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Coming back from the Silver show, I arrived at the R station and noticed about a dozen people dressed like Santa on the uptown platform. When I got up on the street there were more Santas in front of the terminal. It was mystifying because there were so many and they seemed to be in a loose group. I asked one of the Santas and he said that the next boat would have about a hundred Santas on it.  I went upstairs and waited. 

In the waiting room there were more Christmas characters. 

There were a LOT more than a hundred getting off of the boat, I took a video of the boat unloading and put it up on YouTube. I’ll try to embed it here but if it doesn’t come up go to this

link and see it on YouTube. 

After they disembarked, I took these two shots of the upper and lower lobbies of the terminal. 

It wasn’t until I got home and on the web that I found out that the SantaCon is an annual event and there are videos of various events from a number of years on YouTube.

It was only yesterday that the NY Times wrote an article about a show in a Columbia University Gallery. “Delight in Design” is a show of silver tableware from India made during the Raj. Didn’t think I was going to go but I decided last night that I would make the effort. It was the last day and it was something I needed to see. The Wallach Gallery opened at 1:00 this afternoon and I made it up to 116th street and found the gallery by about 1:30. I was fortunate to find the curator, Vidya Dehejia was there talking with one of her friends and taking him through the show. Following along, I got a lot of interesting insights about the culture in India at the time of the British occupation. A few other people joined the impromptu tour and had questions of their own which enriched our knowledge of the times and people around the silver in the show. Here’s a photo of Vidya.

A number of people showed up having read the Times article (Last Chance) and all of them were as surprised as I was that we hadn’t heard about it, it’s been open since the middle of September. This is the first piece that greeted us as we entered the galleries. It is made with spectacularly deep repoussè work, on closer examination I saw a number of holes where the metal may have been worked too hard or it may have worn through over the ages, but none of the flaws took away from the drama of the piece. 

What I wanted to examine here is the insides of the vessels, here’s a shot of another slightly smaller bowl with a shot of the inside which shows how deep the repoussè work is.

  Here are a few shots of the gallery and a case or two.

The rocking chair in this case is a wine bottle holder. There’s a circular hole in the seat so that the bottle can rest on the rungs. 

Here are a few details of pieces I like. The first piece is their PR centerpiece in the Kashmir style, it is remarkably sculptural with a pierced base. This double shot was put together from the gallery web site. I took the shots of the accompanying plate, decorated with the same pattern, showing front and back and another shot of the inside of the large bowl.

A bowl decorated with animals representing the days of the week, I’ll have to read the catalog to get more information. 

I like this image of an elephant and Tiger, it’s on a tankard that’s covered with animals surrounded by foliage and flowers.  

 There are many more pieces I liked (especially the little pepper pots) but this is enough for this post, you can see the whole show by clicking on this word

Delight

which will take you to the Wallach Gallery page for this exhibition. There are slide shows that take you through the regional styles of decoration and show almost all the pieces in the galleries.  

There’s also a great catalog available. One of the other visitors said you can find it on Amazon too.  It’s $65 in hard cover. 

Here’s a shot of the tall cup being worked for a second time after applying the silver rim.   This rim didn’t go on as easily as the first one, I was using a smaller gauge sterling wire and it was harder to fit and keep in place during the soldering process. After the first phase of chasing, I trimmed the edge and added the rim. I also bought a sand bag to hold the cup while working on it. Here it is, on the new sandbag being worked for the second time on December 7th. 

Here they are today, sides and bottoms. The camera lens distorts the shapes a bit when I shoot this close,  makes them look like they are leaning out from the center of the photo and widens the tops. 

I liked going over the pieces the second time, it gave me a chance to make some small corrections and sharpen the figures. I’m thinking about having them plated, the copper is warm to look at but I don’t think that I want to drink out of it. 

While in the city last Monday, I passed through a part of the West Village that I hadn’t seen for a long time. There was an awful mess on the sidewalks under a few trees by the Cabrini Pool near Hudson Street. The smell told me it was from fruit of Ginko Trees.  Usually only the male trees are planted in the city because they don’t bear fruit. Hadn’t realized what a problem it could be until I saw what three trees could do to a short stretch of sidewalk. Here’s a better view of the abundant fruit still hanging in branches overhead.

We were watching the late local news, something I usually refer to as the local mayhem and we saw that there was snow falling in Chelsea. I thought that it had looked a little strange outside from the bathroom window but didn’t investigate until I saw the news. Here are some shots of the front and one of the deck. Not much, but it probably won’t be on the ground when we wake tomorrow morning.