In mid September, 1814; lawyer and sometimes poet Francis Scott Key watched the battle of Fort McHenry while on the deck of a boat moored in Baltimore Harbor. In the days following the battle, he composed a poem he called Defence of Fort McHenry. Key gave his poem to his brother-in-law who noticed that the words fit the melody of To Anacreon in Heaven, a popular pub song at the time. Keys' brother-in-law was a judge named Joseph Nickelson. Nickelson took the poem to a printer and printed up broadsheets of the lyrics and music. On its second printing, the name changed from Defence of Fort McHenry to The Star-Spangled Banner.
This is a copy of Francis Scott Key's original poem
This is a copy of the original broadsheet.
The song grew in popularity and quickly became one of a number of patriotic songs that were used officially and unofficially by the United States. Different functions called for different patriotic songs but there was no national anthem. In the years after the First World War a movement arose to name a single, official song. Out of a number of popular anthem-like songs, The Star-Spangled Banner won and it was named the official anthem of the United States in a law signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1931.
It's a stirring song and here's one of the best renditions of it I've ever heard.
Disclosure time. Francis Scott Key was one of my ancestors, something I learned when I was in college. Every time I hear our national anthem I'm reminded that I am glad to be a citizen of this great country and I'm also reminded of the sacrifices made by my immediate ancestors. I'm proud of that song and it's pretty cool to be a descendant of the man who wrote it. Lovely though it is, there's another song I think sums up the promise and potential of the United States better than The Star-Spangled Banner does. That song of course is America The Beautiful.
America The Beautiful was written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 as a poem called Pike's Peak. It was set to music by Samuel A. Ward in 1910. Here's as stirring a version of it as I could find.
Regardless of the songs you sing today, happy Fourth of July and remember the people whose shoulders you stand on.
It's a holiday weekend and I'm taking advantage of the lull in my web traffic to throw it wide open and write about some things other than design.
I may be alone in this opinion, but I really hate this commercial for AT&T.
I can't stand its assumption that I wish I were five again and I resent this ad's use of one of my favorite songs of all time. It not only gloms onto the Gene Wilder original recording from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it misses the point of the whole song. Here's the song in context.
Willy Wonka is not being nostalgic for his childhood. He's very accurately describing his adulthood.
Being five means you can imagine anything you want to. The other side of it though, is that even if you can imagine something, you're also powerless to do anything with that vision. Nostalgia relies on a selective recollection of the past, and that's why it's worthless as a past time and downright destructive as a cultural force. I remember imagining I could fly when I was five and it was lovely. However, I also imagined that there were monsters under the cellar stairs and they scared the living day lights out of me. The joy of adulthood is that I know that not only can I not fly, I also know that there are no monsters under the stairs. Why is it that this ad and the ideas behind it want me to pine for the days when I believed I could fly but forget that I also believed in the monsters under the cellar stairs?
Here are the lyrics to Pure Imagination:
(Spoken)
Hold your breath
Make a wish
Count to three
(Sung)
Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
We'll begin with a spin
Trav'ling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy
Explanation
(Refrain)
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it
There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be
(Refrain)
There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be
That song was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the great film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The movie was based on the Roald Dahl story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator were two of my favorite books as a kid. I swear my dark sense of humor comes from reading Roald Dahl. My childhood was idyllic by the way.
I'm not one to collect pithy quotes but the refrain from that song hangs next to my sink in my bathroom. I have to look at it every time I brush my teeth. The refrain is the whole point of the song and the whole point of that movie. Here it is again,
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it
Willy's not telling the people on the tour that they are in paradise as they walk around the product of his imagination, he's telling them that they already live in paradise. So do I and so do you. It's why that lyric hangs in my bathroom. Paradise in the context of this song and in the greater context of life is not describing a place, it's describing a state of mind. I live in paradise because I say it's paradise and I treat my life as such. That Willy Wonka refrain keeps me centered and it keeps me grateful. When things start to look less than paradisaical around here, it's always because I'm making bad choices or settling for something because it's easy instead of accomplishing something because it's right. Paradise, like happiness, is an internal state. Staying happy and staying imaginative are functions of will. No amount of nostalgia can make up for a lack of will. To quote Willy Wonka again, Anything you want to, do it.
The imagination of a child is an amazing thing but like all childhood skills and aptitudes, it's under construction. Feats of great imagination recognize the limitations of a given situation and work within that framework. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a masterpiece because Michelangelo imagined how a ceiling could look. The Claire de Lune is so sublime because Claude Debussey imagined how a piano could sound. Great works of literature and art and music and film are created by adults not because there's a dark conspiracy to discredit the imaginations of five-year-old kids. Rather it's that adults understand limitations, sensible ones at any rate.
