“MARY” MUMMIES NIANKHKNUM AND KHNUMHOTEP

Despite the unprecedented discovery, nearly fifty years ago, of what appears to be documentation of the gay life and times of history’s first same-sex couple, attempts are still being made to keep the nature of their apparent relationship under wraps.

NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP, whose names translate respectively as “joined to life” and “joined to the blessed state of the dead” were manicurists to the court of King Niuserre during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty (about 2,400 B.C.) In 1964, archaeologists discovered a warren of chambers fabulously decorated with reliefs of two men hunting, banqueting, and most surprisingly, in a series of intimate poses reserved for hetero-normative couples in the canon of Egyptian art.

Despite this evidence, homophobic historians have classified the two men as being merely “friends” or brothers. Even as recently as 2009, a professor of Egyptology at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts constructed a hypothesis about the relationship of NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP to suggesting that the two men were “…conjoined twins, and it was this physical peculiarity that prompted the many depictions of them hand-holding or embracing in their tomb-chapel.”

All I have to say is HELLO! These two old queens were manicurists! What more evidence do you need?

OMG! A YOUNG HIPSTER IS STABBED!

Brideshead sure does get chilly in winter, (brrr!). And a tapestry is a great way to blot out creeping drafts. So, the next time I'm kickin' it in Paris, instead of blowing all my milk money at some louche bar on the Rive Gauche, I'm gonna creep over to the XIIIe arrondissement and have this crazy snap -- taken off the TV screen, obviously -- woven as a tapestry at Manufacture des Gobelins. Since the 15th century, Gobelins has been the premier weavers of massive depictions of stylish and bloody battle scenes, la chasse, etc. So the concept makes perfect sense. Well... it does to me, anyway.

La Bataille de Zama by Jules Romain, 1688

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS,

(or The Bodleian Oath*) 

or The New York Times Turgid 

"Below, the A-List Eats; Above, Bare-Bones Lives", 

Here's the Accompanying Photograph!

Saturday's Times ran an illustration of flop house resident, gravely ill Bernhardt Wichmann III, 76, laying on a single bed in a dingy room no larger than a closet. To accompany an Upstairs, Downstairs-style study in contrast between purveyor of preppy pub food J.G. Melon, and said shabby single-room occupancy hotel above it. But is this the stuff of a self-styled melancholy style blog? 

Indeed. 

Because Wichman's over-the-top floor-to-ceiling collage -- compulsive embellishment to create fantastical variance with grim objective reality -- got me thinkin' bout sixties-era British playwright Joe Orton, and the similar décor of his inner-city London council flat. A "garden of earthy delights" created from hundreds of mutilated library books. Which, true to form, resulted in Orton and lover Kenneth Halliwell being sentenced to Hell, six months imprisonment. 

The couple's guerrilla tactical art included altering, and then returning, library books.  Evidence that Orton honed his satirical skills with scissors, in order to skewer the genteel middle classes, authority and defenders of ‘morality’, several years before the wild successes of the playwright's Entertaining Mr. Sloane, etc.  

"Libraries might as well not exist; they’ve got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books." Orton wrote in 1967. Thanks for reminding us, Joe, that not so long ago, before the Information Age's embarrassment of riches, nourishing a hungry mind could be tough going.

*The Bodleian Oath is, of course, Oxford University Library's "I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; nor to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”

EQUAL PARTS RHINOCEROTIDAE & ALPHA-METHYLHENETHYLAMINE

Bright Young Things aiming for that dissipated Brahmin heiress look, make note: Kenny Jay Lane chandelier earrings, khol applied in copious amounts, The Kinks LP skipping on your turntable -- all baby steps! Its way important to ingest a lot of pharmaceutical-grade amphetamine (Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and/or Methedrine) and then arabesque on a leather rhino.

Because, for half a century, WASP matrons have decorated degenerate daughter's and son's starter apartments with these charming footstools, made by a small British company called Omersa. Alas, like so many of the finer things in life, it will cost you. Upwards of "One Large" in street vernacular. And remember, its the Greater Depression. (In other words, Daddy's dividends have dwindled.) So... what to do? Ask Mummy to write a bad cheque to "The Man" for the afore-mentioned pharmies. And go in arrears on the rent!

Then, wrap that Balenciaga chinchilla 'round those narrow shoulders and run, don't walk, up Park Avenue in your opaque-stockinged feet. Directly to Scully & Scully; exclusive U.S. distributors of the extensive range of leather animals, just like Miss Sedgwick's.

JEEPERS SNEAKERS...

