Paul Manship, New York Tercentenary Medal
Bronze, 2 3/4 inch diameter
1914, Smithsonian American Art Museum

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UNQUESTIONABLY: “Zwartboek”, or “Black Book” as it was released here in the United States. Sebastian Koch you will recall from “Das Leben der Anderen” (which, come to think of it, probably ties with “Zwartboek” for film of the year), while Carice van Houten will be in the next James Bond flick.

But is it better than director Paul Verhoeven’s previous Dutch World War II film, “Soldaat van Oranje”? Difficult choice! Happily, both films display a certain monarchist tendency.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE handsome and dignified, and yet relatively small, buildings is the Felix Meritis on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It has a long and interesting history to accompany the beauty of its design. The ‘Felix Meritis’ was a learned society founded by a number of prominent burghers of Amsterdam in 1777 for the promotion of the arts and sciences in their city. Its name is Latin for ‘fortunate (or more literally, ‘happy’) by merit’. Ten years later, the Felix Meritis purchased four narrow homes on the Keizersgracht and constructed a building, designed by the architect Jacob Otten Husly, on the site. (more…)

An old Dutch gable complete with old Dutch vrouw gazing miserably from the window. Albany County, New York, 1930’s.

The form of brick course on the gable is known as ‘mouse-tooth’ and is found primarily in Holland, East Anglia, and the Hudson Valley of New York, though also here and there in the American South.

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