Lately, I have Been Feeling Very Sorry For.........

Brown Furniture. ( Do you know what I am talking about?)

Now that the craze for "mid-century" is in full bloom

and is being designed around by all the big box stores

and catalog retailers, all the stream-lined, slightly beige,  non-descript stuff that lurked around your parents' and grandparents' houses

in beech, birch, alder and walnut

from the 50's thru the 70's, is now packing warehouses where the hip want to be, and commanding astronomic prices

that even the big box stores' astronomic prices for goods-made-by-the-bazillions-for-fashion-victim-legions-the-world-over in factories in China..........do not achieve.........

Meanwhile I sorrow for sweet sad brown furniture.

Fifteen years ago I saw all of this furniture (or its cousins) as it filled the three top floors of a drafty warehouse in Leicestershire.   Cheek by jowl with old pub signs, Toby mugs, and brass ox-buckles.  Fifteen years, and thousands of miles further afield, it commands still only those humble 1996 prices.  And yet.  Nobody wants it.  Especially not my English husband.

Noone cares about the handwork in these pieces.  The precision and the balance.  The heft, and the harmony, that some humble man put into the setting of the curves and the matching and joinings of the grain.

  Six hundred dollars (or less) for a hand carved oak or mahogany sideboard.  Solid as a rock!  No particle board here.  Think of the old growth forests that have yielded this up for you!

Do you know how much Lloyds Loom would cost you new?  And that you can leave it in the rain?  Do you realize that this settee has probably survived one hundred years intact?  And an ocean crossing?

If you were to buy one of these homely, lonely, "brown" (Victorian and early 20th c. English) pieces at YOUR local version of Wertz Brothers, you could insert it into a corner of your otherwise all-white Scandinavian style decor as an "accent piece".  Better, as the focal point of the room.  You could plop an inky indigo blue vase (or several forest green ones) on top of it, or a squishy bold Marimekko print cushion into a nice chair.  With your own bobbles added.  You could paint them a more modern color with this paint.  And it could look this good.  No messing, no guessing. 

 With the money you've saved you could also pick up one of these other kinds of pieces......

that EVERYONE wants now.

Proving that you truly are glam and a design-savvy person.  With brains and heart to go along.  And me, I could live with a little less heartache. 

 Now.  Wouldn't you like to do that?

Columbia Road - In Retrospect

So back to regular posting.  I do have the odd thing or two that had been set aside over the year.  Are you ready for it all to finally be revealed?  Are you rested and refreshed?  Here's something I always meant to post that was part of our wander around the East End of London.  Hope you like it!

We at Passage Paradis seem to have a gift for showing up in out of the way places and finding our destinations closed.  (Does this sometimes happen to you?) ....and....(What up w' tha'??????)

This is what happened when we went along to Columbia Road in London last March.  On a 

TUESDAY.

OK.  Should we have been paying closer attention?  After all Columbia Road is famous for it's flower market.  Which takes place on Sundays.  So you know, after all that heavy commercial activity

of a Sunday afternoon, maybe the shopkeepers, stall minders and even the local residents would just........

like a rest.

And as disappointing as this can be.....(as much for Blog Readers as for Blog Writers, I concede.......) 

really, the Paradis family doesn't mind sooooo terribly much! 

Why?  Well because.....neighborhoods are usually so blissfully peaceful when the shops are closed.

Pubs are less crowded.  So no waiting for your drink. 

  Plenty of seats and no sharp elbows at the bar.

Accordingly, the customer can be better satisfied.

And it saves Mr. Paradis SO MUCH DOSH!  There is less of the desultory hanging about on curbs, checking his email, the latest New York Times report, Tube timetables, emergencies at work.   And saves him dodging sidewalk denizens, too, who never turn out to be his wife............

because his wife, SHE, aka mlle paradis,

is still in somewhere poking her nose into things, weighing the conundrums of "cash" relating to "carry".  The physics, probabilities and mathematics of time times speed equals travel plus breakage? Absolute volume vs. relative weight calculated against long term ergonomic and aesthetic satisfaction.   

As it all factors into the existential question represented by an overhead compartment of an overcrowded airplane i.e., voices in her head some less familiar than others.  (Do you also see an alien in this photo attempting inveighing coercive consumption?  No?????  Uhhhhh.....never MIND!)

So the good news, when contemplating a life, or even a moment in one's life, of teetering on the edges of becoming unhappily "threadbare".............   

is that, shop closures notwithstanding 

On a quiet sunny day, in a village part of London, nifty little coffee bars.....and cheery delicious Spanish restaurants usually ARE OPEN anyway.

And if the sun has been shining.  IT WILL HAVE BEEN A GREAT DAY FOR A WALK.

What do you think?

Monday Bites - Lou etc

I'm starting my first "Monday Bites" of the fall with a little silliness.  I have been craving hamburgers all summer.  I've been eating alot in the neighborhood of faster-food variety.  I guess I really need to go the best hamburger in L.A. (that's for another post) and get it over with already!

