tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8406170966999042272024-03-28T02:21:13.331-07:00WOMEN DETERMINED TO SUCCEEDWomen determined to succeed presents "Women of the Ages" who left their indelible mark on the world through art, music and great courage to live life to its fullest and at the same time in some instances save the lives of women, men and children who were in peril.Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-92062343873312034812009-08-12T05:46:00.000-07:002019-10-14T10:00:08.821-07:00TAMARA DE LEMPICKA, Painter Extraordinaire<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPtwAkQRgY26SBno_p0ZXiopxfkIwM8w8l2lzQBI-jtnmXEiIfm9TbsreynLPO5We5KZI_KnSC0s-lT2gsDNxEHpEpccFR1tjp1IH1DG5_9b1GMoT0H2pcmm_KJaqVuEAomD0XhQ2kAc/s1600-h/auto-portrait-tamara-lempicka.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372123651787913218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPtwAkQRgY26SBno_p0ZXiopxfkIwM8w8l2lzQBI-jtnmXEiIfm9TbsreynLPO5We5KZI_KnSC0s-lT2gsDNxEHpEpccFR1tjp1IH1DG5_9b1GMoT0H2pcmm_KJaqVuEAomD0XhQ2kAc/s320/auto-portrait-tamara-lempicka.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 241px;" /></a><br />
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Dear Tamara: Art Deco painter extraordinaire, Russian Revolution refugee, bohemian, socialite, classic beauty, but I remember you best on the cover of the German fashion magazine, Die Dame, Auto-Portrait, Tamara in your Green Bugatti, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">chicly</span> helmeted, your glove hand at the steering wheel driving forward as a free, independent woman paving the route for women of the century to follow in your footsteps. What an amazing life your carved out for yourself and despite being born into a wealthy and prominent Polish family, your steely personality was your strongest quality that fostered courage and determination to succeed in a life, which through twists and turns could have easily made you a movie star. You possessed a persona and beauty that rivaled Hollywood stars but your reputation as a famous Art Deco painter is legendary. It comes full circle today as your iconic paintings are rediscovered and sort after by new admirers.<br />
TAMARA De <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">LEMPICKA</span><br />
A childhood of neglect did not curtail Tamara's amazing independent spirit. The core of her heritage is that of a privileged individual. Born on May 16, 1898, she was named Maria and later in life adapted the name Tamara. Her mother, the former Malvina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Decler</span> was a Polish socialite and her father Boris-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Gurwik</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Gorski</span> was a Polish lawyer. As was the case in the privileged aristocracy her wealthy and prominent Polish family shunted her off to boarding school in Switzerland. However, her first exposure to the Great Masters of Italian painting came when she fortuitously spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy. Another plum in Tamara's development was when her parents divorced in 1912 and she went to live with her wealthy Aunt Stefa in St. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Petersburg</span>, Russia.<br />
Tamara must have been quite a beauty even then because at the age of fifteen she set her sights on marrying the man of her dreams and with her campaign to win him over, albeit abetted by her well-connected uncle, she married <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Tadeusz</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Lempicki</span> in St. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Petersburg</span>. Rumor had it, however, that this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">bon</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">vivant</span> man, ladies man and lawyer by title only, probably was more seduced by Tamara's significant dowry.<br />
Their privileged lifestyle came to a startling end during the Russian Revolution in 1917 when <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Tadeusz</span> was arrested by the Bolsheviks. Escaping to Paris, as so many other aristocratic refugees did, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Lempickas</span> lived for a while from the sale of her family jewels. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Tadeusz</span>, who was so used to his privileged ways, was of no help and he was either unable, but most like unwilling to find work. The burden was placed on Maria to become the breadwinner. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Lempickas</span>' dire circumstances may have been the very catalyst that pushed Tamara into painting. Paris, the city of light and haven for artistic venues was the ideal place for Tamara's artistic development. It was also at this time that Tamara gave birth of her only child, a daughter named <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Kizette</span>, who like own neglected childhood, Tamara rarely saw her daughter and sent her off to boarding school.<br />
De <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Lempicka</span> developed a technique that <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">truly</span> exemplified the Art Deco era. he lines had an architectural quality, sleek, clean and elegant, yet a certain <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">curvelinear</span> softness which was described as "soft cubism." Through her aristocratic connections she produced numerous portraits and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Lempickas</span>' lifestyle significantly improved. During the Roaring 20's Tamara was a recognized celebrity. She knew the best of the Bohemians from Pablo Picasso to Jean Cocteau and her bisexual appetite was legendary and became the source of the gossip mongers. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Tadeusz</span> got fed up with it all and they were divorced in 1928. Perfectly timing because a long time patron, Baron Raoul <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Kuffner</span>, commissioned her to paint his mistress but true to her winsome ways Tamara replaced the mistress when the portrait was finished.<br />
Through <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Kuffner</span>, who she married in 1933 (his wife had died), Tamara was re-established on the highly socially connected <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">cognoscenti</span>. The depression didn't seem to curtail her output and her painting continued its popular course of commissions. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Kuffner's</span> eventually settled in Beverly Hills, California and began to socialize with the Hollywood stars of the day. She became known as 'the baroness with the brush' and cultivated a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Garboesque</span> persona, which wasn't too difficult to do, because Tamara was still a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">blonde</span> haired beauty and was often compared to the legendary star.<br />
However, her trademark style of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">angularity in</span> figures of celebs and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">aristocrats</span>, carved like sculpture in streamlined poses, were beginning to lose popularity. Tamara tried palette painting but this technique never took off. She retired as a professional artist in 1962 and after Baron <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Kuffner's</span> death, the same year, Tamara traveled extensively, then lived with her daughter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Kizette</span> for a while in Houston, Texas and finally moved to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Cuernavaca</span>, Mexico in 1978 where she died in her sleep on March 19, 1980.<br />
Dear Tamara, though your iconic style of painting lost favor in the 1970s, you are not forgotten, but rather adored again. Your fan's have rediscovered your oeuvre and in plays and music have paid homage to your amazing independent spirit, an Art Deco painter extraordinaire, who I will always remember racing into the future in her Green Bugatti.<br />
Your admirer, Polly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Guerin</span></div>
Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-51683924323714834142013-01-06T13:06:00.000-08:002018-10-12T06:16:28.210-07:00AUSTEN, ALICE: Legendary Photographer (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWQi3qxGgq5rdrmUCyDz6IcqEyqbu3H-cIvRgXdQlzpcQpb3ljAZDVC3z2bg-CvUGOnjqCiRpWBBm7B_fv6sNAJwOittCK-drgNvR0bTBifYigC9IkatJC98ZuxAIPcOT-St36J3yktQ/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGWQi3qxGgq5rdrmUCyDz6IcqEyqbu3H-cIvRgXdQlzpcQpb3ljAZDVC3z2bg-CvUGOnjqCiRpWBBm7B_fv6sNAJwOittCK-drgNvR0bTBifYigC9IkatJC98ZuxAIPcOT-St36J3yktQ/s320/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Alice Austen’s white cottage still stands at the water’s edge in the neighborhood of Clifton on Staten Island--- a testament to Alice’s long and remarkable life as a photographer. Born into comfortable circumstances Alice had no need to pursue a career, but photography, that started out as perhaps a hobby, became her passion. A young woman determined to succeed; Alice deserves her due recognition as a pioneer in this genre. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>FIRST LADY OF THE LENS</strong> She was one of America’s earliest and most prolific female photographers and over the course of her life created 8000 images. For one thing in the late nineteenth century, cameras were a cumbersome affair, but Alice surpassed any restraints and managed to carve a niche in the photography world with images that preserve a myriad of subjects. She captured the great transatlantic ships that still pass in front of her house, the coming of the automobile to the beginning of tennis, the countryside and world beyond. The Alice Austen House Museum, Clear Comfort, is located at 2 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island, New York. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij04Roj5eoYd-71atgeJlhSrCh76zomlSA-rKzNaswwjbY9vCH-yMCxzv5TdXGlW8z2lO7vs_wiZKBJsOzT7WivaMfVCgimeFxwxedO44cCAyFFfaKR-JM-XZpjiP6o6FD2v37AMOgHt4/s1600/Alice_Austen_PhotoPole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij04Roj5eoYd-71atgeJlhSrCh76zomlSA-rKzNaswwjbY9vCH-yMCxzv5TdXGlW8z2lO7vs_wiZKBJsOzT7WivaMfVCgimeFxwxedO44cCAyFFfaKR-JM-XZpjiP6o6FD2v37AMOgHt4/s320/Alice_Austen_PhotoPole.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">FROM SOCIETY BELLE TO PHOTOGRAPHER</span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"> It was her Danish Uncle Oswald who brought home a camera in 1876 and her Uncle Peter who showed her how to develop the negative images on the dry plates she exposed. Alice was captivated by the new art form and advanced forward with alacrity. However, Alice always insisted, that except for these initial demonstrations, she simply “learned by doing.” By the time she was eighteen, Alice was a professional photographer and her family was sufficiently comfortable to indulge Alice in the best of the cumbersome equipment she required. A closet on the second floor was converted into Alice’s darkroom. Ships sailing the Narrows were her favorite photographic subject---over the years she saw and recorded them all---racing yachts, schooners, tugs, warships, luxury liners and immigrant ships from the vantage point of Clear Comfort, a Victorian Gothic cottage on the shores of the Verrazano Narrows. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>LAUNCHING A NEW CAREER</strong> Most belles during Alice’s time would not have taken on such a demanding task as photography was not a lighthearted affair. Wearing her Sunday best, a bustle fashion gown with striped over skirt one can only imagine how difficult it may have been to photograph the fine old houses and historic buildings on the island. It was not an easy adventure--at the same time lugging around fifty pounds of photographic equipment. She hauled her camera and tripod along to picnics, masquerades and chronicled the social life of musical evenings in her friends’ parlors as well as family gatherings and weddings. She even climbed a fence post, not caring if she exposed her ankles, in pursuit of the picture she wanted of local auto speed trials. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTlOiuCpE-pUU1J2tGeW-YBDdpVy6JPOhMO2_Omf323eMhtQMB5vgvFYLC5H2XU02jYFGBn7umMn3SZfMtj1q_1ASRghaF_V4lv5fdMoYZSug7aVxoNwk2WNE2jT-7VTHXbVjs4Liv3-o/s1600/austenjpg-f00e4860c56f80d9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTlOiuCpE-pUU1J2tGeW-YBDdpVy6JPOhMO2_Omf323eMhtQMB5vgvFYLC5H2XU02jYFGBn7umMn3SZfMtj1q_1ASRghaF_V4lv5fdMoYZSug7aVxoNwk2WNE2jT-7VTHXbVjs4Liv3-o/s320/austenjpg-f00e4860c56f80d9.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>POSING HER SUBJECTS</strong> Alice would go to almost any length of get the picture she wanted. She was rather a perfectionist and she did not care how impatient her complaining subjects became. The expression of her subjects and the overall composition had to be just right and the exposure in the right light. She enjoyed recording Americans at work, boat races, amusement parks, country fairs in Vermont and the great world fairs in Chicago and Buffalo. She may have spent more than twenty summers aboard and always traveled off the beaten path to capture the activities in some tiny town and she felt equally free to visit places considered unseemly for a lady. Alice usually traveled with two cameras capable of producing images of different proportions, which filled a large steamer trunk. It was a cumbersome affair but Alice was a strong woman capable of carrying her heavy equipment creating in her lifetime images with lasting beauty that chronicle a legacy from America’s past.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Alice Austen used her camera in a very personal way to record people, places and interesting travels. Her photographs show us real people and places as they actually appeared and we are made luckier by the fact that she captured these images of a wonderful time in America’s history. I suggest that you also read:: ALICE’S WORLD, The Life and Photography of an American Original: Alice Austen, 1866-1952 by Ann Novotny, Chatham Press, Old Greenwich, Connecticut.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Polly loves to hear from her readers, please send your comments to pollytalknyc@gmail.com.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-86977671191468740782010-02-26T14:56:00.000-08:002016-10-23T10:23:01.259-07:00EDITH WHARTON AND THE MOUNT (c) By Polly Guerin<br />
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Friday, February 26, 2010</h2>
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<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://amazingartdecodivas.blogspot.com/2010/02/edith-wharton-and-mount-c.html&source=gmail&ust=1477329028520000&usg=AFQjCNEjg-5XAv9oT0R3MBg_ugt3hwHHyg" href="http://amazingartdecodivas.blogspot.com/2010/02/edith-wharton-and-mount-c.html" style="color: #9e5205;" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">EDITH WHARTON AND THE MOUNT </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(C)</span></a></h3>
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By Polly <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.3">Guerin</span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">It was many years ago when I first visited Edith Wharton's former Berkshire estate, “The Mount” in </span><span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.4" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Lenox</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, Massachusetts---a pilgrimage of sorts to pay homage to Wharton's amazing oeuvre producing over forty books during her lifetime. </span></div>
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The library at that time (2010) was rather barren of books save for a few first editions, less than I expected. However, I had my picture taken there by her desk and commanded this moment to memory and asked Wharton to be my muse. Her characters, such as Ellen <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.5">Olenska</span> in the Age of Innocence and the charming but ill-fated Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, are the most memorable among her books that I have read. These personalities still resonate with readers, even today.</div>
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Wharton's life and the society that she wrote about stand as a testament to the obstacles that she encountered to find happiness and self fulfillment. She broke through polite society's restrictions to become a Pulitzer <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.6">Prize</span> winning American novelist, short story writer and interior designer.</div>
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<span style="color: #993399;"><strong style="color: black;">LOOKING BACK ON THE GILDED AGE</strong></span></div>
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Wharton’s life spanning the years (1862-1937) was truly amazing era which put her in an ideal position to chronicle the lifestyles and the social ambitions of the newly rich of the Gilded Age. As a participant in fashionable society and a keen observer of the regime set by the old money set, she was in an enviable position to combine an insider’s view of America’s privileged classes.</div>
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With a brilliant, natural wit Wharton also wrote humorous incisive novels and short stories. In this privileged position Wharton witnessed the variegated changes in Old New York and in Newport, Rhode Island where she summered and observed the cognoscenti of the era.</div>
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Eventually, seeking a different venue, she built her own house, The Mount, in <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.7">Lenox</span> in 1902.</div>
