Lola at the Coffee House, Cafe 101

I have quite a few of these "coffee table books" - architectures of Mexico,
Tuscany style, Los Angeles houses (the old Spanish type) Coastal and so on. I like to look at them from time to time and when I am in a bookstore (less and less since Amazon.com) I always go to the section of architecture and interior design.

Love Le Corbusier's furniture, the chair his most famous:



I used to sell that in just about every interior showroom I worked in and then at my own in Laguna and Newport Beach. It's more comfortable than it looks.

I'd usually keep one book on the old coffee table but the one guests would pick up most is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. One thing about them is if there's a burglar in the house, they would be considered weapons.

I have the "coffee table" sized books of Lansdownes "Birds of the Us " series These are some of the best action avian portraits, so loaded with action. Ive seen the Elephant folios of Audubon and Im really not that impressed (Obviously the books are worth bazillions , but not, IMHO, for the quality of the art therein.

My favorite coffee table book is the Ed Hopper one . It has a fairly complete run of his works.

As far as computer resolution, Id have to say that, an Apples color renditions are superioir to PCs and I dont know why. Ive shown a friend a side by side version of a Dela Robbia vase and the PC'c color was a bit weird , even when optimized

heres a della robbia (Roseville version). The design is to the turquoise blue yet, when I view it on a PC the blue always comes out grayish

That Corbu chair is so beautiful. Also, to me the positioning of the angle of the seat/back is perfect.

Lightwizard, I used to have a Wassili Chair in my office, the most comfortable chair in the entire building. Never go out of style and never break either.

farmerman, that reminds me of that old movie "Mr. Hobbs takes vacation"
where Mr. Hobbs (James Stewart) went out with all the serious bird watchers.
I have an Apple, so the vase has this beautiful bluish/green color.

I forgot: an Ed Hopper book is another conversation piece over the coffee
table. I like his pictures very much too. Same with David Hockney or Jasper
Jones or Liechtenstein. Heck, I even like good old Norman Rockwell.

D Give me the natural expressions of true workmanship in wood , like the work of Nakashima or Maloof and Im a happy guy.

You should used a photoshop application to correct the color. Google's Picasa 3 is free and performs tasks you'd pay about $ 40.00 to $100.00 for in software. It also keeps the originals which you can delete but it's not necessary -- uploading the corrected images back into Picasa and you can re-adjust the color, contrast, fill light, detail, color intensity, et al.

I'll download this into mine and correct the color and upload it so you can see the result.

Yes -- I had a pair of them (copies, 'cause the Knoll was very expensive and even Breton who manufactures the chair was expensive). I placed them opposite the sofa on a Persian rug, a nice contrast of old and new.

Maloof definitely, I can't get warm with Nakashima though. Too austere for
my taste.

Can we not get a podium in here with some spotlights so that LW can have a position in our midst that more befits his station?

I've seen it happen many times. When the people in the immediate vicinity of those who use every conversation as a means of reflecting glory upon themselves get pissed off with it, as they do, they, the trumpet voluntaries, often relocate in order to find a fresh lot of saps to do it to all over again. A new location also enables them to refine their spiel because in any fresh neighbourhood there are no witnesses to the earlier events and thus great scope for invention exists. There's a word for it in the military where people are coming and going all the time but I can't just recall it at the moment. It rhymes with dullknitting.

I have no room on my coffee table for books. What with my company accounts and my investment portfolio and my choice of three candies, Jelly Babies, Pontrefact Cakes and Cadbury's Eclairs, and my Golden Virginia tobacco pouch with the necessary accsessories, and my chocolate digestive biscuits and some notes for a literary experiment I am working on, and the photograph of the only lass I ever loved taken in her prime, which was something to behold I can tell you, and my onyx ashtray which I swapped for a pack of Chesterfield's with a tribesman and a plastic fossil relipca, finished in dunge brown, of a 699,746,269 year old sabre toothed tiger's jawbone thought to be, by leading scientists, part of the missing link between an amoeba and a hippopotamous, which I keep to maintain a modicum of focus, and my table mat, on which there is always a drink at hand, and my remote controls with which I watch the world over the horizon and the space on which I place my feet----what with that lot and my antique coffee table only being 6 feet long there is no room to display any of those large glossy books with the coloured diagrams and easy to follow explanations with which to impress my visitors with my breadth of knowledge and profound erudition.

I wouldn't want to impress them anyway. They are all wankers and W.C said to never smarten up a chump and if I did they would only seek my advice on matters of importance such as which way to vote on propositions placed before the electorate.

The only advice I have is to keep a clean head and always carry a lightbulb. I might advise to not arrange meets with LW unless you like hagiographic life stories on a loop tape.

Is this any closer?

This is getting laughable. The beta minus artistic taste competition. I can't work out which one is taking the piss. Cal probably.

Art, like the kids in the schools, is nowhere. It's just poise at that in-between level in the social order where people are neither one thing or the other. They are those to whom it is done who do not know they are having it done to them as opposed to the majority of people who do know and are therefore not as stupid.

Why Spendius, I do believe you are displaying a bit of envy..

Don't prod the troll -- it makes them angry and they begin to screech louder and louder.

I'm busy looking up Maloof and Nakashima. After that I'll come back and regale you with the books I have on my brazilian cabinet top (bought at "antique" emporium for $90.00), my coffee tables stacked as they are in my garage.

site on Maloof - http://azar.yvod.com/mej/Sam.Maloof.htm

Nakashima pieces -



I'm more immediately comfortable with the Maloof style, but do understand liking Nakashima's work.

So, on the cabinet top... all photographers


ideas without end - Imogen Cunningham
Flora - Imogen Cunningham
Sleeping by the Mississippi - Alex Soth
Figments from the Real World - Gary Winogrand
A Thousand Hounds - Raymond Merritt & Miles Barth
Dogs and Their Women - Barbara Cohen and Louise Taylor
Bones - Keith Carter
dog - Deborah Samuel
Chim - David Seymour
A Propos de Paris - Henri Cartier Bresson
The Care and Feeding of Cats - Eleanor Booth Simmons
The Cats of Venice - Shin Otani
small books:
Joseph Sudek
Chris Killif
Martin Chambi
Walker Evans
Henri Cartier-Bresson

Now I'm annoyed/worried - where is my Marc Riboud book?

LW, no, I have the color on the PC optimized, the Apple just is geared more to graphics than is a PC.It also seems that the definition of space is better