MY AFFAIR WITH THE CHAIR

We can thank the ancient Romans for plumbing, paved highways, and the Julian calendar. But of all their contributions to Western civilization, the most important, as far as I’m concerned, is the introduction to Europe of the free-standing chair. Until approximately the seventh or eighth century BC, we were still tucking in on the floor with the animals. The utilitarian bench and stool and even the floor cushion may have raised us marginally off the floor, but it was the anthropomorphic free-standing chair that marked humanity’s elevation from subsistence to “civilized” living. With its articulated arms and legs and seat and back, the chair denoted our abandonment of animal habits and postures in favor of comfort and symbols of power.

The Pharonic Egyptians were the first to develop the chair – for ceremonial use. In the sixth or seventh century BC, the Greeks modified Pharonic proportions to create the most elegant chair in history -- the ineffable Klismos.. With its low, concave backrest shaped to the human body, and splayed legs that allowed the sitter to lean back, the Klismos is as sculptural as a Brancusi and as comfortable as a contour. As the Roman Empire spread across Europe, the Klismos became a fundamental part of the scenery for the theater of Western life. . .at least for a millennium or so.

Having climbed to such a pinnacle of civility, how, we must wonder, could humanity could return to a life of squatting. Indeed, if anything was dark about the Dark Ages, it was the return to eating off the floor. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5^th Century AD the free-standing chair was all but forgotten…and for more than a thousand years!

Not until the dawn of the 16^th century, as the earliest domestic interiors of Europe’s town-dwelling bourgeoisie evolved, did houses began to fill again with rudimentary furnishings. These took the form of built-in and portable chests for stage, seating, and sometimes sleeping as well as stools, folding benches, and trestle tables for eating and working. The nobility traveled among their many residences carrying their portable tables and collapsible chairs with them (hence the words for furniture in Italian, French and Spanish are mobili, mobiliers, and muebles). The poor lived wretchedly in huts of mud and straw. But city-dwelling merchants and artisans enjoyed their relative degree of medieval prosperity in long, narrow, two-story townhouses where they combined living and working. Although they were still virtually camping inside, this proud population began to think about something resembling permanence and, equally astonishing, comfort.

The chair connoted stability, affluence, and religio/civic authority. The earliest free-standing examples were X-frame chairs made of an X-shaped wooden frame across which canvas, webbing or leather was slung as a seat and stretched as a back. (It was derived from the X-shaped folding stool.) By the 17^th century, an increased control over materials and expanded expertise in production enabled furniture pieces to be used as part of the decoration of a room. Fabric and padding were customarily attached to a chair frame with nails, the fabric and nails lending ornament and the padding comfort. Furniture, for the first time since the Roman era, came to be considered a valuable possession.

With this consciousness, the medieval X-frame chairs grew into “chairs of estate” and achieved throne-like prestige with expanded proportions, luxe upholstery, and decorations of with fringes, tassels, needlework, and large ornamental nails. This macho opulence ultimately gave way, toward the end of the 17^th century, to a refinement of line and form. As the frame grew graceful, the seat and back grew commodious and intimations of the Klismos appeared. Ultimately, the abundantly cushioned and graceful fauteuil, the classic French open armchair, grew so desired for its elegance and largesse, that it was sustained and copied in most European countries throughout the next century. During the 18^th century, which was the pinnacle of chair design, the chair came to mirror fashion. In France, for example, chairs were created to accommodate the fabulous heights of ladies’ wigs or to accentuate the simply cut gowns of the favored Grecian style.

Regardless of its age or condition, a beautiful chair is a work of art. In my garden, a half-wooded, subtropical Giverny, a collection of old wrought iron garden chairs suggest a poetry of ruin. Although each chair possesses some arabesqued element – a scrolled armrest, a fanned backrest, a splayed foot -- they are more Giocommetti than Brancusi, skeletal and rusting into a deterioration of sculptural glory. Poised for visitation, their assembly begs curiosity – who and what are they waiting for out there in the elements as if in silent anticipation of a Quaker meeting.

Inside the house, my oval-back dining chairs are upholstered in a leopard pattern print on which my Bengal cats, curled in slumber, become almost indistinguishable. At the head of the dining table sits a Klismos-like armchair with silvered finish and ram’s-head finials. If such a thing were not oxymoronic, it could be considered a modest throne.

My friend, the illustrator Barry Zaid has an actual throne in his “sitting” room. It is one of only nine reproductions that exist in the world of a chair made for Sitamen, daughter of Tuya and Yuyu, aunt and uncle of the Pharoah Tutankhamen. The original was discovered when Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1903 and is now (we hope, still) in the Cairo museum. The modeled gesso and gilt decoration on the back panel of the chair consists of a winged sun disc below which appears a scene showing a dual image of Sitamen receiving gifts of gold necklaces from female servants. The accompanying inscription above the seated princess gives her name: "The eldest daughter of the king whom he loves, Sitamen." The text inscribed above the servants describes the offering of gold from "the lands of the south."

Barry bought his throne from an antique dealer in 1976. Today it sits in his South Beach apartment among his collections of mosaic urns and obelisks, glass globes, and examples of his own art. It looks right at home. His spotted Bengal cat Chitta and her companion Penny long ago claimed it for a napping spot.

