Highest Price Paid for a Camera to date

An 89-year-old Leica camera recently sold at Galerie Westlicht in Vienna, Austria for nearly $2.8 million. The anonymous bidder not only has one of 12 surviving models of the legendary 0-Series, but an important piece of women's history. 25 test models were originally made in 1923 as prototypes for the compact and durable Leica A which made its debut to the public the following year. But this prototype was more than just a camera. It served a symbol for the profound change women underwent in the 20th century.

The camera, once a complex, cumbersome instrument now became available to everyone.  It was affordable. When it became apparent that the camera could record any kind of situation and experience -- that it was the source of an instant form of immortality -- everyone wanted one.  It wasn’t just men but women who took up the camera and began recording images of their ordinary lives.  These cameras were hand-held and fast-action and could capture a fleeting moment in time under a low light -- an expression, a gesture, a mood, a posture. 

This camera was emblematic of widespread social changes. And photography was the field where these changes were most evident.  Using their own cameras, women created their own portraits and self-portraits. More and more women altered the rules by which they had traditionally been regarded to terms they could understand and control.  Interestingly enough.... the traditional male images of women began to correspondingly change.

Leica 0 series, number 116. Photo by Leonhard Foeger for Reuters.

Maurice Sendak

Your characters have been called snaggletoothed and grotesque, which raised concerns from the sterile masses.

What many critics failed to see was the beauty and fantasy of your creatures and their stories.

I would sit alone in my room as a child studying your drawings and words and not feel so isolated.

"I refuse to lie to children.

I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

~ Maurice Sendak

A fellow terrier lover, you wrote about Jennie your Sealyham terrier. Jennie has everything a dog could possibly want, but she looks out the window and wonders if there is more to life. So she sets off on an adventure.

RIP Maurice Sendak, you opened up my world as a child reading about Max and Jennie as an adult.

Zaha Hadid's Liquid Glacial

Zaha Hadid whose signature language is curvilinear forms and dynamic movement frozen in time reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni has created a new item of furniture:  Liquid Glacial

The clear acrylic table seems to be caught in the moment of transition -- as ice melting into water spinning at a high speed.

The tabletop is smooth and flat, as the legs flow downwards in rippling patterns.

Desire of the Day: Linda Steen and Lena Axelsson's Spinnaker Chair

I've been thinking about packing it up and moving to the beach a LOT lately with my husband and two terriers in tow. My husband has a small sail boat. It is nice to sit quietly on his boat and watch him steer the waters with his Popeye arms. I close my eyes and pretend we are somewhere else -- the clear blue waters of the Caribbean or even the deep and dark waters of a Scottish loch. These brown lakes in Missouri where we sail just do not do it for me.

Or perhaps I can squash this restless feeling by bringing a bit of the sailing feeling home. Literally. Designed by the Norwegians Linda Steen and Lena Axelsson, the Spinnaker Chair is  produced in Norway by Hødnebø.  Named after the sleek curves of a spinnaker sail, the Spinnaker chair supposedly simulates the feeling of floating.

You can customize it to your liking by choosing from a variety of colors of leather or canvas cushions. The backing? Recycled old sails.



The spring steel frame is powder varnished which comes in black, steel grey or white. The frame has a slight curve at the front rail preventing the constriction of blood circulation the legs. A great idea as I sit here typing this post shaking my feet awake in my most uncomfortable desk chair. It also has a loaded tilt function which can be locked into three different positions to recline. The canvas or leather is stretched over three carbon ribs by comfortable foam cushions (not like those old foam seats which have hardened after 50 years). And, the best part, it swivels 360 degrees.

I will never tire of a swivel chair. I used to make myself sick as a child spinning around and around in my grandfather’s living room chair until I was scolded to stop.

The chair also comes with an optional foot stool.

What I like the most is that the design of the chair was collaborated by two WOMEN. Linda Steen (left) who established Studio Scenario in 1985, which is now one of the largest interior design company in Norway. And Lena Axelsson who just turning 40 has quite an impressive design resume.

And by the way, no one is paying me for writing anything. otherwise, i would be writing this from the beach.

Images from Studio Scenario  and Spinnaker

Women in Design: Lucie Rie (1902-1995)

In 1995, Lucie Rie's death at the age of 93 brought an end to the long and productive life of one of the leading studio potters of the 20th century. In many ways, it also marked the end of an era for the craft itself.

Born in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie (née Gomperz) was the third and youngest child of a prosperous ear, nose and throat doctor who possessed progressive artistic taste -- his surgery and waiting-room was designed in the latest Viennese Modernism style. Gisela, her mother, family’s fortune was in the wine business. She divided her time between her family’s city and country home and watched her father play chess with Sigmund Freud.

Artistically inclined but uncertain of her path, Rie enrolled at the Vienna Kunstgewerberschule in 1922. She studied under Michael Powolney who was more of a modeler than a potter with an old-fashioned eye. Under him, she learned to throw, a technique she continued to use all her life.

Her work was hugely influenced by pared-down and functional forms advocated by Josef Hoffman. Adapting Hoffmann's credo, she made earthenware pots, tall cylinders, rounded bowls, and tea-sets that were sparse in form and often with fine rims and thick handles.

Rare "Vienna Period" vase, circa 1935
She signed her works Lucie Rie Gomperz during this time
Phillips de Pury & Company, June 12th, 2008

She also gained a sound knowledge of ceramic chemistry and experimented with applying stoneware glazes on unfired red clay creating the first of her volcanic jars with deeply fissured and pitted sides.

