Born into churros

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Recently a friend asked me to suggest a good place to get churros in Madrid. I offered a few suggestions, but insisted that she first try the best churros con chocolate Madrid has to offer at Chocolat in the Huertas district. I can’t think of a better breakfast, treat, or late night snack than crispy, fried-to-perfection churros lightly dusted with sugar and dipped in piping hot, delicious thick hot chocolate. The charming video below, which profiles Charo Salguero Venegason, fondly known as “Grandmother of Churros,” is a real treat too. She’s a living legend from the small town of El Puerto de Santa María, Spain. Charo’s churreria isn’t just a business—it’s her life.

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A very big book

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s The First Folio. The collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare that was published in London in 1623. Considered to be one of the most influential books ever published, only about 230 copies of an original printing of 750 copies are known to have survived. The Victoria and Albert Museum has three copies, and in the video below, they lead the viewer on a tour through one of them. In this video, Elizabeth James, senior librarian at the National Art Library in London, and Harriet Reed, curator of contemporary performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, open and explore this fascinating 400-year-old document, detailing its creation, content and enduring influence.

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Posted in Books, Europe, History, Libraries, Museums | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Tattoo You

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

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The Poor Man’s Rembrandt

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Visitors to Amsterdam often take home Rembrandt related artwork in the form of posters, postcards, or T-shirts. Now they can also take home  permanent Dutch souvenirs on their own bodies. Travelers searching for that perfect keepsake of their time in the Netherlands can have one of Rembrandt van Rijn’s masterpieces in the form of a tattoo permanently applied by a tattoo studio aptly dubbed The Poor Man’s Rembrandt Project at the Rembrandthuis Museum.

Dutch tattoo artistsHenk Schiffmacher ( aka Hanky Panky) and Tycho Veldhoen will set up at the studio offering a wide variety designs based on the artist’s popular artworks. Rembrandt fans will get inked right where Rembrandt lived and worked from 1639 to 1658.

“We see ourselves as the artists’ house. Rembrandt was not just living there and working there, but also teaching his pupils,” museum director Milou Halbesma commented. “We want to work in our new studio space with Dutch artists to connect with the public—and we consider Schiffmacher and Veldhoen artists. It’s about the challenge for every museum: to reach the next generation.”

Tattoo buyers  can choose from a variety of Rembrandt-inspired designs, from a selection of his self-portraits to imagery drawn from his etchings, as well a copy of the artist’s signature and even a drawing of the Rembrandt House Museum itself.

 

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How to design a transit map

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

If you are a regular visitor to Travel Between The Pages. you are probably aware of my long interest in public transit systems and the maps that help us negotiate those services. I’m not sure where my fascination with public transit began, but my best guess would be riding the New York City subways as a small child. As an adult, I always try and explore new cities via their transit networks and I still study transit maps wherever I go.

The beautifully designed regional transit map for Oslo, Norway above was created by designer Torger Jansen. In his 10-minute video below he explains how he designed an unofficial transit map that combines all three of Oslo’s public transportation networks (tram, metro, train) into a single diagram. His four main goals:

1. Showing all the lines on every network, thus making it easier to understand the service patterns.
2. Making it recognisable with the official line colours.
3. Compressing unnaturally long distances between stations.
4. Balancing aesthetics and accessibility. The diagram is clear and easy to read with minimal fuss.

As Jansen notes, this is not how a design process would work in the real world — there’s no user testing or competing stakeholders to please — but from a purely aesthetic and functional standpoint, it’s still an interesting challenge and puzzle to attempt to solve.

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Bookstore Art

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

I have seen the painting pictured above many times online, but I only just took the time to research the artist. Although the image is often labeled as Bookstore (woman reading), I’m not sure what the actual title should be. The wonderfully atmospheric work is by the late Dutch artist Willy Elize Belinfante-Sauerbier. She often painted images of browsers in Amsterdam and Rotterdam bookshops and book markets. I managed to track down a few other images of painting and prints from this long series. The next time that i visited the Netherlands, I’ll be certain to try and locate more of her work.

