Tanglewood Conservatories Blog – Alan Stein's Writings about Custom Conservatory Design and More

We recently received this message from our friend Jan Kirsh about her new collection of outdoor fruit and vegetable sculptures. This is not as strange as it may sound- these are large landscape art pieces that are exquisitely modeled and produced.

Jan is a well known Landscape Designer in the Chesapeake Bay area.

Jan writes: “I am thrilled to announce that my new collection of Indoor/Outdoor Fruit and Vegetable Sculptures will debut at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in NYC. I am calling this new phase of my business Jan Kirsh Studio.

My sensual, over-sized fruit and vegetable sculptures will be displayed in the MADE Section at the AD Show from March 26-29th, 2009. The MADE section is described as “A juried selection of limited-edition and one-of-a-kind fine art objects, decorative arts and furnishings.”

To see a preview of my work, please visit my website www.jankirsh.com and click on the Sculpture Link at the bottom of the home page. My dream is to continue designing gardens and integrate sculpture into the garden designs. If you are already tending and enjoying a garden we have built together, let’s visit and discuss the possibilities.

It would be wonderful to see you at the show!

Please do pass this email along to your art loving friends.”

Thanks so much,
Jan

I received this note from our friend Matthew Glover about his upcoming bicycle trip through India to raise money for HEAL. I hope you will consider donating to this very worthy cause.

Hi

Ali and I are taking part in Cycle India again – a 200 mile sponsored bike ride through the Indian countryside over 4 days.

It would be great if you would consider sponsoring us and making a donation to Heal by clicking:

http://www.justgiving.com/matthewglover

The money you donate will go towards helping educate and support orphaned and underprivileged children in Andhra Pradesh, India. Heal is a very small charity run by volunteers so any money you donate will not be squandered and go directly to the children who need your help.

For more information about the event we are taking part in please visit www.cycleindia.org.

Thank you.

Regards

Matthew and Ali

I came across a great book that I had picked up at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago a few years ago and then inadvertently misplaced.

Back in November 2001, the well-know artist Dale Chihuly created thirty of his characteristic art-glass pieces and installed them throughout the conservatory set among the permanent collections of exotic plants.

They were interestingly placed, entwined with the branches and trunks, suspended in space or floating in the many indoors ponds providing an interesting contrast with the profuse natural vegetation.

“With names like Peacock Blue Tower, Macchia Forest, Ikebana, most of the pieces used elements first used in other contexts, but now ‘recontextualized’ in a site-specific assemblage” – as the book notes. There were glass reeds, fronds, Art Nouveau Tiffany-type snakes and blossoms which were contrasted with natural environments within the greenhouses.

Here are a few pictures of the works.

However, the part of the book that I actually liked the best was in the beginning. Seemingly unrelated to the subject matter at hand, there were 23 reproductions of old colorized black and white postcards and photographs depicting many of the original great conservatories built in America.

What looks to be a postcard image from the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco shows the newly constructed Conservatory in Golden Gate Park, now known as the “Conservatory of Flowers”.

There were some images of buildings I had never seen before including an elaborate conservatory labeled “Conservatory Garfield Park, Chicago, IL”. It features two large glass “onion domes” on top of a very complex roof.

This one caught my eye because I have just been working on a history of the existing conservatory at Garfield Park in Chicago- and it doesn’t look anything like the one pictured. In fact I used one of the colorized images from the book showing the current conservatory at Garfield Park in the new “Our Heritage” section of our website. If you go to this page you can see the “other” Garfield Park conservatory. I wonder what happened to the older one?

I’m going to post these wonderful images on our site shortly, but in the meantime here are few that I really liked.

What a wonderful heritage we have- and some high standards to live up to! More to come on these.

Alan