An ancient technique, raw glazing became a signature feature of her work. Whether decorative or functional, she always thought of her work to integrate with the domestic interior.
With Hoffman's help, she held her first exhibition in 1923 at Hoffman's Palais Stoclet in Brussels. And two years later participated in the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1926, she married Hans Rie (1901-1985), an easy-going young businessman who worked in the Bruder Bohm hat factory. They had little in common except for a fondness for skiing. Rie turned to her work.

Lucie Gomperz and Hans Rie on a skiing trip, 1925

Over the next decade she further developed and honed her style, but with the union of Austria with the Nazi Germany, she and her husband escaped to London in 1938. Her husband left for America and in 1940, they amicably divorced. Her popularity had not caught on in London where the work of Bernard Leach dominated. Leach tried to influence her with his heavier oriental meats Arts + Crafts aesthetic.


He thought her pots were too thin and her turning too fussy. but her own work remained severe and urban. Rie rooted her works and ideas in the Modern Movement. Still, they remained life-long friends.

‘I am a potter, but he was an artist’ Lucie Rie said while being interviewed by The Guardian in 1988.

 Her work nearly halted during the war. She hired assistants to make colorfully glazed ceramic buttons and jewelry. One assistant named Hans Coper, a young German refugee, was hired in 1946 to help make the buttons. Hans Coper trained as her assistant and together they created an enormous range of tableware and on off pieces.  Four years later they began to share a series of exhibitions and supply Heal’s department store with tableware.

Tablewares by Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, c.1955
Porcelain with manganese slip and sgraffito decoration

Rie’s and Coper’s personal styles started to diverge: hers remained functional, his became sculptural. Eventually, in 1958, Coper decided to set up his own studio and teach extensively.

From 1860 to 1972 she taught part time at the Camberwell School of Art where she was known to be a bit rigorous and unsympathetic to her students -- her demeanor somewhat steely, though pleasant. Always elegant, it was said that she stepped off her wheel after throwing as clean and spotless as when she went on.



Porcelain Cylindrical vase with flaring neck, c. 1976
Phillips de Pury & Company, September 27, 2011



In 1981 she was advanced CBE and continued to exhibit and work throughout the decade, but after a series of strokes in the early 1990s she had to stop. In 1991 she was made Dame. She died in her home on April 1, 1995.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Quietly spoken, she would politely show visitors around her studio and offer them strong coffee or tea and home-made chocolate cake . She possessed a clear understanding of her materials and control of form. She was one of the most creative studio potters of the twentieth century. 



top image: Lucie Rie 1987 at her front door Jim Hair ; all other images with the exception of Phillips &de Pury from The Lucie Rie Archive at the Craft Studies Center.

Charlotte Perriand Wins

By the 20th century, major institutional obstacles began to disappear, allowing women to formally train in art, architecture and design. Women enrolled in these schools in droves. At the same time that Modernism was developing, it was also becoming marginalized. As critics and scholars began to define Modernism, the work of women designers was left off the pages.

Women created great original works of quality design, and in significant amounts. They acquired professional skills which they exhibited in public venues, and began to relentlessly pursue active careers. They created a diverse range of style and ground-breaking designs, and many of their names still in the 21st century are obscured by the shadows of men.

In February, a Paris court issued a decision in favor of the daughter of Charlotte Perriand. Perriand wasn't given proper authorship of three of her designs; instead, the works were attributed to her sometime male collaborator Jean Prouvé. Pernette Martin-Barsac, Perriand's daughter, fought against the Sonnabend Gallery for misattribution and won. She had been fighting this for a decade (or more) even when the Pompidou Center hosted a retrospective of Perriand's work in 2005. When these three designs went to auction, Prouvé was credited as the designer.

Perriand dealt with this during her lifetime. In the 1950s the Tunisia bookshelves was launched on the market under the label of "Jean Prouvé Studios."

Tunisian Bookshelf, pic from MoMa

Information gets regurgitated over and over, with assumption and bias. Lately we have come to care more about the look of a design over who designed it and how it fits in. We have a unique opportunity to study the range of activity and information about women designers.

Perriand's floor plan for a student room in the dormitory building, Maison de la Tunisie,
at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris

Why aren't we doing this?

Student Room, Maison de la Tunisie, 1952
Perriand was put in charge of a group that was to design and furnish 40 student rooms. 

Both images above from Mary McLeod's (editor) Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, 2003.

Acclaim to the Women's Clubs

In 1859, Constance Fauntleroy Runcie (1836-1911) founded the first women's social club east of the Mississippi in New Harmony, Indiana. She called it The Minerva Society.

She moved to the city of St. Joseph, Missouri in 1871 with her Episcopal minister husband James Runcie. A lot of things were happening around this time in St. Joe. The railroad reached the town in 1859 where it served as a supplier and distribution point to the entire western half of the country. St. Joe is known for a lot of things -- John Patee opened his luxurious four-story brick hotel just a year earlier where Oscar Wilde later stayed, the Pony Express in 1860 and 61, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Company established in 1867, and the death of Jesse James in 1882.

The Patee House

In 1894, Mrs. Runcie founded the Runcie club -- the oldest existing women's club today. She wanted to further cultural development and provide an intellectual outlet for the good women of St. Joseph. The club is still very much active today. In 1995, I curated an exhibition of the art purchased, compiled and carefully collected by members of the club over the years. Seventeen years later (boy, that hurts) I was given the opportunity to deliver a lecture to the members of the club where I asked:

Can the decrease of interest and value of domestic objects

be linked to a deeper and more profound change

in how we regard the role of the housewife today?

There are still a number of far-sighted women who over a century later realize that education and civic involvement are essential elements in building a stable community. Although women have made great advancements in the professional world since that time, we still can learn a thing or two from Women's Clubs of the nineteenth century: we still need to open opportunities for women and develop support systems for each other.

St. Joe today

(images from Missouri Western University's digital archives and stjoemo.com)