Greer Gilman's Blog, page 11

Metamorphoses II

The shirt-pile series:



















Nine

Metamorphoses

In valiant spite of the pandemic, Raven Books, Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, Tosci’s (transcendent ice cream), Tatte (coffee and cakes), Burdick’s (chocolate and patisserie), and Bob Slate (ink and paper) are still with us—hanging on by their fingernails, thank all the gods—and so’s the shop that sells amazing socks (Rosie the Riveter kittens? They can mew it!); but the plague has seized on Joie de Vivre. I mourn. It opened in my neighborhood 36 years ago, just months before I moved north of the Common. I found it waiting for me, newly hatched, and I’ve loved it ever since.

It is a sort of off-world museum shop, crowded with sublime and silly things: glass-blown worlds and rare-wood boxes from the whatnots of Dorimare; spell-crafted kaleidoscopes; jittery robots made of wire and sparks; books by Andy Goldsworthy and Edward Gorey; miniature croquet sets turned in wood, for “studying that game left unfinished at the end of summer”; Etch-a-Sketches; music boxes; spinning tops and gyroscopes; the begging dog who does backflips with his bowl; triple-tongued squeezy dragons; bathtub devil ducks; finger aliens and pencil-top Elder Gods; Slinkies of all sizes; snark on badges and on magnets; a spillikins game of wooden hedgehogs; owls, elves, ravens, mice; a felt Lady Liberty for the top of your Christmas tree, and the best greeting cards.

Its owner-curator has an eye for the peculiar and diverting. She could have called her shop Hobbies Odd.

Nothing here that I’ve ever needed, heaven knows, and much that I’ve unreasonably wanted or gleefully given to the startled or bemused.

Toys.

And those enchanting kaleidoscopes that I’ve been picking up and putting down again for decades with a sigh? Last chance. On sale.

I bought two. One is an immersive secondary world, a pocket universe; the other, liminal, transformative.

One, by Peggy & Steve Kittelson, is hand-turned in spalted maple.



That otherworld map is drawn by an invasion of fungi. That case alone would be a joy to handle and display, but it’s capped with “a gold anodized oil-filled chamber ... filled with Peggy's signature multi-colored lampworked glass pieces.” It does an exquisite ever-tumbling mandala, a choreography of jewel-bright fractals, which is sadly unphotographable—at least not with my camera and without a tripod. I’ve tried. All I get is a Byzantine apse, dim distant angels seen by candlelight.



The other, a teleidoscope by Henry Bergeson, is almost Shakerish in its simplicity: a heavy wedge of polished maple and a globe.



But O my stars! What metamorphoses!





This tessellated lapis lazuli and mother of pearl?



Is laundry.

Books turn out rather nicely, as well. If that were a Liberty silk scarf I'd buy it.



But then, so does a toppling pile of old New Yorkers.



And a piece of string on the rug.



And pretty much anything you spy.



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Dancing in the streets (socially distanced)

I ran out before I'd had my tea.

There is a glorious tranquil autumnal Yardscape, and behind it a joyous clamor of sirens and shrieks and horns.  It's a bit like the "Ascot Gavotte."  A train of bicyclists went swooping through like the Riders of Rohan.  Forth USingas!  A grey-headed woman came striding like Liberty, swinging a great handbell.

Any other year, the Band would have materialized, playing "Illegitimum non carborundum."  We'll take it as read.

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Cabinet of curiosities

With even chocolate inadequate, I went for intensive bibliotherapy and got myself the exhibition catalog for Making Marvels : Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe.  O my!  All sorts of princely toys:  a celestial globe in silver gilt; a clockwork commedia dell'arte; orreries, astrolabes; wonders realized in semi-precious stones, turned ivory, rare woods, and far-fetched shells.  I love the automata set trundling down princely tablecloths, the expensive delicate ships coasting the platters, and the nervy gilt Dianas, springing arrows at dessert.

Just my demitasse of chocolate.

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"But westward, look, the land is bright"

My roof has sky.





May there be a hopeful sunrise.

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Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of puzzling

Of all days in the year, my turn at Liberty has come up. I will take that as a hopeful omen. Warily.

My November puzzle ought to be autumnal.

