A room of ones own

This is the first post for my new project: recreating in miniature the writing rooms or studios of modernist women. My plan at the moment is to create Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas' living room at 27 rue de Fleurus. From the photos it is clear that Stein wrote there and Toklas clearly worked there as well. I've also begun to get together bits and pieces for Virginia Woolf's 'garden shed'. Vita Sackville West's tower room at Sissinghurst and then Vanessa Bell' room at Charleston are also on my list.

I've searched the web and found five photographs of the living room at 27 rue de Fleurus. I have found most of the furniture on the web. I spent the weekend making a slip cover for a Bespaq armchair (rather shoddily made I must say) from fabric I picked up at the V&A quilts exhibition in June. It took me two days to complete but am quite proud of it. It will suit Gertrude to a T. The furniture so far consists of two Hansson Victorian armchairs for Alice, a tavern table and sideboard by JBM and a gramophone table and aforementioned armchair by Bespaq. Yesterday I found a good approximation of the fireplace on ebay. It's a Jim Coates one so have ordered it. I'm waiting for a Bespaq Wexburgh Saxe chair which is the closest thing I have found to Gertrude's writing chair. Once the fireplace comes I'll be able to build the room around its proportions.

The original inspiration for the project came from the paintings--wondering whether they had ever been itemized or inventoried. The project combines my longstanding interest in modernist women writers and artists and a new found obsession with miniature furniture. It gives me a chance to combine these with some research into the paintings and lives of these women. Just trying to find the furniture has been interesting. So many different chairs. Not surprising on reflection since they had all those writers and artists around 

That's all for now. Still figuring out how to do this.



First attempt at upholstering in 1:12

10 August 2010

Got distracted this weekend by the arrival of two volumes of Reac chairs which I had ordered with the intention of selling all but two. However, I fell in love with the wrong ones --the le Corbusier couches and the butterfly chairs --so spent the weekend arranging a room totally unrelated to Gert and Alice.

I did attempt to make the footstool to go with the slip-covered armchair, but it turned out looking like a mob-cap. Lesson: pleat, don't gather, tiny bits of cloth. Back to the drawing board on that one.

The Bespaq Court chair arrived Monday. It is exquisite, delicately carved and upholstered in red velvet. It is intended for Gertrude's writing chair which was, however, upholstered in leather. So I will have to decide whether to re-upholster it or not. I would have to get much better at this business of manipulating tiny bits of fabric before I would risk it. I'm going to try to make a visual catalog of the chairs in the various photographs, partly simply to document them and partly to have a record/checklist against which to compare the existent miniature chairs out there in the world to find matches. Haven't quite figured out how to make the catalog but it all adds to the challenge. Watch this space!

a room of two's own; a room of two zone

Long time between posts partly because I've been trying to figure out a way to upload gadgets from the ipad. Haven't cracked it so am on the pc. One of the few drawbacks of the ipad. That and the lack of Flash.

The visual catalog worked well, and showed me how poor my visual memory for detail is. Am going to have to replace some of the furniture with more accurate replicas. Will try and post an excerpt, although several attempts so far haven't worked.

Lots of progress, however. Last weekend went and bought the materials for the salon. $61.00NZ bought enough mdf board for an 18 x 18 x 13 inch roombox, plus sealant and paint. There's enough left over for most of another room box as well. Painted the walls Resene's Dim Night' -- a lovely grey-blue, with a wainscoting of Paeroa with a little Dim Night mixed in. Matches the slipcover blue perfectly. Very pleased.

Yesterday, Doug and I made the floor. We etched lines 2cm apart from the back wall to the front with the edge of a fine chisel. Then we rubbed red and green shoe polish, unevenly, onto the mdf. Next we made cross-cuts on individual boards randomly at 4 cm. Doug then put in nail marks using a small hammer and the tip of a sharp screw.Final step was to rub the whole floor over with brown shoe polish and polish to perfection. It looks fantastic: glows like old wood and doesn't have that nasty polyurethane shine.

