Horizons

Keeping cosy

The four days I spent at Steep Ravine were, of course, right in the middle of our first big El Nino storm event of the year. Wave after wave of torrential downpour would head towards the coast and dump its load – sometimes with hail, sometimes with lightning, often with sunny interludes. The cabins gave a great view of the drama and allowed me to keep warm, nosh on chili and read while enjoying the ever changing spectacle. Here some of the images I took of the horizon over one day gives you an idea of the constantly changing chiaroscuro.

Steep Ravine

‘Oh, to make art as powerful as a single storm-fed wave building, cresting, breaking.’

I’ve spent the last four days at one of my favourite places in Bayarea. The cabins at Steep Ravine just south of Stinson Beach (an hour’s drive along the windey coastal road north of San Francisco). Mount Tamalpais State Parks maintains 10 rustic cabins right on the ocean’s edge facing north towards Bolinas and Point Reyes.

The cabins perched between cliffs and sea

Cabin 7 - Hot Springs - named after the 'crypto' hot springs a the foot of the cliff

The cabins were built at the base of Steep Ravine Canyon in the 1940s by a Marin landowner, William Kent, Jr., who leased them to Bay Area families. In 1960, the state acquired the land and they became the focal point of controversy between leaseholders and the state. Their future unresolved, the structures fell into a sorry state and were threatened with destruction until the park restored them in 1980. Each building received a new roof and interior; woodstoves, tables, and sleeping platforms were installed, and steps and paths built. On April 1, 1984, 10 of the 14 original cabins (some were beyond repair) were included in the state environmental campground system. They were made available for $12/night!! Its now $100/night but still worth every penny in my opinion.

Inside Cabin 7

Window view

Some of you may have been lucky enough to see the exhibition  “Life Surrounding a Cabin: Dorothea Lange at Steep Ravine” which was shown at the Marin History Museum in late 2006 and then subsequently at the SF Public Library in early 2008 and at the Bolinas Museum and Stinson Library in mid 2008. The images they used are from the rich archive of the Oakland Museum of California.

Dorothea and her family rented a cabin at Steep Ravine in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Her images look like they were taken in the same cabins yesterday.

“I began to wonder what it was that made us all feel, the minute we went over the brow of that hill, a certain sense of – not peace, particularly, or enjoyment – freedom. Then, I thought, I could do a real sequence, a series of photographs on the subject of freedom, of which the cabin would be the device.”
– Dorothea Lange

You can book the cabins online if you’re lucky – they seem perpetually booked out. But mid-winter, or even better mid-winter storm, there are often last minute cancellations to be nabbed. Cancellations more than 48 hours in advance can be booked online. Otherwise you have to head to the Pan Toll Ranger’s Station near Mt. Tamalpais to get in the 2pm daily lottery for available cabins.

Stormy sunset

Lhasa de Sela

I just heard that Lhasa de Sela who was one of my favorite singers, and someone whose music I had only been recently introduced to (thanks Isabella), died on New Years Day.

If you haven’t discovered her music already then pay tribute to the passing of a great talent by getting your hands on one of her 3 outstanding albums.

From Nova Scotia’s Amherst News -

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela dies in Montreal at 37
JESSICA MURPHY
The Canadian Press

Globally acclaimed singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela, who grew up as a semi-nomad in a travelling school bus and ultimately made Montreal her home, has died after a battle with breast cancer at age 37. The Mexican-American musician was known for her trilingual lyrics and folk songs infused with fantasy, magic and fairy tales. She died in Montreal on New Year’s Day.

“Old stories, adventure tales — although they can be very violent and scary — they don’t traumatize me the way modern stories do,” de Sela told American National Public Radio in 2005, explaining how she grew up with fairy tales, and developed a lifelong love affair with their styles and imagery.

De Sela was born in 1972 in Big Indian, a small town in the Catskill mountains in New York State, to an American mother and a Mexican father. Her early life was spent criss-crossing the U.S. and Mexico in a converted school bus. The experience instilled in the singer a wanderlust that led her around the globe.
At 13, she began singing Billie Holiday classics and Mexican tunes a cappella in San Francisco cafes, where she developed her voice and singing style. She moved to Montreal in the early 1990s, playing in bars for about five years and developing songs for her debut album, the Spanish-language ’La Llorona’.

