It was great fun on the train to Martigny, Switzerland, to meet a « cousinade » of Turckheims, a famous Protestant family from Alsace. The 50 cousins were all meeting in Verbier for the first week end of snow of the season and had planned to visit the Toulouse Lautrec show at Fondation Pierre Gianadda as part of their reunion. For the … Read More
Bob Calle is celebrated at Ecole des Beaux Arts
Two years after he disappeared on April 6, 2015, Bob Calle, a brilliant oncologist who directed Institut Curie in Paris, was celebrated at Ecole des Beaux Arts by a group of friends assembled by his widow Laurence Dumaine-Calle. The occasion was the prize giving ceremony in his name to European artists’ books. For he was a great art lover and had founded … Read More
The House of Worth, or the birth of Haute Couture
It is an extraordinary book that Chantal Trubert-Tollu, the great grand daughter of Charles Frederick Worth has just published with Françoise Tétart-Vittu, a costume historian. The House of Worth, 1858-1954 tells the story of four generations of fashion designers and it is mostly the history of a hundred years of Paris society through fashion.
Rebecca Fraser delivers a masterpiece!
It was a very jolly event at Daunt books in Marylebone, one of the oldest and prettiest Edwardian bookstore in London, for the book launch of Rebecca Fraser’s latest work, « The Mayflower generation, The Winslow family and the fight for the New World » published in Great Britain by Chatto and Windus. After her biography of Charlotte Brontë in 1988 and … Read More
Duncan Hannah, New York’s “enfant chéri” takes Paris by storm
His British chic is unmissable and yet he breathes a definite American allure of naughtiness. Duncan Hannah was opening his first ever exhibition in Paris at galerie Pixi, run by Marie Victoire Poliakoff, and suddenly the sidewalks of rue de Seine were filled with Transatlantic jet setters who had spent last week end in Milbrook, N.Y. and were « training » to … Read More
Popular images from 1500 to 1840 at Documents 15
It is a lovely little show that artist Erik Desmazières and Mireille Romand has organized at gallery Documents 15 to present a book of André and Marie Thérèse Jammes’ collection of popular papers. You might remember the fantastic sale of Jammes’ photographs in 2008 at Sotheby’s which has been since called “The sale of the century”. This erudite book seller, who still … Read More
Gerald Shea, a history of sign language
Sign language or oral language for the Deaf, cochlear implants on babies ? Gerald Shea, author of « Song without words », a memoir on his experience as a partly deaf adult, recounts the history of sign language, largely promoted in France by Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée who founded the first public school for the deaf, in a new book, « The Language … Read More
Two young writers share the Prix littéraire de la Vocation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet
What was most striking at the Prize giving ceremony of Prix littéraire de la vocation Marcel Bleustein Blanchet was the youth and enthusiasm of the two laureates. This year the jury, presided by Christophe Ono-Dit-Biot, could not decide between two laureates, Nina Leger and Simon Johannin.