Playgrounds of the World 1955-1960

I bought this series of "travel" prints a while ago. I always liked vintage travel art and illustration from the 1950-late sixties era which was the great  era of illustration before photography took over in advertising.  

The artist is Frans Van Lamsweerde, a Dutch illustrator who moved to Southern California in 1950. He did book and magazine illustration and made time for what he called "Overseas Study Tours" which resulted in a series of paintings known as the "Playground of the World" series. 

 FIrst up, Hong Kong. 

These prints from the series of paintings were reproduced by Brown & Bigelow's unique color-etch process and presented as Christmas gifts to the calendar-maker's special customers. There were also sold in portfolios.

Bermuda

Bermuda detail of divers on coral reef

Acapulco

Monte Carlo

The paintings were reproduced on foil by a color-etch 
process that enhances the striking detail.
This carnaval Parade in Rio is a riot of color 
and movement

This is the full size image of Rio

I'm not sure why Vienna is part
 of the playgrounds of the world series.
 Vienna had legalized gambling
which may account for it.

Vienna detail of horse and carriage and a flight of doves

Zermatt Switzerland

Zermatt detail of skiers and landscape.
 Note the wall decoration on the inn

The seller told me the head of the firm had kept first impression prints of all the work by commissioned artists. Some of them were matted by the seller and all of them remain in their shrinkwrap so my photos may not do justice. I have one framed (Zermatt, Switzerland) and hung over my bureau. 
My idea when I first saw them was to use in a powder room where some sparkle and flash is not out of place. I'm still reserving them for use in a future powder room where I think their color and shine will add that eccentric touch and flair. 

Garden Tea

Here are some shots of my partner's preparation, set-up, and tablesetting for a garden tea a few summers ago.  Outdoor entertaining is always more involved than indoors because of the distance from the kitchen and having to transport everything needed for service and the table outside the house. It's even more complicated when your house sits on a slope and the yard is two floors below the ground level of the house. We found how hard it truly is to entertain outdoors when we held a 4th of July party for forty people. After a huge amount of planning and setting  it all up outdoors it was a nonstop fetch and carry all day long. People enjoyed themselves which was the point, and the talk was so nonstop, they just put used plates, cups, etc on the ground where I went discretely about retreiving them while ample trash bins were placed strategically for guests to use. We also kept cold drinks directly inside the basement with coolers and bottle openers tied down with string and I still had to offer people drinks all day long. The last guests left at 9:30 pm. It was a  gruelling day but we felt we had done our job as hosts. We made a lot of people happy. So it was worth it. Even so, we never invited such a crowd again. We prefer more intimate entertaining.
This garden tea was a party for four, the two of us and our goddaughter and her mother. We all dressed up. it was a warm July day but we all wore straw hats to keep off the sun and this nice screen for the treats.
It was a classic English tea with all the trimmings, down to those tiny ladylike tea napkins. Our godchild had a wonderful time dressing up and going through the ritual of tea. It was a memorable afternoon for all of us. I'm a lucky guy to have someone like my partner in my life.

Table set waiting for the tea

Scones, clotted cream, james, tea sandwiches under the screen on side table

Pink Fostoria Cake Plate, Red Bakelite flatware, red embroidered napkins

A candid cropped shot of handing the tea sandwiches round after the tea is served

