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.



Nine