Tuesday’s icon.Tuesday of naturalness… Ingrid Bergman’s Tuesday.
With a resplendent beauty, a sweet smile and a serene elegance,we will always remember her as the eternal lover of Humhrey Bogart in “Casablanca”
Images: Wikipedia
Icon Tuesday. Today, John Wayne! “The King of the western”!
The more sensitive, charming and honest Hollywood seducer.
In his tomb commanded to write as epitaph: “Formal, strong and ugly”
Images: Wikipedia
Although Lisner’s pieces weren’t really appreciated by collectors until recently, the prices have been increasing lately and they’re gaining many followers throughout the modern collectors.
“Lisner and Company” was established in New York in 1904. At the beginning, the company made its own quality jewellery designs and didn’t brand them. it was just before the explosion of the Second Worl War when Lisner became Else Schiaparelli’s official agent in the US, importing and selling the French designer’s pieces. He also had a license to produce, sell and distribute his jewellery and accessories in the US.
In the Thirties the Company Whiting and Davies, famous for their metal mesh bags, produced a few pieces for the brand.
However, Lisner’s great peak would arrive in the Fifties. The jeweller, who produced designs in those years, became very popular for his colour combinations, attractive designs and, above all, his low prices.
The base to these pieces was lucite or plexiglas, a material developed by Dupont in 1937. An acryllic plastic that could be coloured and molded.
The Chairman of the company at the time was V. Ganz, a creative genius with a fashion instinct. He was sufficiently canny to develop the clean and commercial style that keeps Lisner’s pieces as fresh as they were in the moment they were created.
The designs were placed on chrome bases or bathed in silver and, from the Sixties onwards, in “blackjapanned metal” (which is a type of black lacquered metal). This pieces on their black bases were popular in their day and very sought-after today.
In the late Fifties early Sixties Lisner introduced a new range, branded “Richelieu”, which was better quality and more expensive. The pieces are rarer to find nowadays and if they’re in good condition the prices can be rather high.
The price of Lisner’s designs have started to rise recently, due to the fact that pieces from other designers of the period are sky high. In the case that the prices of pieces made by highly premiered designers go up, the more affordable pieces, such as Lisner’s, grow in demand. As a consequence the branded and well designed pieces are called on to rise in value.
The company used the brand “LISNER” in capital letters for their own pieces for this first time in 1935. From 1959 they used “LISNER” in capital letters with an elongated “L”. Nevertheless the buyers should have in mind that the molds and stamps were reused afterwards, consequently the brand isn’t a reliable indicator of the date of the piece.
The company’s production finished in 1979.
Images:
She was the first Spanish actress to reach international fame.
The most seductive at her time, the more brazen and the great diva of Spanish cinema.
Sara Montiel… “the Queen of the Cuplé”!
She is our icon of this week. Today, she is our protagonist.
Tuesday’s icon. Tuesday for comedy… Tuesday for Doris Day.
Three comedies: “Pillow Talk” , “Lover Come Back” and Send Me No Flowers”, all of them performed together with Rock Hudson and in which she played an innocent woman, warm, a bit childish… but with a touch of glamour.
A series of comedies that frame her career and that we will always remember.
Images: Tumbler
Tuesday´s icon.Tuesday for a Latin Lover…Tuesday of Rodolfo Valentino
With a height of 1.80 m, a seductive,exotic manly bearing and an intense gaze,he became the desire on the crazy 20s
Elevated to the category of great myth and the first ¨Latin Lover¨on cinema
This photograph of James Abbe with Natasha Rambova has always seem impressive to me.
Images:
Wikipedia
“I had a house in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills…” just hearing this phrase already sounds like a melody to me.
I can’t speak about this film without getting emotional, i think I’ve seen it more than 20 times and there are some scenes that still give me butterflies in my stomach, exactly the same feeling as I had the first day I saw it. So romantic, so sad, so intense…
The film, which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, narrates the life of Karen Blixen, a Danish writer that arrives in Kenya at the beginning of the Twentieth Century to manage a plantation alongside her husband, an incurable womanizer, to whom she is married but doesn’t love.
The relationship that Karen establishes with Africa and its people; the striking contrast between the indigenous kikuyus against the forever strict British society in one of its colonies; and, above all, Karen’s love story with the hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, these are the main driving forces behind a simply charming film.
The winner of seven oscars, amongst which, the best film and the best director (Syndey Pollack), the film was enormously successful with the public, qualifying as a “masterpiece” and “unforgettable jewel”, making it an all-time cinema classic.
For me Meryl Streep, in her role as a high society Danish lady, is magnificent. I Iiterally fell in love with her from the the first minute and since then I don’t think I have ever missed a single film appearance by her.
