Chef Sally Schmitt remembers the French Laundry.  She remembers the clam spaghetti and blanquette de veau she served on opening night.  She remembers her late husband, Don Schmitt, opening bottles of wine, tending to the blaze in the fireplace and chatting with guests, an amiable host.  The Schmitts opened the French Laundry in 1978 in a former Yountville, Calif., steam laundry originally built as a saloon, and ran it for 16 years.  https://sixcaliforniakitchens.com/

Clafouti (or clafoutis) is a French batter cake, a specialty of the Limousin region, traditionally made with black cherries but also sometimes with prunes, apples, or other fruits.  Our version is from Sally Schmitt (of French Laundry fame) who suggested adding apple cider syrup to the apple juices to sauce the clafouti.  https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Apple-Clafouti/

In his lifetime Peter Paul Rubens was described as 'prince of painters and painter of princes'.  Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino--better known as Raphael--has been called the Renaissance Prince of Painters.  An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art was titled Titian, Prince of Painters.  various sources

Words and phrases called contronyms (also spelled contranyms, or referred to as autoantonyms) are terms that, depending on context, can have opposite or contradictory meanings.  Mark Nichol  Find list including fine and finished at https://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-contradictory-meanings/

Sepiolite, also known as meerschaum meaning "foam of the sea", is a soft white clay mineral, often used to make tobacco pipes (known as meerschaum pipes).  A complex magnesium silicate, a typical chemical formula for which is Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O, it can be present in fibrous, fine-particulate, and solid forms.  Originally named meerschaum by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1788, it was named sepiolite by Ernst Friedrich Glocker in 1847 for an occurrence in Bettolino, Baldissero Canavese, Torino Province, Piedmont, Italy.  The name comes from Greek sepion (σήπιον), meaning "cuttlebone" (the porous internal shell of the cuttlefish), + lithos (λίθος), meaning stone, after a perceived resemblance of this mineral to cuttlebone.  Because of its low specific gravity and its high porosity, it may float upon water, hence its German name.  It is sometimes found floating on the Black Sea and rather suggestive of sea-foam, hence the German origin of the name as well as the French name for the same substance, écume de mer.  Meerschaum has occasionally been used as a substitute for soapstone, fuller's earth, and as a building material; but its chief use is for smoking pipes and cigarette holders.  The first recorded use of meerschaum for making pipes was around 1723 and quickly became prized as the perfect material for providing a cool, dry, flavorful smoke.  The porous nature of meerschaum draws moisture and tobacco tar into the stone.  Meerschaum became a premium substitute for the clay pipes of the day and remains prized to this day, though since the mid-1800s briar pipes have become the most common pipes for smoking.  When smoked, meerschaum pipes gradually change color, and old meerschaums will turn incremental shades of yellow, orange, red, and amber from the base on up.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepiolite

Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by molding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics.  Less often the term may be used broadly for all the visual arts (such as painting, sculpture, film and photography), as opposed to literature and music.  Materials for use in the plastic arts, in the narrower definition, include those that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete, glass, or metal.  The term "plastic" has been used to mean certain synthetic organic resins ever since they were invented, but the term "plastic arts" long preceded them.  The term should not be confused, either, with Piet Mondrian's concept of "Neoplasticism".  In contrast to the limiting of 'plastic arts' to sculpture and architecture by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in 1807, the German critic August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) applied the concept not only to visual arts, but also poetry.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_arts

A long, insular history transformed Iceland into one of the most literary countries in the world.  In 2005 UNESCO added Reykjavík to the Creative Cities Network for its dedication to literature.  Iceland also has the most writers per capita, the most books published per capita, and more books read per person than anywhere else in the world.  Every autumn, Iceland experiences a Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood.”  Icelanders rush to buy books for each other to open and read on Christmas Eve.  The NATIONAL AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF ICELAND resembles a bright red IKEA more than a classical house of literature.  After 16 years of construction (and nearly 30 years of planning) the library opened in 1994.  Boasting 140,000 square feet, the library houses nearly every work written in Iceland, as well as almost every work written about Iceland published elsewhere.  Blair Carpenter  Read more at https://bookriot.com/2020/02/19/icelandic-literary-culture/

The modern comic book was created in the 1930s, and rapidly grew in popularity.  In the competition to secure trademarks on titles intended to sound thrilling, publishers including All-American Publications and Fawcett Comics developed the ashcan edition, which was the same size as regular comics and usually had a black and white cover.  Typically, cover art was recycled from previous publications with a new title pasted to it.  Interior artwork ranged from previously published material in full color to unfinished pencils without word balloons.  Some ashcans were only covers with no interior pages.  Production quality on these works range from being hand-stapled with untrimmed pages to machine-stapled and machine trimmed.  Once the practice was established, DC Comics used ashcans more frequently than any other publisher.  Not all the titles secured through ashcan editions were actually used for regular publications.  The purpose of the ashcan editions was to fool the US Patent & Trademark Office into believing the book had actually been published.  Clerks at the office would accept the hastily produced material as legitimate, granting the submitting publisher a trademark to the title.  Since the ashcans had no other use, publishers printed as few as two copies; one was sent to the Trademark Office, the other was kept for their files.  Occasionally, publishers would send copies to distributors or wholesalers by registered mail to further establish publication dates, but nearly all ashcan comic editions were limited to five copies or fewer.  At the time, garbage cans were commonly called "ash cans" because they were used to hold soot and ash from wood and coal heating systems.  The term was applied to these editions of comics because they had no value and were meant to be thrown away after being accepted by the Trademark Office.  Some spare copies were given to editors, employees, and visitors to keep as souvenirs.  Changes to the United States trademark law in 1946 allowed publishers to register a trademark with an intent to use instead of a finished product,  and the practice of creating and submitting ashcans was abandoned when publishers began to consider it an unnecessary effort lawyers used to justify a fee.  Because of their rarity, ashcans from this era are desired by collectors and often fetch a high price.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcan_comic

DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCIES:  La Brea tar pits, iconic symbol, close proximity, join together  See also https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50004/11-totally-redundant-place-names and https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pleonasm and https://www.prdaily.com/34-redundant-repetitive-and-superfluous-phrases/

THESE TIMES:  Italy's answer to coronavirus is a classic published almost 200 years ago · Big-hearted strangers are turning Little Free Libraries into Little Free Pantries · Ina Garten and Samin Nosrat are here to help with your lockdown cooking. | Lit Hub  Stuck at home?  Travel the world with these far-flung mysteries. | CrimeReads  March 19, 2020  https://lithub.com 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2246  March 25, 2020