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<span style="color: black;">EARLY RECOLLECTIONS</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Literary legal eagle, Louis </span><span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.8" style="color: black;">Auchincloss</span><span style="color: black;"> in a talk in 2002 at the New York School of Interior Design had quite a bit to say about Edith Wharton. “Shy, yes,” he said, but she had a definite aggressiveness, too. In Newport circles, she was considered a little fast---I know my grandmother thought that!” Although Edith Wharton had a rather strained relationship with her mother she was not without early support. Her mother had her poems privately printed when she was sixteen and the copy that </span><span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.9" style="color: black;">Auchincloss</span><span style="color: black;"> gave to the Morgan Museum had Wharton’s own pen corrections in it. </span></div>
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In 1885, at 23 year of age, Edith <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.10">Newbold</span> Jones married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, from a well-established Boston family who was 12 years her senior and a gentleman of her social class. Wharton at that time had very little knowledge of what to expect in marriage and she bitterly remembered that her mother refused to answer any questions that she may have posed. This fact wasn’t the only reason why it wasn’t a happy union, and aside from travel the couple had a lackluster relationship and more importantly, little in common intellectually. She divorced Teddy Wharton in 1913.</div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;">THE DECORATION OF HOUSES</span></strong></div>
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Edith Wharton’s writing career as an interior decorator may have been launched with the publication of her first book, The decoration of Houses, (1897) written with her architect friend, Ogden <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.11">Codman</span>, but it was just the forerunner of this born storyteller’s oeuvre. The two taste masters denounced Victorian decorating <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.12">practices</span> and advocated the elimination of overstuffed furniture, artificial plants, festoons of lace on mantelpieces and dressing tables, heavily curtained windows. They endorsed a style of minimalism, bringing a breath of fresh air into interiors by stressing rooms based on simple, design principles, stressing symmetry and balance in architecture and thereby launched the careers of professional decorators to interpret the new style.</div>
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<span style="color: #993399;"><strong style="color: black;">LONDON AND PARIS BECKON</strong></span></div>
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Heading frequently to London and Paris she forged friendships with Bernard <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.13">Berenson</span>, the painter John Singer Sergeant and scores of French writers and artists including Jacques-Emile Blanche, Andre Gide and Jean Cocteau, always writing and managing to produce a volume a year. </div>
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In Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world she began an affair in 1908 with Morton Fullerton, a journalist on the London Times, and all that she painfully missed in her marriage, love and intellectual communion, was fulfilled. However, <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.14">Auchincloss</span> described Wharton’s lover, Morton Fullerton as follows: “It is always sad to see a first-rate human being temporarily in the grips of a fourth-rater.” Wharton herself finally wrote that she would have been better off had she never met him. </div>
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<span style="color: #993399;"><strong style="color: black;">AN EX PATRIOT AMERICAN</strong></span><span style="color: #993399;"></span></div>
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In Paris, Wharton on her own terms and newly divorced became part of the intellectual circles where the artists mingled with the rich and high-born interlopers. She settled in Paris, in the historic <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.15">Faubourg</span> Saint-Germain <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.16">arrondissement</span> on the Left Bank. Life was a whirlwind of visiting Americans as well, including Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Adams. </div>
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But World War I was looming and Wharton became fiercely dedicated to the Allied cause. Traveling to the front lines, unusual as it was for the time, she often in the company of Walter Berry and her chauffeur, made excursions in her automobile into the front lines to observe the fighting. </div>
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An early war journalist she wrote reports for American publications in which she urged the United States to join the war effort. In addition, Wharton helped establish workrooms to employ women who had no means of support and tirelessly led the committee to aid refugees. </div>
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During the war years she also collaborated on war charities with <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.18">Elisina</span>Tyler (Countess <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.19">Elisina</span> <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.20">de</span> <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.21">Castelvec<wbr></wbr>chio</span>), for which the French Academy in 1920 awarded them jointly a gold medal inscribed with both their names.</div>
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<span style="color: #993399;"><strong style="color: black;">FRANCE AND GREAT REWARDS</strong></span></div>
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The final stage of Wharton’s life was spent in two beautiful houses in France---the summers at <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.22">Pavillion</span> <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.23">Colombe</span>, in a small village just north of Paris, and the winters at Chateau Saint-Claire at <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.24">Hyeres</span>---where she continued to write and enjoy the company of her beloved miniature dogs that were always a key element of Edith’s intimate household. </div>
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In recognition of her accomplishments the grand dame of American letters was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer <span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.41">Prize</span> in 1921 for The Age of Innocence, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from Yale University in 1923. The lifestyle of the social and moneyed world in which she lived and depicted in her fiction may have vanished, but her books and authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design and travel have survived the test of time. Her achievements continue to leave a lasting impression of a remarkable woman who gave us a peak into the Gilded Age and other venues of witty storytelling.</div>
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<span style="color: #993399;"><strong style="color: black;">RESTORING THE MOUNT</strong></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">After further touring The Mount several years ago, I was disappointed at the time that Edith Wharton’s boudoir and bedroom were empty, the furnishings long gone, but somehow her spirit lingered on. I was happy to learn recently that the NYC based designer, Michael Simon will soon be restoring these areas so that it reflects the time period in which she lived. The Mount is in every aspect of the estate, including its gardens, architecture and interior design, evokes the spirit of Edith Wharton who created an environment that would meet her needs as a designer, gardener, hostess, and, above all, as a writer. Within a year Wharton wrote: "</span><span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.117" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Lenox</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">has had its usual tonic effect on me, and I feel like a new edition, revised and corrected...in the very best type.” In a letter to her lover Morton Fullerton, she revealed how much of herself she put into The Mount. “I am amazed by the success of my efforts. Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than a novelist, and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth.” The Mount, located on a hillside in the Berkshires overlooking Laurel Lake was designed according to the principles stated in Wharton's 1897 book, The Decoration of Houses. The house and the restored Italianate gardens can be visited from May through October. Ticket Office:</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><a href="tel:413.551.5107" style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank" value="+14135515107">413.551.<span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.170">5107</span></a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.edithwharton.org/&source=gmail&ust=1477329028520000&usg=AFQjCNFrqLIAkDlLoJZeK-E_LzxTAuP02Q" href="http://www.edithwharton.org/" style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">www.<span id="m_-1405752327051481526gmail-m_-4781166560212367162m_7131564113528670415:u7.171">edit</span></a></div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-56454777421407295722016-10-18T08:51:00.000-07:002016-10-18T08:51:04.831-07:00CHARLOTTE BRONTE: An Independent Will: Review by Polly Guerin<h2 class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-date-header" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #777777; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.65px; font-stretch: normal; margin: 10px 0px 0px;">
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<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXcysbmWps411Et2i8xSCn14KKHGuQhfr_gOPp8zYWaeseOhO0dx7mrTSaT89QLBHBNaq9NvwrLymzVACoUOurMn4fmRT5vxb1kZVFS3LgSLUEZ6wVa5d79D6SmGkmzlZfIHavWGiXkX7M/s1600/George_Richmond_portrait.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #de7008; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" class="gmail-CToWUd" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXcysbmWps411Et2i8xSCn14KKHGuQhfr_gOPp8zYWaeseOhO0dx7mrTSaT89QLBHBNaq9NvwrLymzVACoUOurMn4fmRT5vxb1kZVFS3LgSLUEZ6wVa5d79D6SmGkmzlZfIHavWGiXkX7M/s320/George_Richmond_portrait.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-tr-caption" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.4px; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">Charlotte Bronte 1850 National Portrait Gallery</td></tr>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;">Charlotte Bronte, a woman determined to succeed, declared herself "a free human being with an independent will." She was born in the era of The Cult of Domesticity on the desolate moors of Yorkshire, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. </span></i></b><br /><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"> Charlotte and her sisters, and their brother, Branwell, grew up blighted by domestic tragedy and loss and had to create a world of imagination for themselves. Save for the Parsonage cemetery at their doorstep and monotonous hours exploring the windswept expanses of the moors they were led as teenagers on a path of creative Juveniiia that </span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;">resulted in plays and hand-made miniature books, illustrated with watercolor images. </span></i></b><br /><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"> For Charlotte and her sisters later it was Jane Eyre, Withering Heights, and Agnes Grey that gave the mid-nineteenth century a new concept of women in love and trying to live in society. </span></i></b><br /><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image Left: </span></span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: xx-small;">Life portrait of Charlotte Bronte, by George Richmond, on loan from London's National Portrait Gallery.</span></i></b><br /><b><i><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"> <span style="color: red;">CHARLOTTE BRONTE: An Independent Will, a new exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum runs through January 2, 2017. It traces the writer's life from imaginative teenager to reluctant governess to published poet and masterful novelist. The exhibition celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of Bronte's birth in 1816, and marks an historic collaboration between The Morgan, which holds one of the word's most important collections of Bronte Manuscripts and letters, and the Bronte Parsonage, in Haworth, England which lent a variety of key items including the author's earliest manuscript, her portable writing desk and paintbox, and a blue floral dress she wore in the 1850s.</span></span></i></b><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 1em; padding: 4px; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-tr-caption" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.4px; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">Bronte's earliest surviving miniature manuscript book</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i>THE MINUSCULE BOOKS Reading of the classics, the bible and Milton, Scott, and Lord Byron to name a few, fueled the Bronte children's imagination and their games informed their writing, and enhanced their stories. The selection of Juvenilia presented in the exhibition highlights the whimsy and imaginativeness of the Brontes' production. On one view is Charlotte's earliest surviving manuscript, a tiny handmade booklet. I observed, it is no more than two and a half inches by one and a fourth inches illustrated with watercolor drawings. It presents the story of a little girl named Anne who goes on an exciting journey. Best to use the magnifying glass provided in the exhibit hall to try to see the almost indecipherable writing. Bronte wrote it when she was about twelve. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image Right: Charlotte Bronte's story, beginning "There once was a little girl and her name was Anne ca 1828 Bronte Parsonage Museum.</span></i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">TE</span>ACHING and PUBLISHING: In 1836, when she was nineteen, Bronte entered the Roe Head School where she previously had been a student, as a teacher, but chafed in her new role. A few years later she took a a short-term position as a governess in a private home, caring for what she called the "riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs." Relief came with the largess of an aunt. Bronte and her sister Emily went to Brussels in 1842 to study and improve their teaching credentials. It was there that she fell under the influence of her inspiring teacher, Constantin Heger and later suffered years of what appeared to be unrequited love for the married professor. </i></b></span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 4px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIr-HI0KFj8_cPZWNX8afckD4M74bsyjT3taP4OlBDQduKpNQykyy-vU5pF7L9IcEb9lA2S_OvPr_xuJ5GeTnvU_82FAsf2jt5AJ2qhXYamgvzz2NUEt4WG3sYtIM9qppb6upLcx3LUUqX/s1600/unnamed+%25281%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #de7008; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" class="gmail-CToWUd" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIr-HI0KFj8_cPZWNX8afckD4M74bsyjT3taP4OlBDQduKpNQykyy-vU5pF7L9IcEb9lA2S_OvPr_xuJ5GeTnvU_82FAsf2jt5AJ2qhXYamgvzz2NUEt4WG3sYtIM9qppb6upLcx3LUUqX/s320/unnamed+%25281%2529.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="gmail-m_-1398234768219119420gmail-tr-caption" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.4px; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">Charlotte Bronte's gown circa 1850</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i> As Bronte biographer Rebecca Fraser wrote, "Working as governesses, teaching school, traveling to the continent, and caring for their volatile and tragic brother, Branwell, Charlotte and her sisters led difficult and fiery lives---lives that electrified their fiction, challenged the Victorian Age, and made them the most distinctive, enduring women---and novelists--of their time."</i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i> In 1846, she and her sisters Emily and Anne self-published a book of poems, which by the record sold but one copy, yet was held in esteem by some of her followers. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. and Agnes Grey followed. The authors retained the pseudonyms they had chosen for their book of poems the year earlier. Charlotte was Currier Bell, Emily, Elias Bell and Anne, Acton Bell.</i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i> LEGACY: Bronte published her last novel, Villette, in 1853. The following year, at the age of thirty-eight, she married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate. A mere nine months later, she died, most likely from complications of pregnancy. Bronte's writing continues to have a profound impact on readers throughout the world, and many find her life story just as compelling as much of what lays within the stories parallel her extraordinary life's experiences. A woman who wrestled with her own independence. Charlotte Bronte's, An Independent Will Gallery Talk takes place Friday November 4 at 6 pm Free with museum admission. For further information about programs and the adult workshop visit </i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.themorgan.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.themorgan.org</a> </i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;"><b><i> Ta Ta Darlings!!! A reading group on Charlotte Bronte's final novel, Villette, in the historic family rooms of the nineteenth-century Morgan House,takes place on Nov. 1 and Dec. 13. Advance tickets are required. I'm going!!! Polly loves to receive fan mail at <a href="mailto:pollytalknyc@gmail.com" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">pollytalknyc@gmail.com</a>. Visit Polly's other Blogs at <a href="http://www.pollytalk.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.pollytalk.com</a> and check the Blog that interests you listed in the left-hand column </i></b></span></div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-74809447125543408372010-08-04T08:07:00.000-07:002016-01-29T07:46:54.800-08:00Gerda Wegener Remembering The Danish Painter (c) by Polly Guerin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLr_bLnUBes0OSGN0kZ5GIsq6cpz7f5c6YeaMd0LZwUyygjchJCWrttlFQVAbcAJkTmRt7SXwQY4jE9nIJE7-Rpk_i5NsrRjuo1audOcMUmkA_XhIZ3a7ertjZ1SHflXbKqt8pDS57KDE/s1600/wegener_11.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501573091275082450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLr_bLnUBes0OSGN0kZ5GIsq6cpz7f5c6YeaMd0LZwUyygjchJCWrttlFQVAbcAJkTmRt7SXwQY4jE9nIJE7-Rpk_i5NsrRjuo1audOcMUmkA_XhIZ3a7ertjZ1SHflXbKqt8pDS57KDE/s400/wegener_11.jpg" style="float: left; height: 300px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a>Though nearly forgotten in the history of female artists it is high time that you should be rediscovered for your playful art and strength of character. An internationally renowned Danish painter Gerda Wegener amazes by her prolific oeuvre as portraitist, graphic artist and purveyor of deluxe editions of erotic stories. Although Gerda’s career relied on her phenomenal talent, perhaps even more shocking was her notorious diligence and the advantages of an unusual marriage which opened up notoriety on a more sinister scale. It was at an art opening at the gallery of Leonard Fox, Ltd. on Madison Avenue in New York City where I found that Gerda’s works were delightful, charming, provocative and surprisingly shocking eroticism imbued with an Art Deco sensibility.<br />