You can't get these creepers made for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion 40th Anniversary. Its a dead issue, 'cause sadly they are no longer available. The canvas design is, of course, a facsimile of the hall wallpaper back at the 'ole manse. Maybe you'll get lucky, and find 'em on ebay.

Ones Treasure is Another's Trash, Part II

My mother's family at 608 North Cañon Drive in 1967, the year I was born. Sunny Scott holds me, at center. Already, I seem transfixed by the camera's powerful presence.

My grandparent's fantastic 1920's pink stucco Mediterranean-style house, at 608 North Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills, was photographed for a Los Angeles Times cover story in the early 1970s. And published under a headline extoling it's longtime residents as the chi chi neighborhood's indigenous hillbillies. A cruel riff, of course, on the popular television program. The reporter scaled an alley wall behind the house to discover a plot of dusty earth bound by herbaceous borders of straggling woodbine and broken liquor bottles, patrolled by a leopard... skin coat, draped over a sagging clothesline. I like to imagine the luxe fur had been let out in the fragrant air to freshen a sour odor that clung to it, say, a heady mixture of Camel cigarettes and Guerlin's Jardins de Bagatelle, after a night out on the town at Chasen's, Coconut Grove, or maybe The Brown Derby. And then it had been forgotten and left there. For a decade. Or two. My mother's '65 Ford Thunderbird convertible -- white, with a mouldy green canvas top, and tethered by a massive fallen tree branch -- lorded over 'the chauffeur's cottage' a derelict and crooked structure that re-created the main house in miniature.

608's high-studded reception rooms opened on to several interior courtyards, with pissed-dry cement fountains and old-growth lemon and avocado trees strangled by creeping fig. From a child's perspective, distorted by memory, the house invokes the labyrinth of the Minoan palace at Knossos on Crete. Granny had altered the floor plan to become a maze of perilously stacked, slippery bundles of magazines, newspapers. Blind alleys did not lead to the Minotaur's lair. Instead, looming and ghastly-looking Chinese antiquities lay in wait, silhouetted forms of vengeful demons and smirking Buddhas, which had passed down along with the so-called CREB "alcoholism" gene from my grandfather's family. The living room's original décor, as preserved in home movies, is barely recognizable to me: rustling, gauzy curtains diffuse that famous California light; a suite of Victorian furniture is upholstered in immaculate, powder blue cotton velvet. Foreshadowing of the wreck it would become: Staffordshire lamps placed around the room, representing doomed characters from the works of Shakespeare.

Staffordshire Romeo & Juliet Figure, c.1855

Into creating theatrics at home? Bishop and Daughter Antiques has a fine collection of Staffordshire Shakespearian actor figures. Procure one for about a thousand bucks, have it mounted as a lamp, and let the drama begin. bishopantiques.com

ONE'S TREASURE IS ANOTHER'S TRASH, AND VICE VERSA, part III D.I.Y

To achieve this uniquely American-Gothic style in your own home, throw away all garbage cans, refuse to pay utility bills, bend the good silver via psychokinesis, and engage in heated conversation with family portraits. Find additional inspiration in works of literature:

Halsey House, 1801

Providence, Rhode Island

The House of the Seven Gables, 1668

(photographed c. 1900)

Salem, Massachusets

After Holbein, (1928) Edith Wharton's momento mori of old crone Mrs. Jasper, once New York's leading hostess. Now hideous in her askew tiara on a purple-black wig, and seated at one end of the long uninhabited dining table in her big house on Fifth Avenue. Sèvres Rose Dubarry centerpieces are arranged with crumpled newspaper to substitute hothouse orchids; mineral water is announced by the footman as Château Lafite, '74 and handed in turn to one after another of the spectral guests.

In H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, (1927) -- the titular character lives in "a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river" inspired by Providence's Halsey House, built in 1801.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, (1851) inspired by a late-seventeenth century house in Salem, Massachusetts. Old Hepzibah Pyncheon, dignified in her rusty silks but desperately poor, worry's over "a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast..." indistinguishable from her own memories. "They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony." Hepzibah says "And if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it."

These clever author's conceits construct complex works of fiction around historic, tangible places to emphasize the seemingly-ancient trappings of civilization as trivia in relationship to the vaster, more ancient chaos of the universe.

In order to "Keep up with the Jones'es" :

(referring to the comparison of one's neighbour as a benchmark for the accumulation of material goods, its origins in the privileged lifestyle of Edith Wharton, née Edith Newbold Jones, father's family*) take a second morgage out on the 'ole manse and procure a Qianlong Chinese export porcelain tea service for your very own, and similar to Hepzibah's, at Richard Gould's shop in Los Angeles.

richardgouldantiques.com/chinesexport

*Shari Benstock, No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. (New York: Scribner's, 1994), 26.