Imagination doesn't get squashed sometime between the ages of five and 35 automatically. Either it gets refined and made useful or it gets discarded. That's how life goes. Keeping it alive takes a bit of work and quite a bit of discipline. Implying that people reach their creative peak at the age of five is ludicrous.
I'm thrilled that I'm 45 and not five, thrilled. And this ad gives me yet another reason to resent AT&T beyond the usual reasons, dropped calls and spotty coverage.
Back in March, Kitchen.com's editor, Kim Sweet, asked me to participate in an editorial project they were working on. I was honored and said yes before I knew what exactly I was getting into.
The plan was to find well-known kitchens designers (who? me?) and pair us with an influential person outside of the industry. Based on a phone interview, we'd then design a fantasy kitchen for our iconic partners. The plans would never be build so we weren't constrained by such mundane things as budgets or production schedules.
I was paired with chef Ann Cooper. Ann's known as the Renegade Lunch lady and has made it her life's work to improve the quality and healthfulness of kids' school lunches.
Ann lives in the Rocky Mountains, entertains a lot and as a chef, is used to being around commercial equipment. She wanted something transitional, a room where she could cook and entertain at the same time and like everybody, she wanted a lot of room. There needed to be a fully functioning outdoor kitchen as well and it needed a charcoal grill and a wood-burning pizza oven.
I drew a plan in SketchUp and Kitchen.com's incredible renderer Kevin took my basic drawings and made absolute magic out of them.
The house was to be in the mountains and I wanted to honor the location and have the final room be rustic but not primitive. I used an inset, flat-panel cabinet in an off-white painted finish. The counters around the sink and part of the island's wall are in Carrera marble and the rest are in stainless steel. The island that I morphed into a table is an homage to the great Johnny Grey. He built an arced piece of marble into a kitchen and it's haunted me for the last ten years. I hope my version of it did some justice to the original.
I know and admire all three of these women and it's a privilege to be included in any group that involves them. Now that it's finished and now that I see whose designs are part of this project as well, I'm struck by the same question. Why did you pick me? Those three are accomplished, award-winning designers and I'm some schmoe with a big mouth. Whatever the reason, this has been a real thrill so thanks go to Kim, mark and Kevin at Kitchens.com and of course to Ann Cooper for being such a good sport.
I was reminded of that exhibit because I'm working on a post with the marketing folks at MOMA on exhibit they have coming up about modernist kitchens in the early 20th Century. That's coming next week, but I want to dwell on Mr. Dresser here today.
Toast Rack, Christopher Dresser c. 1880
Manufactured by James Dixon and Sons
Prior to seeing those teapots at the Cooper Hewitt, I'd always though that modernism was strictly a 20th century impulse but as you can see from Dresser's work here, modernism's roots dig well into the 19th Century. So even though the conventional wisdom holds that household objects from 130 years ago didn't look like this:
Decanter, Christopher Dresser c. 1879
Manufactured by James Dixon and Sons
Dresser's popularity at the time shows that the Rococo mishmash of ornamentation that most people think of when they think Victorian wasn't universal.
Footed bowl, Christopher Dresser c. 1885
Manufactured by Elkington and Company
Dresser was an industrial designer, his work was meant to be mass produced and to sell. Of course some of his projects were more typical of the time. But what interests me about him are his projects that look forward to a new era all together.
Decanter, Christopher Dresser c. 1879
Manufactured by Hukin and Heath
He was from all accounts an interesting man. He was a botanist by trade and was awarded his doctorate before he traded in his study of plants for the study and creation of objects. It was through his observations of the economy of plant design that he started to rethink the decorative arts. A trip to Japan in 1876 altered his views on ornament permanently. His willingness to look to the forms of other cultures, notably Japanese and Arabian, and to integrate them into his work spawned the wide acceptance of these forms and styles.
Toast Rack, Christopher Dresser c. 1881
Manufactured by Hukin and Heath
Like many of his contemporaries, Dresser was involved in the movement to reform design. Remember that the later 19th Century was a time of great reform movements. The wealth generated by the industrial revolution spawned a class of people who were determined to reform and reinvent their entire society. Design reform was of a piece with sanitary reform, prison reform, workplace reform, etc. The Victorians reformers were going to improve the lot of everybody. Design reform was an attempt to mass produce tasteful objects for the middle and lower classes. Dresser's unadorned objects were not only new, they were less-costly to produce and his sensibilities fit the time when he lived to a T.
I'm old enough to have had a great-grandmother who was keeping house at the time when Dresser was plying his trade. I wonder what she would have thought of his take on their times, the Victorian Era?
