Summer Love 2009
and
Livin' Easy 1992

On a recent trip to the Huntington Gardens here in Pasadena, California, I spent a few hours
in the rose garden, enjoying the names of the roses. From Apache Tears, Pillow Fight, Modern Art, and Rosie O' Donnel, there seemed to be a rose named after everything and everyone.



----------




Summer Love and Livin' Easy were two of my favorites, out
of the 30 that I photographed.
Perhaps, I'll plant these two in my front yard at some point,
as a reminder to live loose in the summer.




------------

"Rules for naming roses are put in place by the International Cultivar Registration Authority. Though they do not have the force of law, the rules are widely observed: a maximum of 10 syllables and 30 letters or characters per name. This helped stifle the trend toward naming roses after royal personages with a half-dozen ancestral names."



"According to the authors, (Douglas Brenner and Stephen Scanniello titled, "A Rose by Any Name: The Little-Known Lore and Deep-Rooted History of Rose Names.") there are more than 15,000 rose species and cultivars in the world and thousands more, extinct now, that live on in old catalogs. Every one has a name and a story about how that name was acquired."

text taken from here..













----------------------

Charles Rohlfs

Charles Rohlfs
1853-1936

in LA now!
NY this Fall.

One of my favorite museum shows I've seen this year, easily.
“The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs” opened at The Huntington on
May 22 and continues through Sept. 6 in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.










chair, 1929

Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936) stands among the leaders of the nation’s first foray into modernist design, along with Frank Lloyd Wright and Gustav Stickley. However, the multiplicity of his sources —which include influences from British Arts and Crafts, French Art Nouveau, and East Asian furniture, among other design traditions—makes the work difficult to categorize and has kept Rohlfs on the periphery of scholarship that has focused on more easily defined turn-of-the-century styles.

The exhibition surveys his extraordinary furniture and decorative objects through 44 examples, including pieces made by the artist for his own home as well as major commissioned works. Bringing together masterpieces culled from the collections of 10 museums and several private collections, the exhibition and accompanying book reflect new scholarship based on the Rohlfs family archives and recently discovered primary source material.

Charles Rohlfs' living room, 156 Park Street.
Photograph ca. 1922.

Rohlfs was the son of a cabinetmaker in Brooklyn and trained in design at the Cooper Union in New York City. In 1884, he married the popular novelist Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935), who is now credited as a collaborator in the artist’s work and contributor to the design of some of the motifs he carved into his furniture. Green was an extremely successful mystery writer whose work is represented in The Huntington’s library holdings.










Charles Rohlfs
1853-1936

in LA now!
NY this Fall.


-------

the huntington
gardens.
a spring
sunday.

Spent a long lazy Sunday
visiting the Huntington Gardens with Mr. RJ!
Amazing gardens and sculpture. A must for anyone
coming to Los Angeles! An incredible way to kill the afternoon.
More photos soon!

"A private, nonprofit institution, The Huntington was founded in 1919 by Henry E. Huntington, an exceptional businessman who built a financial empire that included railroad companies, utilities, and real estate holdings in Southern California.



Huntington was also a man of vision – with a special interest in books, art, and gardens. During his lifetime, he amassed the core of one of the finest research libraries in the world, established a splendid art collection, and created an array of botanical gardens with plants from a geographic range spanning the globe."

don't miss the collection
of vintage lightbulbs!
over 100 plus lightbulbs
of different sizes.








------------