P A P I E R D O R E I L L E

Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Léon Bakst with a swingin', yellow touch

..Et voilà! L'inspiration continue!

Following "The Bakst Issue" (see precedent post), this is one of the latest pieces of the new collection.

A great, opulent, rhinestone handpiece, inspired both by the novel "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and Léon Bakst costumes and ornaments made for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes' (1909-1929) "Scheherazade".

A small, yellow touch reminds of a yellow car zipping through New York in the 20's..

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."

F. SCOTT FITGERALD, The Great Gatsby, Penguin Classics, London, 2000, p.129.

Enjoy and click here to get now your one-of-a-kind déco ornament on the WEBSHOP!!

Franci

Monday, 3 March 2014

"Orientalismes", Paris 1909-2014

It's a cold, sunny day in Paris. Seems to be (no, it's only that I dream it since one-two weeks) a joyful anticipation of Spring, and the trees in the park in front of my atelier's window talk to me about the new season coming.

It's a secret perspective from here, and I can easily look without being seen the profile of a person through the branches, the grass, and the strands of sun painted on the humid ground.

There's also my friend ladybug on the curtain, so I think that in this silence our story can start..

It's to the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov's (1844-1908) Scheherazade and to my private passion for the late 19° and first 20° century Orientalism that some of the 2014 Spring/Summer papierdoreilles are inspired.

At the beginning of 20° century Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris (1909-1929) contributed to change the perception of the orientalist imagery (India, Persia, Byzantium, Central Asia, ancient Russia) through a series of choreographies, screenplays, costume designs and musical compositions which completely re-elaborated a great amount of literary traditions, A Thousand and One Nights being one of the most famous.

The great, immense Léon Bakst designed for many choreographies signed by Fokine and Balanchine an array of costumes, extraordinary rich in precious details.

In the case of A Thousand and One Nights, the artist and costumer mixed the iconography found out into the Indo-Persan miniatures of the book's written tradition to the déco taste developed in the 1910's in Paris, following the issues of Paul Poiret and the fashion illustrations by Georges Lepape and George Barbier on La Gazette du Bon Ton.

Sketches for Scheherazade costumes and scenography, by Léon Bakst

I've been collecting lots of images of Ballets Russes during the last years and the beautiful exhibition Les Milles et une Nuits I saw in Paris in Spring 2013, hosted at the Institut du Monde Arabe has been the last straw for my inspiration.

Scheherazade, costumes by Léon Bakst. Affiche by George Barbier, 1913.

With this small collection I liked to let my imagination free to create all the things I've been lovin' to wear since my orientalist passion came to me:

. a Persian/Hindi headpiece, with a pendant cabochon hosting a couple of swans by English Victorian illustrator and artist Walter Crane (1845-1915)

. a great cabochon ring with the same image

. a pair of crystal pendant earrings, in between Scheherazade and Salomé

. a macramé knotted bracelet, adorned of small precious metal beads,

with a Berber-taste, open-work fermoir

. Byzantine rings, with corals, agate, crystals, baroque river pearls and lapislazuli

. a lace ring with an opaline cabochon, better if in a calcedonium shade

Et voilà.. for the moment!

This is just a preview, 'cause the collection is actually growin' up (and continues to follow Bakst instances)..

Now!! Visit papierdoreille Etsy shop to get your languid-Scheherazade outfit ;-) and prepare yourself to the whole papierdoreille Spring collection!!

Love,

franci

(Note: I am not able to give the picture credits of all the images of this post, because since it's a lot I'm collecting about Ballets Russes I can't remember where I found some of them exactly. In any case, the pictures without my copyright marked-on are not mine.)

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

Green, beautiful, byzantine

Emerald déco earrings

When I think about the adjective “byzantine”, green is one of the first colour coming up in my mind, together with porphyry, gold, white, deep yellow and lapis blue. Particularly, I associate it with mosaics, architectonical elements and pavements production.

Greece, Hosios Loukas, Katholikon. Plan and detail of the opus sectile pavement, 11th cent.

Images © Schultz and Barnsley 1901

The reason of the large use of this colour in byzantine art can be found following two different aesthetical levels. The first concerns the symbolic meaning of green, often connected with heaven and the New Jerusalem; the second one, regarding both architecture and opus sectile pavements, comes from the highest value attributed to green marbles as the so known thessalian and the marvellous serpentine, the precious green porphyry already used in roman antiquity and then widely employed from costantinian architecture during the whole byzantine millennium.

Thessalian or Verde Antico and Serpentine or green porphiry
Images © Del Bufalo 2010 and Gnoli 1988

So, just to give few extraordinary examples in the use of green during the byzantine age:

-the beautiful mosaics from the rotunda of Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki, Greece (alternatively attributed from 4th to 6th century), and the ones from the churches of Acheiropoietos (between 5th and 6th century) and Hagios Demetrios (5th to 7th century) in the same city.

-the thessalian green columns from the nave of the 5th century church of St. John of Stoudion, in Istanbul, Turkey, and its later pavement.

Turkey, Istanbul, St. John of Stoudion Monastery, thessalian columns, 5th cent.
Photo © Francesca Zabarella 2010

Turkey, Istanbul, St. John of Stoudion Monastery, opus sectile pavement, post 1059.
Photo © Francesca Zabarella 2010

-the 6th century mosaics coming from the Great Palace of emperors, Istanbul.

Turkey, Istanbul, Great Palace Mosaics Museum,

-two stripes of thessalian green on the great 6th century proconnesius ground floor of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, and the presence of the same marble in the west tribune’s pavement. The presence of thessalian and serpentine too in the great 12th century omphalos of the ground floor, not to talk about many other architectonical elements in the greatest byzantine building.

Turkey, Istanbul, Hagia Sofia, thessalian and serpentine in the west tribune

and in the great omphalos of the nave

-they’re not properly “byzantine”, but- two examples from the adriatic city of Ravenna, Italy: the 6th century apsidal mosaics from Sant’Apollinare in Classe and San Vitale.

Italy, Ravenna, St. Apollinare in Classe and St. Vitale church, 6th cent. mosaics

-two marvellous pavements and the mosaics from the 10th-11th century complex of Hosios Loukas, near Delphi, Greece.

Greece, Hosios Loukas complex, pavement of the church of the Panagia (plan and detail)

and a mosaic from the Katholikon

-the 14th century precious marble revetments from the church of St Saviour of Chora, Istanbul.

Turkey, Istanbul, Kariye Camii , pavement, 1316-1321

The earrings I show you today are visually inspired both by this so-symbolic colour (one of my favourites) and by another element, the typical early-byzantine impost-capital, open-work decorated with branches, leafs and rosettes.

Turkey, Istanbul, Archaeological Museums,

capital with emperess Theodora monogram, 6th cent.

The design of my creation is conceived starting from the trapezoidal shape of a vegetal-decorated print, then strengthened and plasticized.

To the larger base I applied nine translucid emerald green glass-paste beads, following the ancient roman and byzantine taste, in jewellery production, for the so-called pendulia, particularly for earrings and necklaces.