Painting catalogue, new furniture

Lots of progress this week. I now have 40 paintings in my catalog, with dimensions and provenance for about half. Thank heavens for the web. Still trying to figure out how to add pages so I can post the catalog on the blog.I also found a link on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art webpage about a forthcoming exhibition called The Steins Collect. They have a call out for unidentified or unprovenanced works of art. So I am probably reinventing or at least co-inventing the wheel. http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/research_projects_steins

New furniture arrived this week. The proportions between the Hansson chairs and the Bespaq (Gertrudes) armchair were all wrong. I found a passage in Diane Souhami's Gertrude and Alice which describes them buying this furniture in London just after Leo Stein moved out in 1913: "They shopped with enthusiasm ...In Paris they had been unable to find a suitable three piece suite to replace the chairs Leo had taken to Florence, so they had themselves measured for chairs and a couch-- to accommodate Gertrude's bottom and Alice's short legs. Then they took a lot of time choosing chintz for the suite that would go with all their pictures" (Souhami, 1991: 121). [Unfortunately Souahmi doesn't use footnotes so I can't find her source]

Using my visual catalogI was able to find the chair which was both smallest (for Alice's short legs) and, fortuitously, most closely resembles the originals. They are upholstered in blue and dark pink, virtually the same blue as the walls and slipcover. Meant to be, as my mum would have said. Also, in the package a beautiful delicate Bespaq lady's desk (for Alice who liked dainty furniture),and a chair, Bespaq also, very similar to their Florentine chairs. Later in the week the blanket chest arrived. It will need adorning with gold lions' feet and trim, but it is basically the right shape and size. It will be a good first project for amending (or hacking as the ikea hackers say, although I shudder to use that word) furniture. So the furnishings are almost complete . The remaining pieces, the Florentine writing table, the big double chest, and the ornate tea table, will have be be made from scratch  or hacked from other furniture.

I was interested in the comment about choosing a chintz which would go with all their paintings. I chose a muted chintz on the grounds that it wouldn't clash with the paintings, but these women loved colour. I keep having to remember that. I'm drawn to a muted minimalist aesthetic, but their modernism had nothing to do with restraint or minimalism. It was about excess, genius, confidence, and not quiet confidence.

First mockup

Final acquisitions of the week are two woven carpets bought at the Hamilton Miniaturist Exhibition. Keeping in mind the colour issue I chose one in bright red and blue, and one green and gold. The latter doesn't work in the room, although that may change when the pictures are hung. The red and blue one pulls the whole thing together. Fabulous! As my friend Lisa would say