mugs

The quest for the perfect mug wasn't something I thought about before I came to England, but then a very neurotic Englishman, an acquired habit of tea-consumption, and time enough to start collecting objects again conspired to make me think about what I like in a mug.

I like a mug to hold enough tea, but not too much. No oversized IKEA fancies for me, please. I like thin china, but nothing precious. I like mugs that feel good in my hands and I like mugs that fit in, roughly, with my other things. (I don't have any matching dishes, but I like it all to hang out together happily.)

My longtime favorite mugs have been a blue Tams Ware one I, er, borrowed from the back of the staffroom cupboard a while back and a Marimekko one with a bright green pear on it that I bought in a Scandinavian design shop in Oxford. But then I went to John Lewis (one reason not to leave England) the other day and saw this:

...of course, it had to be mine.

John Lewis also has a lot of really lovely Orla Kiely mugs (you can see them here), all of which are bone china, so they're really nice and light. The handles are a good shape, too.

When I was at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park about 18 months ago, I found an Orla Kiely mug with cars printed all over it--ohhh nice. But this one, from Fiona Howard, is even nicer:

You can see more of their stuff here. Although perhaps it's better not to look, even. The collection of a thousand mugs begins with a single set. Or something like that.

airmail

Girl of the future, I'm sending you a crown airmail...

If you are waiting for an email about your public transit tickets and your cameras, please wait a little more--it's coming. I've been working on this, haven't had time for much else. But I haven't forgotten. If you're still interested but haven't gotten in touch, please email ohbara at gmail dot com. The project will entail you receiving something in the post, taking a high-quality digital photograph (I'll specify what), then sending me back the photo (via email) and a public-transit ticket of any kind from the place it was taken.

Recently: Benoit P.'s photos. Kyoto Chirimen Museum. Magritte's house is a museum, too. A short video (not new, but still funny) about art school.

And more good mail. (Thanks, Gracia & Louise! Poems soon.)

return to the archive

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote about Derrida. Well, let's change that. I'm re-reading The Postcard for the chapter I'm writing right now and it makes me remember exactly why I love Derrida. He is so materially romantic. The archive? Yes, it's the part of memory work that contains the trace of the past, and it's an important theoretical trope. But it's also a material love story for Derrida, who caresses his distant beloved via his careful treatment of the things around himself. He notices everything. The book is full of trains, photomatons, houses of cards, pots of growing myrtle, books, letters, postcards, photographs, traces of the beloved and the disappearance. And throughout it there is the insistence on the burning of the archive--let's destroy it as we go, let's start over, Derrida (or 'Derrida', because as readers we're not meant to be sure of who we are reading, I don't think) says. Let's build this record of all the things that I love and you love and then if we need to let's leave it all behind, poems and libraries and Purim cakes and telephones and hands and cut-paper flowers.

re-arrange

Friday after Thanksgiving I came downstairs to find water running down the wall with the shelves that all my books were on. After a big panic and a lot of running back and forth shoving books against radiators, I got everything moved and now I have a new place for my books, in the living room. I can't work on the buffet that I'd been using as a desk anymore, so I got a table from freecycle and work in the living room now, too. We'll see how it goes.

Here are my dishes in their new home, and jars of art supplies above. I didn't like it plain, so I made an easy garland of some old Christmas ornaments I found in Leicester on Thursday morning. Just tie a pretty string through the tops, and voilà.

And my books. I like them much better in this bookcase than I liked the dishes in it. It used to stand in the dining room and always looked cluttered. I'm not much for the style, either (kind of shabby-chic). But with the books in it, it's nice. Not too tall, so it doesn't lean away from the wall. And because it's openwork, it feels airy. Rachel brought me the plant and it is a really pleasing addition to the room.

* * *

If you're in Nottingham, stop by and see my kiosk. It's on Pelham Street, across from Homemade Café, just up from Zara. You can see some things I've made here. We're open Tues-Weds-Thurs this week (1-2-3 December) from 10-6 T/W and 10-5 Th.

pretty

I get so many compliments when I wear my star-shaped rhinestone brooch. It's failsafe; every time I wear it, at least one person will comment on it. This is the only thing I wear besides my red shoes that has this effect so reliably. And the red shoes are a different story. Sometimes I come home after wearing them and feel like I need to be invisible for a while.

Recent pleasures: the blue hour. new socks from tabio. knitting with my friends, using a yarn that's wonderful to knit with. miss capricho's fashion girls. making bobêches and designing labels for the market!

Have you seen Fideli Sundqvist's stunning work?

daguerrotype

The first photograph to contain a human being?

Exposures were so long that movement wasn't captured. But he held still long enough and made it into this century. And surely beyond.

Tomorrow I'm going to Belgium via train. I really like that journey and it will be nice to do work on the way. I'm bringing my (film and digital) cameras. When I get back I expect I will have used up my first roll of film and I'll be able to have it printed and see what the exposures look like. For my birthday, two friends gave me a Kodak camera that's even older than the one I have been using (a Pentax ME) and I want to find film for that and try it out. Maybe very early in the morning, before people are on the street.

I tend to prefer spaces with no people in them.

floating world

Good art needs to trust the traces, and print both the thing and its erasure. That's what I want to do and what I struggle with.

I want to start making lithographs again. Read a book about lithography the other day in the library. Made some photocopies from a book: Paris streets in 1900. I really love Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg lately. I would like to loosen up and make more expressive marks.

How much would I love a yard and a half of this? I'd wear it as a scarf.

I need to be back in Paris. Soon. I miss that city.