Maquisard Roland Degueurce

On October 1, 1944 Roland Degueurce from Montceau was awarded the Croix de Guerre with bronze star under Résistance. The decoration was well deserved ... especially as the recipient was only 13 years old.

The resistance in Montceau les Mines was well organized. Roland acted as intermediary and carried various documents and memorized messages to members of the Résistance.

He was usually accompanied by his dog Diamond. During an attack by Germans or Italians in the Alps, it was Diamond who made the soldiers stop shooting and rush for their vehicles.

He wore an admirably large Tarte Alpin too.

Derek Raymond aka Robin Cook

Robert William Arthur Cook (1931 –1994), better known since the 1980s by his pen name Derek Raymond, was an English crime writer, credited with being a founder of British noir.

The eldest son of a textile magnate, Cook spent his early years at the family’s London house, off Baker Street, tormenting a series of nannies. In 1937, in anticipation of the Second World War, the family retreated to the countryside, to a house near their Kentish castle. In 1944 Cook went to Eton, which he later characterized as a “hotbed of buggery” and “an excellent preparation for vice of any kind”. 

He dropped out at the age of 17. During his National Service, Cook attained the rank of corporal (latrines). After a brief stint working for the family business, selling lingerie in a department store in Neath, Wales, he spent most of the 1950s abroad. He lived in the Beat Hotel in Paris, rubbing shoulders with his neighbours William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and danced at fashionable left bank boîtes with the likes of Juliette Greco. 

In New York he resided on the Lower East Side and was married to an heiress from New England for all of sixty-five days. He claimed that he was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn’t believe in and didn’t want, whose values were meaningless. 

He was seeking to carve his way out — “Crime was the only chisel I could find.” Cook smuggled oil paintings to Amsterdam, drove fast cars into Spain from Gibraltar, and consummated his downward mobility by spending time in a Spanish jail for sounding off about Francisco Franco in his local bar.

Fiona Timantti

Fiona Timantti is a milliner and costumer from Helsinki, Finland.

Helsinki Burlesque DJs, Miroslove Satan & Fiona Timantti

Timantti's vintage style, high quality hats and headpieces are made with love and old school millinery techniques. She prefers recycled and vintage materials. She makes unique and delectable headdresses for femme fatales, vintage vixens, burlesque beauties and for anyone who wants to add class and glamour into their style.

Fiona Timantti is a funloving femme fatale; adventurous, ambitious and hopelessly romantic. But apart from her work as a milliner, she is a vintage collector, costumer, Helsinki Burlesque DJ, part-time model.

This is her blog; about her, her hats, her cats, music, movies, vintage fashion...and everything!

Jennifer Moon

Jennifer Moon lives and works in Los Angeles, California.  Jennifer is currently working on the second part of Phoenix Rising, a three-part mediation on love, revolution, and personal change.

The project is both an act of self-examination and disclosure, as well as a manifestation of The Revolution, a self-authored philosophy for transformation and expansion authored by Jennifer herself.

Jennifer puts it more eloquently below, she is not asking viewers to believe in The Revolution.  Nor is she espousing it as a global system that will work for everyone.  What she is doing – and what the work models – is challenging the viewer to operate from a position of belief, and not belief in Jennifer or her beliefs, but in themselves.  It is this challenge that makes Jennifer’s work so compelling, and unique among the artists living and working today.

Augustus John

Augustus Edwin John (1878 – 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom.

"Augustus was celebrated first for his brilliant figure drawings, and then for a new technique of oil sketching. His work was favourably compared in London with that of Gauguin and Matisse. He then developed a style of portraiture that was imaginative and often extravagant, catching an instantaneous attitude in his subjects."

During World War I, he was attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist and made a number of memorable portraits of Canadian infantrymen.

Although well-known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits, some of the best of which were of his two wives and his children. He was known for the psychological insight of his portraits, many of which were considered "cruel" for the truth of the depiction.

He joined the Peace Pledge Union as a pacifist in the 1950s, and on 17 September 1961, just over a month before his death, he joined the Committee of 100's anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London. At the time, his son, Admiral Sir Caspar John was First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff.

He is said to have been the model for the bohemian painter depicted in Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth, which was later made into a 1958 film of the same name with Alec Guinness in the lead role.

Caddetou & Ernest Gabard

Ernest Gabard was born in Pau (Béarn)  in 1879 and died there in 1957. At a young age, he had the misfortune of losing his mother and father. Orphaned, he was raised by an uncle and aunt. His talents for the arts showed early and at age 17 his family allows him to join the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

He learned the ropes in the studio of Jules Thomas and also attended the studio of sculptor Auguste Rodin, but at the end of his apprenticeship, disappointed by the Parisian art world, he chose to return his native Béarn. Léon Bérard, said of him in 1954: " Gabard departs from the classical type of the sculptor ... He wanted to be a “Sculptor of Pau” ... and his work bears the stamp of the land ... "

He practices drawing, watercolour, painting, wood carving, stone and marble. Many of his works are located in Béarn and other parts of France’s Southwest.

For berets, he is best known as the creator of his comic book character, Caddetou, always portrayed wearing a beret, blouse, sabots (wooden shoes) and with umbrella.

After the Great War, he worked on numerous monuments to commemorate the dead, comrades of him from when he was active during the war. He also created a beautiful small notebook of 42 watercolours, portraying life at the front.

