Boasting intricate patterns that appear inlaid, encaustic tiles are made up of at least two (and up to six) colors of clay that comprise both the design and the body of the tile.  Unlike glazed patterns, which sit on the surface, encaustic patterns are essential to the makeup of the ceramics and won’t wear off over time.  While encaustic tile has been popular for a while in Europe, the method is now becoming more of a trend in the United States, thanks to advances in technology that have made the tiles easier to produce.  Megan Beauchamp  February 12, 2019  https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/a26304753/what-is-encaustic-tile/

“It all starts with shape and color,” says this rising-star French ceramist.  Using a knifelike tool, Alice Gavalet slices earthenware into flat forms that she then hand-assembles into three dimensions, firing the results before painting them with colorful enamels for one last bake, all in her petite workshop just outside Paris.  The wild and whimsical pieces (squiggly striped vases, mirrors outlined in zany shapes) take inspiration from Ettore Sottsass’s playful objects, Jean Dubuffet’s graphic compositions, and her nine-year-old daughter’s spontaneous drawings.  By Gavalet’s admission, her own works—often large and heavy—aren’t exactly practical, but, she says, “I consider them sculptures that can be used.”  It’s an idea she undoubtedly gleaned from the 10 years and counting she has worked as an assistant to the legendary furniture designer Elizabeth Garouste, known for her spirited takes on functional objects.  Hannah Martin  See pictures at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/meet-the-artist-bringing-colorful-whimsy-to-ceramics107055

You have most likely encountered one-sided objects hundreds of times in your daily life--like the universal symbol for recycling, found printed on the backs of aluminum cans and plastic bottles.   This mathematical object is called a Mobius strip.  It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians and many others ever since its discovery in 1858 by August Möbius, a German mathematician.  The discovery of the Möbius strip in the mid-19th century launched a brand new field of mathematics:  topology.  Möbius discovered the one-sided strip in 1858 while serving as the chair of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig.  (Another mathematician named Listing actually described it a few months earlier, but did not publish his work until 1861.)  Möbius seems to have encountered the Möbius strip while working on the geometric theory of polyhedra, solid figures composed of vertices, edges and flat faces.  A Möbius strip can be created by taking a strip of paper, giving it an odd number of half-twists, then taping the ends back together to form a loop.  If you take a pencil and draw a line along the center of the strip, you’ll see that the line apparently runs along both sides of the loop.  The concept of a one-sided object inspired artists like Dutch graphic designer M.C. Escher, whose woodcut “Möbius Strip II” shows red ants crawling one after another along a Möbius strip.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/mathematical-madness-mobius-strips-and-other-one-sided-objects-180970394/ 

Did you know that plums are probably the first type of fruit cultivated by humans?  Most people incorrectly assume that these moist fruits were first domesticated by cultivars in the wild.  However, in actuality, the cultivation of plums began in East European and Caucasian mountains near the Caspian Sea.  Some groups of people believe that plums were carried to Rome around 200 B.C. and then introduced to Northern Europe.  On the other hand, others like to think that the Duke of Anjou upon his return from Jerusalem brought along plums to Europe around 1198 to 1204 A.D.  Whatever may be the truth, one common consensus remains that wild plums were planted and raised throughout the Old and New Worlds.  See names, appetizing pictures and descriptions at https://www.homestratosphere.com/types-of-plums/ 

Sarah's Knish by Sarah Dipity  Traditional Jewish treat of little golden pastry domes filled with seasoned mashed potatoes and fried onions.  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/212834/sarahs-knish/ 

Prior to the transcontinental railroad, the cost of travelling from Missouri to California cost about $1,000 and took from four to six months.  However, after the completion of the 1,776-mile road, a trip cost between $65.00 and $136.00, and a week or so from New York to San Francisco.  Ever since the first railroads in the 1830s, men had dreamed of the day one could board a train and roll safely and majestically from coast to coast in the United States.  Prior to the Civil War, about 30,000 miles of track had been laid, mostly in the North and Midwest, most of it east of the Mississippi.  Abraham Lincoln was one of the chief railroad lawyers in Illinois, and his election to the Presidency meant new contracts for rail lines in and out of Chicago moving in every direction, as well as the beginnings of a line that would traverse the nation from shore to shore.  In 1860 a young engineer named Theodore Judah lobbied Congress and the President about the feasibility of building a railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains at the Donner Pass.  In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, chartering two companies to build a transcontinental railroad:  the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads.  President Lincoln signed it and the race was on.  The rival teams met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.  Leland Stanford made the first swing at a solid gold spike, missing and hitting a rail.  An inebriated Thomas Durant swung next and completely missed.  A railroad worker finally put in the spike.  See picture of the 17.6-karat ceremonial “golden spike”, driven by Leland Stanford to mark the joining of the two rails, on display at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University.  Bill Potter  https://landmarkevents.org/leland-stanford-drives-the-golden-spike-1869/  Consequences included new words:  Boom!  Go  west!  *  Transport of fresh fruit from Southern California  *  helped to double Chicago’s population and make it the nation’s lumberyard and stockyard—also inspired the mail-order catalog  *  Santa Fe began the innovation of chain restaurants  * 

Chuck Close's face made him famous—his face on canvas, that is.  Gigantic, up close and personal, his black and white 1968 Big Self-Portrait leaves nothing to the imagination.  You can see every spike of stubble, every wisp of uncombed hair, every curl of smoke from his cigarette.  It was a bold opening statement from someone who went on to become one of the best-known portraitists of his generation, who died August 19, 2021  at age 81.  Close was born in Washington State in 1940, and as a child struggled with what he later realized was dyslexia—but art was never a struggle.  His parents encouraged him, paying for art supplies and lessons; he told the New York Times Magazine in 1998 that he remembered staying up late, poring over magazine covers with a magnifying glass, ''trying to figure out how paintings got made,'' which might perhaps have been a hint at where his career would ultimately go.  Close didn't just work in paint—he was a photographer, a printmaker, even a weaver.  But he's best known for those big heads, the pixelated portraits of himself and his art-world friends that he made by breaking down photographs into intricate grids and then blowing them up, reproducing them square by painstaking square onto oversized canvases. He even developed a system with a forklift, a platform, a chair and a rope that let him maneuver around the whole painting easily.  Petra Mayer  https://www.npr.org/2021/08/19/1029495330/chuck-close-painter-gigantic-portraits-dead?ft=nprml&f=

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2407  August 20, 2021