“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991. This room is in Mildred’s Lane, the Pennsylvania artist’s colony that J. Morgan Puett and partner built over many years. Thanks to kellylynnwaters for the photo, which is originally from J. Morgan Puett via pjb.
Via OWI – Office for Word and Image. Photo: Vercruysse Frederik
This house is called the Yakisugi or “charred cedar” house. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori is using a traditional Japanese technique of charring as a way to finish and preserve wood. See another charcoal house by Fujimori here. Fujimori’s buildings often use traditional materials in almost fantastical, quasi-folkloric ways. This house was built to resemble, at least in its interior, a cave dwelling found near Lascaux in France. All photos here are by Edmund Sumner accompanying an article by Yuki Sumner in the Telegraph:
“Fujimori wanted to wrap the exterior of his ‘cave’ with charred cedar boards, a traditional and highly durable Japanese cladding material. Normally, such boards come in lengths of less than 7ft – any longer and they tend to warp when heated. Undeterred, the architect persuaded his clients, plus eight friends, to spend a day with him in a field charring the timber using a technique that he had discovered. A day’s hard work produced 400 beautifully charred cedar boards, each more or less 25ft long, and, although they were slightly warped, the gaps were filled with thick plaster, which created the striking striped pattern of the exterior walls.”
Why does our cringe list contain so many toys or toy-like objects? We like toys! But not really this one. This toy was in the house for as long as I can remember while my sisters and I were growing up. It arrived as a hand-me-down, but no one could remember from where or whom. It’s stamped Made In Germany on the bottom, which would put it at pre-WWII. It’s very well made, very sturdy, and the pieces spin and slide very smoothly. Somehow this makes the whole scenario all the weirder, and I can remember we found it quite creepy as children. Why were the babies screaming? Did they not like to be spun around? Is it because they hit the beads above when you spun them? Were the policeman meant to be babysitting, or were they out searching for abandoned babies, or perhaps for criminal babies? How many policemen does it take to find 5 babies, and more pressingly, how will they ever get to them? Why is there only one black baby, and more pertinently, why are there no black policemen? Was it a linear progression, with pastel eggs hatching into babies who then grew up to be white policemen? If those aren’t policemen, what are they? Baby abductors? Construction workers from different teams? What belonged in all those peg holes underneath? Was the main purpose of this object to hone a child’s narrative skills, or crime-solving skills? These and many other questions. It seemed as if there was a lot going on here, and most of it not very nice. And then there was the sickly colour scheme. It still bothers me to look at this thing, and still I can’t bring myself to throw it out. It’s as if some forensic expert or anthropologist might need it someday. But you could say that of a lot of toys.