In a 2004 magazine interview, she recalled her early years in Montreal’s watering holes. “I had to work hard to be heard,” she said. “I learned in those years how to reach people, even people who were there for beer and conversation.” Those lessons ended up garnering de Sela critical acclaim in 1998 for her debut album, which won a Juno for best global album that year. But burned out from two years of touring — including time with the Lilith Fair festival — she fled to France where she joined her sisters’ travelling circus, performing as a musician and helping assemble and dismantle the big top.

It was in Marseilles, where she later settled for a period, that the groundwork was set for her second album, ’The Living Road,’ recently named by the Times of London as one of the 10 best world albums of the decade.
In her brief career, the singer was named best artist of the Americas by the BBC’s World Music Awards in 2005, and she received a slew of Quebec and Canadian awards.

A multilingual artist who sang in English, French and Spanish, she collaborated with Montreal musician Patrick Watson, U.K. indie band the Tindersticks, and French performer Arthur H. Her final album — simply titled ’Lhasa’ — was released last year. De Sela postponed her European tour and a string of concerts this past summer as she battled breast cancer.

It has snowed more than 40 hours in Montreal since Lhasa’s departure.

Oz – Hobart – 42° 50′ S.

The last leg of our trip takes us to our southern-most destination Hobart; the capital of Australia’s tiny southern island state Tasmania. I have been here a few times over the years and my visits always mark significant milestones in my life. I’m sure this visit will turn out to be similarly significant to me.

We’ve been hosted by the School of Art of the University of Tasmania at Hobart which has an amazing location in old industrial buildings (the old IXL jam factory) on the bustling downtown waterfront docks of Hobart.

I ran a design workshop for a week with a dozen motivated and inspiring students. We explored a range of methods for developing complex sculptural forms and created a whole lot of interesting prototypes derived, in part, from seed pods and flowers that we collected in the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. My thanks to Richard Skinner, the furniture design program director, for all of his enthusiasm and planning to make this workshop a success.

The nature table for form inspirations

Discussing the forms we constructed

The highlight of our last fee days in Hobart was our visit with Peter Michael Adams at his extroardinary piece of paradise – Windgrove. I recommend that you spend hours reading his rich, engaging and provocative blog.

Peter had the insight to acquire some 100 acres of beachfront property about 2 hrs drive from Hobart and has spent the last 18 years re-foresting the land and creating an artist’s retreat and living sculpture garden. Peter’s own writing gives a clear perspective on his spiritual and ecologically inspired approach to land management and art practice. I will simply share some images and captions from our brief stay with him.

Roaring Beach

One of Peter's many outdoor sculptures within the sculpted landscape

The fire pit where Peter maintained a continuous fire for 6 years to promote world peace. While digging the fire pit Peter found blackened fire stones that were used sometime in the last 20,000 years by the Aboriginal people of the area.

Peter in his outdoor studio

One of many sculptural benches Peter has created for Windgrove

The huge circle clearing that Peter has created by his plantings and nurturing, as viewed from Roaring Beach

The circle from nearby

The bowed bench that crowns the circle and affords panoramic views of
Roaring Beach and the Derwent River estuary

The 'drop stone' bench, inspired by the volcanic stones that are weathered out of the sedimentary cliffs nearby

Detail of the 'drop stone' bench

Double spiral sculpture in Peter's house

New works on display in Peter's house

A new work inspired by the plight of the recent 'boat people' trying to land in Australia, which of course, is a country inhabited entirely by 'boat people' and their descendants

Watching the sunset with Peter and Jerry Michalski

'Alpha Romeo' highlit on the Derwent as she heads for line honors in the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race

A perfect way to end our 4 months of inspiring travels!!

But hopefully not my active blogging.

Oz – Sydney – 33° 52′ S.

Opera house tiles

After Heron Island, we flew back to Sydney to start our residency at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) at the University of NSW (my science degree alma mata). COFA gave us a wonderful apartment just off Oxford St. in Paddington, close to galleries and an easy bus ride into downtown Sydney where I wanted to be for most of my planned research.

Sydney is my hometown and its always great to be there. Old friends, beloved relatives, Scotch finger biscuits, Madura tea, Boy Charlton Pool, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Bondi Beach, the list goes on.