King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel NYC

A prosperous and thriving dinosaur, the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis upholds the old gold standard of grand hotel bar service even though its clientele is often an odd mixture of well-groomed & haute-coutured hotel guests and casual tourists in gym shoes and shorts who are bound to squabble about the price of the drinks here. Since i moved to NYC in 1995, I started a weekend habit of dropping by at quiet hours (2:30 pm on Saturday) and savored the hushed atmosphere and excellent cocktails served by an always discrete but convivial bartender who made your drink your way with no resistance. On more recent visits, the hushed early quiet has vanished. There always seems to be a full house, all bar stools and tables taken and a noise level that is off the decibel chart.
A lot has happened in the past 15 years....cell phone ringtones blaring from all the seats in the house, the serving of a full menu in the bar, making the table turnover non-existent, the pulling up of extra chairs from a storage room that don't match the decor to accomodate larger groups who are dining here rather than sipping drinks and having quiet conversation which is the old raison d'etre of a hotel bar.
I think the food service is the main culprit. God knows bars ought to be making enough from the booze, but it seems food service is de rigeur everywhere and frankly it completely spoils the experience for a couple or foursome who simply want to sip cocktails and converse in civilized tones.  The bar waiters here remain expert at traversing a small space crowded with diners and drinkers, both seated and standing, with classic drinks in the correct cocktail glasses (correct size and shape, that is, according to a classic standard) balanced ably on small round trays. The trouble is too often they are also slinging hash at tiny tables meant for drinks and nibbles only to loud patrons who continue to ask for this and that addition to their meal, glasses of water and wine, and asking greedily for dessert.

This is a grand mistake. This bar is small and intimate, well-lit, still has not succumbed to large screen televisions (muted or not). There ought to be one place left in Manhattan where you can escape the deplorable norm. The King Cole Bar should be a temple dedicated to cocktail service. It should refuse to serve anything more than assorted nuts and chips to patrons who want some hardier fare with their licquor. They do their best to uphold a tradition of bartending and mix excellent quality cocktails and their servers are well supervised and trained and have just the right tone and personality for the job but this effort is being wasted in the morass of food service and noisy overcrowded activity that makes it impossible at peak times to hear anything anyone is saying with the exception of some loud goon shouting from across the room.

The King Cole Bar is a victim of its own success. The death knell came when some bean-counter or hotel management dunderhead insisted on food service in the bar as a moneymaker.  It's a shame because this legendary bar still has personnel who know the difference between the ideal and the all too real.

These calm, voluptuous photographs of the bar belie everything I said above but be persuaded that I am not making this up. I regret more than anyone the hard times on which the King Cole has fallen. I hope they wake up before they install a breakfast buffet.

The Famous Maxfield Parish  mural with its infamous "secret"

The Good Old Days from a 1950s Life ad

In the Before Time: La Maisonette Restaurant (Cincinnati Ohio)

My partner has a catchall phrase for everything belonging to the period of our childhood when we had the illusion the world was civilized and people cultivated manners and "correct" social behavior. He prefaces all remarks about this lost world with the phrase .... In the Before Time...
I'd like to use that as a special recurring feature here because I expect to have a lot of posts looking back at those days gone by to recapture some social history and personal memories before it all fades to black.

First up, a fancy French restaurant from my childhood. La Maisonette, in Cincinnati Ohio. Gone now, but a major go-to destination for the sixties and beyond generation and our parents. This was the ne plus ultra in fine dining in the entire region. We lived in Kettering, a Dayton suburb, and we had a few grand places in town like the King Cole Restaurant, but nothing to compare with La Maisonette. Here are a few photos from the restaurant's past. They had a fantastic art collection, wine cellar, authentic French chefs and menu. I remember several visits when I was in my early teens, though what the occasions were I can't remember in the least. I was fascinated by the heavily draped corner booths which some patrons left looped and open and some were closed for privacy. I could hardly pay attention to anything but what might be going on behind those corner booth curtains. Every time a waiter discretely parted them for service, I craned my neck to stare as I suppose even a lot of adults were also doing at the time. There was nothing in my childhood to compare with an evening in this restaurant, the drive south to Cincinnati from Dayton, the valet parking, the downtown location, the grilled entrance, the low lighting and candles, the mirrors, the fabric on the walls. It sounds corny but it was the chic-est experience a 9 year old Ohio boy could have had in 1969. This post is a thank you to that lost world for offering such a great glimpse into a civilized adult dining experience. I hope these photos convey a bit of the glamour and mystery of the place.

