Our gold medal find at Port 33 Vintage

As I mentioned, one of the reasons Tom and I included Denmark on this trip was to explore more deeply my mad love of Danish design. It is so clean and well designed and well made and beautifully proportioned. It is functional but it lasts.

Mogensen (who I mentioned yesterday re: the film we saw at the Design Museum) studied under Kaare Klint, a father of Danish design who emphasized top quality and perfect craftsmanship. He also felt strongly that anything superfluous to function should be stripped away. So upholstery? Out. Mogensen then worked for FDB Møbler under Frederick Nielson. FDB's mission was to provide functional, comfortable furniture to the general population. 

Anyway, during this creative heyday, the preeminent lighting designer in Denmark was Poul Henningsen. For 42 years he designed all manner of lamp for Louis Poulsen, a renowned lighting manufacturer. Henningsen's various models are so common globally that you've probably seen them, or copies inspired by them, without even realizing it. Here are some examples...

^   PH Artichoke; PH 3½; PH 5   ^

Yesterday, on a break from eating pulled pork sandwiches and tacos, we walked to Port 33 Vintage, a market just outside of Reffen's back entrance. It is a huge warehouse full of dust and treasures and junk, the sort of place you have to spend time searching through but in which might be some gold medal discoveries.

As I meandered through vases and port glasses and broken kids' toys and seemingly infinite mid-century chairs, I spied what looked like a PH 5. Dirty, yes, but the metal screens were unbent, the spacers were all in alignment, and the colored parts were the most delightful red and blue, one of my faves. I checked the neck, and there was the label: Louis Poulsen. Model and other original markers were there too. 

I started to get the total-body feeling of thrill. Here I was. In Copenhagen, the birthplace of Poul Henningsen, to see Danish design in the flesh. And a real piece, not a remake could maybe be mine. I texted my darling cousin who is a designer. 

"Doll- it's em and I'm at a vintage market in Copenhagen where I have found this original Poulsen pendant. What do you think?"

His response was to "Snatch that up and never let go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I negotiated to 1050 Danish kroner which, even knowing that the cord needed replacing and not knowing exactly what I'd find under the accumulated dirt, I knew was a fabulous deal. 

After the renting of the bikes and going to and from Christianshavn to find an ATM and knocking on the closed market door with a beer once finally back but after watching England score the first goal, the dealer told me how to take the lamp apart should I need/want to and packed it in a filthy, ancient box. I promised I would carry it home as a personal item. He was such a dear.

On the metro home, a random Dane peered into the box and said, "Oh! A vintage PH lamp. Did you just find it?"

"Yes," I said. "I just got it at a vintage place." He asked how much, I told him, and he was all "You got a GREAT deal. Especially since it's the red one. That's the best. Usually those go for around 2000 or more kroner. You are lucky. Great find."

I felt smugly wonderful in front of Tom who thus far had largely supported this mad endeavor simply because he loves me. Which is absolutely enough, but I suspect there may have been an interior eye roll in Port 33. There are NO more eye rolls now. Darling man immediately started researching authentic replacement cords (he found a great site and ordered everything today after we saw the current PH 5 models [version 6 now] in a store today). Cooler than cool is that we are nearly certain that ours is a version 3 manufactured here in Denmark in 1988 AND this year, 2018, is the 60th anniversary of the PH 5 lamp itself!!

I am just in heaven. What a special find on a special trip! We carefully took the lamp apart, cleaned it all (unbelievable what great condition it is in), and packed it in the materials we'd brought (I always travel with both bubble and foam wrap, tissue paper, and packaging tape) plus the repurposed box from the market. I can't wait to see this beauty hanging above my reading chair in our room.

Really good reading (Karl Ove Knausgaard), kitchen update

Since I can remember, which to be fair is only since about the age of 6, I have so enjoyed having older friends. High on the list of both options and favorites included my parents' friends, and even my Nanny's. I attribute this to never quite feeling like I fit it with peers my age, finding comfort in those who'd lived a bit longer, made it through various gantlets (who else wonders about gantlet versus gauntlet? See below for a deeper-in-brief understanding.), and shrugged aside what no longer mattered or should.

Being that I am nearly 42, I cannot for the life of me recall why I started this post this way. I mean, it's all true, but where was I going with my older-friend (discussion)? And why, after nothing more than a question from Jack regarding (a fifth) dinner, have I forgotten my direction?

I attribute this both to being nearly 42 and to having been home with a sick'ish child for two days while also being in the midst of our renovation and having a 3rd grade class play to attend to. Plus trump. He's generalized anxiety at its worst. Robert Reich, who I heard speak last night, feels we have much work to do but also should feel lots of optimism. We must get back to the common good, the unwritten moral obligations we each feel for others, for those are the threads that bind. Here's hoping.

In any case, good reading. 

There is always too much good reading to ever actually complete, but, if you love being swept away in deceptively simply observation of places and people, I beseech you to make time for Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Norwegian writer who lives in a tiny town in Sweden. 