In the meantime I went to the library and got out four books on Gertrude and Alice which identify about 20 of the paintings on the walls, as well as giving references to places where more complete lists are published. They also contain some other pictures of the room which I will scan and add. I had a real Wizard of Oz moment when I found a Youtube clip showing two of the paintings (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FasbBkzbnNE) . I suddenly realised how colourful that room was. I have gotten used to thinking abut it largely in black and white.

Decided on the title for this part of the project when I realised how their rooms, life,  everything really,  was their project. Alice clearly worked in the studio/salon alongside Gertrude, as well as organising the whole conduct of their life (not well expressed but  am thinking about that).

Raw floor

Finished floor

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

More books, Picasso chairs, Beineke collection,

More progress this week. Read the terrific biography Gertrude and Alice by Linda Simon. Much more detailed than Souhami, and less drawn from their own autobiographies. In Simon I found some delights, including a description of the atelier by Francis Rose who first visited the studio about 1930: "...facing us was a large lock-up studio which might have been a garage or workshop with a small residence attached. The studio was higher than it was wide; the furniture was heavy and Renaissance; a great sofa and armchairs stuffed with horsehair filled the middle; two tiny Louis XV chairs stood near-by; they were covered with jewel-like petit-point tapestry, one in bright yellow, black, and red, the other in green and white. These were the work of Alice B. Toklas from designs Picasso had painted on canvas... On entering the studio for the first time, I immediately noticed an ostrich egg made into a lamp with a shade of negro raffia-work, and next to it an egg-cup and spoon cast in lead, painted with dots. It was the first sculpture collage, made by Picasso"(Rose cited in Simon 1977, 143). Rose also lists his paintings which hung in the atelier, and which I have added to my catalog.

Here is the account of the petit-point chairs:

"When Picasso came by one day, Gertrude brought up the subject of Alice's needlework. "Alice wants to make a tapestry of that little picture," she said pointing to one of his paintings, "and I said i would trace it for her." Picasso, of course, would have no one tamper with his work. "...If it is done by anybody...it will be done by me," he replied. quickly, Gertrude placed a piece of tapestry in front of him. "well go at it". "(ABT, 175 in Simon 144). And Lo and Behold, I found the chairs, which were donated by Alice to Yale after Gertrude's death. Below are the photos from the Beineke Library website.

Petit Point Chairs, Conception
 and Work by Alice Toklas

Design by Pablo Picasso
(Beineke Library,
Yale University)

Even better than Simon is Linda Wagner-Martin's "Favored Strangers" (1995), which is both more detailed and more balanced than earlier biographies. She conveys the depth and range of their characters: these women drove to Paris to collect their paintings during. the occupation, found they couldn't transport them, took two, including the portrait of Mme Cezanne, drove back to Bilignin, and subsequently into Switzerland in the dead of night to sell it. Despite the fact that this painting was central to Gertrude's development of her style of writing, they retained enough of a sense of humor to quip that they ate Mme Cezanne during the war. Quite a feat for a couple of women in their late sixties.

Other nuggets: Alice collected miniature furniture! And her favorite colour was blue which is great, given the colour scheme I have used.

Mme Cezanne with a fan; Hermitage Museum, Netherlands


 

I also found more pictures of the studio on the Beineke Library website, most of which are dated and which I will add soon.

Ooops!

Not much work done recently on the blog or the minis, but have been reading more. Discovered to my chagrin that I had the wrong portrait of Mme Cezanne. After much searching found the correct one and inserted it above. Also found a really good photograph of the salon in Vincent Giroud's Picasso and Gertrude Stein (2007). Was pleased to see that the fine writing desk, which I had intuited from a configuration of shadows and objects in the 1922 photograph is actually there in the room.
Miniature exhibition on in Auckland this weekend. More after that.