You can read more about the Treasures of Yuya and Tuyu at http://anubis4_2000.tripod.com/SpecialExhibits/YuyaTuyu.htm

You can see Barry’s graphic design, illustration, and packaging art at http://www.barryzaid.com

The Colors of White

Laura Cerwinske

If only white were only white, we might be fooled to believe that life could ever be -- black and white. But white -- the luminous sum of all color -- is the epitome of nuance. Think lime white, glacier white, honeymilk white, colorless chameleon white, and dove white. Imagine rich and glossy white "like the rooms in Gosford Park" and sharp, cool, clean enamel white.

Ten architects, interior and set designers, product designers, and color experts reveal their propensities in a to-the-point article about "choosing whites." Writer Elana Frankel confides that she "tends to use brighter whites higher up in a room and warmer whites down around eye level." My conclusion: There's nothing black and white about white.

Take a look:

http://www.homegoesstrong.com/pick-perfect-white-paint

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE...

the geographic and historic mix grows all the richer

On Christmas day I flew to Tampa to visit the blues/rock musician and funked-out-elegant clothing designer Judy Tampa (http://www.judytampa.com) and her ex-husband with whom she lives, the Mack Truck scion David Hall. We’ve all known each other since art school at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s and various subsequent episodes in San Francisco, Miami, and New York. Judy sings with her band Bunko Squad and their first CD, "Tainted" is killer.

In 1973, Judy and I “received Knowledge” from Guru Maharaji, known then as “The 16-year-old Guru” and “Lord of the Universe.” He dazzled my artist/dancer/writer/soul-starved wanderer self (contrary to every intellectual Jewish fiber of my being). Today I am still an artist/writer/teacher, but my self is no longer soul starved, and Maharaji, now known as Prem Rawat, is still dazzling me. (http://maharaji.net/main1280.html).

At Judy and David’s Christmas party I ran into (with champagne in hand) their lifelong friend the juggler/filmmaker/art historian Stuart Lippe who I met in 1967 on the FSU art program in Florence, Italy and who I’d not seen since. We delved into a psychedelically cluttered reminiscence that included Stuart’s mention of the Rubenesque and brilliant academic Helen Hennessey with whom he had recently become reacquainted. I remembered her as my roommate and frequent photography model at USF after our return from Florence.

The next day Judy Tampa and I drove to St. Petersburg to visit Fred Tirabassi, owner of the legendary eatery Kopper Kitchen. Fred and I had known each other since 1973 when he was the head of Maharaji’s Miami ashram. Judy and I followed him down a yellow brick path on a tour of the 1920s Spanish Mediterranean house he’d remodeled. Once uninhabitable, it is Fred’s homage to the casual beauty of Old Florida.

For New Year’s my friend and boss the architect Bernard Zyscovich (http://www.zyscovich.com) held a dinner for a few friends including his partner, architect Suria Yaffar (native of El Salvador), Vlad and Ludmilla Wasserstein (natives of Russia), Camille and Ron Sppmno (who grew up in St. Petersburg and whose brother turns out to be a long time friend of Fred Tirabassi), Pam Blum (a South African-born Israeli and my dearest friend from the kibbutz I lived on in 1968) who is the mother of Maayan Blum who is married to Joe Clark (an Israeli Cherokee) who works for Zyscovich, Inc.

Yes, a glorious tangle. And the holiday is not yet over. After New Year’s my dear, sartorially superb octogenarian friend Bob Watters, known for his generosity – and popularity -- as “the rock star of AA,” held a birthday luncheon for the octogenarian stud and furniture maker/artist Les Cizek and his wife, the renegade belle of Mississippi whose memoir is to be published this summer, Norma Watkins. Joining us was architect Suzanne Martinson, for whom Zyscovich partner Suria Yaffa used to work. Suzanne’s former husband, the architectural photographer Steven Brooke (http://www.stevenbrooke.com), and I produced the first architecture and design books on Miami (http://www.bluehairlady.com), many of which included the work of Bernard Zyscovich. Suzanne Martinson met Bob Watters through me, I met Bob through Norma Watkins, and Norma and I met through a friend of Fred Tirabassi’s.

I regard this tangle of place and time, these unexpected collisions that re-unite and re-ignite former and present selves, to be the art of living. Out of it I am learning to transform the image I am too often shocked to find in the mirror (lower lighting, ever lower lighting, please) into the brave, gregarious girl I remember. This occurs as I experience myself more and more from the inside out: When I look into Pam’s eyes/mouth/face, I am 19-years-old again and ready to climb the peach trees, prune the plum trees, and take on whatever was next in our uncharted lives at that unique moment of hope for Israel. With Judy Tampa I am the languid bohemian, lounging at the lake-house-in-the-orange-groves just as I am the brittle, exhausted twenty-three year-old, screaming her primal brains out in a freezing cold New York apartment. The primal therapist led us to Maharaji. With Fred I am the girl sitting in a tree behind the ashram, dazzled by the height of the sprawling banyan, the intensity of Fred’s devotion, and our novitiate spiritual grandiosity. When I am with Bernard, we are still pioneers.

“If you want to know your destiny, look around at your friends,” says my godfather, the ever wise Oba Ernesto Pichardo. Likewise with self-regard: in whose eyes do you choose to see yourself? I’ve been looking into Maharaji’s eyes for 38 years as he has been looking back into mine.

Today, I had a meeting with prospective editorial clients whom I had never met before -- Benny Mizrahi (a third generation Israeli) and Farouk Gongee (a native of Lebanon) -- who want to write a book together on Maharaji. Farouk was among Maharaji’s first devotees in America and had been sent to Beirut to propagate Knowledge. He had preceded Fred Tirabassi as director of the early Miami ashram.