My main purpose in Sydney, however, was to continue my research into Australian colonial furniture and artifacts connected with natural history collections and the transmission of knowledge about the colony back to England. I have already talked about Bauer’s writing desk that I saw at Kew Gardens in London in an earlier blog. In Sydney I struck the jackpot! My dear cousin Anna Blunt is a librarian at the Historic Houses Trust which has a rich and varied library. Anna spent a day with Sandra and me helping us research our various interests and getting wonderfully side-tracked along the way.

Exhausted from too much input

Anna showed me a beautiful new monograph of the early colonial painter Joseph Lycett (a convict deported to Sydney in 1814 for forgery). In the monograph was images of the Macquarie Chest, an extraordinary piece of cabinetwork, which encapsulated all of the ideas which I had been looking for in an early colonial piece. For those of you interested you can find a wonderful image archive of the Macquarie chest here.

I will give you a taste of it here.

Macquarie chest

The cabinet itself is about as big as a cooler (Esky) and sits on four short legs. Its made of timber sourced in the colony. When the chest is opened it reveals its treasures. Under the upper doors is a separate shallow chest with two drawers and an opening top. Below that are two shallow trays. Underneath all that, opening from the front of the chest, is a series of 3 drawers. In each drawer and tray is a unique collection of aesthetically displayed natural history specimens. The piece as a whole is wonderful but it has four extraordinary aspects.

Open sesame!

Firstly, under each lid is an original oil painting by Lycett of a scene from around Newcastle and Port Macquarie (north of Sydney).

One of Lycett's views

View with a roo (or two).

Another view

Secondly, the natural history collections are intact and largely undisturbed from when they were assembled almost 200 years ago. The dried bird specimens in particular are brilliantly coloured and perfectly preserved – it looks as though they all fell off the perch yesterday.

The birds!

The bugs!

The corallines!

Thirdly, there is a great story about the piece which conservationists, curators and historians have pieced together over the years since the chest was discovered. It seems that the chest was most likely a gift from Lieutenant Wallis, the Commandant of the new penal colony of Newcastle, to the 5th Governor of the colony of New South Wales – Lachlan Macquarie. Macquarie in all likelihood, took the chest with him on his return to England in 1822 and passed it on to his son – also named Lachlan – in his estate two years later (dead at 62). Lachlan was a wild boy with passions for gambling and drinking (a good son of Australia), he ran up debts to William Drummond the son and heir of his father’s old friend Andrew Drummond, the 6th Viscount of Strathallen. It appears that shortly before his untimely demise from a drunken fall down the stairs of Craignish Castle (in 1845 at 41 years old), Lachlan Jr. changed is will to leave most of his dwindling estate to Drummond in payment for his debts. Fast forward to 1986 when the NSW State Library was informed of the existence of the chest still in place in Strathallen Castle where it had rested for 140 years undisturbed – passing from owner to owner over the generations. Resting undisturbed in a cold, dry dark stone castle was perhaps the best treatment it could possibly have received.

The fourth extraordinary aspect is that it has a twin – the Dixson chest. Which is almost as superb as you can see in the album of images here.

My task now is to develop a piece based on and drawing inspiration from this incredible piece of craftsmanship so imbedded in Australian history and the relationship of the young colony to England. Its quite a challenge. I wish I could just claim authorship of the work as an objet trouvé. It would be a wonderful addition to my Genius Loci series. But this isn’t a possibility. I’ve been enjoying thinking through my interpretation of this piece. How much will it be a reproduction? What will it contain? Where is my act in the work? What part of history will it encapsulate? Which Scottish castle will take care of it for 140 years for it to reach maturity?

Anna Blunt and Louise Anamaat

My immense thanks to Anna Blunt, at the Historic Houses Trust, who revealed the existence of this piece to me and to Louise Anemaat, curator at the State Library who kindly made it possible for me to spend an unforgettable afternoon closely examining, measuring and being awed by the Macquarie chest.

Oz – Heron Island – 23° 26′ S.

Board decal at airport

After a few days in Oakland to repack our bags (dump the books and fancy clothes, swap in the camping gear and insect repellent), bond with our furry boy Nico and squeeze in a quick surf at Bolinas, we boarded our 13 hour flight to Sydney. Then we turned right around again to fly to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

I was first on Heron Island over 20 years ago as a zoology student at the Heron Island research station. The research station and the neighbouring resort have changed totally since then, but the island itself seems largely unchanged. At this time of year the island is home to (almost infested by) tens of thousands of nesting seabirds.