<strong>ARRIVING IN PARIS </strong><br />
When Gerda arrived in Paris in 1912 she was accompanied by her husband Einar Wegener, also a painter, who she married in 1904. It was the perfect environment for emerging artists, but the city had entered into a period of unprecedented upheaval. There was public outcry against certain art and music. Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloe and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps were among the public targets and even riots. The young Gerda, on the other hand, took Art Deco by storm with her adventurous spirit and superb artistry, winning numerous awards as well as commissions for portraits of Parisian society women. The French State even decorated Gerda with a Legion d’Honneur for her art.<br />
<strong>GERDA’S PROLIFIC TALENT</strong><br />
Gerda was not only a rare talent she was industrious and productive. Her illustrations appeared in La Vie Parisienne, Vogue, Le Rire and La Baionette, and other premiere fashion and political journals of the day. Her artistic portrayals of fashion could be seen plastered on walls, but most notably her erotic scenes, inspired by the Art Deco movement probably found their way into the trenches of World War I. She became a very popular among the cognoscenti and sought economic success living a life of passionate pursuit of her art. <br />
<strong>AN ARTIST’S LIFESTYLE</strong><br />
Gerda was no shrinking violet but was a dynamic personality fueled by an ambition to acquire the bourgeoisie ambiance and trappings of society. Together with her husband Einar, she was part of the Parisian artist scene, living a life with decadence sex and fashion. Her expensive apartment and studio was in the fashionable quartier Tour Eiffel and at their summer home on the banks of the Loire she would stage parties for two thousand invited guests. It is sad to realize that despite her prolific career and all these extravagances, in the end she died in poverty and obscurity.<br />
<strong>GERDA’S UNUSUAL MARRIAGE</strong><br />
In the 1930s transformation surgery was risky and at an experimental stage. Her husband, Einar Wegener, a known transsexual, liked to disappear into the streets of Paris in one of his costumes. In female guise as “Lili”, at first he cross-dressed as a favor to Gerda, who needed a female model to pose for one of her portraits. After cross-dressing Wegener became convinced he had another personality---a female one. Urged by this realization he traveled to Germany for sex reassignment surgery and afterwards went by the name Lili Elbe. Lili lived a double life in Paris attending parties, balls and socials as Lili, and gained many admirers. Sadly Lili passed away from complications after her fifth operation. However, Gerda had supported Lili throughout her transition, but the King of Denmark declared the Wegeners’ marriage null and void in 1930.<br />
<strong>GERDA MARRIES AGAIN</strong><br />
Gerda was not without admirers and along came a suitor that would rescue her and begin a new stage in her life's story. She subsequently married an Italian air force officer and diplomat, Major Fernando Porta. By all estimates they were an enviable couple, romantic and wildly in love, and moved to Morocco, settling in Marrakech and Casablanca. The marriage lasted about 8 years. She returned to Denmark in 1938, but this time her work was largely out of fashion. Although she died impoverished and largely forgotten her story comes to life in the international best seller, The Danish Girl, a novel by David Ebershoff. The novel is being developed for the screen and Nicole Kidman will be playing the role of Einar/LiLi and Charlize Theron will the playing the role of Gerda.Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-77047920244399303212015-08-03T11:26:00.002-07:002015-08-05T06:45:36.934-07:00FANIA AND ZLATKA remembered in PAPER HEARTS by Meg Wiviott: Review by Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Meg Wiviott's young adult book <b><i>PAPER HEARTS</i></b> brings the story of Fania and Zlatka and their friendship through poetry written during the terrible days in Auschwitz The novel is is based on a true story of a bond that helped two teenage girls realize hope for the best in the face of the worst. The book of collected poems also focuses on twenty remarkable young women who conspired through their youth and determination to conspire against the Nazi regime, which classified them as subhuman, forced them to work as slave laborers, and thought of them as nothing more than the numbers tattooed on their arms---yet they conspired to commit an act of great defiance.<br />
They dared to behave as humans and they dared to celebrate life---a birthday---with a simple gesture that, if they have been caught, could have meant death. Needless to say, after some seventy years after the events, this story still resonates to remind us that courage and youthful optimism instilled a strong resolve in the hearts of these incarcerated young women.Through poetry in verse their plight in the hateful camp becomes a riveting story of fortitude and survival.<br />
<b>MAKING A BIRTHDAY CARD </b>should seem like a simple everyday task but only "an act of defiance," a statement of hope makes this book such a treasure to read, to inspire, and to remind us of indomitable spirit of the youthful poets. Making a birthday card in Auschwitz was all of those things but death marches were real and the slightest effort of defiance was punishable by death. Yet Zlatka had courage and the determination to create a birthday card for her best friend Fania. She stole and bartered for paper and scissors, and secretly created an origami heart. It was passed along the work tables to sign, which they did with their hopes to find love and happiness but most of all, freedom. It is not known how many of the girls who signed the Heart survived the death marches but Fania treasured her gift and kept it secret during her imprisonment, even carried it through the death marches. She kept the Heart with her when she was liberated, and through the years as she rebuilt her life and her family.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Meg Wiviott</td></tr>
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This remarkable story lives on in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, where it is a permanent exhibition, telling its story of defiance, love, and friendship. Thousands of visitors who visit the Centre each year, will no doubt take to their own hearts this remarkable story in verse. Fania eventually returned to Poland, met her husband, and then settled later in Toronto, Canada, where they raised their daughter and son. Fania still lives there today.As for Zlatka, the creator of the Heart, she too returned to Poland, fell in love, got married and moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she still loves today (as of October 2013).<br />
This is Meg Wiviott's first novel for young adults. Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">On sale: </span><span class="aBn" data-term="goog_89186082" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">9/1/15</span></span><br />
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Preorder the book: <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Paper-Hearts/Meg-Wiviott/9781481439831" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://books.<wbr></wbr>simonandschuster.com/Paper-<wbr></wbr>Hearts/Meg-Wiviott/<wbr></wbr>9781481439831</a></div>
Fan mail and comments about this review welcome at<br />
pollytalknyc@gmail.com.,<br />
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<br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-36555407194157349852015-03-18T08:30:00.002-07:002015-03-18T08:38:19.555-07:00INCOMPARABLE COUPLES By Rose Hartman Reviewed by Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Reading Rose Hartman's new book, <b>Incomparable Couples</b>, is like taking a trip down memory lane revisiting the glamorous and celebrated personalities who defined the fashion and social trendsetter era for three decades. The book is populated by people we knew and people we wish we knew. Nostalgia tugs at our hearts as we review the pages of engaging couples at the prime of their celebrity.<br />
Couples featured in this full-color, beautiful tome include:: Jerry Hall and Annie Leibovitz, Bob Mackie and Cher, Jean Paul Gautier and Lauren Bacall, Peter and Jane Fonda, Bianca and Jade Jagger, Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono, Liz Taylor and her dog, Robert Wolders and Audrey Hepburn, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, and 150 more, too numerous to list here.<br />
So why should we want to read Incomparable Couples?" The answer comes clear and forthright in the photographs themselves and I can surreptitiously hear the reader saying, "Oh I remember them, and then repeat page after page, I remember them again, and then sigh. At best Hartman's photographic documentary serves as a permanent archival book referencing artists and muses, designers and muses, family, mothers and children; pets, friendships, models, marriages --images of people we remember and people we wish we had known.<br />
Hartman, the quintessential photographer of our time, captures beautiful duos, unlikely duos and some downright scary duos. Rose's images are always spontaneous, never staged, that is what makes these photographs so interesting and spellbinding.. Ms. Hartman tips the shutter at just the right moment, capturing a critical moment in a conversation--a pose, a gesture--to present a story abut two people from the world of popular culture.<br />
Eric Shiner who wrote some of the text wrote, "It might be best to think about Rose as an anthropologist who has spend so much time with her subjects that she has become a trusted, known entity."<br />
In her presence, celebrities have let their guard down, allowing her to capture moments otherwise rarely seen. The vitality of the images in "Incomparable Couples" attest to the rare sense of familiarity. Hartman portrays the humanity in her subjects. instead of their more famous, fashionable shells. :<br />
Incomparable Couples is published by ACC Editions, photographs by Rose Hartman, Texts by Eric Shiner, Michael Gross and Rose Hartman, hardcover $49.50 available a fine book stores.<br />
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Who is Rose Hartman? Rose stands as one of the most prolific photographers of our age. As a woman <br />
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photographer, she has jumped over every hurdle in a male-dominated world to create a huge body of work documenting the demimonde of fame and glamor in the center of the world of culture. Hartman is a one of those remarkable women who have scaled the heights of success in their oeuvre. She has created a book that has archival value, recording over time, she straddles the boundaries between street photography, portraiture and documentary photography. My hearty congratulations to Rose Hartman for preserving a world of celebrity for generations to come. As Eric Shiner, Director of the Any Warhol Museum said, "It takes two to tango, but it takes Rose to truly dance."<br />
Read this feature on pollytalkfromnewyork.blogspot and also on amazingartdecodivas.blogspot (womendetermined to succeed) or go to www.pollytalk.com and click on the link in the left hand column to either one of these blogs.<br />
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.Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-87794740917170398432010-02-10T14:59:00.000-08:002015-02-11T08:14:36.648-08:00ESTHER HOWLAND FIRST LADY OF AMERICAN VALENTINES (c) By Polly Guerin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUmdIRglioi4zLjkMIl_JvX9qvlawW-1AChIVC5w93buabl7JyXwDqUsNTogh89gNhNkNIU84UrUma8TTgG-4W9GJPHoQKNSVmHDfuzgEv6_9sn7r15dyQGw5oO1B3zzrueSKebTWa1ro/s1600-h/val19H.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUmdIRglioi4zLjkMIl_JvX9qvlawW-1AChIVC5w93buabl7JyXwDqUsNTogh89gNhNkNIU84UrUma8TTgG-4W9GJPHoQKNSVmHDfuzgEv6_9sn7r15dyQGw5oO1B3zzrueSKebTWa1ro/s400/val19H.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437385918045269666" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 265px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 175px;" /></a><span style="color: #cc0000;">LOVE TOKENS FROM THE HEART, THE GOLDEN AGE OF VALENTINES ©</span>By Polly Guerin<br />
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Lacy and be-ribboned, gilded with hearts, intertwined and pierced by Cupid’s dart, “Love Tokens From the Heart” were the fru-frou confections of lavish sentimentality, which identify with the Golden Age of Valentines, the years 1830 to 1860. These lavish confections, spilling forth with fancy paper work and sentimental verse, expressed an era and a time when the delicate art of romance was heightened by sending of charming valentine cards and greetings. So engaging is the custom that modern sentimentalists will be sending over a billion Valentine greetings, February 14th, making Valentine’s the second largest card-sending holiday.<br />
THE POSTMAN COMETH<br />
A popular magazine in 1850 explained the significance of the expected Valentine: “But of all the clamorous visitations in expectation is the sound that ushered in…a Valentine. The knock of the postman on the door this day is light, airy, confident and befitting of one that bringeth good tidings. A blessing on St. Valentine, the patron saint of the day, fraught with so many heart flutterings and heart enjoyments!”<br />
As the postman’s footsteps were heard along the street on Valentine’s Day ladies awaited the tell-tale knock at their door, which signaled the momentous arrival of a sweetheart’s sentiments. To be passed by was a devastating personal experience as it was observed by one’s next door neighbor who was peeking out of the window and awaiting the post as well. So much for Victorian fables!<br />
The custom of sending valentines to loved ones was so well established that there was practical help for swains whose feeling went deeper than words. If the muse did not inspire there were little books of love poems, called “valentine writers”, which were available for copying by lovers who could not conjure up an original rhyme. Commercial valentines were soon to lead the way to a prolific business that spread from England to America.<br />
TWO HEARTS ENTWINED<br />
The first valentines were imported from England, where new graphic art techniques enabled publishers to produce valentines of extraordinary beauty, intricacy and delicacy. Of all the well-known makers in England and America two stand out above all others, Jonathan King of London and Ester Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts, the first lady of the American Valentines.<br />
The real inspiration behind Jonathan King’s business was his wife Clarissa who added glitter to cards simply by decorating them with powdered colored glass. King’s valentines were highly ornamented to catch the eye and prettily enhanced with fine net, lacy paper, silver and gold glitter, cupids, flowers and love birds.<br />
Valentine “bank notes” issued by the Bank of True Love were also in vogue at the time. Typically the sender promised to pay the sincere homage and never-failing devotion of an affectionate heart. The idea was pure fantasy and wit, but the notes were printed on actual bank note paper that looked so real that they very soon outlawed.<br />
AMERICA'S SWEETHEART<br />
The history of valentine greetings in America has one special heroine—Esther Howland. Esther was the daughter of Southworth A. Howland who ran the largest bookstore and stationery shop in Worcester, Massachusetts. The well-educated young woman, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary was preparing to go into teaching, but when she saw a British valentine that her father had imported to introduce in his emporium, it sparked her artistic talent. Quite enchanted with the cards, Esther hit on the idea that she could make Valentine cards as pretty as the European kind, if not nicer, and set about doing so.<br />
When her brother, Allen, was scheduled to go on a horse-and-buggy sales trip for their father's business, to get orders for the next season, Esther convinced him to take along a few samples of her cards. The handmade cards cost from $5 to $l0, a price that only the wealthy could afford, and the response was overwhelming. Esther expected her brother to sell $100 to $200 worth of the expensive cards. Instead he returned with orders for $5,000 worth.<br />
A BUSINESS WOMAN<br />
