#sundayplacesnotebook

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Sunday Places Notebook - Heaven Must Be Here

My Sunday Places Notebook takes me to a near yet far away place because it can only truly be reached through a child’s heart. We call it Heaven Must Be Here. It leaves tomorrow behind and is nestled somewhere between now and those forever days.

Here, at our cottage on the shores of Lake Huron, time stops as we know it. An old grandfather clock from the early 1900’s has its patinated hands permanently set at 3:34 p.m. We chose not to fix the frozen keeper of hours. I often wonder what happened at that moment on the day of a distant year. I feel that it must have been a memorable one, not a significant event, rather a special moment in time when a butterfly stretched its art wings to the sun, when the forget-me-nots offered a timid wave in a gentle breeze, and when the lake’s ebb and flow circled a beach rock in perfect and beautiful geometry.

Here, the wind caresses cheeks and whispers sweet nothings. Listen. Did you hear that? The heavenly child can play tricks rustling through the old wise trees.

Here, a symphony performs from dawn to dusk. If you listen carefully there are a myriad of instruments that key in harmonically as if guided by a master conductor. Small petals dance to the sonata strings of long summer field grasses and the drums of hummingbird wings keep all to the beat.

Here, silence has its own melodic tune; hauntingly mesmerizing and beautiful.

Here is where my favourite flower blankets the ground each spring. I’ve always loved the delicate little white bells and their sweet smell. They take me back to a childhood storybook where Mother Earth’s root children celebrate new beginnings with large lily of the valley lanterns.

Our Eden tree stands constant in a small garden island within the surrounding waters. It romances the rising sun and purple sunsets with its wispy silhouette. The hot summer surrounds it with bright chlorophyll green, water lilies, and wildflowers and offers a canvas of meandering Monet strokes; my live masterpiece.

Here is where wishes are made through dandelion heads against a fiery end-of-day sky.

And when the twilight touches the lake, illuminated trees strung with hammocks stand still and quite to give the stage to lonely bullfrog calls and distant night bird songs. 

Heaven must be here.

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Sunday Places NotebooK: Unknown Artists and Versailles Prisms

I often wonder what stories an old ware holds and what it meant to the owner. Was it proudly displayed on a shelf or tucked away and forgotten in a box? The value is always one of perception and to treasure hunt in its truest meaning, is to seek out the ‘meaningful’. A watercolour on old paper and signed by an unknown artist may be a masterpiece simply for its beauty. A box of crystal prisms, some cloudy with age, could have once adorned a great palace. Perhaps they were parts of a Versailles chandelier?

Somewhere in between antiquity and imagination lie the treasures.

My Sunday Places Notebook takes me to the largest place for treasure hunting in the world, the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen in Paris. It comprises some 2,500 stores, spread across 15 markets. Yes, I count this as a bucket list place!

Established around 1870, ‘Marché aux Puces’ translates to ‘flea market’. It earned the name because of the flea-infested furniture and other wares sold at the market by the crocheteurs, ‘hook men’, for they used hooks (‘crochets’) to scour through garbage, picking through junk for objects they hoped to sell.

Yes, that is how it originated but today you can expect to find everything from exquisite 17th century decorative arts, to books, postcards and vintage clothing, and large architectural items such as mantelpieces, bookshelves, and stairs. It is a feast for the treasure hunter!

For me, the treasures were many because I see the ‘meaningful’ in the smallest trinket. Fortunately, I was with a group or I would have easily and happily remained absorbed in one booth!

Some were quirky little odds and ends that I found amusing and I wondered how I could transform them into art. The multiples of simple items became works of sculpture. Art Deco luminaires hung disparate and glorious from metal grids and I was drawn in by groupings of bright hued mid-century chairs. Remnants of what once was and perhaps no longer pristine; these hold the romance of another time and place.

I didn’t find a rare Picasso sketch, but I did proudly walk away with a small bag holding the most beautiful watercolour signed by an unknown artist. I wonder who he was and if his dreams would have been that his art be sold a century later.

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Sunday Places Notebook : Layers of the Aiken-Rhett House

Today is my first ‘Sunday Places Notebook’ post. 

Sunday is a quiet day of the week: a pause day. It’s a day of reflection that can bring fresh perspectives and ideas for the week ahead. On Sundays, I love to listen to old tunes; shed a wistful tear; smile; read; clean; fill my home with flowers; set my table with some meaningful odds-and-ends pieces; see beauty in the small and significant things around me; and often to pour over images from my far away and near-to-home journeys. It’s a notebook kind of day that collects all the experiences and assembles them into beautiful packages.

My ‘Sunday Places Notebook’ will be a regular end-of-week post that will be as much meant for me to enjoy as it is meant for you by bringing together the captures and perspectives that have shaped me as a creative and a person.

Be prepared to see exotic architecture and the structure of a dandelion head. It will be random, thought-provoking, and filled with inspiration. This will be a travel log where an iron street grate detail may take precedence over the iconic building or a where a butterfly wing may take focus over the picturesque landscape.

As my first post, I am exploring the raw and peeled-back beauty of what once was; a diamond in the rough in reverse. 

This is a historical home in Charleston that I was fortunate to experience with Kravet Inc. and several Canadian designers last spring. 

Showing all its intriguing layers, the Aiken-Rhett House is one of Charleston’s most renowned antebellum mansions. 

Without the polished veneers, this Greek Revival mansion is intensely beautiful in its historically layered and patinated form. There’s a magic here exposing a 150-year evolution of living, fashion, and technology.

 For me, the scenes opened my thoughts to the music that once played through the harp and the flowing dresses that presented down elegant staircases. 

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Sunday Places Notebook: My Last Day in Paris

It feels like so long ago and so far away; a world away when I walked along the narrow side streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The January morning was brisk and sunny on this last day in Paris and I wanted to explore. I only had a little over an hour before leaving for the airport, so I skipped my long breakfast (a personal ritual) and ventured out into the already bustling city. 

I did not walk far before stopping at a beautiful door, and then another, and another. 

The streets were lined with them; bold entrances saturated with rich colour and ornament that stirred the imagination to what beauty must lie behind them. Their hardware and large ornate knockers (door furniture as I like to refer to them) had stories to tell within each metal turn.

But I had to divert and keep walking. I wanted to visit some of the antique shops (there are many in this area) and possibly find that one last piece of Paris to bring home with me. I did not walk far before looking through a shop window. Yes, I was intrigued with the rather unusual and somewhat whimsical lamps. I’m sure they were worth a small fortune, but they were just fanciful to me.

Window shopping is a layered experience to me. I love to see the city’s reflection mixed within the wares. Architecture and street signs and grand candelabras; I want to buy the scene. And I do, with a few captures that stir my imagination each time I look back.

I did not walk far before the narrow streets opened and the River Seine offered the Louvre that stretches endlessly along its banks.

A world away it seems.