More tips for the ardent do-it-yourselfer:

Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding, Tolin, Frost, Steketee Oxford University Press (2007)

www.amazon.com

Got a Light, Sailor?

Torn from the pages of Interior Design and Decoration, December 1937 

America's oldest wallpaper company, Thibaut produced this whimsical, versatile, wallpaper Tattoo. Whether to decorate  the powder room at your pied–à–terre on Sutton Place, or the nursery room at the beach cottage -- in order to corrupt baby --  this sadly now-discontinued paper would be met with great success, today.

For Whom the Bell Jar Extols

Edward Gorey's Fantod in a Bell Jar

Shortly after 9/11 I began to see bell jars, as I wandered about town. Curious little domes, sprouting up like so many glassy mushrooms, with increasing frequency, as decorative accessories flaunted in smart shops and well-appointed interiors. Today, from an aesthetic point of view, a potted hothouse flower, e.g. a Jack in the Pulpit or a curiosity, e.g. an Egyptian mummy's severed finger -- well, more simply put, these days a table top decoration seems nearly naked without a bell jar at hand to trap it there.

Why?

A bell jar is the paradigmatic opposition of a snow globe's self-contained whorling, glitter-and-glycerin nor'easter. The bell jar, quite obviously, protects its fragile contents from the outside world's harsh realities.

Conversely, Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel established what's-caught-within-the-bell-jar as a notorious metaphor for the claustrophobia of clinical depression. "...to the person in The Bell Jar, blank and stopped up as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream."

Indeed.

Good, or bad, the blown glass dome is hardly a fad. Why? For starters, the bell jar was a ubiquitious accessory in late 19th century interiors, employed to protect the horror vacui of Victoriana -- fussy and more-often-than-not peculiar table top decorations from unsightly, greasy accumulations of dust motes and soot e.g. bouquets of flowers made from wax, or seashells, or human hair; beadwork baskets of fruit; taxidermy squirrels resurrected in lifelike poses, etc. And, I suspect, this late 19th century fascination with bell jars was, more importantly, a subconscious attempt to preserve what's held most dear, as result of the War Between the States' catastrophic losses.

For centuries, the bell jar has also been called a "garden cloche", serving out-of-doors to protect an early spring plant from a late frost, and to its hasten maturity. A terra cotta bell jar will transform rhubarb, a deadly brute of a clump, into a palatable cluster of sweet, delicate pink stems ready to be baked in a pie.

A "cloche" made of fur felt or other haberdashery stuffs becomes a woman's close-fitting brimless hat (From French: bell, from Medieval Latin clocca) typical of the 1920s and 1930s. The cloche hat is hardly au courant as a fashion accessory, but remains an enduring symbol of the Jazz Age flapper. As are rolled stockings and bootleg liquor; wearing aigrettes and smoking cigarettes; the liberation from the wasp waist and monobosom of the Gibson Girl silhouette that preceded her; vamping and syphilis.

But I digress.

Beyond the realms of decoration, and horticulture, bell jars are also frequently used in the classroom to illustrate the effect of a vacuum chamber. If Sylvia Plath had chosen to remain amongst the living, she would certainly have learned to appreciate the irony of the following science experiment in relationship to her prose, a demonstration that the propagation of sound is mediated by the air:

1. A ringing alarm clock is placed under the bell jar.

2. As the air is pumped out of it, the shrill noise of the alarm clock fades...

There. Evidence.

Setting an alarm clock is futile within the confines of a bell jar, where life becomes a ceaseless "bad dream". If you have the misfortune of getting stuck, muster the courage to lift the bell jar off of your head and use it to nurture flora, instead.

The online shop at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's exquisitely self-designed house and garden museum, offers up a handsome looking terra cotta bell jar for your own garden.

monticellostore.stores.yahoo.net/040248.html

Or try englishcreekgardens.com/Cloche1.htm for a glass bell jar, to wear on your head to the next literary-themed costume party.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia - Mutter Museum exhibits ghastly fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; alas, no pickled fantods are to be found. collphyphil.org/mutter.asp

The Bell Jar was first published in 1963 under a pseudonym because Sylvia Plath

questioned the novel's literary value and did not believe it to be a "serious work".

Walker Evans, Woman Wearing Cloche Hat and Stole,

New York City, 1928-30 Metropolitan Museum of Art