A Day at the Museum

Am channeling Dash to share our recent visit to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and their exhibit of work by Jean Schlumberger - a French jewelry designer who was famous for his work at Tiffany &  Co. 

Elsa Schiaparelli hired him in the 1930's to design buttons for her clothing and later to costume jewelry for her design house.   After WWII he moved to New York where he designed clothing and jewelry.  In the mid-1950's he joined Tiffany & Co.


His clients were the A-list of royalty, Hollywood and politics, including the Duchess of Windsor, Greta Garbo, Gloria Vanderbilt and Jacqueline Kennedy.  His whimsical designs included birds, animals and flowers.  He worked in gold, precious stones and enamel in the style of Faberge.

A pectoral cross.

A box covered in peridots.

I'd love to keep my rings inside!

Who cares what time it is ...

when time is this beautiful?

You always use salt cellars, right?

The current exhibit at VMFA includes about 50 pieces from the collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon.  Small boxes, salt cellars, and objects, with only a few pieces of jewelry. 

I could have spent a week!

Two Days

Two days away from work. 

Two days to sleep late and read.

Two days of gourmet breakfast and wonderful meals that I didn't have to cook.

Two days of tasting wine.

Photo: Veritas Vineyard

Two days of paradise!  The Inn at Westwood Farm.

And a neat idea.  The wreath is covered in a patchwork of mosses.

There's No Place Like Home

There's no place like home.  I feel like Dorothy ... it was a lovely week in a little corner of Paradise, but I was so glad to get home to my own bed last night!  Apparently Mitchell was, too.  There is still an occasional snore coming from beyond the bedroom door.

We walked on the beach and watched the kingfishers fish.  We strolled and enjoyed the peace of the marshes.  We ate, we drank, we laughed.  The Colonel and Dora visited us for part of the week and we ate and drank with them.  Laughed a lot with them.  We even slept late and took naps, but still arrived home tired from the road.

We did small business shopping all week.  The best was a shop that sells only olive oils and flavored vinegars - The Oilerie.  You can taste everything before you purchase and then they decant it and seal it like a bottle of wine (no wonder I love that place!) and label it like a wonderful gift - one you give to yourself. 

There are lovely galleries and craft shops on Hilton Head, and clothes (of course).  So many wonderful restaurants that the difficult part was choosing just one per night!  And, actually, an excellent outlet mall.  We hit the latter on the way onto the Island last weekend and never went back.  I'll pass on Black Friday, thank you very much!
 

The best part of the week, tho, was exploring an old cemetery where we spent two days documenting the gravestones.   Located overlooking a marsh and deep within a gated community, this is one of the most peaceful places you could hope to visit.  The Colonel got interested in genealogy a number of years ago and spent significant time  tracing his roots.  When he discovered how useful tombstones were to that research, he also got involved in a neat project to document tombstones to help others find information on their family members and ancestors.

Find a Grave is a website where thousands of cemeteries all over the world are documented with photos of individual headstones and as much information as possible is posted about the people buried there.  The Colonel has posted more than 14,000 photos over the past few years.  Which brings us to Talbird Cemetery on Hilton Head.

It is an African American cemetery that dates back to the middle of the 19th century (or earlier) and contains more than 300 gravesites.  It is still in use today.  A gentleman who lives nearby has taken on the project of keeping the cemetery mowed regularly and cleared of undergrowth.  He is also trying to reset and repair toppled and broken stones. 

We spent two days photographing the individual stones, which The Colonel will now post to the website in the hope that others will be able to use that information.  We are now looking for information on two other old cemeteries that we might try to document next year.

We spent two lovely days in the fresh air, but ended up thankful that we could do something [ok, something rather odd] that will be helpful for someone who can't come to South Carolina and do it alone.  A Thanksgiving well spent! 

A Little History

We just spent a long weekend in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  It's one of those places that I have always wanted to visit, but never made the time and was never in the vicinity. 

Rolling hills and lovely farms surround the borough itself, where a traffic circle marks the intersection of two major routes.  The 18-wheelers mix with small and large cars and navigate the circle skillfully.  It was fun to just sit and watch the hustle and bustle right thru the middle of town.

We shopped little stores up and down the streets and enjoyed a nice lunch right on the circle.  Lots of American crafts and hand made items to choose among, as well as art and antiques.  There was a wide variety of things to see, including a wine-tasting room.  It would be terrible to not support the local grape growers ... don't you think?

No gardens to visit, but the town center was filled with flowers and fall decorations - all adding to the overall feeling of a fall festival.  There was a First Friday event that evening with lots of the boutiques open with specials and serving this and that.  Sadly, we were committed to a conference dinner.

Oh.  I forgot to say that we made this journey to attend a conference.  Mitchell and I both made all the obligatory appearances and then disappeared to shop or to visit the battlefields.  I didn't even try to photograph the battlefields - the scale was just too large for my little point-and-shoot.  Instead I took pictures of the orchards and vineyards.

A nice place to visit and a good place to remember the terrible war that was fought there.  Perhaps fitting that we were there a week before Veterans' Day.  Wish we could put that war behind us, but we don't seem to be able to do that yet.  A pity.  We need to find a way to heal those wounds and come together - sooner, rather than later.

Next week: our big purchase!

What a Difference a Day Makes!

Ocean City, Maryland - March 26, 2011

Ocean City, Maryland - March 27, 2011

Home, Sweet Home!

Is home ever nicer than when you return from a trip? I think not!

Mitchell and I have just spent a wonderful 10 days in Florida - warm, mostly dry, entertained, spent time with wonderful friends - all the good feelings of a winter vacation. And the Central Virginia to which we returned is covered in snow, slush, and ice - three things I really loath - and yet we were delighted to finally get here this afternoon. It feels so safe and sane to be back in our normal nest.

Travel - at least by air - is no longer fun. You know all the problems - to catch an 8:30 flight this morning we had to get up at 5:00 and be at the airport at 6:00 to return the rental car. Then the strip search at security.

Unfortunately, Mitchell had a knee replaced a couple of years ago. Apparently along with his discharge from the hospital, he was put on the "Suspected Terrorist" list. I wasn't aware that titanium and plastic joints are considered lethal weapons, but apparently so. We can deal with the fact that he sets off the metal detector, but you'd think that 10-inch scar on his knee might key them in that he's not actually carrying!

Several long waits at the gates and a bit of anxiety about whether or not we would get seated on our flights, and finally we were in the air and actually headed home. It seems that the airlines still sell 55 tickets for every 50 seats.

The heavy snows in the mid-Atlantic over the weekend didn't help the situation, since they left lots of other folks stranded and vying for seats on the planes that were running.

So eleven and a half hours later (it was,after all, nearly three hours of flying time!) we are back to home sweet home in time to start a new week tomorrow. A wonderful vacation, but an excellent home coming!

Note: Finally solved my problem of uploading more than one photo so I will update It's My Garden in the next couple of days - lots of Guest Gardens on this trip.