Essays & Art
Let’s dive into Part Three of the adventurous life of 20th century design trailblazer Charlotte Perriand.
Missed the first two episodes? Start at the beginning or jump into Part Two to get caught up.
After narrowly escaping arrest during a house raid by Viet Minh partisans, Charlotte and her daughter manage to leave Vietnam aboard a repatriation ship in early 1946.
Continue reading “Who is Charlotte Perriand? (Part 3)”
Welcome back to Part Two of our journey through the remarkable life of 20th-century design trailblazer Charlotte Perriand.
If you missed the beginning of her story, you can catch up here.
Charlotte is by now an independent young woman at the beginning of her 30s, looking for more than just sexual freedom. Next to shift is her professional relationship with modernist architect Le Corbusier. And the devastating consequences of the Second World War are looming on the horizon.
Continue reading “Who is Charlotte Perriand? (Part 2)”
It is early morning in Paris. She opens her bathroom window and climbs on the roof of her apartment. A deep breath, a quick look over the neighbourhood of Montparnasse. She stretches, moves her head in a wide circle and starts exercising in the fresh air. After half an hour, she returns to her one-bedroom flat under the roof. The tiny apartment is quirky.
Continue reading “Who is Charlotte Perriand?”
Adam’s first wife wasn’t Eve.
Some say Adam’s first wife was Lilith. And Lilith was evil, they say.
This is her story.
Continue reading “Evil Women”
Of course, one knows Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The musical genius and society eccentric. And for sure, you have hummed along some of Mozart’s songs from “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” or “The Magic Flute”. If not in the opera, then while on the phone listening to music on hold in a waiting loop.
Yet, most likely you haven’t heard of his sister Maria Anna Mozart. And most likely, you don’t know either that Maria Anna Mozart was the original musical prodigy.
Continue reading “Who is Maria Anna Mozart?”
My eyes firmly fixated on the buildings around me, I am usually walking through London ready to discover this fascinating city’s quirks along the way. On one of those days, I ended up in Primrose Hill, in a 1920s villa housing a cultural temple for English Folk Dance.
Continue reading “A Love Story ❤️”
I was raised in a Catholic environment. A small village in Southern Germany with a church forming its centre and a chapel with a mysterious crypt as eternal deathbed for our gentry. Those feudal countryside masters left our village in the 19th century and if I remember correctly, their heritage line died out shortly after. Almighty God’s will or random coincidence?
Continue reading “Beyond The Seven Deadly Sins”
When volunteering at an Octavia foundation charity shop in London’s Kentish Town, I stumbled across the name giver of this organisation: Octavia Hill.
Octavia was living in 19th century London. She was a prominent figure in the fight against land developers who were as early as the 1830s planning to build townhouses and villas on London’s famous green lung “Hampstead Heath”. Yes, the Hampstead Heath. This amazingly vast forest so close to the city.
Continue reading “Who is Octavia Hill?”
A sharp pencil and an even sharper tongue when observing other human beings were Wilhelm Busch’s toolkit. The German comic strip poet, illustrator and painter lived a self-styled withdrawn existence in a small village in the North Western part of 19th century Germany.
Wilhelm brought his social studies to life through witty caricatures. Sketching and commenting human failures and people’s darker traits in quirky verses of creative silliness were his trademarks.
View cartoon →After being away for three months, I have returned to my flat in central London. I had expected things to be a bit more dramatic, one of a kind to experience how it would feel to come back after such an extraordinary life-and-society-interrupting event as Covid-19. We are trained through media exposure, aren’t we?
Yet, all seems rather ordinary here in Kentish Town. This impression is only true when first arriving.
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