January 31st, 2012
It is snowing outside, but in our hearts – and our windows – it is spring! A festive rococo garden is blossoming in our windows, designed by bureau sacha von der potter.
In honor of St. Valentine, Juno, Pan, and the archaic Feast of Lupercalia, the installation “Mignonne, allons voir si la rose” is an exuberant orchard of plants and trinkets. A floral and synthetic whirl and an abundance of fluorescent colors invade the SEPTIEME ETAGE space, and for the month of February, morph it into a garden of fantasy and plenty, combining the ticky-tacky and the sublime. Do click on the images below for an animated version!
Created by two graphic designers, a product designer, and an architect, the bureau von der potter conceives projects in which graphic design and interior design are always complimentary.www.bureausvdp.com
And since we know you long to slip into some sumptuous spring attire, and perhaps something cozy for this snowy spring, we reorganised the store with racks that spell our love for the designers we want to share with you – a garden of plenty that includes Alexander Wang, Opening Ceremony and Mayle racks at prices that allow for LOTS of plenty!
And there is another thing we want to share – two gardens we long for.
Close to Rome, the “Bosco Sacro” (Sacred Grove) of Bomarzo is the work of Pier Francesco Orsini, who with the help of architect Pirro Ligorio created it as an homage to his beloved wife. Intended not to please, but to astonish, it is sprinkled with surreal statues that appear to be unconnected to any rational plan, and appear to have been strewn almost randomly about the area, sol per sfogare il cuore ( “just to set the heart free”), as the inscription on one obelisk says. Enigmatic verses in Italian by Annibale Caro, Bitussi, and Cristoforo Madruzzo, some of them now eroded, were inscribed in the stone beside the sculptures.
The garden was long neglected and forgotten during the 19th and 20th century, only to be rediscovered by Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, and it inspired Niki de Saint Phalle for her garden in Tuscany. Since the 70s the Bettini family has restored it, and its statues overgrown with moss have swirled through the imagination of writers, filmmakers, and artists ever since.
On the other side of the world, in the mountainous jungles of Mexico’s Huesteca Region, the Englishman Edward James spent 40 years creating a huge landscape garden with follies. A poet and a wealthy patron of Surrealism, who already owned West Dean in Sussex, bought the Las Posas ranch at Xilitla in 1944 and, in collaboration with Plutarco Gasbélum Esquer, spent the next 40 years creating a sort of Surrealist Stowe or buffo Bomarzo – a park with canals, pools, and, above all, nearly 40 different concrete sculptures.
Jorge Vertiz © 2007
The follies were suitably Surrealist – a library without books, a ‘stairway to nowhere’, a cinema without seats and (very Bomarzo) the ‘Three-Storey House’ with, in fact, five storeys. Yes, we are called “SEPTIEME ETAGE”, and yes we are on the ground floor of a building with 4 floors – how could we not be charmed?
As time is unkind to neglected gardens and jungle even harsher, Las Posas, though doubtless made more romantic by the jungle, is also being swiftly overgrown. A foundation, www.xilitla.org, tells you more about this story, and prevents the garden and its follies from crumbling into oblivion.
To toast to the folly of spring we invite you to meet Manon, Célia, Anh and Paul of the bureau svdp on Thursday February 2nd from 5-8 pm at the store with some bubbly champagne, and to come and marvel and enjoy their sense of wonder anytime during this month of February.
xxxKatharina
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