Joseph Cornell’s studio, soup season, and a hierarchy of geraniums

[fabiadrake]

The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson, 2025
Odd yet fascinating to me: Wes Anderson has recreated Joseph Cornell’s studio.

This is one of my favourite types of fashion article — 9 Best Non-Fashion Fashion Films.

“My advice is driven by the realisation that when people ask me ‘How do I dress for the English countryside?’ they are not asking that at all. They don’t want me to tell them how to dress like a farmer or a shepherdess: they want me to tell them how to Fit In with those they aspire to fit in with. What they are really saying is, ‘How can I look like a fantasy of an English country person, specifically a posh, aristocratic version of the above? How do I channel Lady Mary?’” Perhaps this may come in useful for you? Or perhaps even me? (My sartorial choices for long walks in the English countryside, which I do a lot, are more Monty Don: hardwearing cotton trousers, chore jackets/raincoats, muted colours, strong boots, and practical yet non-hideous hats. But then I have not yet been obliged to fit in with aristocrats. Occasionally when out walking I cross paths with a lord, whose title I did not catch, and he seems to subtly approve my distaste for athleisure so I feel that’s enough for me.)

Not that I have the slightest idea about geranium snobbery.

Far more usefully, Anna Jones has posted a number of soup recipes.

If you need help/forewarning on reading The Brothers Karamazov, it is at hand.

Angus Colwell’s Top 50 London Restaurants list gets a refresh. (Sông Quê mention! Take a friend.)

Borough Kitchen is very discreet about its clearance sales.

“In fact many claims involving very old people down the ages are questionable. One of the most famous historical examples was the Countess of Desmond, a very old woman during the reign of James I who claimed to have danced with Richard III as a young girl, something not really believed by any historians, as it would have made her over 120 (she said he was a very good dancer).” Ed West has a three-part series on overlapping events/lives in history, and my excuse for pulling out a non-factual one is that I simply can’t help having a soft spot for this elderly 17th century lady telling barefaced lies about her dancing days. I recall from Edith Sitwell (both her delightful book The English Eccentrics and her poem “On the Vanity of Human Aspirations”) that a chronicle of the time claimed that the Countess of Desmond died in 1732, at the age of 140, through falling from an apple tree.