Latest news with #Aesthetic
Scottish Sun
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Rare Tiffany lamp owned by global music legend to sell for £30k at Glasgow auction
The antique bears the distinctive mark of the iconic jeweller UP FOR GRABS UP FOR GRABS Rare Tiffany lamp owned by global music legend to sell for £30k at Glasgow auction Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) AN antique decorative lamp once owned by Sir Elton John is set to be auctioned. The colourful Tiffany piece will go under the hammer at McTear's in Glasgow next month. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 A Tiffany lamp once owned by Sir Elton John is set to be auctioned Credit: Mc Tear's; 4 The lighting piece is expected to fetch between £20,000 and £30,000 Credit: Mc Tear's; 4 The lamp was auctioned as part of a historic Sotheby's sale of the music icon's possessions in 1988 Credit: AFP Dating from 1899 to 1920, the lamp was part of the legendary Sotheby's sale in 1988, which saw around 2,000 of the iconic musician's personal items auctioned after an exhibit at London's V&A Museum. Bearing the prestigious mark of Tiffany Studios New York, the 'Poinsettia' lamp boasts a kaleidoscope of leaded glass in pinks, blues, greens and milky white. Its rare spherical bronze base, adorned with overlapping leaves, offers a striking departure from the more familiar column design. The current owner's family acquired the lamp at the landmark Sotheby's auction. And it has remained a treasured centrepiece in their home ever since. The lamp is expected to be sold for between £20,000 and £30,000 at McTear's Auctioneers' design auction on May 7. Other items in the 1988 Sotheby's sale included spectacles, flamboyant boots and a pinball machine from the rock opera, Tommy. A copy of the original sale catalogue will accompany the Tiffany lamp in the McTear's auction. McTear's director, Magda Ketterer, said: "The lamp is an extraordinary piece of decorative art, but its connection to one of the world's most celebrated performers gives it a rare cultural cachet. "Whether you're a collector, a design enthusiast, or an Elton John fan, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity." Why McDonald's Cancelled Its New Drive-Thru Plans in Scottish Town (1) McTear's 19th and 20th century design auction will also feature exceptional pieces from the Glasgow Arts & Crafts, Secessionist, Aesthetic, Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements. For more details and to view the full auction catalogue here.
Miami Herald
13-03-2025
- Miami Herald
Hialeah wants to spruce up pedestrian bridge with painted pink flamingos, nod to racetrack
Hialeah is moving forward with plans to refurbish a more than 60-year-old pedestrian bridge that connects to Miami Springs. The proposed design shows painted pink flamingos, a nod to the large colony at the Hialeah race track, as well as other birds in flight perched above the columns. Landscaping and ground cover below will include native and sustainable plants. 'Hialeah is turning 100 next year and we want key features of the city to shine alongside new additions,' the project's proposal says. An estimated 62,000 vehicles, on a daily basis, whisk under the 1,400-long prefab concrete pedestrian bridge that crosses U.S. 27 at Red Road, or Okeechobee Road and West Fourth Avenue, according to the Florida Department of Transportation. The city awarded a $64,021 contract last September to R.J. Behar, a Fort Lauderdale-based infrastructure contractor, for engineering plans and permitting work. The vote was 6-0, with Council Member Luis Rodriguez absent. A spokesperson for Behar said the project is under review by the Florida Department of Transportation as it involves a state road. FDOT said Wednesday the agency is reviewing Hialeah's request. 'We have received a Community Aesthetic Feature request from the City of Hialeah,' said FDOT spokeswoman Cynthia Turcios. Such a request involves 'an enhancement installed within the Department's right of way to represent or reflect the surrounding community's identity, culture, and values,' according to the agency. FDOT will meet with Hialeah officials on March 20 to discuss comments provided by state transportation officials, Turcios said. If necessary, the city may have to revise its plans based on the agency's suggestions. Following the review, Hialeah most likely will advertise the project by the end of April with a contract expected to awarded in the fall, a Behar spokesperson said. 'The beautification of the Okeechobee pedestrian bridge is vital to one of the initiatives that the city is spearheading, the expansion of our city's connectivity,' Hialeah Councilman Jesus Tundidor said. It is unclear whether Miami Springs has plans to spruce up its portion of the bridge, which exits onto North Royal Poinciana Boulevard and links to parks, fishing and picnic areas, walking trails and a free shuttle that meanders about the city on an hourly loop to Hialeah. Miami Springs Mayor Maria Mitchell and council members did not return an email seeking comment. Mitchell's term ends in April and she is not seeking re-election. A few blocks west, Hialeah has also floated plans to build a pedestrian bridge underneath the Hialeah Expressway, according to Hialeah's 2050 plan draft. The new pedestrian bridge would be part of a linear park called 'Hia-Line,' according to Hialeah's 2050 plan. Plans call for creating 'a network of pedestrian paths, sidewalks and trails with safe and comfortable crossings.' Read more: Hialeah wants its own version of The Underline, a linear park called 'Hia-Line' The area under the proposed bridge is a geographic conundrum, as the land borders Miami Springs, Medley, Hialeah, unincorporated Miami-Dade County and Florida East Coast Railway property. Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo did not return a message asking whether the bridge would be built on county-owned land sandwiched between Medley and Miami Springs.