During the day, every tree has scores of nesting White-capped Noddy Terns. They were getting ready for the nesting season by building their nests which they are incredibly bad at. Its hard to imagine why they are so ineffective. I watched a nesting pair for two days as the male flew dexterously around collecting suitable looking Pisonia leaves which he then ferried to his nest building mate. She would juggle the leaf to find a good spot for it and then look on impotently as it fell off the nest. After two days she was still sitting on just a single leaf.

Noddy nesting

Mr. and Mrs. Noddy

As the sun sets thousands of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters fly in from the west to meet up with their burrow mates and work on their sandy burrows. The pairs sit close to each other and moan to each other or squabble with their neighbours causing an extraordinarily creepy cacophony all through the night – like hundreds of deep throated babies wailing. The resort has a supply of earplugs in each room.

When you walk around by day or night you have to be careful not to tread on a bird or get run over by one as they come in to land. They are completely fearless. Bird poop becomes an integral part of your casual attire on Heron Island and pervades the otherwise pristine atmosphere.

The seas are full of life as you would expect on a coral atoll. And from the beach you can see rays and sharks and turtles right off shore in just a foot or so of water. The Green sea turtles were just beginning to come up on the beach in the evening to lay their eggs. You can wander out carefully at night and spot their tractor-like tracks heading up the beach and then get fairly close to them by listening for their digging. They spend hours laying hundreds of almost golf ball sized eggs in a deep pit which they then cover before heading back to sea. Here’s one heading back to zero gravity after a hard night’s work.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

The last leg of our eurotour was Istanbul. We kept the best till last! We had the extra pleasure of sharing our last week or so with my brother Chris who lives in Vienna and was able to join us on the Istanbul trip.

Chris boarding the train to Istanbul

I’ve always wanted to come to this city lying at the crossroads of Asia and Europe. It is the most ancient city I’ve stayed in and it’s amazing how so much of it’s 2000+ year history is still clearly present and legible. There are significant buildings on the skyline of the old part of the city dating from almost every century starting from the 6thC Ayasofya. It’s great detective work teasing apart the various cultural and historic layers, trying to understand what is Byzantine, Ottoman, Christian, and Muslim – like the sticky pastry layers of an ancient baklava.

Sunset from the Golden Gate

East meets West

You can see lots of images of the city on Sandra’s weblog.

The main reason we came to Istanbul however was to experience the music here. We were fortunate in our timing to be able to join in on the first week of Dore Stein’s Tangential Turkey Tour. Dore is the mastermind of Tangents which is far and away my favourite radio program – 8pm-12am every Saturday on KALW - you can stream it live if your not in the SF Bay Area.
Tangents has been a huge influence on my musical tastes since moving to SF. I was excited to be able to spend more time with Dore and to get a chance to experience the musicians he has gotten to know in this richly musical city.

Our first tangential musical encounter was the amplified chorus of the muezzin’s calls to prayer blaring from every mosque in the city 5 times per day. To strangers it’s evocative and poetic The changing chorus as you move around the city and different mosques take the lead has a haunting Steve Reichian quality.

Looking to Allah

As part of our tour we enjoyed a series of concerts over several days at great, intimate venues all over the city.

The first night we say Turkish jazz with percussionist Engin Gürkey’s 5 piece band featuring violinist Turay Dinleyen and a great assortment of guest artists at a cool little jazz club called Nardis, just below the Galata tower.

The next afternoon we visited the studio of famed percussionist, drummer and instrument inventor Okay Temiz.

Okay Temiz

OK! Sandra!

The next night we caught a ferry to Kadakoy on the Asian side of the Bosphorus to dine with and then enjoy a performance by Sumru Ağıryürüyen accompanied by the versatile and sensitive guitarist Cenk Erdogan at a great little club called Guitar Cafe that opened just for our group. You can see a movie of a song from the performance here (make sure it loads fully before you begin the playback!)

Sumru and Cenk at the Guitar Cafe

And finally Roma clarinetist Selim Sesler (featured in Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul) with his incredibly energetic and accomplished band, in another tiny dinner club overlooking bustling Istiklal Cadessi.

Selim Sesler and band

We also visited Faradan, a well known traditional instrument maker, in his tiny apartment which was essentially a museum of instruments from Asia Minor, many of which he had created from research into historical miniature paintings. I was tempted by a beautiful juniper wood balagma that he had made but decided to continue researching my options before committing. We spent some time in his tiny, cramped messy workshop. It’s amazing how such immaculate instruments can be built in such crappy conditions.