In 1847, with such good sales results, Esther was able to convince her family to let he go into business.She persuaded her father to import embossed lacy paper and materials from England, and color pictures from a lithographer in New York. With all the material assembled, as well as artificial flowers, feathers, glitter, silk and lace, spun glass, colored papers, portraits and romantic scenes, Esther rounded up her "staff," selecting young women eager for a trade, friends and family and set up her enterprise.<br />
She took over a bedroom in the family home as her workshop and created prototype designs for her helpers to copy. Then they worked in an assembly-line fashion. One person cut out pictures; another made backgrounds, and so on around the table the valentine confections were assembled as each girl added further embellishment. As time went on, Esther Howland's, assembly-line production of her trademark Valentines did exceedingly well and the business expanded to a $100,000 a year enterprise. It was an astonishing accomplishment and huge sum for 1848.<br />
IMITATORS EMERGE<br />
It was not long before other entrepreneurial individuals recognized a good thing and established similar businesses with valentine cards that bore a striking resemblance to Esther Howland’s. Legend has it that among one of her employees was George Whitney, who later established his own business. The striking resemblance of the Whitney valentines in decorative art collections today prove out the fact that Whitney’s valentines closely resemble those of Esther Howland, even to the small red “W” stamp at the back of each card, similar to the “H” used by Miss Howland. When her widowed father became deathly ill in 1880, his dutiful daughter gave up her business to be at her father’s side.<br />
SHE BROUGHT ROMANCE TO MILLIONS<br />
By all accounts Esther Howland by Victorian standards was an attractive young woman and wore the fashionable attire, perhaps having her gowns made by a seamstress who copied styles form Godey’s Lady’s Book, at that time, the quintessential arbiter of style. It featured colored fashion plates from England, selected by the venerable editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, whose opinions on domesticity and fashion ruled the lives of Victorian readers.<br />
. Esther came from an excellent entrepreneurial family, she had a good education and a fine bearing and with such business success one might have thought that many a beaux would have courted the First Lady of Valentines.. However, the opposite was her misfortune. She never had a sweetheart of her own and died a spinster in 1904.<br />
Let's toast the First lady of Valentines whose greetings lavished with lace; love and sentimentality were the epitome of a romantic bygone era. Let's raise a glass of champagne to her memory and her charming valentine's that brought such happy sentiments to so many people.♥<br />
FYI: For individuals interested in the decorative arts, Howland's Valentines are considered valuable collectibles today.<br />
Visit Polly at www.pollytalk.com.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpKfKUCJoXyYjTbUFtptxk4sTgsj8U9zJCKRaf5aYsI_r-YTcLzRJPPougL-ESQt3z1cBvCpm_tlEJixnr0c9FUvS9C7PyKmYlySkgb-sQVYskYtU8-ru69Tf5MFLtjaaeAjkOv0ehwyY/s1600-h/EstherHowlandcouple.jpg"></a>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-54716805581058723132014-10-27T13:28:00.000-07:002014-10-27T13:28:09.362-07:00HELENA RUBINSTEIN: BEAUTY IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="date-posts" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
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Helena Rubinstein may not be a household name, but the legendary magnate built a cosmetic empire and crowned herself Queen of her domain, reigning over the beauty routines of women worldwide for decades. Her story is one of inspiration for all women who aspire to ascend the ladder to success. What it took was a passion for living, a drive extraordinary and perseverance to succeed. And, it is about time that recognition be given to this pioneering woman who made her beauty business one of the hallmarks of the cosmetic industry.<br /> The Jewish Museum exhibit, <b>Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power, through March 22, 2015 </b>is the first museum exhibition to focus on the innovative cosmetics entrepreneur and art collector.. By the time of her death, Rubinstein had risen from her humble origins in a small town Jewish Poland to become a global icon of female entrepreneurship and a leader in art, fashion, design and philanthropy. As head of a cosmetic empire that extended across four continents, she was, arguably, the first modern self-made woman magnate.<br /> Rubinstein was born in a small town in Poland in 1872. In 1888, when she was sixteen Rubinstein fled the prospect of an arranged marriage and found her way from Krakow to Vienna to Australia, where she established her first business, Helena Rubinstein & Co., producing skin creams; and at the same time she married her first husband, Edward Titus.<br /> Her talent for business and its inherent feminism reflects her modern thinking. One of the first slogans Rubinstein used to promote her cosmetics, "Beauty is Power," is an advertisement that first appeared in an Australian newspaper in 1904. This was revolutionary at the turn of the century when the use of cosmetics, associated with the painted faces of actresses and prostitutes, was widely frowned upon by the middle class, but Rubinstein found the means for ordinary women to transform themselves. Her business challenged the myth of beauty and taste as inborn, or something to which on the wealthy were entitled. By encouraging women to define themselves as sell-expressive individuals, Rubinstein contributed to their empowerment.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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She eventually returned to Europe where she established salons in the grandest districts of London and Paris, and also began collecting African and Oceanic art in 1909.<br /><b style="font-style: italic;">The Salon Format </b>Inspired by the tradition of European literary salons, Rubinstein conceived of her beauty salons as intimate environments where progressive ideas were exchanged under the guidance of a sophisticated patroness. At the outbreak of World War I she moved to the United States, where she founded her first salon in 1915. Today the term 'beauty salon" means a hairdresser or a day spa. But Rubinstein salon was a place designed entirely by women, where a client could learn not only how to improve her looks, but also how to re-conceive her standards of taste, to understand design, color, and art in order to express her own personality. What Rubinstein advocated was new and profound in the early 20th century. She offered women the ideal of self-invention, a fundamental principle of modernity.<br /><b>The Art Collection </b>Madame (as she was universally known) ruled with a firm hand and empowered<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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women. Case in point, at a huge rally in 1911 some women suffragists wore lip rouge as a badge of emancipation.<br /> Selections from Rubinstein's famous art collection include works by Pablo Picasso, Elie Nadelman, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Joan Miro and Henri Matisse, among others, as well as thirty works from<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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her collection of African and Oceanic art. When people found it strange that a woman who had dedicated her life to beauty would purchase such "ugly things," Rubinstein said, "I had always favored the unusual and when I followed sound advice, as well as my own 'inner eye;' my purchases were invariably good.":<br /> Other highlights include Rubinstein's beloved miniature period rooms, jewelry, and clothing designed by Cristobal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli and Paul Poiret. Her savvy for self-promotion is evident in portraits of her made by the leading artists of her day, from Marie Laurencin to Any Warhol. Most interesting are the vintage advetisements, cosmetics products and professional films related to her beauty business.<br />At The Jewish Museum, located on Museum Mile at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, www.thejm.org.<br />Ta Ta Darlings!!! Madame is my inspiration, she really set the independent mark for women. Fan mail welcome at pollytalknyc@gmail.com. Visit Polly's Blogs on www.pollytalk.com and in the left hand column click on the Blog of your interest be it amazing women, visionary men, treasures in New York or poetry.</div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-20688762426532140812013-08-19T09:51:00.003-07:002013-09-07T07:57:55.969-07:00ENERGETIC BLISS with SHARON BYKERK-LONERGAN By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://mail.verizon.com/webmail/driver?nimlet=download&fid=INBOX&mid=58572&disp=attachment&partIndex=1" />In a world filled with the cacophony of city life, the stress of work or personal health concerns it is comforting to know that women seeking the resurgence of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>harmony in their lifestyle need go no further but turn to Sharon’s Energetic Bliss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her mission statement says it all. “My belief in the healing arts is deeply profound, providing an Energetic “whole” – istic approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pledge to keep the power of gentle professional touch alive by providing an important service to women that can truly improve their quality of life by being the conduit, for their own self-healing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sharon is a woman determined to succeed in holistic healing with a subtle approach that underscores the philosophy of Energetic Bliss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">HOLISTIC HEALING Sharon has dedicated her life to the well being of others. She is a woman whose hands have a distinct therapeutic touch that is gentle, yet goes deep into sensitizing where a client’s energy centers need the most attention and revitalization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With soft persuasive hands, Sharon‘s gentle professional touch serves as a conduit that also helps women to heal themselves and clear toxins whether emotional, chemical or both. Her services are tuned into the needs of the individual and her uncanny ability to immediately attune to a client’s concerns makes her a truly sensitive practitioner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">THE SERVICES Sharon practices in disciplines including Reiki, Aromatherapy Massage, Hot Stone Massage, Polarity Therapy and Onnetsu Far Infrared Therapy. The wall in her salon attests to the fact that Sharon has honed her skills and authenticated her diverse practice. The serene salon has a skyline view with windows opening to the sunlight. A warm bed-like massage table, on which a client reclines, in a fully clothed session, provides a soothing experience that calms and restores disharmony in the energy fields of the body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can almost feel the tension and the burden of everyday concerns melt away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">POLARITY THERAPY I can attest to the Polarity Therapy treatment as I was fortunate recently to experience it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sharon’s featherlike touch scanned my body reaching blocked currents in the body’s energy field, and at one place in particular, she touched a spot that dramatically resonated to her touch with a gentle but almost electrifying reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I assessed this to mean that there may be severe blocking of energy in that area as well in other places. After the session I felt light and euphoric. I now realize that the power of gentle professional touch can truly improve the quality of life by clearing and balancing chakra/energy centers, relieve pain, activate the body’s natural ability to heal itself, relieve stress and release toxins or impurities, to name a few.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">ENERGETIC BLISS, Natural Health Care for Women, focuses on your total well-being in treatments that soothe your senses, restore your body and replenish your spirit. Energetic Bliss is located at 121 Newark Ave., Suite 402, Downtown Jersey City, NJ 07302. Tel. 971.239.8476 or sharon@energetic bliss.com By appointment only. Visit her Web Site at www.energeticbliss.com<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-18431591478498375822013-05-30T09:57:00.000-07:002013-05-30T10:10:10.870-07:00GUERIN, POLLY's Illustrated Lecture on her book: COOPER-HEWITT DYNASTY OF NEW YORK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">NYPL: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY</span></b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">New York, NY 10016</span></b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Thursday, June 27</span></b><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">th</span></b><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">6:30 p.m. on the 6</span></b><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">th </span></b><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">floor<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">w e l c o m e s<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 36pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">Polly Guérin<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">presenting an illustrated lecture on her book</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: large;">THE COOPER-HEWITT DYNASTY OF NEW YORK </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">About the presenter:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 36pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">P</span></b><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Bold','serif'; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">olly Guérin </span></b><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">is a former adjunct professor at </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">and the author of four college textbooks, four blogs,</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">magazine articles and pollytalk columns. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Her features</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">on the decorative arts, antiques, collectibles and design </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">have appeared in </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-RegularItalic','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><em>Art & Antiques </em></span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><em>magazine.</em> She is also</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">theauthor of four blogs: pollytalkfromnewyork;</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">menremarkablevisionaries; womendeterminedtosucceed and </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">poetryfromtheheartbypollyguerin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="http://www.pollytalk.com/">www.pollytalk.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="http://www.gothamcenter.org/blotter">www.gothamcenter.org/blotter</a> (book essay)</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'NYPLKievit-Regular','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="mailto:pollytalk@verizon.net">pollytalk@verizon.net</a></span></i></div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-62105981163202598932013-05-13T10:58:00.002-07:002013-05-13T10:58:55.099-07:00PALMER, POTTER: Retail Pioneer and Bertha Honore (c) by Polly Guerin<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">While retail theater on television is currently celebrating the rise of the department store, viewers would be served better to know that the true story of the man you brought retailing to the pinnacle of showmanship was Potter Palmer. He was the creator of what we now know as the modern department store. (It was not Marshall Field or Harry Selfridge) Palmer ranks highest among the remarkable visionaries who made shopping an adventure and entertainment destination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, he was more than just a merchant king he also gave Chicago, the grand Palmer House Hotel and many other ‘firsts’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>including<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>introducing impressionism to the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Palmer's wife, Bertha Honore, shares in the limelight by becoming one of Chicago's most distinguished leaders for women's rights. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong>RETAIL ORIGINS</strong> Palmer invented many of the retail practices we take for granted today. He was the first captain of the merchant class to allow women to exchange merchandise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He created the motto, “the customer is always right,” originated a liberal credit policy, opened the bargain basement concept and last but not least installed dazzling window displays. Obviously Palmer influenced other retailers who adopted his successful retail innovations. A man ahead of his time, Palmer hired one of the first female architects to construct a building for the World’s Columbia Exposition in 1892.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><strong>LOVE UNDER FIRE</strong> Such a story<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is worth<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>historical reverence and to this end Corn Bred Films has set the record straight about <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the lives of Bertha and Potter Palmer, one of the first and foremost power couples in the United States. Corn Bred's new 30 minute documentary film, LOVE UNDER FIRE, tells the epic love story between young socialite Bertha Honore and Potter Palmer, a self-made man twenty years her senior. Their passion for Chicago, the city they loved is a riveting saga that reveals more than meets the eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong>PALMER ARRIVES</strong> Potter Palmer came from upstate New York and was interested in retailing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stopped off in Chicago a burgeoning Midwest town with mud roads but a growing community. Palmer saw opportunity and decided he wanted to be part of the city and prospered in real estate and retailing. After reaching an elevated level of business and social recognition, when he was thirty-eight years old Palmer was worth millions of dollars, a fine catch to say the least. Due to Palmer’s social ascendancy, he was invited to dinner at the home of real estate maven, where Palmer met thirteen year old Bertha Honore, an event that would forever </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">change his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><strong>PALMER HOTEL</strong> Bertha </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Honore was a remarkable woman, determined to succeed and did so in more way than when years later she married Palmer. Palmer was a man of great gestures and he built the Palmer Hotel as a wedding present for his bride. During the raging fire that destroyed Chicago in 1875 and the Palmer Hotel, Bertha seemingly rose from the ashes, a woman of great fortitude. She was the first woman to appear before Congress to petition the government for funds, and traveled throughout Europe, influencing royalty and industrialists. Palmer let Bertha shine in the limelight. She continued to be a great supporter of women’s education, wages and working conditions. This powerful couple’s story is breathtaking and illuminating as to how two people forged a legacy that makes the Palmers important figures in the historic record of our country’s evolution as a great retail empire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong><em>TO ENJOY THIS REMARKABLE STORY OF THE PALMERS AND TO PURCHASE A COPY OF THE DVD, LOVE UNDER FIRE, CONTACT </em></strong><a href="http://www.courtingbertha.com/"><strong><em>www.courtingbertha.com</em></strong></a><strong><em>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or call 708.359.2783,<o:p></o:p></em></strong></span></div>
Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-65521972523259965782013-05-05T15:48:00.000-07:002013-05-05T15:48:12.890-07:00HAUSMAN, KATHRYN: Design Pioneer, ADSNY (c) By Polly Guerin<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathryn Hausman <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Photo: Zenith Richards)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">There are women born with many gifts and then there is Kathryn Hausman, a woman determined to succeed beyond any obstacles in her path, a woman who went past the glass ceiling and scaled to the heights of success in every field she endeavored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How shall we define a woman of such diverse talents: mother, designer, entrepreneur of Medusa’S Heirlooms, collector and philanthropist, president of the Art Deco Society of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York and glamour icon!!! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hausman manages to toss all her responsibilities in the air and produce a legacy of achievement that is befitting a modern woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, not one who came into her success through marriage or inheritance but through personal perseverance and persistence. Hausman was determined to succeed and to make the world a better place. She pursued her dreams and leaves a legacy to inspire other women to pursue their dreams as she did. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><strong>MEDUSA’S HEIRLOOMS</strong> I remember meeting Kathryn many years ago when I was an accessories editor and found the starling creator introducing her hair ornaments and delightful accessories someplace on Third Avenue. And then I followed her to Bloomingdale's where sales were booming and another story was in the works. Striving and surviving throughout the decades and gaining momentum she built a thriving business and still has a big following nationwide, and Bendel’s is her best New York Customer. In her showroom at 385 Fifth Avenue baskets of hair ornaments, barrettes and jeweled accessories spill out from floor to ceiling and sparkle like diamonds, in a treasure trove display where buyers stepping into the magic kingdom descend to place orders of hair accessories for their boutiques and stores. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong>SOUND INVESTMENT</strong> Hausman, a single divorced and devoted mother of two sons, invested in her family with unwavering devotion and to this end she said, "With the financial success of Medusa's Heirlooms I did something smart and bought a brownstone on East 89th street for $155,000 in 1978. If one is invited to this amazing home/museum there you will find Hausman's Goldscheider collection of ceramics made in Vienna </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">from 1885 to 1938--gaily painted female figures from the 1920s that depict Hollywood actresses and exotic dancers. So rare and wonderful is the collection that its celebrity was presented <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in an exhibition “Goldscheider Ceramics---A World Brand from Vienna” at the Leo Baeck Institute, part of the Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16 Street in 2009. In the future Hausman plans to document her Goldscheider collection in a book that no doubt will have profound collectible value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><strong>A COLLECTOR'S DEN</strong> That’s not all that is housed at Hausman’ s brownstone, in her personal collection drawers spill forth with Bakelite jewelry and with so many other treasures in her Art Deco-inspired interior it is like visiting a petite museum. She is as decorative as her collections. “I always dress a little costomey,” says the iconic designer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I like vintage clothes or a bit of eccentricity.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A loyal friend with unwavering faithfulness, Kathryn seems to have the ability to put other people’s interests and needs before her own, and to this end she has also mentored young students from the Fashion Institute of Technology who have the opportunity to learn the accessories business first hand in her Medusa's Heirlooms' showroom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong>ART DECO SOCIETY PRESIDENT</strong> Kathy Hausman has been involved in the Art Deco Society of New York for over thirty years. She says, “I joined the Board as a shy, young Deco advocate and served as a Board member for many years and later was elected to be the Social Director producing great parties and balls at prestigious private clubs and venues. When Bill Weber, who was president for years and my inspiration became ill I was elected vice president and in the following year, 1999 I was voted in as president.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hausman’s role became even more demanding and in 1997 she represented and attended the ICAD’s Congress in Los Angeles. She was so inspired that she proposed at the ICAD’s 2001 Congress in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an official offer to host ICAD’s Congress in New York City. The vote was unanimous!!! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong>ICADS NEW YORK CONGRESS</strong> In 2005 drew 250 attendees from all over the world to experience New York’s Art Deco treasures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scholarly lectures, parties and historical New York venues were orchestrated by Hausman in places of extraordinary historical reverence. I remember the Australian contingent and never met friendlier and more enthusiastic attendees but there were many other Deco international friends and this congress set the stage that recognized Hausman as a born leader on the world stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><strong>DECO GOALS FULFILLED</strong> Dawning on the heels of her success and after serving as President of ADSNY, Art Deco Society of New York for over 15 years, Kathryn Hausman leaves a legacy of achievement that cannot be matched by many other women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she said, “I am not leaving! I will sail perpetually on the ADSNY ship, but will no longer be at the helm.” Hausman’s Medusa’s Heirlooms continues to be one of New York’s eminent accessories firms. The Art Deco Society of New York, on the other hand, will never be the same, for under Hausman’s administration the organization was imbued with heightened awareness of the Art Deco significance of New York’s treasures and the events were always a sensation, a rare opportunity of expand one’s appreciation of Art Deco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><strong><em>THANK YOU KATHRYN HAUSMAN, A MODERN WOMAN DETERMINED TO SUCCEED WHO RAISED THE LEVEL OF ART DECO APPRECIATION. SHE LEAVES A LEGACY OF CONSIDERABLE ACHIEVEMENT THAT HAS INSPIRED AND ENRICHED THE LIVES OF SO MAY DECO ENTHUSIASTS.<o:p></o:p></em></strong></span></div>
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-11077023629624982732012-12-06T09:09:00.000-08:002012-12-06T09:09:22.056-08:00GREEN, HETTY: THE EMPRESS OF FINANCE (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Henrietta Howland Robinson, known as Hetty Green, beat the robber barons at their own game; invested her dowry in bonds rather than in a husband and was the first woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street. Why should we be interested in Hetty? Because this feisty Victorian , despite stiff competition of the mostly male business environment, paved the way for women to think differently about their circumstances. Hetty was known for her financial prowess and ability to parlay her wealth through shrewdly investing in the stock market and made a fortune on wall street. Hetty Geeen was an American woman determined to succeed and this in itself is a remarkable feat that she achieved in the Gilded Age. <br />
<strong>MARRIAGE AND INVESTING</strong> Hetty wasn’t expected to do anything particular but to marry and bring in capital that would then be managed by a male, family member. It was the era when women did not have control of their finances or inheritance. Hetty would shun such an idea and set her path of independence from the start. As was the custom when time came for marriage, her parents handed Hetty $l,200 for gowns and carriages and sent her off to the nation’s financial capital to attract a spouse. Nothing doing, Hetty invested $l, 000 of that money in bonds and from then on she was on a roll, caught up in the web of investing. <br />
<strong>GREEN’S HERITAGE</strong> Hetty was born, Henrietta Howland Robinson in 1834-1916, and her family was wealthy merchants owning vast fleets of whaling ships in New Bedford, MA. Early on Henrietta (Hetty) cleaved to her father and from the age of six she was reading financial newspapers to him and this is how she learned about stocks and bonds; by thirteen Hetty became the family bookkeeper. At the age of 33, Hetty married Edward Henry Green, a member of a wealthy Vermont family. Ahead of her time, she made him renounce all rights to her money before the wedding on July 11, 1867. The young couple moved to London and there raised a son, Edward Howland Robinson ‘Ned’ Green and daughter Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Green. When her father died in 1864, Hetty inherited $7.5 million and started a legal campaign to get access to the money she inherited. Against the objections of most of her family , she invested in Civil War bonds. <br />
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<strong>A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS WOMAN</strong> When the family returned to New York City Hetty began parlaying her inheritances into her own astonishing fortune. She conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in order to avoid paying rent elsewhere and this begins a routine of stinginess and denial when she could easily have afforded all the luxuries that her wealth could afford.. She could be seen in the financial arenas of business wearing her unusually dour dress, which was mostly black and which she rarely cleaned as it being too expensive to do so, and this formidable appearance she was nicknamed, “The Witch of Wall Street.” Surrounded by her trunks and papers she ate frugally. Yet she was a successful business woman who dealt mainly in real estate, invested in railroads, and lent money. It is legendary that on several occasions the city o f New York came to Hetty in need of loans, particularly during the Panic of 1907 when she wrote a check for $l.l million. <br />
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<strong>DENIAL TO THE END</strong> Sadly, Hetty’s stinginess carried over to the welfare of her children. When her son Ned broke his leg she denied him immediate professional medical attention deeming it too expensive and held back her daughter from marriage because she disapproved of all over Sylvia’s suitors because she suspected they wanted to get their hands on her money. When her children left home Hetty moved repeatedly to small apartments in different boroughs, mainly to avoid tax officials in any state. She failed in the great arena of philanthropy as parting with money was at the hallmark of her stinginess. So fearful was she of parting with money that she did not underwrite the great institutions, libraries or hospitals of the era. When it came to finance Hetty was a genius; yet she led a life of extreme thrift.<br />
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<strong><em>In Janet Wallach’s book, The Richest Woman in America, Doubleday she says that Hetty was a talented investor who had the bad luck to be born in an era when the guild of Victorian men, shut out a whole class of minds---women’s. Fortunately, not so today, women have scaled the heights of management and proving their mettle and breaking new ground in the financial world.</em></strong><br />
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-88038138844316799122012-11-28T09:02:00.000-08:002012-11-28T09:02:06.798-08:00GILBRETH, LILLIAN: Mother of Modern Management (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One would hardly have expected Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), an American psychologist and industrial engineer to be one of the first superwomen who combined career and home life. Despite the fact that her father was not an advocate of higher education for women, she was determined to succeed and managed to graduate from the University of California in 1900 and pursued her master’s degree at Columbia University, but illness forced a return to California; she went back to Berkeley and received a master’s degree in literature in 1902. She seemingly ‘had it all’ and was one of the first females working in the fields of engineering and industrial psychology. Lillian considered herself plain and never expected to get married but is perhaps best remembered as the mother of twelve children. The books Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes (written by their children Ernestine and Frank Jr.) were subsequently made into movies. Lillian Moller Gilbreth was a remarkable woman for her time and her work paved the way for other women to pursue similar industrial engineering careers. <br />
<strong>A SUMMER ROMANCE</strong> After graduating she celebrated by taking a trip to Europe and on a stopover in Boston the group’s chaperon Minnie Bunker introduced Lillian to her cousin Frank Bunker Gilbreth, a well-off construction company owner. It must have been love at first sight because they had an instant connection and upon her return from Europe Frank travelled to California to meet her family. They became engaged and married in 1904. Frank, who never went to college, was interested in efficiency in the workplace and together they began their study of scientific management principles and Lillian worked by his side in his consulting business. They began their family and moved to Rhode Island in 1910, where Lillian took her doctorate in psychology at Brown University in 1915 with four young children in tow at the ceremony. <br />
<strong>TRUE PARTNERS</strong> Lillian and Frank were true partners at home and in business and applied their scientific management principles to the running of their household and the businesses to whom they consulted. Where Frank was concerned with the technical aspects of worker efficiency, Lillian was concerned with the human aspects of time management. Her work with Frank helped create job standardization, incentive wage-plans, and job simplification, and she was the first to recognize the effects of fatigue and stress on time management. Over seventeen years, the couple had twelve children all the while collaborating together. The story of their family life with their dozen children, in the fore-mentioned books, chronicles how they applied their interest in time and motion study to the organization and daily activities of such a large family. <br />
<strong>LILLIAN’s RECOGNITION</strong> Lillian and Frank wrote several books together, but Lillian was never recognized as co-author because the publishers were concerned about the credibility of the books if it were known that a woman was one of its authors. Yet Lillian had a doctorate and Frank had not even attended a university, but Lillian was already gaining recognition as a pioneer of what is now known as organizational psychology. When Frank died of a heart attack in 1924, Lillian was faced was the enormous task of raising the children alone and finding a way to continue their consulting business. She returned to holding workshops in their home. She became the first woman member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and in 1935 she went to Purdue as a professor of management and the first professor in the engineering school. In her consulting business, she worked with GE and other firms to improve design of kitchens and household appliances. During the Great Depression she was asked by President Hoover to address unemployment and launched the successful “Share the Work” program.<br />
<em><strong><span style="color: red;">THE RECIPIENT OF MORE THAN A DOZEN HONORARY DEGREES, LILLIAN MOLLER GILBRETH’S ABILITY TO COMBINE A CAREER AND FAMILY LED TO HER BEING CALLED, BY THE CALIFORNIA MONTHLY IN1944, “A Genius in the Art of Living.” </span></strong></em><br />