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: River Babble by Eugene Lee-Hamilton
River Babble I The wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase Away despair from many a wingless day; And in the corners of my heart I pray That they may last, or leave at least some trace: Yet would I tear them all, could that replace The fly-rod in my hand, this eve of May; And watch the paper fragments float away Into oblivion on a trout-stream's face. Thou fool, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool! Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone Where rise the trout in every rocky pool; Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone Beside the humming waters, in the cool, Where dance the flies, and make the trout thy own! II And yet I think — if ever years awoke My limbs to motion, so that I could stand Again beside a river, rod in hand, As Evening spread his solitary cloak — That I would leave the little speckled folk Their happy life — their marvellous command Of stream's wild ways — and break the cruel wand, To let them cleave the current at a stroke, As I myself once could. — Oh, it were sweet To ride the running ripple of the wave As long ago, when wanes the long day's heat; Or search, in daring headers, what gems pave The river bed, until the bold hands meet In depths of beryl what the trick'd eyes crave. Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845 - 1907) is associated with the poets and artists of the Aesthetic movement, and the tenet of l'art pour l'art rather than art for the sake of realism or moral homily. He is remembered especially for his skill in the Petrarchan sonnet, a form of inherent aesthetic distinction, and also one amenable to the need for composing ('wreathing … my rhymes') mentally for others to write down. This was important, because Lee-Hamilton was disabled as a young man by a long-term condition that left him paralysed. He moved to Florence to be cared for by his half-sister, the writer Vernon Lee, and Matilda, their mother, and eventually he began a slow recovery which brought about a (sadly temporary) remission. The paired poems of River Babble come from his 1894 collection, Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, a later edition of which can be read here. River Babble belongs to the first of the five sections, A Wheeled Bed, voicing the frustration and time-heavy boredom of a once active and ambitious young man confined to what he addresses elsewhere as 'hybrid of rock and of Procrustes' bed, / Thou thing of wood, of leather and of steel…' River Babble is angry at times, but richer in memories and longing. The scenes recalled are not primarily there to be enjoyed by the aesthetic eye, however: beauty is embodied by movement and sensation, now irretrievable. It begins with the consolations of rhyme-wreathing and the secular 'prayer' that the poems 'leave at least some trace'. But the next quatrain gives voice to fierce denial: the poems and their posterity would mean nothing if the poet could only recover his ability to fish the trout-streams and pools. And, by the first tercet, the mood has darkened to self-castigating fury at those fantasies of recovered strength. The writing in the first sonnet is at its most vivid when it observes ordinary things: fragments of torn paper, the 'leap[ing] from stone to stone', the water 'humming' at dusk with insect life. In the second, equanimity is restored, and the meditation centres on the idea that, if he were cured, he would 'leave the little speckled folk / Their happy life — their marvellous command / Of stream's wild ways.' While 'little speckled folk' is almost childish, the image of the 'marvellous command / Of stream's wild ways' is redeemingly fine, giving renewed physicality to the narrator's remembrance of his own human body when it seemed to share the trout's 'marvellous command'. But now there's a flip from exultation ('daring headers') to mystery. Diving down to the river-bed, the poet feels its surface for gems, 'until the bold hands meet/ In depths of beryl what the trick'd eyes crave.' Beryl ('precious blue-green color-of-sea-water stone' as Wiki translates the classical Greek) is a mineral which includes precious stones, such as emerald. Perhaps he's imagined these shimmering in the river's depths, and that he could somehow gather up a sample. There may be a sexual metaphor buried here, but an aesthetic one is also likely. The beautiful form, the Petrarchan sonnet, is associated with precious stones and precious metals elsewhere. For instance, the poem, What the Sonnet Is, concludes, 'It is the pure white diamond Dante brought / To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore / When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought; // The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core; / The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought / For his own soul to wear for evermore.' The 'dark, deep emerald' of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting The Day Dream might be relevant to What the Sonnet Is, and, possibly, in River Babble II, it's Rossetti's genius-guaranteed immortality that's encoded in the wishful dive for the beryl. Or perhaps the stone simply represents beauty itself – something whose perfect form, Lee-Hamilton acknowledges, can never be found exactly as 'the trick'd eyes crave'.
