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Showing posts with label tetsubin tea pots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tetsubin tea pots. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Sunday morning in Paris is perfect to go foraging for desserts.
You must start early. M and I leave by 9:30 am joining the joggers and dog walkers. While Paris sleeps you'll catch all the best desserts that got away all week, when you walzed in the late afternoon to find zilch...
A Paris restaurant 'guard' cat watches us as we go off to forage...
Gerard Mulot is always buzzing with activity on Sunday from dessert foragers...
I'm looking for desserts to shoot and later paint...
Never easy at Mulot - too many to choose from...
Ah ha! This chocolate dome will do the trick.
I send off M. with the booty while I head on for more treasures. She has instructions to carry the desserts gingerly...
Laduree's vitrines are full of springy colors and flowers to honor the new macaron flavor, Mimosa. Mine is resting in the freezer...
And the newest dainty coffret/box to hold the macarons - the adorable Madame Pomador box.
Why do I always feel like this 5-year old inside Laduree Bonaparte, full of excitement and anticipation..? I manage to walk away with THREE cupcakes!
Sunday brunch awaits some lucky late sleepers...
I head off to Pierre Herme on rue Bonaparte. The windows are impossible to shoot, full of reflections. And photographing inside is now strictly verboten. I have a plane to catch on Monday so...
One last pit stop for the elusive sesame eclair at patisserie Sadaharu Aoki. It's M.'s birthday and she must have a sesame eclair bien sur!
Back at the apartment I photograph like mad in the beautiful overcast morning light. Pierre Herme's Cherry Pistachio tarte looks an awful lot like M.'s bumpy Japanese tetsubin teapot.
But the PH cerise/cherry comes in handy as a prop for the other setups...
Laduree's pistache cupcake + cerise...
The other two patiently await their turn. I've never been an eater of cupcakes, but suddenly I'm converted. I wolf down the citron, naturally only after shooting...
Later I meet up with Amy of Sweet Freak at Carette's newest tea salon in the Marais at 25, Place des Voges...
It's impossible to eat even one bite of Amy's clafoutis. I'm desserted out.
Still, can you think of a better way to spend a Sunday in Paris?
Still, can you think of a better way to spend a Sunday in Paris?I'm back in New York, unpacking, paying bills, and heading out to the pool to work off that citron cupcake!
BONJOUR DIMANCHE!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Japanese woodblock prints have long influenced my still life watercolors. 
The French Impressionists, particularly Manet, collected Japanese prints like mad. The abstract areas of black in the prints, the mastery of balance in composition achieve serenity and intensity at the same time,
all strongly influenced their paintings. 
My studio walls are covered with print reproductions. I like to think I'll soak up their beauty by osmosis.
Utter simplicity balanced with wonderful negative/positive shapes... 
I bought this facsimile ages ago. The colors are so soft and delicate, yet the composition is very strong. Artists began making still life prints after Commodore Perry "opened" Japan and the new influx of European painting.
My studio walls are covered with print reproductions. I like to think I'll soak up their beauty by osmosis.
Utter simplicity balanced with wonderful negative/positive shapes... 
I bought this facsimile ages ago. The colors are so soft and delicate, yet the composition is very strong. Artists began making still life prints after Commodore Perry "opened" Japan and the new influx of European painting.
The ships also brought in the Prussian or Paris Blue pigment you see in so many prints.
I can't resist Japanese household objects either;
the shiny, deep reds, pale greens and blacks.
The book that got me addicted:
The Great Wave:the influence of Japanese woodcuts on the French, from an exhibit at the Met. The prints first showed up in France,used as wrapping paper for shipped pottery from Japan. Their strong patterns and asymetrical compositions captivated the Impressionists. Van Gogh copied them exactly in oils to better understand them. I started collecting prints after that show and they still hold my rapt attention...
(Reposted from October 26, 2006)
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