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-75989126204587984102012-10-09T08:02:00.000-07:002012-10-09T08:02:45.687-07:00BATH, PATRICIA DOCTOR, BLACK INVENTOR<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Imagine being born in the 1940s with the stresses associated with Harlem and World War II pending. One would not likely expect that a beautiful Black woman would emerge out of this chaos to become a renowned scientist. Notwithstanding obstacles the famous African-American inventor, Dr. Patricia Bath was a woman determined to succeed in an area of medicine where few women would have cared or been able to infiltrate. One of Dr. Bath’s finest achievements is the Laserphaco Probe which through cataract surgery gave people new vision. Kudos to you Dr. Bath, your brilliant mind inspires all women today to pursue their dream. <strong>OVERCOMING OBSTACLES</strong> Dr. Bath remembers, “Sexism, racism, and relative poverty were the obstacles which I faced as a young girl growing up in Harlem. There were no women physicians I knew of and surgery was a male-dominated profession, no high schools existed in Harlem, a predominately Black community; additionally Blacks were excluded from numerous medical schools and medical societies; and, my family did not possess the funds to send me to medical school.” However, her mother encouraged Patricia to read constantly and broadened her interest in science by buying her a chemistry set.<br />
<strong>DEVELOPING LASERPHACO PROBE</strong> Image living in a world of hazy, cloudy vision that would result in total darkness? Before 1985 this was the plight of those with cataracts who did not want to risk surgery with a mechanical grinder. Doctor Bath’s passionate dedication to the treatment and prevention of blindness led her to develop the Cataract Laserphaco Probe; designed to use the power of a laser to quickly and painlessly vaporize cataracts from patients’ eyes. <br />
<strong>FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE DOCTOR’S PATENT</strong> Dr. Bath a New York based ophthalmologist, was living in Los angles when she received her first patent in 1988, thus becoming the first African-American female doctor to patent a medical invention. Her patent was for removing cataract lenses transformed eye surgery making the procedure more accurate. The difference between the old method and her new invention was the difference between the use of highly accurate laser technology and the somewhat subjective accuracy of a mechanical device. With yet another invention Dr. Bath was able to restore sight to people who had been blind for over 30 years. <br />
<strong>A MERIT AWARD</strong> Science was at the heart of her ambition form the start. Patricia served as editor of the Charles Evans Hughes High School science paper and was selected from a vast number of students from across the country for a summer program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She was only 16 years old she worked in the field of cancer research and her mentor, Dr. Robert Bernard incorporated parts of her research into a joint scientific paper which he presented in Washington, D.C. Due to the resulting publicity, Mademoiselle Magazine presented Patricia with its 1960 Merit Award. <br />
<strong>ACADEMIC ACHIEVER</strong> Further on Patricia graduated from Howard University School of Medicine in 1968. Her reputation as an acclaimed scientist was acknowledged in 1975, when Dr. Bath became the first African-American woman surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center and the first woman to be on the faculty of the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute. Need I say more? In her remarkable journey she founded and was the first president of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness.<br />
<span style="color: red;"><em>DOCTOR PATRICIA BATH WAS ELECTED TO HUNTER COLLEGE HALL OF FAME IN 1988 AND ELECTED AS HOWARD UNIVERSITY PIONEER IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE IN 1993. WITH REVERENCE WE STAND IN AWE AND ADMIRATION FOR HER COURAGE AND INSPIRATION , AND DETERMINATION TO SUCCEED.</em></span><br />
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Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-24583788427489446692012-09-25T08:44:00.000-07:002012-09-25T08:44:13.190-07:00VON NESSEN, GRETA INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Greta von Nessen may not be a household word today but when she created the Anywhere Lamp in 195l there was nothing like it, but at the same time, there was absolutely nothing new about it; all the lamp’s parts had been available as early as the 1920s. Amazing! She was an innovator, a style caster of a modern style. Greta decided instead of totally reinventing the wheel, to wield already-been made parts together (each from a different design periods) to create something new. Greta von Nessen was a woman determined to succeed in a man’s world where so few women had made their mark. In a sense her lamp was a game-changer-or at least parts the effort towards taking design to its next level. <br />
<strong>WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL DESIGN?</strong> It emerged as a profession in the 1920s but took firmer hold in the depression the United States. After the stuffiness of previous eras manufacturers turned to industrial designers to give their products a modern look that would attract consumer appeal. It was a fresh new beginning and the timing was fortuitous. At a time when the country was at a low-ebb, the new streamlined works evoked a sense of speed and efficiency and projected the image of progress. At the same time, it allowed corporations to mass produce items and industrial designers lowered the costs by exploiting new materials like plastic, vinyl, chrome, aluminum creating works through molds and shaping. Resulting affordable prices and a growing prosperity helped to drive popular demand for modernism. <br />
<strong>GRETA BEHIND HER MAN</strong> Greta was the widow of the industrial designer, Walter Von Nessen founder of Nessen Studios, established in 1927 in New York City, now Nessen Lamps Inc. Von Nessen was the only major designer to concentrate on innovative contemporary lighting and quickly gained a following with well known architects. After her husband’s death in 1943, Greta continued his lighting and furniture business developing designs of her own, particularly the Anywhere Lamp. She is counted among the pioneers in American industrial design and her designs have been featured at MOMA, the Modern Museum of Art and on a United States postage stamp. There seems to be very little biographical date about Great except that she was an American born in Sweden in 1900 and died in 1978. <br />
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GRETA VON NESSEN, ONE OF THE PIONEERS IN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, SERVES AS INSPIRATION FOR WOMEN TODAY WHO WILL SET THE STANDARD FOR A NEW GENRE OF FUTURE MODERNISM. <br />
<br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-34946775022499557832012-09-11T11:14:00.001-07:002012-09-11T11:17:41.491-07:00JULIETTE 'DAISY' GORDON LOW GIRL SCOUT LEADER (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I visited Savannah, Georgia I was delighted with the quaint neighborhoods with their English style gardens and Victorian houses, and in this unlikely place I discovered Juliette ‘Daisy’ Gordon Low, the daughter of a proper Southern family who gave girls a voice before the country even gave women the vote. On March 12, 1912 she established the Girl Scouts in Savannah and from a single troop of 18 girls; the Girl Scouts has grown to an international organization of 10 million members in 145 countries. On the occasion of the Girl Scouts of the USA, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2012, we pay tribute to “Daisy,” as everyone knew her, a woman determined to succeed, and did so at a time when it was unthinkable that an elite Southern girl would prepare for a career. <span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: xx-small;">Pictured left: Daisy pins an achievement award on one of her Girl Scouts. Inset: Daisy as a young Southern society debutante.</span><br />
<strong>‘DAISY’ ON THE VERGE</strong> Daisy was the product of the genteel South and the daughter of a wealthy cotton broker, as cotton was King in Savannah her father was wealthy and could indulge his daughter. Very little was expected of her and she could have gone on her merry way after attending finishing school to engage in cultural pursuits, but most certainly her first priority was to land a husband. That’s exactly what daisy did, she feel hopelessly in love with William Mackay Low, called ‘Willy,’ the heir to a British fortune. <br />
<strong>THE UPPER CRUST</strong> This fairytale romance culminated in stunning society marriage in Savannah in 1886. Tragedy began at the start when a piece of rice tossed at the newlyweds logged in Daisy’s ear and that exacerbated an already existing poor hearing problem. When a doctor attempting to remove the rice punctured her eardrum she lost most of her good hearing as well. A feisty woman, Daisy’s near deafness did not slow her down but the antics of the British upper class were her undoing. Her philandering husband drank to excess and he made no attempt to conceal his affair. <br />
<strong>BREAKING AWAY</strong> When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898 and the impending divorce, and the untimely demise of her husband, Daisy found herself a widow in her 40s, but she decided it is never too late to change your life. So she headed back to America determined and made life-changing decisions. As fate would have it, at a luncheon she met retired general Robert Baden-Powell, a hero of the second Boer War, who regaled her about his scouting program for the Boy Scouts. This encounter began a lifelong relationship with Powell and she caught the spirit of the message. So much so that using her personal fortune, her society contacts and her personal connection with Powell Daisy introduced Girl Guides to America. <br />
<strong>SELF HELP BOOK</strong> Daisy was an innovator and she helped write and publish “How Girls Can Help Their Country,” a feminist self-help book before either term even existed. Eventually the Girl Guides name was changed to Girl Scouts but they do more than sell cookies: they teach respect, confidence, compassion and leadership. The philosophy or the organization and the activities and projects the girls participate in are the inspiration of its founder Juliette ‘Daisy’ Gordon Low. At first parents were reluctant to let their daughters join a group promoting independence, but relented when it became apparent that self-improvement far outweighed any thought of revolution. The Girl Scouts uniform gave the members of the troop a sense of true belonging to a new breed of young women who would pave the way for independence.<br />
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WE SALUTE JULIETTE ‘DAISY’ GORDON LOW; A WOMAN DETERMINED TO SUCCEED WHERE NO OTHER HAD VENTURED BEFORE CREATING THE GIRL SCOUTS OF AMERICAN A POWERFUL ICON FOR MILLIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN. TODAY THE GIRL SCOUTS HAS GROWN TO AN ORGANIZATION OF 3.3 MILLION ACTIVE MEMBERS, 50 MILLION ALUMNAE AND TROOPS IN 92 COUNTRIES.<br />
<br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-4792874259640280632012-08-10T07:40:00.001-07:002012-08-10T07:40:57.988-07:00CABRERA,GLORIA Cosmetologist the Natural Way(c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Making clients beautiful has been the livelong ambition of Gloria Cabrera, a cosmetologist for over thirty years. A petite Philippine native, Gloria, honed her skills and after owning a successful salon in the Philippines, she had the serendipitous opportunity to come to New York City, where she was able to fulfill her dream of being a salon and spa owner. She is a woman determined to succeed and has plied her trade “A Natural Way of Beauty,” for over 30 years in the Gramercy Park area of New York City. Gloria is a success story that should serve as inspiration of other women who immigrate to the United States and wish to be business owners. Gloria did it through perseverance and the kind of hands-on ownership that makes customer service a very personal way of doing business. <br />
<strong>SCIENCE AND NATURAL INGREDIENTS</strong> With the combination of science and natural Asian ingredients from herbs, plants, grains and flower oils, Gloria created a skin care line that revitalizes and helps the skin’s true beauty. Gloria says, “These ingredients not only improve the glow and texture of the skin, but also protects it from environmental damage and aging.” Now that’s the right approach to skin care. Clients who have used the Gloria Cabrera Whitening and Anti-Aging Facials and skincare products attest to their effectiveness, which have shown results in a week, leaving skin fresh and radiant. Most interesting to women with dark spots Gloria’s products lighten those spots and evens skin tone, and helps to reduce fine lines and wrinkles.<br />
<strong> FACIAL CLEANSERS</strong> I’ve always envied women who have that special glow and wondered how they maintained such a youthful appearance. This is a special concern of New York City women who are always trying to find ways to keep their skin clean and beautiful. For one thing, Gloria Cabrera products wash away all the debris, excess oil and free radicals that age the skin, and those natural ingredients help restore skin leaving it fresh and glowing. The Herbal Cleanser & Toner, for example, is made with natural ingredients, including rose petals and lavender buds, and smells just divine! It is designed to cleanse, tone, unclog pores and help prevent fine lines, leaving skin fresh and glowing. The organic Face Mask is another yummy mixture containing Almond Extract, lavender, Rose Power and Clay. You get the point, it’s beauty the natural way. <strong>FACE MOISTURIZERS/FIRMING CREAM</strong> Living in New York City puts a lot of stress on a woman’s face, and that why moisturizers are such an important part of a daily beauty routine. Why? Because moisturizers hydrate, restore and refresh dull skin, while protecting from sun and environmental pollution. No need for a facelift, try results the natural way. The Neroli Firming Cream in this product range is infused with hydrating mixture of neroli, lavender and other essential oils which help to eliminate fine lines, minimizes pores and most important, it leaves the skin firmer, smoother and glowing. <br />
<strong>I HATE MY NECK, TOO</strong>!! What could be more delicious than a Ginger Rice Body Exfoliant? This combination of natural herbs and Himalayan salt creates a perfect blend that polishes away dry, dead skin and leaves the surface smooth and radiant. You remember the book “I Hate My Neck,” by the late Nora Ephron…well, I do, too, but Gloria suggests her non surgical anti-aging neck serum, a special blend of essential oils that helps prevent wrinkles, loss of skin elasticity and double chin, while preserving skin moisture for firm, smith skin. Need I say more? Visit Gloria Cabrera at 309 East 23rd St, NYC 212.689.6815. www.gloriacabrerany.com.<br />
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<br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-9450623303687212012-06-26T08:05:00.000-07:002012-06-26T08:05:00.889-07:00DOLLS: MADAME ALEXANDER, The First Lady of Dolls (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The great French chanteuse, Maurice Chevalier used to sing, “Thank goodness for little girls” and thank goodness it is for the dolls that little girls play with from the iconic Alexander Doll Company, Inc. The world famous Madame Alexander Doll has reinvented itself under new management by the firm, Kahn Lucas, a manufacturer of girl’s dresses and matching dresses for dolls. The acquisition is a perfect fit. Kahn Lucas recently purchased Alexander Doll Company from The Kaizen Breakthrough Partnership private equity firm managed b the Gefinor banking group and is not a newcomer to Alexander Doll. For the past four years Kahn Lucas has been a licensing partner with Alexander Doll under Kahn Lucas’ Dollie & Me brand of matching girl and doll apparel the fashion accessories. There are two setups at FAO Schwarz store in New York, the Madame Alexander Doll factory where girls can create their own dolls, and the Newborn Nursery, where girls learn about babies in nurseries as preparation for when they have siblings. <br />
<strong>THE LATE BEATRICE ALEXANDER BEHRMAN</strong> While Madame Alexander was a doll maker of rare imagination, the series of dolls inspired by the pages of her beloved childhood storybooks live on for the young-at-heart everywhere. Alexander Doll Company, founded in 1923 is nearly 100 years old yet it continues the tradition of ‘hand-crafted quality workmanship, made in America’ dolls. Madame Alexander was a visionary, a woman determined to succeed. She started making dolls on her kitchen table in Brooklyn when she was 28 and firmly believed that dolls should engage a child’s imagination, educate and expand their vision of the world. Over the years dolls were inspired by fairy tales, movies and celebrities. The Secret Garden trunk and its wardrobe, the Little Princess, Little Women, Cinderella, the Anne of Green Gables series, the Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind series all attest to the legend of hand-crafted excellence. Madame Alexander was the day star who managed the company until 1986, continuing on as a design consultant until her death at 95 in 1990. <em><span style="color: red;">Pictured above: Madame Beatrice Alexander examining the Queen Elizabeth II doll from the Coronation set.</span></em><br />
