Monday, November 21, 2011

Urns, Architecture & Sex

David W. Dunlap, in the New York Times last week, wrote about these urns, below.
 Heavy & fearing liability the building owner, Atria, decided to remove them.  (If I wasn't a Landscape Designer I would be selling roof finials.  We must have our arcane passions.)
 In a rare twist, Atria, after requests, replicated the urns in a lighter material (not cheap), above, to replace the old urns.
When she saw the old urns coming down, Kennedy Fraser, above, said, "It was one of the most traumatic days of my life."   A woman I understand.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Puppet Barbuda enthralled by Fraser, and wanting to know, "Where the h**l did the old urns go?", Googled for answers.  One must have priorities with their time when the to-do list is 4 centuries long.
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Delightfully, Puppet Barbuda was swept up in the sexual peccadilloes of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Violet Trefusis, a king & etc.  From a review of,  Mrs. Keppel And Her Daughter, in the New York Times, by Kennedy Fraser,
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The English have always believed they can do anything they want as long as they do it in a foreign country. For the rest of her life, Violet lived in France or in the palace Mrs. Keppel bought for herself near Florence. Once the die was cast, Violet reached a truce with Denys. It was he who introduced her to the Princesse de Polignac, the former Winnaretta Singer. She was immensely rich and had had many lovers before Violet, including Romaine Brooks and Olga de Meyer, who was reputed to be one of Bertie's illegitimate children. The Princess's intimates were all gay and lesbian artists. She was a great art collector and patron of composers. Her salons were famous. Cocteau, Poulenc, Valery and Proust were frequent visitors. Like Kingy, she entertained opulently and with great ceremony; like him she was stout, middle-aged and far too grand for scandal to stick to. When she took her new favorite on a trip up the Nile, Mrs. Keppel, Pawpaw and Denys accepted the Princess's civil invitation to join them."
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Puppet Barbuda doesn't know where the old urns are.  In fantasy her guy with a truck, stuffed with heavy urns, are tootling back from NYC to a little garden in Stone Mountain, GA.
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Pics, by David w. Dunlap, from the NYTimes article.  

6 comments:

Desert Dweller said...

Hmmm, where did those ornaments go? I like to think you are right and they somehow ended up in Stone Mtn GA, as you and I are enjoying croissants and java in your conservatory, before you take me hiking up to the interesting cactus plants you mentioned near some bridge or RR tracks!

This blog post's title...so Puppet B. and so Tara D.!

Anonymous said...

No, no, no. They are on their way to Hogansville and my garden!

Re: getting caught up in the Vita / Violette escapades, I did the same when in Italy visiting the Villa Cimbrone, former home of Ernest Willam Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe, who was Violette's biological father. (oh my, Alice certainly got around!)

In May of 1913 Violette and her mother stayed at the Villa and "she invited Vita Sackviile -West, her beloved friend, to spend a fortnight together. Vita agreed to the proposal"

I got so warapped up in the historic drama I almost missed the garden! It was fabulous!

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La Petite Gallery said...

I really got into reading this little story, so where are they now, the Urns.... yvonne
hope you had a great Thanksgiving. It is Dec the 1 and in the 50's with sunshine , in MAINE. Can you believe it. I believe Al Gore..

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Unknown said...

I really got into this little story... this thread thrilled me i read this with passion and i like it..