Last reminiscence

When we lived in Amsterdam - for where, see bell-gable in photo above - the view from the window in the photograph below ...

... was the one on the postcard below.

Of course, we didn't live there as long ago as the clothes might suggest, and we had an oblique view of the statues in the niches as our house was two over on the left. The saplings had grown by our time to massive, stately copper beeches that in leaf ranged from olive/orange to deepest red in autumn, and in summer the head only of the right-hand statue was visible through a window in the leaves.

The first photo was taken from the Rietveld Cupola at the top of Metz & Co, the premier store for modern design in Amsterdam. 

The second, a polaroid, was taken in our breakfast room (no snickering about the skirted table, this was the early 90s) and the third image is a postcard bought at the Rijksmuseum because I recognized the view from our house. The painting "The Garden and Coach House of Keizersgracht 524, Amsterdam" is by Hendrik Keun (1738-1787). 

The walls of the room in the second photo had been washed twice in chrome yellow gouache and then varnished. Glorious, glorious, glorious! 

That's it as far as reminiscing is concerned. 

Tomorrow back to design after one last post (maybe) about Rex Whistler. The problem with Whistler, if I may express it so, is that he and his ilk are such a deep vein of creativity running through the first half of the 20th century and have so many connections that they just cry out to be explored. 

And explore I shall.