Not only Karen but also the majority of women we see in the film fall in love with a Robert Redford that plays the role of an attractive, well-educated, charming and gallant with a touch of liberalism and adventure.
The photography is the work of David Watkin. For me the photography and the music are the strongest success points of the film. It seems as if we were watching a National Geographic report. The journey made in Denys’ plane by the two of them from Nairobi to Mombasa flying over the hills of Kenya is absolutely breathtaking. Who hasn’t dreamt of a similar experience accompanied by someone very special in your life? I have, of course, although I don’t think I will ever manage to make it come true. I will stick to and cherish the scene from the film that makes me live it as though the journey were my own.
There are thousands of warming, romantic and emotional scenes. however, the scene that stays with me most of all is when, in a break from the Safari, Denys washes Karen’s hair using a sheet and the water runs through her soapy hair, meanwhile she closes her eyes, freeing herself to countless pleasurable sensations… it’s a simple scene with an enormous sensual charge.
A few days after being released in the cinema in 1906 I already had the soundtrack in my possession.it was a very special gift from someone who continues to be an essential part of my life. Since then, every time I listen to it I close my eyes and can feel the breeze, visualize the colour and the aromas of the hills of Ngong…it takes me to Kenia, transporting me to a different time, to live in another period…waking up incredible, intense and marvelous memories in me. It’s a soundtrack compiled by John Barry with a wide variety of melodies that seem to flow from the different places from where the work was filmed.
I have a 22 year old daughter who still hasn’t seen the film and I thought about giving it to her this month as a gift. I am extremely curious to know what impression the film will make upon her, given that she is nearly the same age as I was when I first saw the film. I am intrigued to know if the film that I consider to be a cinematic masterpiece will awaken the same feelings in a young girl of this century, as the ones that it awoke in me.
I will let you know…
Icon Tuesday.¨The blond Venus¨…Tuesday, just Marlene Dietrich.
With her dazzling presence, her matchless glamour and that cold distant and unattainable halo she became a true diva in the history of cinema.
We will always remember her singing ¨Lili Marleen¨
Images: Wikipedia
We have now been continuously hearing this word for years. We hear it in relation to fashion, decoration, cooking, art, crafts, floristry and design in general… From cars to electrodomestics everything can qualify under this term. Vintage sells.
However, what is so attractive about vintage items? Why has this special style of pastel tones and perfect finishes returned yet again?
For me, Vintage is a synonym for exclusivity, quality, good materials and, of course, craftsmanship. Vintage is a synonym for something well done or well made in the past.
If you think about lace, velvet ribbons, wild flowers, antique books, black and white photographs, hidden treasures in a chest, furniture stored in an old loft, you’re thinking about Vintage.
Thanks to this love for handmade things, and for unique and irreplaceable pieces, we have recovered a great deal of lost traditions. We knit and do crochet and bobbin lace making. I know various clubs and societies in which lovers of the art of knitting can get together once a week in order to share patterns and chat about wools, needles, scarves and fabric slippers.
We baked cakes and cupcakes so colourful and detailed that it was a shame to eat them, yet they had come from recipes recovered from our grandmother’s forgotten cookbooks.
The art of calligraphy has returned, we have started to write postcards and cards again, classes are given on how to write with a quill pen or on how to make wax seals. What would make you especially happy, receiving a card by post or by email? In my opinion, especially if the address of the card delivered is written by hand, it would seem as if the best present had just arrived for me.
Vintage photography is a contagious fever. Editing in black and white, sepia or with textures is all but an art that takes us back to the beginning of photography, when each photograph was revealed without really knowing what you were going to find.
Different sensations are recovered and shared. The “Do it Yourself” is in fashion and goes hand in hand with Vintage. You can disconnect, chat and exchange ideas, whether its face to face or over internet forums.
This is the secret of Vintage. You can recover human contact, passionate recoveries and values which had been buried with the passing of years. Manual work, well made things, eye for detail, perfect finishes…
It’s due to this that we like designs from the 20s, 30s, 40s… These years reunite all of the characteristics of which we had previously spoken, each and every one of them belongs to these years. It is because of this that we search for this aesthetic, and that’s why these great designers continue to look at these years when the time comes to launch a new collection.
Vintage is a style marked by the retro exclusivity and by the magic of well made things, that’s why Vintage sells. It has been selling for years and everyday it sells more and more.
We will continue enjoying this style and go with its flow…
Tuesday´s icon. Tuesday of goodness, honesty and naturalness.
Not in vain called ¨The prince of non-actors”, for his naturalness to act.
Spencer Tracy had a difficult personality, but that did not stopped us to keep in our memories all the comedies that he made with Katherine Hepburn, with whom he had a long and not very secret relationship .
Personally i never get tired of seeing them.
Images: Wikipedia