"LA DI DA" LILLIPUTIAN'S LOUNGE

About one hundred years ago, New York's swanky socialite spinster Stettheimer sisters began the decoration of a dynamic, yet diminutive, Deco-influenced early Modernist-style dollhouse.

Now to be found among the dreary period rooms and droves of dusty dolls that comprise the Museum of the City of New York’s permanent collection, Carrie and Florine Stettheimer’s creation really stands out as a work of art that’s quite spectacular and super-original.

Ahead of its time, indeed -- yet also an encapsulation of the era in which it was produced.

And the sister’s artistic endeavor is ambitious in another way, ‘cause the mini mansion contains a Meta-magnificent mélange of original, to-scale works created by the Stettheimer's artist friends, including William Zorach, Alexander Archipenko, and Gaston Lachaise.

Crouch down, peer in to its many rooms, and it just might be hear a tinny-sounding, Cole Porter song spinning on the gramophone, and tiny satin-shod feet stomping on a postage stamp-sized polar bear fur rug to the detumescent fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz rhythm… of a plethora of Pop! Pop! Popping! Popped! pen nib-sized champagne corks.

MESSRS. SANFORD ET FIL, OR DAVID SMITH?

Art, dear reader, is all about context these days. Case in point: my Crown Heights neighbor's clever creation. A wrought iron sculpture-cum-fence to protects and embellish a young tree growing out front of his charming property. Equal parts Abstract Expressionism and junk heap, the sculpture is a meta masterpiece in miniature that delivers threefold. Its an assemblage, its a fence, and its also a vitrine en plein air for further urban detritus. Various objet trouvés discarded at the foot of the tree are showcased: dried-up doo doo, fast food wrappers, a forty in a skirt (that's street vernacular, for une bouteille de bière, dressed down in a prêt-à-porter paper bag) etc. Trash never looked so good.

DESSERT, BACK IN THE DAY, AT THE BROWN DERBY RESTAURANT

Rudolf Freidrich was head pastry chef at Los Angeles' fabulous Brown Derby, during in the 1940's. My friends Glenn and Robert discovered these pictures at auction, a few years back. 'Nuf said.

CLINGSTONE HOUSE, DUMPLING ISLAND

As a boy, I was in love with... a house. Is it possible to be in love with real estate? I think so. Like so many romantic interests, a home -- whether lived in, or worshiped from afar -- also has the ability to convey complex and contradictory floods of emotions. Think "attractive liability doctrine" of the law of torts.

 

Each summer, our family spent quite a bit of time in Newport, Rhode Island. At a distant cousin's place, the eighteenth century Pagoda House (so-called, because of the quirky shape of its roof). But that's another story. Anyways, as we crossed the Newport Bridge each time, to and fro, to and fro, from my vantage point seated in the back of the car I'd look out across the water to catch just a tantalizing glimpse of a small island, right in the middle of the Narragansett Bay, with a massive house built over it. (Much later, I learned that the house is called Clingstone, built in 1904 by a Philadelphian, Mr. J. S. Lovering Wharton.) Year by year, I grew a little older and Clingstone stayed the same: a three story shingle-style beach cottage with 26 rooms, clinging like a stubborn old tortoise to a small outcropping of rock, the miniscule and delightfully named Dumpling Island. Clingstone looks fragile, and formidable. 

One summer, a friend of my parent's who also lived in Newport and shall remain nameless, committed suicide. He was handsome. Successful. Involved in the Arts. We would see him at the beach. I liked him a lot. And then one morning, at Pagoda House, I stood atop the back stairs and listened as the adults whispered to each-other in the kitchen down below. They said something to the effect of: "Last night So-and-so pulled over and parked his car right in the middle of the Newport Bridge, and then..." Afterwards, he wasn't at the beach anymore. Since that particular summer, twenty-five-or-so years ago, there remain 'No Parking' signs, installed the span of the bridge every hundred yards. He deserved a better epitaph.

An August 1904 society item in The Philadelphia Press reads, “Everyone is of the opinion here that Mr. Wharton will not stay in the house more than one season, and they say one nor’easter will settle it.” Mr. Wharton spent every summer there, on Dumpling Island, until his death just before the devastating hurricane of 1938. Clingstone suffered little damage.