Faradan playing the baglama

Faradan's tiny, cramped and messy workshop

Faradan's tiny, cramped and messy machine shop

A coopered Oud body under construction

No musical tour of Istanbul is complete without a visit to Galip Dede Caddessi which winds it’s way up from the monumental Galata Tower. This street is literally crammed with instrument stores.

Our first stop to load up on CD’s was Laleplak (Galip Dede Caddessi no 1, Tünel, Byöglu). Then we drooled down the hill enjoying all the little boutique music stores (stopping for Turkish coffee and baklava of course) until coming to Barok Musik 2 (no. 64) where I had an introduction to the charming and enthusiastic multi-instrumentalist and great salesman Berkant Kaya. Berkant spent ages with me explaining and demonstrating lots of different instruments while fielding constant interruptions by customers from all over Turkey looking for specialty instruments. I finally settled on a beautiful, locally made, long-necked balağ

ma made from olive wood. I’m looking forward to levering open the door to traditional and contemporary Turkish music with my new balagma in the new year.

Thank you Dore and Berkant!!

Excursions

The Netherlands is so tiny that getting to the other major cities is just a day-trip by train from Amsterdam.

We had to visit the Design Academy in Eindhoven where so many renowned Dutch designers have studied – Marcel Wanders, Hella Jongerieus, Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey, Toord Boontje, Piet Hein Eek and Richard Hutten to name a few. Clearly they must be doing something right!!

We were warmly welcomed by the chairwoman of the board Anne Mieke Eggenkamp and the director of international programs Yolande von Kessel. We had a great discussion about contemporary design education and the contrasts between the model at CCA and that at DAE. Yolande took us on a tour of the facilities. I was very impressed with the workshop facilities. They are even better than CCA’s with a lot more equipment and room for students to work. There are facilities for metalworking, woodworking, plastic and resin, plaster mold making and screen printing; all in one large space with some divisions where necessary overseen by a team of technicians. Their is even a tiny foundry! The workshops are open from 9am-10pm from Monday through Friday only!! My students at CCA would rebel at such limited access. The design studios seemed much less used or useful than CCA’s which are always packed with students, their work and their energy. DAE’s design studios are used in a very flexible, open manner and as a result aren’t used as a home base or dedicated professional studio by the students. The cafe was great – beer on tap and foosball!!!

We talked about the potential for student and faculty exchange and for cross-institutional projects. I’m hopeful we can grow our collaboration and have a meaningful exchange between CCA and DAE.

DAE workshops

DAE workshops - metal machining area

Cafe

 

My next day-trip pilgrimage was to the Rietveld Schroder House in Utrecht. I lecture about this iconic building in my history of furniture course and have always wanted to walk around in it and see its ’swiss army knife’ features in operation. The house is part of the collection of the Central Museum in Utrecht and the museum provides bicycles for visitors to pedal between the museum and the house – a great way to get a feel for the suburban environment in which the house was built.

Rietveld Schroder House

At the time it was built the house was right on the edge of Utrecht. It finished a a street of row houses and beyond it was fields. Now it overlooks a small highway and the suburbs beyond.

The house is well titled as it was a collaboration between Gerrit Rietveld and Truus Schroder. It is unique in Rietveld’s ouvre even though many of its features show up in his other architectural projects. It is clear that Schroder had her own ideas about how the house should function and that her thinking was as instumental in the design as his and that his subsequent work incorporated ideas clarified in collaboration with her.

Its great to walk into the second floor space now and feel how open and airy it is. The interior was built for Mrs. Schroder who was a small woman but it doesn’t feel constricted – unlike most of Frank Lloyd Wright’s interiors for example. All of the interior walls fold away into stub walls and dedicated closets so that almost the entire space can be opened up with windows on three sides. When all of the walls are pulled out and connected the space becomes cosy and private. The transformation is remarkably efficient and straightforward and Truus Schroder lived in and operated the house for 60 years from the day it was finished in 1924 until her death in 1985 (at age 95).

She also raised three children in the tiny house despite the fact that the house was generally abhorred by the neighbors who forbade their children from visiting the house or playing with the Schroder children.

The kitchen downstairs

The kid's bedrooms upstairs with the walls pulled back

The lounge area upstairs (Can one lounge in a Rietveld space?)