<strong>MADAME ALEXANDER DOLL FIRSTS</strong> A master innovator, Madame Alexander’s original outpouring was prolific. In 1940 Jeannie Walker, one of the first walking dolls, made her debut as did the first dolls with life-like sleep eyes, that open and close. Production of the Sonja Henie (Olympic Skating star) doll also began at this time. High fashion was on her mind when in 1955 she introduced the first full-figured fashion doll called Cissy who wore designer fashions. Honors poured in and in the 1960s she was honored on United Nations Day for her international series of dolls. The same year the Smithsonian Institute selected two of Madame Alexander’s creations to include in its doll collection: the Madame doll from the American Revolution series and the Scarlett O’Hara doll. Film tie-ins include the 1970s production of large Sound of Music dolls with the release of the film. The First Lady of Dolls received FAO Schwartz’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986. Always on top of the news, in 1990 the Welcome Home series of dolls commemorating those who served in Operation Desert Storm were put on the market. <br />
<strong>THE KAHN LUCAS STORY</strong> This privately held, fourth-generation family firm, has an even longer history than Alexander Doll. Based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania it was founded in 1889. The firm manufactured fashion for sizes, newborn to 16, carried nationwide at stores including J.C. Penney, Sears, and Toys “R” and Wall-Mart. The acquisition of Alexander Doll places Kahn Lucas at the top of its genre competing to a degree with the American Girl, a division of Mattel. The manufacturing headquarters of Alexander Doll is located in the heart of Harlem, New York at 615 W. 131st St, New York, N.Y. with showrooms at 200 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.<br />
<strong>The Madame Alexander Fan Club</strong> was started in 1960s by Margaret Wilson. It was based in Texas and sponsored an annual convention. Of its 12,000 or more female members 40 percent are curiously male.<br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: white; color: red;"><em>THANK GOODNESS FOR LITTLE GIRLS AND THANK GOODNESS FOR MADAME ALEXANDER, THE FIRST LADY OF DOLLS, WHOSE DOLL CREATIONS INSPIRED THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE OF ALL GIRLS YOUNG AT HEART.</em></span></strong><br />
<strong><br /><span style="background-color: magenta;"></span></strong><br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-45055004742260011302012-06-15T10:26:00.000-07:002012-06-15T10:31:11.058-07:00QUEEN LIZZIE, FASHION ICON (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Pardon me, but did I say Queen Lizzie? I say that with the utmost of esteem for the grand lady of England, because she seems to be the kind of woman everyone can relate to and has come full circle as the Queen mum. It was in the 1953 Order of Coronation that England’s newly crowned ruler was referred to as Queen Elizabeth, Your Undoubted Queen,” but she emerged on the international scene as one of the most determine women in her lifelong performance as Queen. One can stand back in awe and admire her style and how she has fulfilled her role of service with honor and dignity. Those traits service, honor and dignity need to be brought strongly back into the collective consciousness of world leaders, corporate executives and parents today. We can thank Queen Lizzie for carrying the torch of correct behavior throughout her long life. <br />
<strong>DRESSING WITH DIGNITY</strong> Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, relates, “Her style is a clear portrayal of upper-class distaste for novelty and gimmick, a resistance to foreign ideas, and a reassuring matronly solidity.” Her clothes are designed for specific functionality and remember the queen mainly works standing up for hours on end with nary a complaint. You rarely see her sitting down, she is usually photographed at full length, and as petite as she is, is required to stand out in a crowd. How does she do it? <br />
<strong>A MEGAWATT</strong> <strong>SMILE</strong> Keeping up appearances is a challenge for the 86-year-old monarch with the white set curls and megawatt smile, but like a performer, she never disappoints. Even when her family behaved badly and public opinion for the monarchy hit a low, the Queen, was steadfast and dignified in the stewardship of her family and kingdom, and remained stable and determined dealing with circumstances with a calm hand. Charged with illuminating the dullest of ribbon-cutting the Queen has evolved with a flair for making an entrance in head-to-toe color or print-coordinated ensembles: shoes, gloves, matching hat and that classic handbag, that say, Queen” every inch of the design. <br />
<strong>INSIDER DESIGN INFO</strong> So why doesn’t her skirt rise up at the flutter of a windy breeze? Clever solution: They’re anchored down and weighted, something any executive or woman in politics should consider doing for her next outdoor appearance. To accommodate that jubilant hand wave, the armholes of her coats and jackets are cut generously. Always conscious of what to wear on a specific occasion, for foreign travel, a staff of researchers will scout out the country’s national symbols and cultural significance and what color is verboten in that place. Good advice for anyone making personal appearances on the cultural or business stage of life. <br />
<strong>HAIL to the QUEEN</strong> Flash-forward 60 years (2012) and the nation marked the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, making her the second-longest-serving monarch after Queen Victoria. At home in the private confines of her friends and family she loves to dress up with penchant sparkling jewels and enjoys horse racing, homeopathic remedies, keeps several corgis in tow and wears silk Hermes head scarves. She’s able bodied and a true thespian, playing out her role as “Elizabeth the Dignified,” but to us fashionistas she’s still our darling Queen Lizzie.<br />
<strong><em><span style="color: red;">Throughout her six-decade reign, Queen Elizabeth weathered the likes of family tragedy, scandal and mishaps and much more behind the scenes than can be imagined, the likes of which are so similar to the misadventure of many average families. Yet the Queen has set the hallmark for Queenly behavior and motherhood, remaining as rock solid and as steadfast as Mount Everest throughout it all. Hail to the Queen, the woman determined to succeed, the truest royal that ever graced our century.</span></em></strong><br />
<strong><br /><em><span style="color: red;"></span></em></strong>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-41918892496819251492012-05-15T13:22:00.001-07:002012-05-15T13:22:19.772-07:00APFEL IRIS, 91 YEAR OLD FASHION ICON (c) By Polly Guerin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1tpvvgPkP0Ol_S4pviysBU1Ycm26-lxn0PlFsXJsGOtoFVF3bbtDiLF7mmAEeWu3_TOnCAJCAPK7oNzEUI-dmPS4rSavz6wlMH_MIlWBYvVeQupoXtjAEpV3rhzjxadNwuJFSbGi9UuU/s1600/imageiris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1tpvvgPkP0Ol_S4pviysBU1Ycm26-lxn0PlFsXJsGOtoFVF3bbtDiLF7mmAEeWu3_TOnCAJCAPK7oNzEUI-dmPS4rSavz6wlMH_MIlWBYvVeQupoXtjAEpV3rhzjxadNwuJFSbGi9UuU/s320/imageiris.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
It’s not her signature owl-shaped glasses that adorn her venerable face that gets your attention and it’s not her mix of haute couture with hippie trimmings that makes you gawk in admiration. No, it really isn’t any of these adornments that attract you to her. It’s the sheer magnetism of her personality, her drive and her unending creativity that makes her a legend in her own time, a woman so determined to succeed that she is the subject of a string of museum exhibitions, a coffee table book and even a fashion advertising campaign. This geriatric starlet’s charisma, a blend of her iconoclastic style, youthful passion, energy, drive, ambition and determination are the right kind of ingredients to inspire a new generation of designers or anyone, for that matter, who wants to be judged as an innovator. <br />
<strong>POLLY MEETS MS. APFEL</strong> It was in 2005 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City premiered an exhibition about Apfel titled, “Rara Avis (Rare Bird) and indeed, I was delighted to meet this rare bird and overwhelmed by the sheer magic of the collection on view---a hodge podge of the most imaginative way of dressing from Apfel’s collection of clothes, accessories and furnishings, which she had acquired during her travels. Her collection reflects pieces that commemorate high points in her life and is lavishly documented by photographer Eric Boman in “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel. <br />
<strong>UNSTOPPABLE FASHION ICON</strong> Apfel readily admits that she is not a designer but a good stylist and that is perfectly clear as her imagination takes flight with the artful clash of textures, furs, buttons and bones, and assorted trappings hurled into a fashion message of individualistic charm which she carries off with panache. Not everyone could do that, but Apfel’s somewhat Bohemian style is chic and savvy. Her philosophy is “When you don’t dress like everyone else, you don’t have to think like everyone else.” <br />
<strong>BECOMING IRIS APFEL </strong>Who would have ever suspected that Iris Barrel born in Astoria Queens, August 29, 1921, would become the darling of the fashion and art world. Sadye, her Russian-born mother owned a fashion boutique and perhaps Apfel acquired her passion for fashion there. Her dad Samuel Barrel’s family owned a glass-and-mirror business. Did she stand in front of one of them on day reciting, “Mirror, mirror on the wall what is in store for Iris??” Preparing for her passion for art and fashion she studied art history at New York University and attended art school at the University of Wisconsin and at one time she worked for Women’s Wear Daily, where I had honed my skills as a writer. Alas our paths never met. Her tenure at WWD was way before I arrived but she had left her mark and was not forgotten. <br />
<strong>TRAVELING WITH CARL</strong> In 1948, she married Carl Apfel and two years later they launched the textile firm, Old World Weavers and ran it until they retired in 1992, all the while traveling to exotic places where Iris found treasures that she would interpret into her own design. However, Apfel was not the retiring kind of dame. Off she went taking part in several design restoration projects including work at the White House. Now she is peddling her own designs on the Home Shopping Network and finds time to work on numerous charity benefits. And, get this my dears; she is a model for MAC Cosmetics. <br />
<strong><em><span style="color: red;">You go get ‘em Apfel! This country needs more high spirited women like you to remind us how to have fun and turn the ordinary into something marvelous when you’re young and ninety.</span></em></strong><br />
<strong><br /><em><span style="color: red;"></span></em></strong><br />Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-81468027923266196562012-02-11T09:19:00.000-08:002012-02-11T09:35:33.399-08:00COLEMAN, ELIZABETH 'BESSIE,' PIONEER AVIATOR (c)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguFz7qzM1ugAvShPXZ1NCuKV7YlfLcd1qiFeMrRX6duwUD7pBXUrv8_wT1d4LWwWt-_1uU6QqQor-Q1zJKX2xZB4ubvZT_1prjq9enX_BhVusgSrxE1c0YEt9qT_PVUz1i_lZ7rO_agsY/s1600/80-12873.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 314px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5707930800491370658" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguFz7qzM1ugAvShPXZ1NCuKV7YlfLcd1qiFeMrRX6duwUD7pBXUrv8_wT1d4LWwWt-_1uU6QqQor-Q1zJKX2xZB4ubvZT_1prjq9enX_BhVusgSrxE1c0YEt9qT_PVUz1i_lZ7rO_agsY/s400/80-12873.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBcalSfSHDc9aZ4mN5kvCdeMVezhaUL9AggSw1bEhJg_i9yV1FX2s4h6HPi4yguUfrotsZ4zDfecN7FORkXLFUHwHycGzTxihN1oGnMzdqTbz4DAGtKZqBCarHb8Vy1xQWRXJkPOZswi8/s1600/ColemanBessie6.gif"></a><br /><br /><br /><div><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 386px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 245px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5707930360868942674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3vgyOwMsyCgluJ9wVv26xy5w8PiEeu4pDJ-BXf4Hlf-v_ECx1hyLOh59GUVMcol0brZbVI8t_upcQYsS3nxT3AEmsz5YMqdwHyEXFDOrLzxKR95kWLviwO2y6BwpJv57y2Hy7Uz4rH2I/s400/ColemanBessie6.gif" />At a time when no woman, particularly an African-American woman would have dreamed of becoming a pilot, on June 15, 1921 Elizabeth 'Bessie' Coleman, a fiercely independent woman became the first female of African-American descent and the first woman to hold an international aviation license, a feat that is quite amazing at the dawn of the Art Deco era. On the occasion of Black History Month, her remarkable short-lived pioneering role as a pilot deserves to be given her due recognition among the amazing women of the century. Against all odds “Bessie” was determined to succeed as a pilot and despite her youthful zeal she was confronted and rejected by typical prejudices of the day. In the beginning no flight school or flight instructors, including black male pilots, would accept Bessie as a student because because she was African-American and female. Putting adversity aside Bessie pursued her dream. She accomplished the impossible and broke barriers both as a woman and an African-American. Bessie was bravely independent and a woman, who decided, against all odds, that learning to fly provided an exciting challenge. <strong>WORLD WAR I PILOTS’ STORIES</strong> Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman (1892-1926) knew that there wasn’t much of a future for herself in Waxahatchie, Texas, where she grew up the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George and Susan Coleman. So at the age of twenty-three seeking better opportunity she moved to Chicago, Illinois where she lived with two of her older brothers. She found steady work at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist, which was quite fortuitous because in this male dominated circle she would hear about aviation and flying from the young pilots returning home from World War I. She became enthralled with their stories and therein was planted a seed that would grow her determination to become a pilot. One of Bessie’s brothers had also served as a pilot, and he would tease her about the fact that French women had careers and could even fly planes. The idea that French women were pilots was just the kind of catalyst that was part inspiration and determination to o put her on another path toward a career in aviation. <strong>LEARNING TO BE A PILOT</strong> The problem quickly became apparent that she could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. Bessie must have launched a convincing campaign to reach her career goal. Encouragement came by way of Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, which as part sponsor he would capitalize on her flamboyant personality and her beauty to promote the newspaper. Financial backing came forth from other sponsors too including Jesse Binga (a banker). Bessie first took French language classes at Berlitz in Chicago, and fully confidant in her language skills she traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. <strong>THE FRENCH CONNECTION</strong> Upon arrival in the City of Light Bessie quickly enrolled in the prestigious Ecole d’Aviation des Freres Coudon at Le Crotoy. She learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet. On June 15, 1921 with skills acquired at the Ecole d’Aviation Bessie became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, but the first African American woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot’s license. Determined to polish her skills, Bessie spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September she sailed for New York. <strong>POLISHING HER SKILLS</strong> When Bessie returned to the United States, she discovered that she was unable to make a living as a civilian aviator, the age of commercial flight was still a decade or more in the future, but there was a demand to see her fly and in order to become a “barnstorming” stunt flyer, and perform for paying audiences, she would need more advanced lessons, so back she went to France to take advanced courses in aviation, visited the Netherlands to meet with Anthony Fokker, one of the world’ most distinguished aircraft designers, then headed to Germany, where she received additional training from one of the Fokker Corporation’s chief pilots. Bessie was ready and the world was waiting. <strong>QUEEN BESS</strong> When Bessie returned to the United States she became a media sensation and was admired by both blacks and whites. It was a monumental recognition for an African-American woman who had emerged from a small town to the heights of celebrity. She made her first appearance in an American air show on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. The show billed “Queen Bess,” as she was known, as “the world’s greatest woman flier.” Later she returned to Chicago to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Checkerboard Airdrome (now Chicago Midway Airport) with a dramatic, daredevil performance including figure eights, loops and near-ground dips. However, she would not perform at events unless the audience was desegregated. With the admiration of cheering crowds people flocked to see her fly and to hear her speak in cities across the country. <strong>BESSIE’S FLIGHT SCHOOL</strong> Bessie never lost sight of her childhood vow to one day “amount to something,” and indeed she did just that as a pioneering pilot. Her wings took flight in yet another direction to open a flight school what would admit women and African Americans. She worked tirelessly to raise money and sponsors to reach that goal but tragedy struck on April 30, 1926, when Bessie, at the age of thirty-four, was in Jacksonville, Florida. Bessie had completed payments on her own plane, a Curtiss JN-4 in Dallas, Texas and had it flown to Jacksonville in preparation for an air show. Bessie and her mechanic, William Wills was flying the plane in a test run, but Bessie had not put on her seatbelt, and in a mere ten minutes into the flight the plane did not pull out of a dive, malfunctioned and crashed. Bessie was thrown from the plane and died instantly when she hit the ground. Wills died on impact when the plane plummeted to the ground and burst into flame. Thousands attended her funerals in both Jacksonville and Orlando Florida. On her last journey in Chicago an estimated 10,000 people paid homage to Bessie. <strong>HONORS AND RECOGNITION</strong> All honors were her due. Recognition flooded in citing Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman for her bravery, her accomplishment as the first African-American woman and the first woman to become an aviation pioneer. A second-floor conference room is named after her at Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, D.C. Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1990 stepped up to the plate and renamed Old Mannheim Road at O’Hare International Airport “Bessie Coleman Drive,” and in 1992, he proclaimed May 2, “Bessie Coleman Day in Chicago.” She was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp in 1995 and was inducted into the Women in Aviation Hall of Fame the same year. Yet another honor followed in 2000 when she was inducted in The Texas Aviation Hall of Fame. Look for her name on buildings in Harlem.<br /><strong><em>ALTHOUGH ELIZABETH BESSIE COLEMAN DID NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO FULFILL HER GREATEST DREAM, TO ESTABLISH A FLIGHT SCHOOL, HER MANY FANS, FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS ASSURED ITS CREATION. THE BESSIE COLEMAN AERO CLUB WAS ESTABLISHED IN LOS ANGELES IN 1929 SPEARHEADED BY LIEUTENANT WILLIAM J. POWELL, WHO HAD SERVED IN A SEGREGATED UNIT DURING WORLD WAR I. HE TIRELESSLY PROMOTED THE CAUSE OF BLACK AVIATION AND SUBSEQUENTLY BESSIE COLEMAN AERO CLUBS SPRANG UP THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY. </em></strong></div></div>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-79380884719376393092012-01-30T14:49:00.000-08:002012-01-31T08:35:16.372-08:00AYER, HARRIET HUBBARD, COSMETIC PIONEER ( c) By Polly Guerin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOBCfEWtMrRMJVmv8gb2E05iE86VOJe0HX__rURqPN_uIqb7TB6SuEBSLMv0eATedaYV2DpurFLCyVhUSSXSc0R3e7go38kkwsupHwlcQH4SwuD6WiRb5xOMZuvdY9UW5_08kJjrOxu_w/s1600/thumrecamier.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 100px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 140px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703834244771154930" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOBCfEWtMrRMJVmv8gb2E05iE86VOJe0HX__rURqPN_uIqb7TB6SuEBSLMv0eATedaYV2DpurFLCyVhUSSXSc0R3e7go38kkwsupHwlcQH4SwuD6WiRb5xOMZuvdY9UW5_08kJjrOxu_w/s400/thumrecamier.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZhfsOcGEET53flbBHzS1ch4NdwMPykj5P_RMiixVduFhSdxZsEAqCbWgXBggjyKOFZtIZcKdiFSZUre_yV-AJHncSPHioZWofDUuALJv6ZQajTcAKkCLnP7DBBtnkPuiWRqVW2bRodA/s1600/54TBF00ZAyer.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 300px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703831653185744722" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZhfsOcGEET53flbBHzS1ch4NdwMPykj5P_RMiixVduFhSdxZsEAqCbWgXBggjyKOFZtIZcKdiFSZUre_yV-AJHncSPHioZWofDUuALJv6ZQajTcAKkCLnP7DBBtnkPuiWRqVW2bRodA/s400/54TBF00ZAyer.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1KE5ZAWCbcRa1c_GS7Es-4OZ43IpD4Cu7f4LPMODQf481qBPGt5BQRKITsGqKln1ixLsH4erCzpxhL3p9jn2DBmCIzOpWXJzU9wx3YIrSjJpEqgoGAWokquSBfftxyDBX-ssmK7Ygo2k/s1600/1805+Francois+Pascal+Simon+Gerard_Portrait+of+Juliette+Recamier.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3B-fTta7EkDrgGyP6mba2d9C0PxotKgT00MfIKB5L7uTK0ZD_UTSmlHtJpqY9LRyr-y-Foik4q20DhjX1DjUSOKXDxFrEHiZ17F0B5L4LRgDSgCcie91_1DIy6A6bPmyeE-gsKqszFaM/s1600/harriethubbardayermakeupdoll.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 258px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 283px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703562074686576290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3B-fTta7EkDrgGyP6mba2d9C0PxotKgT00MfIKB5L7uTK0ZD_UTSmlHtJpqY9LRyr-y-Foik4q20DhjX1DjUSOKXDxFrEHiZ17F0B5L4LRgDSgCcie91_1DIy6A6bPmyeE-gsKqszFaM/s400/harriethubbardayermakeupdoll.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 304px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703561590369425522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1lPCyMdvyHnkqf3R1qTH4yQ8GvtQ8-ioUnHgFC6x7msM3AIZhGNF4u9ypYzCsLt8stB9sBoeN7Q_sA9IZ9uBpNHLJVpcapcu2dy_o0QYlrIZW28W9qQ-sFek_T1PONtosdHX91J_LS0U/s400/harriet-hubbard-ayer.jpg" /></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>The story of Harriet Hubbard Ayer (1849-1903) reads like a modern day melodrama the likes of which read more like fiction than the transgressions of real life. Yet, this indomitable woman, determined to succeed took matters into her own hands and rose above the stigma of divorce, kidnapping, madness, seduction, betrayal and the loss of her cosmetic business to reinvent herself again as a world famous journalist who penned a column of beauty and cosmetic advice to a devoted audience of women and men. At a time when most women did not work Ayer established Recamier Preparations, Inc., the first cosmetic company owned and operated by a woman but a male dominated society would curtail her entrepreneurship. Vindictive and jealous men in her life punished her for her ambition, accomplishments and seized her children. These egregious setbacks did not squelch her spirit. She was a pioneer and set the stage for other women to succeed and made beauty in a bottle respectable. <strong>AN AMERICAN BEAUTY</strong> Harriet Hubbard was a natural beauty whose intellectual development evolved far beyond what anyone expected. Born into a family of wealth and privilege she matured into a beautiful, accomplished Chicago socialite and was painted by famous artists of the time including William Merritt Chase. No one, however, would have suspected that under the gaze of her beauty lurked a girl full of perseverance, resilience and determination. <strong>BECOMING MRS. AYER</strong> It is no wonder that she attracted the attention of Herbert Copeland Ayer, the son of a wealthy iron dealer. The Civil War was over and Herbert’s father prospered and with his social credentials confirmed the Hubbard-Ayer liaison was a surety. At the age of sixteen, on October 2, 1866, she married Herbert Copeland Ayer, a man fourteen years her senior. It did not prove a happy liaison and with her husband’s excessive drinking and other problems a shadow loomed over the marriage, which was acerbated by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 in which the Ayer’s home as well as the properties of so many other citizen’s was destroyed. Harriet also suffered from the death of her daughter Gertrude, who had a delicate nature and succumbed to the affects of smoke inhalation from the fire. <strong>PARIS SOJOURN</strong> More tragedy struck in 1833. Heartbroken and exhausted, after the collapse of the Ayer iron business Harriet was forced to fend for herself and her two remaining daughters. After separating from her husband and compounded by her mother’s dwindling inheritance, Harriet was almost destitute. With resolve to maintain the lifestyle to which they had been accustomed Harriet moved with her daughters to New York City, where she found work as a decorator and a salesperson for Syphers, the antique furniture store. On one of her frequent business trips to Europe, she discovered a chemist in Paris who created creams and perfumes. <strong>THE MADAME RECAMIER FORMULA</strong> There are several versions of how Harriet acquired the skin care products. It is suffice to say that on one of her trips to Paris, the epicenter of fashion and beauty, she had the fortuitous occasion to visit a certain M. Mirault who made the Parma Violet Perfume Harriet used. M. Mirault also had a formula for a face cream that reputedly had been made by his grandfather for the famous French beauty from the days of Napoleon, Julie de Recamier (1777-1849), which he sold to Harriet for a great price. Realizing an opportunity in 1866, she launched Recamier Toilet Preparations, Inc. <strong>A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS WOMAN</strong> A born innovator Harriet skillfully marketed the Recamier products using her own name Harriet Hubbard Ayer and the Hubbard family crest on the label. Through extensive advertising and paid endorsements by famous entertainers her commercial success proliferated. Such tactics proved successful because countless women who aspired to a higher social status were encouraged to purchase her products, which included brushes, soaps, balms and scents, as well as the coveted cream. <strong>VICIOUS MALE INTERVENTION</strong> A lot of jealousy surrounded Harriet’s success and most of it perpetrated by men. Severe problems arose when Harriet was publicly accused of scandalous behavior in 1889. It’s true that she suffered a form of mental symptoms of exhaustion and melancholia but she was still in control of her business until men intervened. Setting a trap Harriet was drugged and isolated and eventually institutionalized in 1893 by her former husband, who had been egged on by James M. Seymour, the scoundrel who plotted to take over her business. Such incarceration seems to be typical of the way men at that time could do away with unwanted wives or in Harriet’s case a woman of property and business. It took more than a year for Harriet to escape through the help of her lawyers and friends from the Bronxville Insane Asylum. However, she was unable to regain control of the business and retired from its operation. After her departure the company Harriet founded did not last, going into receivershiip in 1896. Other incarnations of the Recamier Manufacturing Company and all rights to the name "Harriet Hubbard Ayer" were obtained by other entrepreneurs seeking to ride on the reputation of her name and beauty products. In 1907, after Harriet's death, her daughter, Margaret Hubbard Ayer sold the rights to her mother's name to Vincent Benjamin. How successful these companies were is lost in the powder dust of the cosmetic industry. <strong>RINVENTING HARRIET HUBBARD AYER</strong> The Recamier business was run into the ground by Seymour but Harriet regained her health and reinvented herself. Obviously you cannot keep a strong willed independent woman down for long. In 1896 she was hired to write a column on beauty advice for the New York World and he role played an important part in advancing the careers of women in the new mass journalism. Eventually, the material from these columns became the basis of a book published in 1902, “Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s book: A Complete and Authentic Treatise on the Laws of Health and Beauty. <strong>OH YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL</strong> The Ideal Toy Company launched a Harriet Hubbard Ayer doll in connection with the leading cosmetic company and each model included a beauty instruction booklet. With a lovely wig on her vinyl head, the doll came with curlers and cosmetics. Not only could her hair be styled, but Ayer cosmetics could be applied to her dainty face.was offered complete with makeup for little girls to hone their skills.<br /><em><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">Harriet Hubbard Ayer was ahead of her time, a pioneer who spearheaded the beauty industry and paved the way for later women entrepreneurs. When Ayer died in 1903, at the age of 54, she was the highest paid journalist in the United States.<br /></span></strong></em>.</div></div></div></div>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-840617096699904227.post-78578366654802863042011-12-28T09:27:00.000-08:002011-12-28T09:48:48.245-08:00BARNES, DJUNA CELEBRATED MODERNIST WRITER (c) By Polly Guerin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpN-EwKrV6an8TVKKCHhN1D6ipdzvMhoz4crqacCTDv38jZbBIMl2iYDVVsE_Si1e_B3QSlTsqIMGnLIiIZJTdFDgGrEl1wUQO_rXLzzzq0RutIioZVSsPnnOpXui1GvNH18SMooOwn4/s1600/220px-Djunabarnes.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 220px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 297px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691236098745140290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpN-EwKrV6an8TVKKCHhN1D6ipdzvMhoz4crqacCTDv38jZbBIMl2iYDVVsE_Si1e_B3QSlTsqIMGnLIiIZJTdFDgGrEl1wUQO_rXLzzzq0RutIioZVSsPnnOpXui1GvNH18SMooOwn4/s320/220px-Djunabarnes.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mozJmEHC797DJPbifTc0u6vz2xLpFYFqkouuk_ozbgKX8U1zEz3WT9jmV9pqyMCVPIW6BF1U3Hax0_ZlO-TH0JSWRRgYPwhH6lUkGv0B35uKwItAYxUwOy9NWn1ejAMoi_IXn2UOOh8/s1600/220px-Djuna_Barnes_-_Villager.gif"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 220px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 303px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691232688524165074" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mozJmEHC797DJPbifTc0u6vz2xLpFYFqkouuk_ozbgKX8U1zEz3WT9jmV9pqyMCVPIW6BF1U3Hax0_ZlO-TH0JSWRRgYPwhH6lUkGv0B35uKwItAYxUwOy9NWn1ejAMoi_IXn2UOOh8/s320/220px-Djuna_Barnes_-_Villager.gif" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div>Djuna Barnes’s extraordinary career as a journalist and illustrator deserves revisiting primarily because she made an important contribution in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing. She was born in a log cabin in 1892 and lived through the Deco years and became one of the key figures in 1920s and ‘30’s bohemian Paris and fulfilled a similar role in Greenwich Village. Though her upbringing in an unconventional household was fraught with incest, rape and hardship, Barnes developed an outsider’s perspective on ‘normal’ life that served her well as a writer. As a woman determined to succeed much of Barnes’s journalism was subjective and experiential. An early twentieth-century advocate for women’s rights Barnes also wrote interviews, features, theatre reviews, and a variety of news stories, often illustrating them with her own drawings. <span style="font-size:78%;color:#ff0000;">Left: This satirical drawing of a dandyish Greenwhich Village resident accompanied Barnes's 1916 article "How the Villagers Amuse Themselves." </span><strong><em><span style="font-size:78%;">Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913-1919, an exhibition of 45 objects including drawings, works on paper, documentary photographs, and stories in newsprint by the celebrated writer Djuna Barnes will be presented in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art from January 20 through October 28, 2012 at Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York. <a href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/">http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/</a>. </span></em></strong><strong>GREENWICH VILLAGE</strong> Barnes’s liberal sexuality fit in perfectly with the bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village and, later, the lesbian expatriate community in Paris. From her first articles in 1913 until her departure for Europe in 1921, she specialized in a type of journalism that was less about current events and more about her observations of the diverse personalities and happenings that gave readers an intimate portrait of her favorite character-New York City. Attempting to capture its transition from turn of the century city to modern metropolis, Barnes developed her unique style of “newspaper fictions,” offering impressionistic observations and dramatizing whatever she felt to be the true significance of subtexts of a story. Prior to publishing the modernist novels and plays for which she is now remembered, such as Ryder (1928), Nightwood (1936) and The Antiphon (1958), which present complex portrayals of lesbian life and familial dysfunction, Barnes supported herself as a journalist and illustrator for a variety of daily newspapers and monthly magazines including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, McCalls, Vanity Fair, Charm and the New Yorker. <strong>THE BOHEMIAN LIFESTYLE</strong> In 1915 Barnes moved to a flat in Greenwich Village, where she became part of a thriving Bohemian community of artists and writers counting among her social circle Dadaist artists and poets. One supporter was Guido Bruno, an entrepreneur and promoter of published magazines and chapbooks out of his garret on Washington Square. He was willing to risk prosecution by publishing Barnes’s 1915 collection, The Book of Repulsive Women, with its explicit poetic descriptions of sex between women, at a time when lesbianism was virtually invisible in American culture. Barnes was unusual among Villagers in having been raised with a philosophy of free love, espoused both by her grandmother and her father. She retained sexual freedom as a value and had a number of affairs with both men and women during her Greenwich Village days. <strong>PARIS SOJOURN</strong> (1921-1930) Barnes first traveled to Paris on assignment for McCall’s Magazine, where she soon became a well-known figure on the local scene; her black cloak and her acerbic wit are remembered in memoirs of the time. She was part of the inner circle of the influential salon hostess, Natalie Barney, who would become a lifelong friend and patron, as well as the central figure in Barnes’s satiric chronicle of Paris lesbian life, Ladies Almanack, which was published under the pseudonym “A Lady of Fashion.” However, the most important relationship of Barnes’s Paris years was with the artist Thelma Wood, a Kansas native who had come to Paris to become a sculptor. Driven by Barnes’s influence Wood took up silverpoint instead, producing animals and plants that one critic compared to Rousseau. By 1922 they moved in together in a flat on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. In 1928 Barnes dedicated Ryder and Ladies Almanack to Thelma Wood the year that both books were published and the year that she and Wood separated. <strong>NEW YORK CITY AGAIN</strong> Barnes published little journalism in the 30s and was largely dependent on the largesse of the art patron, Peggy Guggenheim. Barnes was constantly ill and drank more heavily. After an attempted suicide Guggenheim funded hospital visits and doctors, but finally lost patience and sent Barnes be back to New York. During her Patchin Place years, Barnes became a notorious recluse. E.E. Cummings, who lived across the street, checked on her periodically, others put roses in her mailbox. It is at this time that Barnes stopped drinking in order to begin work on her verse play The Antiphon, that drew heavily on her own family history, the writing was fueled with anger. Although Barnes had other female lovers, in later years she was known to claim, “I am not a lesbian; I just loved Thelma.” <em><strong>BARNES WAS ELECTED TO THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS IN 1961. SHE WAS THE LAST SURVIVING MEMBER OF THE FIRST GENERATION OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MODERNISTS WHEN SHE DIED IN NEW YORK IN 1982. </strong></em></div>Polly Guerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350403789639176075noreply@blogger.com0