There's a beautiful Samuel Palmer of The Weald of Kent, more rustic than mystic.



Nice whimsies, with a mingling of wild and domestic: a fox and a squirrel and farmyard animals; hikers and cooks; a fine shuffle of leaves, some many-pieced—and a scarecrow, tied to a pole in a field of corn! With a crow at hand. Though I regret to say the flaycraw's not eerie at all, but plumply cheerful.



Or there's a wilder, woodland landscape On the River Greta, by John Atkinson Grimshaw (take a look at his fabulous urban Gothic: moonlight as aftermath, on storm-slicked cityscapes,or uneasy forests of masts).



Many leaves, fish and fowl and woodland fauna, a canoe, and a fine tree.



If I can wait until December, I would love to get this Gozzoli Journey of the Magi.



No grand assemblages, but the single whimsies are so beautiful. Just look at that courtier in the red-and-gold houppelande; the girl in the cap and apron with her red cow; the pied fools; the hooded falcon; or Balthazar in his turban.



But then, Foxes in the Moonlight just came out. Ooh. Moon, stars, snow.



And the whimsies are fabulous.



January?

And after that, I'll work round again to spring and summer images...

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All Hallows Eve

Snow on still-green leaves, sparkling and slumping off in a muddle of sorrel and vermilion and Venice yellow.  They looked like fairy gold that got left in Oberon's jeans pockets and sent through the wash.

Fox's nursery school met on the Common for trick-or-treating from park bench to bench.  He came as an absolutely magnificent small King Kong, stomping down snow drifts and beating his chest.  Seriously, he could have gone on screen as a practical effect, though he'd need to tuck in that long golden pony tail.  He was brought by an elegant wolf; I wore my venerable owl mask, the one I hand-feathered ages ago.  It was a smartly turned-out class: a blue morpho butterfly; a spikily ragged bat and a modish velvet one; a skeleton; a surgeon; a construction worker; a UPS guy (hero of the pandemic?); and toddling along with an older sibling, an adorably plump pineapple.  Fox made out like a bandit:  candy (I especially admired the hard candy ring with the gigantic ruby, opulent as Cleopatra's pearl), snacks, glow sticks, stickers, and even an artisanal mask with a cute green monster among skyscrapers.  As he said, in praise of creation, "Whoever made sugar did a good job."

Amen.

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Dystopia, Ltd.

This is really disquieting.  I think I've bid for something on eBay once or twice over the last ten years, and I can't remember ever actually winning a bid.  But I saw a really pretty jigsaw puzzle that I wanted to try for.  When I tried to sign in, I was told that my account had been suspended indefinitely and finally.  What the hell?

My first thought was that I'd been hacked, so I contacted their chat line.  The guy there consulted my account file (he said) and told me that  I'd done something so heinous that there was no possible appeal.  He said something about corrupt business practices.  I told him I'd never sold anything on eBay, and demanded the details.  If I've been hacked, I need to know.  He said he couldn't possibly give me any details, lest I use them to cheat eBay further.  And he cut me off.

The hell?

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Full Fathom Five

The first puzzle I did on my return to solitude was Liberty's magisterial Ocean Life (circa 1859), by James Sommerville and Christian Schussele.



Just wow.

The seven-legged* lobster alone is an inset masterpiece.



Here's the verso, so you can admire its articulation.



The octopus enantiomers are diverting.





Turned right side out, she simply and correctly fades into the under-seascape.



The diver is pure Jules Verne.  How did that lantern work underwater?



But every one of the whimsies, single or complex, is a little work of art.












Detail, with Delft man o' war:



I kept picking those blue-and-white pieces up, and thinking: what's all this broken china? A sunk cargo from Cathay?

The puzzle cut is intriguing, full of seaweed whorls and fronds. And (she says modestly), I did this jigsaw without looking at the picture.

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*Did it lose a fight?

What the hell?

I don't remember this circle...

I thought that sharp right after Simony looked weird, mutters Virgil, consulting his dead phone.

This goes on my short list of imaginative rebrandings of classics, along with that paperback of Pepys's diary I have with a naughty French cover and retitled And So To Bed.

I wonder how many game enthusiasts will have plowed through the Longfellow translation?

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