Meanwhile.  Loved this picture from the WaryMeyers blog. Who are the WaryMeyers, you might ask?  Apartment Therapy posted about them here, two years ago and these couple years on, this is what their blog and shop look like. I especially like this page that best gives you the idea of the special things they do.  I know, I should be doing a whole separate post about them.  Cause I'm going off on a tangent, I should be telling you about: FOOD!

HOW'S THIS?  BETTER?

because you can never have too many variations on  FULL SPECTRUM CAKE!  Have you made one yet?  

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Can I now share my Discovery of the Summer? LOU

You might think it verges a little too towards the "Portlandia" style eating experience judging by the blog post that follows, but not at all, not at all!  It's in a teeny strip mall off of Melrose next to laundramat.  It was probably once a Chinese take out place.  The prices are GENTLE!  The staff are really nice and just regular people who love food.  If you have ever been to La Merenda in Nice or Villandry in London and enjoyed yourself, you will really like this place.  The food is impeccably fresh, flavors simple and direct but l-o-o-o-v-i-n-g.  The wine is delish.  European soul food.  I wish I had known about Lou last winter. Because this is what they served:

January 10: Chanterelle-stuffed rabbit, Anjou rouge from Agnes and René Mosse

Prize winning Arshyre cow

With our first course this Monday, Dungeness crab cake, I am pouring a bone dry Cava rosé made for our favorite importer of Spanish wine, José Pastor. The wine is from organically grown fruit and the winemaker adds zero sugar to it (most Champagne, unless it is bottled as a special zero dosage cuvée, has a dose of sugar added during bottling). The blend is made mostly from Trepat, a grape variety that is unique to Penedès, with a little bit of Garnacha thrown into the mix. At only 11.5 percent alcohol you could glug a whole bottle, but please do not, as I have several other wines I want you to try this evening. 

Our second course is chanterelle-stuffed rabbit, with which I am pairing a 2008 Anjou rouge from Agnes and René Mosse. The Mosses are associated with and, in a way, are disciples of the great risk taking natural vigneron, Thierry Puzelat: following his lead, they farm organically, employ wild yeasts, little sulfur, and use quasi-Luddite techniques. Their Anjou rouge is a medium-bodied blend of the two cabernets from vines that are between 30-50 years old. It smells of freshly turned earth, cherries, and grass, and it has boatloads ofminerality. If you cannot perceive it in this red wine, all hope if lost for you and you will never understand minerality. 

Our cheese course is a nice piece of Bayley Hazen Blue, made from whole raw milk by Mateo and Andy Kehler and aged in the cellars at Jasper Hill Farm. This farmstead cheese, produced out of milk from the Kehler’sAyrshire cows, has a flaky-dry texture, and here, the penicillium roqueforti that makes blue cheese blue is not a poke in yer eye, but more subtle, revealing the underlying nutty, herbaceous flavors of the superb milk from which it is made. I am pairing the cheese with a little sip of Michael Wenzel’s wonderful Gelber Muskateller, a wine made from nobly rotten fruit. 

Dungeness crab cake, citrus salad, mustard vinaigrette
German Gilabert Cava rosé NV

Chanterelle-stuffed rabbit wrapped with lardo and prosciutto,
beans, Brussels sprouts, bitter greens
Mosse Anjou Rouge 2007

Bayley Hazen blue, red walnuts, apple
Wenzel Gelber Muskateller Noble Selection 2006 

Warm chocolate cake, crème anglaise

Actually, you know why I love Lou?  Because their food tastes of the earth and the sea!

So what about yourself?  Any food discoveries this summer?

Sidling Back into Sepia

I'm back!  And I brought my camera!  You?

Weekend Quick Pics

Since I have been away so long and since I set down my camera for quite a long time too, here for the weekend are things I found around the web.  Hope you like 'em!  

 above via frangipani decor

 these two via unatimo - sorry can't locate the link.  anybody?

 above from the thinking tank

 these two, Sophie Munns' seedcapsulestumblr

via stylefiles

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!!!!!

Back to the Blog

designwali

Hello everybody!  How was the summer?!!!!  I've missed you.  I wish I could say that, just like in this photo, the last two months has been all about me (and occasionally Mr. Paradis)  floating like a little petal on distant dark water, being pushed wherever the wind thought it should take us.  Making heart garlands and dreaming about you.........................

OK.  I will say that!  (Voila!)

And tomorrow I'll come back and tell you what I really did!  Nice to be back!

Not....Time.........Yet..............

Jellyfish, by Lieke Huiting at this sweet and lovely blog.  Isn't this gorgeous?

Hello again everybody.  I'm not QUITE ready to come back!  I'm going to take the rest of the summer off.  No, it's not what you think, I'm not lounging the days away in a deck chair and dozing with a nice book on my tummy.  No, I'm working quite alot!  On sewing and cleaning (some more) and plans for the rest of the year, and finishing my kitchen project.  I miss you already!  So I will be back at the end of August.

But not.  Just.  Yet!

Hope you all have been having a wonderful summer so far.  xo