I loved all of the moveable details especially the central staircase (to the left above) which can completely close up to keep the lounge area cosy and separate the living areas upstairs from the kitchen and office space downstairs. 

If the museum ever chooses to de-accession the house I’ll sign up to move in. It is still eminently livable; much more so than its contemporary neighbors.

You can find a zooming panorama of the outside of the house here.

Wall plaques of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is such a great city just to walk around in. Its tiny, its NOT based on  grid which means you can get lost and meander around, there are canals everywhere to refresh and provide great vistas. The only hair-raising part is the hoards of dedicated cyclists whizzing by chatting on their cell phones, smoking cigarettes and chatting to the children draped on the handlebars or built-in carriers – all at the same time. Its real easy to get skittled as you gawk around at the architecture and canal boats and whizzing bicycles. So it was at great risk to life and limb that I bring you this little collection of wall plaques.

Most of the traditional buildings in and around the canal ring have these terracotta or stone plaques imbedded in their masonry walls. Originally they indicated the trades of the people who owned the buildings but they now represent the history of the building itself or probably a more ironic or aspirational comment by the present owner who restored the building.  The animals have more poetic meanings – heraldic beasts, totemic icons, creatures recalled from exotic travels, domestic pets perhaps or even a caricature of the owner?

The stork - bringer of babies!

Watercarrier

A cooper?

The boatman from 1699. The oldest one I found.

More blessings!

Every man's home ...

The castle that sucks up money? Or that changes silver into gold?

The real source of money!

And then there’s all the animals!!

The musical herring

The white elephant

One of my favorites, the penguin. Nice colors.

Tiger tiger burning bright ...

Amsterdam

Sandra wondering if the lean on the buildings is just a side effect of caffeine withdrawal

The next stop on the Europe tour has been Amsterdam. The first trip to the Netherlands for both of us. I was looking forward to visiting the capital of early 21stC design thinking. The fact that almost the entire country has been designed and constructed is unique – the dutch have a saying that ‘god may have made the world but the dutch made the netherlands’.

In Amsterdam we splurged and decided to stay on two houseboats. This was a great choice. One, because it meant that we didn’t have to schlepp huge suitcases up and down flights of narrow stairs. Two, because it felt like we were living in Amsterdam rather than visiting as we had a lounge room and kitchen and could relax, spread out and even cook at ‘home’. And three, because the canals are still the heart of this city in many ways and we were able to see so much just from our waterfront windows.

With our friend Anter cruising past our first houseboat on the Prinsengracht

My first visit was with the  world renowned designer and co-founder of Droog, Gijs Bakker. We arrived in Amsterdam on the last day of an interesting retrospective exhibition of jewelry work by Gijs and his late wife Emmy van Leersum at the Oude Kerk – the oldest church in Amsterdam which is ironically (or appropriately) located in the heart of the redlight district.

Gijs in the pulpit!

Gijs held a conversation on this last afternoon regarding the work on show, his creative collaboration with Emmy and the state of contemporary design. It was moving listening to Gijs talk about his life and work with Emmy in the ancient church. The church itself has 2,500 huge slate slabs forming the floor and each one is a tombstone. Over 10,000 Amsterdamers are buried under the church floor. A fitting scene for recalling memories of lost ones.

Engraved floor slab tombstone

Windsurfing was invented in Amsterdam!

Gijs has recently parted company with Droog in well publicized separation which is dicussed on his website. But he was joyous about the prosepct of having more time to devote to his own design work and to the jewelry collective chi ha paura …? - which translates as “who’s afraid of ….?”

He also talked about the increasing attention to the ’slow movement’ in contemporary design.

The following day Gijs welcomed Sandra and I into his wonderful home and studio in a stately old townhouse facing on the Keizersgracht. We were surrounded by interesting artwork and design prototypes and enjoyed tea and cake while chatting about a huge range of topics. Gijs was about to fly to Taipei for an intensive teaching workshop but was relaxed and charming and made it clear that it was important to take time and savour life’s encounters.

To see more of contemporary Dutch jewelry design check out www.op-voorraad.blogspot.com.

The San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design will be hosting an exhibition of chi ha paura …? opening on January 15th 2010! Gijs will be in San Francisco for the event. Stay tuned to SFMC+D website for announcements of public programs around the opening and Gijs’ visit to SF.

Gijs' desk. How could you get anything done with a view like this?