Grace Kelly's Mark Cross Overnight Case in Rear Window Mystery Solved

Mark Cross, the famous 152 year old leather goods maker was bought by Sara Lee in the nineties. Then in 2005 the company was dissolved due to increased competition from Coach products which stole the limelight in leather goods from the long-established firm.  The most famous instance of early product placement in films occurred in Rear Window (1954) where Grace Kelly brought a black leather Mark Cross overnight case to James Stewart's apartment clearly intending to stay the night to stake out his neighbor's rear window. They have a seductive conversation about the case and its contents while she unpacks a sheer negligee from the case.  My partner was obsessed with the case after seeing its appearance in the film and I did some detective work to learn that the actual case was given away in a contest after the film's release and the owner's sold it at Christie's in NYC on 20 Dec. 2002 for $5019.

Mark Cross Overnight Case 1954
Sold at Christie's NYC Dec. 2002

The Mark Cross overnight case

The negligee she never gets to wear onscreen

At last, a mystery solved. Also note that recently there is a revival of the Mark Cross label at SAKS with some stylish leather bags available for sale, though no copy of this famous original as yet. 

Enfilade

an enfilade is a suite of rooms formally aligned with each other ... The doors entering each room are aligned with the doors of the connecting rooms along a single axis, providing a vista through the entire suite of rooms. The enfilade can be used as a processional route ... as it facilitates the movement of large numbers of people through a building.
---Ask Jeeves Encyclopedia


Exactly what we want. Because we had the effect of an enfilade in our 1946 center hall colonial we know how this opened-up perspective adds to the sense of architectural space. The two wide square doorways on either side of our center hall were aligned and offered vistas beyond the room you were in  through the hall and into the room beyond. The dark-stained wood floor was continuous from the dining room through the hall and into the long living room with the fireplace at the end wall as the focal point. This continuity of flooring and continuous vista achieved by the room openings off the hall really gave the rooms flow. When we entertained we could have a buffet set up in the dining room and a large crowd of guests could move through all three spaces and still hear and see what was happening in the entire space. Here is a composite photo of this space with reverse views from the living and dining rooms. I hope you agree that this perspective lends enchantment.

Strictly speaking, enfilade is an architectural feature referring to connecting rooms. I realize our center hall is not a "room", per se, but the perspective effect is the same. There are no doors to close off the view, either, as in the classical definition, but my point here is that we have a modest enfilade that achieves the same impact on human scale and vision as a grand one. Here are examples of the classic French version and a modern adaptation which are both more "correct" in the architectural sense, but I don't like them as much as my modest home-grown version. 

OK, I dug up a photo of the perspective with holiday decorations. This is not the best photo to illustrate the magic but I don't have all my photo collections on hand here in my new temporary home. This is a Christmastime version with holiday decorations and lighting.  I can illustrate in later posts how beautiful the view was with a Christmas tree and holiday decorations in both rooms, lit at night, aglow with Christmas magic.

Peg's Tea

After lamenting about our massive collection of china and tableware, I thought it might be useful to show an example of how we entertain with these possesions. When we moved to our new home in 2002 we met a great neighbor who became a close friend. Her name was Peg and she had lived in the neighborhood since the early 50s with her husband who was a paraplegic as a result of his service in World War II. Peg was in her nineties, very lively, gracious and a great conversationalist until her death from stroke this past year.  We miss you, Peg.

My partner is a devotee of the English formal tea and has become adept at preparing not only the table but the treats that go along with the tradition. His cucumber sandwiches take a lot of effort to make but the taste is worth it. Here are some photos of a tea given for Peg and her daughter, Harriet. It was winter so the tea was held indoors in the dining room.

My partner always makes menu cards for formal occassions, birthday and anniverary and holiday dinners. This was the menu for Peg's Tea, describing all the treats on the tea cart.

On another memorable occasion, he gave a garden tea outdoors in summer for our godchild. Maybe another posting on outdoor teas next time?