I suspect that being friends with KOK would be difficult. He seems quite the artistic dervish really. Naturally, he is ruggedly handsome, perennially windswept and tan. And he smokes. But I am besotted by his writing, by his ability to see where he is and make you feel that you, too, are there. Smelling what he smells, meeting who he meets, smoking as he smokes. 

He first came on my radar three years ago, when he published in the New York Times a masterful travelogue/essay/memoir-lite about travel through North America. He managed to traverse some epically barren places, but my god did I shortly want to go where he had gone. To see the combination tub-shower-wall that seemed it couldn't have fit through the door but also couldn't have been crafted in that room. To experience the silence and space and immense rurality of some of the places he visited. In the country that is my home, and in the one that is my immediate northern neighbor. 

That piece stuck with me, not least because I consider myself nearly hampered by my observations but here was a writer making beautiful of it. And then I read about his enormous, multi-volume autobiography, and picked up "Autumn." The Guardian loathed it, considered it twee and horrid, but honestly, I loved it. I love the way he describes a wall or a spill of blood or a church or authenticity and the way we all search for and are drawn to it. Is KOK self-indulgent and dramatic? Maybe. But is his eye impeccable and is his hand deft? Without a doubt.

And then, last Sunday, this roguish Scandinavian took us to Russia via not enough pages in the New York Times Magazine. Not having read Turgenev's “A Sportsman’s Sketches," (1852) I can, nonetheless, feel I understand that which Knausgaard remains drawn to: "modest, aimless" stories that manage to portray so much, perhaps even the whole of the story.

There is something utterly magnetic in Knausgaard's rendering of place. Something completely authentic and crucial. Something essential. The everyday. Life.

I can imagine that for some such writing is mundane. But to me it is magical. And while I in no way want this to seem aggrandizing, I wonder if the magical in the mundane is maybe what can get us back to a truer sense of the common good. 

What if we first met each other as teammates? For example, my kitchen renovation. I need a team and I have one. My team is young (30s) and old (70s). They speak English and Spanish in varying degrees of fluency, and no, that doesn't wholly map with age. They are from this country and beyond. They live in cities and they live so much farther out. They are single and they are married. Some are grandparents, some are gay. I do not know where their political affiliations rest, but I do know that all of us respect the others' talents and that each of us can and do work toward a common end. We share a bathroom and a microwave, a lunch break and many hours. I watch videos of their children's musical concerts, I see photographs of their grandbabies, and I hear the woes that teenagers and college freshman bring. I think that were something horrible to befall us here, we would keep each other safe, even if that meant risk.

That is the pattern that has been revered, never completely was, is not, but could be. It is what writers like Knausgaard are drawn to and record, it is what Reich implored us to bring back, and while I still don't totally know why I started writing about older friends, I wonder if that thread is related. What we keep and what we shed as we age and our values come together and focus.

~~~
Oh, and even though I did just find termites in our deck (FFS), our kitchen is coming along swimmingly, thank gawd. The two far left cabinets in the second picture will have glass fronts too- coming...

On guns and kitchens

I am still so upset about the most recent mass shooting that I can't wholly articulate my thoughts yet.

I will say this: If you feel that your right to have an assault rifle trumps a child's right to safely attend school, you are sick and have truly fucked up priorities. If you think that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and you can watch this video of bloody kids (shot) dead in classrooms, you are wrong and sick and have some sort of terrifyingly selfish ability to compartmentalize the facts on the ground. If you think that "thoughts and prayers" are anything but an offensive and grotesque slap in the face to all victims of gun violence, you are wrong and beyond offensive.

Emma Gonzalez, a 17-year-old student from Parkland, FL, said it best: "We call BS!" If you haven't seen her powerful speech at the anti-gun rally following the slaughter at her school, please watch.

***

In lighter news, our damn kitchen renovation. We had a few hairy days following Tuesday's debacle with the plumbing permit. On Thursday, after paying one water commission inspector $200 to come out and count our toilets (to double-confirm the number we and our plumber had already provided), I spent four hours at the water commission attempting to finish things.

Initially I was told that we would have to "put our renovation on hold for 6-8 months until WSSC could come out and install the new main and meter." Early responses to my plea that "not only do I currently have no kitchen but also I have two kids and there are holes all over my house" included "rules are rules." Ah, yes, but I didn't break the rules.

Finally, after applying for an abandonment permit, a service connection permit, attaching a notarized promise to pay for the upgraded service to my house note, paying the abandonment fee, and paying for a new permit, I was promised continuation of our renovation PENDING an inspection Friday morning. After that was complete, I waited several hours for an elusive yellow sticker to be granted. Now, we can proceed.

Fortunately, and I say this with the most sincere gratitude in the world, we really do have an amazing team. They continued work on everything that didn't require inspection such as dry wall repair, replacing a random rotten board on our deck, patching the floors, and finishing up the new register installs. Everything is looking good and cabinet delivery starts early next week. 

Before the snow started falling today, we had a gloriously sunny morning. I went nuts working in the yard- dividing my houseplants, pruning and sawing, raking and bagging. My soul felt so happy and light. My yard is one of my primary sources of life and joy. Thank goodness we can afford to keep our access to water and hoses. I am grateful. 

two happy plants are now four