A small adventure

My husband's nephew is in town for the week. We decided to make today a museum day. We left the house thinking that we would go to the Met. We took the cross town bus and walked downtown along Fifth Avenue. On the way to the met we stopped off at the Cooper -Hewett.

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There was an exhibit called Scrap about how designers are using waste materials from the textile industry to create fashion and usable objects.

One artists begins with saris.

The saris are used in three stages. In the first, Western style garments are cut from the yardage. In the second stage, mixed fabrics are pieced together and then over dyed in one color. I didn't take photos of the garments in the first two stages, they were nice enough, but not all that exciting.

In the next couple of stages the artist uses smaller and smaller bits of the saris.

The base fabric is made out of over-dyed saris and then circles of waste sari fbric are appliqued to the base.

Curtains in the exhibit space were made out of cut work doily's and more of the sari-waste fabric circles appliques onto white cotton.

They were pretty mesmerizing.

Another section of the exhibit was devoted to textiles made out of waste from the silk making process. They were austerely elegant.

We then wandered upstairs and were both completely captivated by the room full of architectural models.

Some seem to have been made as souvenirs of trips abroad, like the domed building made out of ivory. The some, particularly the stair cases, seem to have been architectural models made for client approval of details of commissioned buildings.

We were both completely smitten with this double staircase.

We then moved on to an exhibit of 20th century design for every day objects. This is exactly the sort of exhibit that makes my heart sing.

I loved this outboard motor. At first glance I thought it was milk shake machine. I assume that a milk shake machine of that era would probably not look all that different.

My nephew is less of a fan of modernist design than I am, but we both loved this tea set.

My nephew was not a fan of this vanity. All of the circles made me fall in love.

Speaking of circles, this TV set was great.

I loved how weirdly anthropomorphic this chair is. It looks like you are sitting inside your obese aunt.

Recently this fabric showed up in the background of a TV show set some time in the mid century. I can't remember the show, but this fabric is unforgettable.

We wandered through some rooms with the collections of the Hewett sisters.Here are a few things I particularly liked.

My nephew was completely enchanted by this faux candlestick with a computer generated flame.

We walked south towards the Met, I got distracted by some beautiful late afternoon shadows of shrubbery against one of the buildings along Fifth Avenue.

We then walked home through Central P.ark

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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