 

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What’s your sign

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

I have recently noticed a number of stories online suggesting that there is a resurgence in the popularity of astrology. While I do not want to wander into the quagmire of discussing  astrology, it’s interesting to note that the pseudo-science has a long history of capturing the popular imagination in the United States.

Solar Biology by Hiram E. Butler (no relation) may have been the first book in North America to publicize a simplified astrology. Before Butler, astrological readings usually required quite detailed calculations involving time and place of birth that may be familiar to more hardcore astrology buffs. Butler’s book directly influenced the English astrologer and founder of modern astrologyAlan Leo. It is also interesting to see the Christian religious underpinnings of Butler’s work.

Solar Biology, by spiritualist and cult leader Hiram E. Butler, was published in 1887 by The Esoteric Publishing Co., one of the commercial arms of Butler’s Esoteric Fraternity. In addition Solar Biology, Butler and his followers published over 30 books, booklets, and periodicals from the group’s compound in California. The book was continually in print until 1970.

 

 

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The Ideal Library

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Memories of Tomorrow

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

I’ve long been a fan of vintage travel posters and I especially enjoy the historic posters created to promote the U.S. National Parks. In 1934, the park service began to encourage  state and national park tourism by designing their own promotional posters to be displayed at local railroad and bus stations and hotels. In one of its 1934 Park Bulletin newsletters, the organization explained: “With the aid of State Park Emergency Conservation Work Funds, it has been possible for the Service to have printed for distribution to tour bureaus, railroads, schools, travel clubs, etc., a set of six colorful posters depicting national park scenes. Miss Dorothy Waugh, a New York artist, sketched the posters and they were printed by the Burland Printing Company of New York City under contract let by the Government Printing Office. United States citizens for many years have seen the Swiss Alps, the Italian Lake country, and other beauty spots of foreign lands depicted in beautiful posters on display throughout the land and it is time that Americans should be acquainted with their own beauty spots through the same medium.”

Over the course of two years, from 1934 to 1936, artist Dorothy Waugh designed 17 posters for the federal government agency. Waugh’s bright and bold designs proved the perfect visual match for capturing interest in the great outdoors. From 1933 to 1937, Waugh worked as a landscape architect and artist in the Branch of Planning for the park service, at first developing and designing technical manuals for the but eventually turning to the creation of posters promoting state and national parks that would become her hallmark.

I recently stumbled upon this set of posters that Waugh created for the park service. You can read more about her diverse career in a profile of the artist featured on the park service website.

 

 

 

 

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Amsterdam

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Amsterdam

                                                               Sofia Elhillo

Concentric ripple of the canals, little apartment 
at the center point. All June I’ve been in Amsterdam, 
vowels softening to liquid in my mouth. Long walks 
over the cobblestones in the warmest part 
of the afternoon, narrow houses along the water arranged 
like crooked teeth. My steps lead me over a ballet 
of bridges, precarious choreography of bicycles 
and other bodies, the rare car vulgar and roaring 
along the too-small street. I count the faces around 
that could be my faces, features and shades 
from a much older world than this. City I may never 
see again, and still my old need to belong. To daughter
the possibly Sudanese man at the Chipsy King, 
his kind assurance that the dish contains no pork. 
My nails soften and split in the cool dry air. An ashen 
gray patch on my calf and I am ashamed for hours after, 
wetting a finger with saliva to correct it.

About the poem:

“I wrote this poem during a month-long residency in Amsterdam during which I attempted a 30/30 (thirty poems in thirty days) with my friend Hala Alyan. It’s written after Jenny Xie’s poem ‘Corfu,’ which is one of my all-time favorite travel poems. So much of my writing practice during that month involved going on long walks and describing to myself what I was noticing, what I was feeling, retraining my poet’s eye to the present day after a long obsession with history, with all my life’s great ruptures. In this poem, the worst thing that happens is that I was, briefly, ashy. And that was as deserving of poetry as anything else that’s happened.”
—Safia Elhillo

 

 

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