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, etc etc.

The overgrown road up to the house

Il Pastore

Views from the house

Agrigento



koivu

Stumbled across this lovely birch forest the other day on the blog of Geneviève Bjargardóttir, an Icelandic girl live in Göteborg, Sweden.  Her images are so transporting you can almost smell the moss and fresh air. The fact she uses an analog makes it all the more otherworldly. 

Perfect to look at if you're reading Tove Jansson's Summer Book.

Northern Light

Some friends from Copenhagen (and a Norwegian from the US) have just left, taking my heart with them.  We ate gnocchi, took boat rides, drank spumante, laughed till we cried and did Downton Abbey impressions...they also left me with the song which I can't get out of my head...

Come back!

A Thursday meeting in Venice



Pasolini and Calvino

What I would give to be at this table.  Maria Bellonci is probably at the right. 

And again I beg, why wasn't I born earlier?

Mariano Fortuny

While on my first trip to Venice last November, I developed a bit of an obsession with Mariano Fortuny.  His palazzo was where Axel Vervoordt showed his exhibit for the Bienniale, and if it wasn't for that I'd probably never had gone to the Palazzo Orfei.  The only thing I knew was the name of the impossibly expensive Fortuny fabrics; I didn't realize that in his life he accomplished so much more.

He now is of course most famous for his lavish fabrics, still made secretly in the same factory in Venice.  But he also was a master photographer (see previous Henry James post), able to figure out the camera before many others.  A famous fashion designer: Sarah Bernhardt, Marchesa Casati, Lady Diana Cooper, Isadora Duncan to name a few were all customers.  His name is even mentioned by Proust in The Remembrance of Things Past.  Master inventor: 22 (!) patents were taken out in his name, most of which were for the theater which are still used today; ie: lighting controlled back-stage, the lighting of quarter-domes found in most theaters, photographic papers, fabric printing techniques, etc. Not to mention painter of countless paintings and sculptor...The man was a genius.

Delphos Gown, 1909

He rented a few rooms in the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei with his wife to work and gradually bought the rest little by little until the entire palace was his home/studio, and thankfully today we can go and explore it ourselves.  The Vervoordt exhibit was amazing, but I think discovering about him and his work, seeing where he worked, smelling the oil paint (still!) was all the more thrilling!

I read a brief biography about him, but can't really find something more substantial...does it exist?  If it does, please let me know.  If not, I think I want to write his full story.

I can easily say this is my favorite place in Italy I've seen so far, so if you come, please visit it, or better yet, let me know and I'll meet you there.

Editor's update:  For more information get thee to Acquired Objects well-informed and fascinating posts (here here and here)that completely put mine to shame!  You will not be disappointed!

For a stormy Saturday

I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.

-Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Image: Book Shop in Venice