Radiator Cap with Beret

Ah, those days that cars had fancy radiator caps... And much better, in my humble opinion, than any Rolls Royce's 'Icarus" or Mercedes Benz 'Tri-Star', is this 1920's Lou Caddetou figurine, made of silver and bronze, at 14cm's height. 

Not only does it proudly depict a beret, but it has a moving arm too! 
The design is by Ernest Gabard (1879-1957).

Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes Setién (1920 –2010) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor associated with the Generation of '36 movement. From 1975 until his death, he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, where he occupied chair "e". He studied commerce and law and began his career as a columnist and later journalist at the El Norte de Castilla. He would later head this newspaper before gradually devoting himself exclusively to the novel.

As a connoisseur of the fauna and flora of his geographical region and someone passionate about hunting and the rural world, he could give form in his works to all matters relating to Castile and hunting from the perspective of an urban person who had not lost touch with that world.

He was one of the leading figures of post-Civil War Spanish literature, for which he was recognized through many awards. However, his influence extends even further, since several of his works have been adapted for the theatre or have been made into films, which won awards at competitions such as the Cannes Film Festival, and television shows.

He was marked deeply by the death of his wife in 1974. In 1998 he was diagnosed with colon cancer, an illness from which he would never fully recover. As a result his literary career came almost entirely to a halt. He fell into apathy and became virtually isolated until his death in 2010.

Basque Chef Alain Darroze

Alain Darroze , born 21 April 1959 in Bayonne , Pyrenees Atlantiques, is a French (Basque) chef.

Alain set up his private Elysee school for chefs in the Basque Country and is well known not only for his culinary qualities, but especially for his originality and culinary (media) madness. He is the author of Mon Pays Basque. 

He is the uncle of 2-Star Michelin chef Hélène Darroze.

Mus

Mus is a Spanish card game, widely played in Spain and Hispanic America, and to a lesser extent in France. Most probably it originated in the Basque Country. The first reference about this game goes back to 1745, when Manuel Larramendi, philologist and Jesuit basque, quoted it the trilingual dictionary (Basque-Spanish-Latin).

In Spain it is the most played card game, with many Mus clubs or "peñas. The origin of the word Mus is uncertain. It could come from the Basque language, where "musu" means "kiss", the established signal of the better possible card combination (3 Kings and one Ace).  Larramendi wrote about the word mus or "musu" meaning lips or face and suggests that the name of the game could have derived from the facial gestures used while playing.]

Following another theory, the word mus comes from the latin "musso", that means "keep silent". It is conjugated as "mus" ("I keep silent"), in opposition to "talk", that is the word used to open the game.

Basque Painter Patrick Larcebal

Basque artist painter Patrick Larcebal paints the land of his roots, expressing history and his attachment to the Basque Country through his paintings.

His paintings reflect the beauty and variety of landscapes of his country and tell through authentic scenes, the life of the Basques.

Larcebal made ​​the watercolor his favorite medium because it embodies softness and lightness, while his oil paintings  express the strength and presence of his characters and landscapes.

Bunny Rugs

 

William Alexander Anthony "Bunny Rugs" Clarke (1948 – 2014), also known as Bunny Scott, was the lead singer of Jamaican reggae band Third World as well as recording as a solo artist. He began his career in the mid-1960s and was also at one time a member of Inner Circle and half of the duo Bunny & Ricky.

Born in Mandeville and raised on John's Lane in Kingston, Clarke's father was an Anglican preacher. He joined Charlie Hackett and the Souvenirs, the resident band at the Kittymat Club on Maxfield Avenue, in the mid-1960s before leading the early line-up of Inner Circle in 1969.

Clarke explained that his 'Bunny Rugs' nickname came from his grandmother calling him 'Bunny' as a child because he would "jump around the house like a rabbit" and from a member of the Third World road crew calling him 'Rugs' because of his liking for sleeping on the floor.

Rubble Kings

 

From 1968 to 1975, gangs ruled New York City. Beyond the idealistic hopes of the civil rights movement lay a unfocused rage. Neither law enforcement nor social agency could end the escalating bloodshed. Peace came only through the most unlikely and courageous of events that would change the world for generations to come by giving birth to hip-hop culture. 

The film Rubble Kings chronicles life during this era of gang rule, tells the story of how a few extraordinary, forgotten people did the impossible, and how their actions impacted New York City and the world over.

Naomi Elaine Campbell

 

Naomi Elaine Campbell (1970) is an English model, actress, singer, and author. Recruited at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognizable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and the 1990s, and was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion industry.

In addition to her modelling career, Campbell has embarked on other ventures, which include a novel, an R&B-pop studio album, and several acting appearances in film and television, such as the modelling competition reality show The Face and its international offshoots. Campbell is also involved in charity work for various causes. Her personal life is widely reported, particularly her relationships with prominent men, including boxer Mike Tyson and actor Robert De Niro, and four highly publicised convictions for assault.

Paul Strand

 

Paul Strand by Walter Rosenblum

Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. 

His diverse body of work, spanning 6 decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

Barbara Hawk, Taos, New Mexico, 1931, a photo by Paul Strand

Peio

It was raining heavily that day in the Basque Country, and a large puddle formed in front of the village bar.

- Peio is there, in the rain but under his umbrella with a fishing pole and a string hanging in the puddle.

A tourist touched by what he sees, approaches him and asks him what he's doing there, in the pouring rain:

- "I'm fishing" Peio replies, simply.

Poor bugger, thinks the man, who immediately invites Peio to accompany him to the bar to dry in the warm and offer him a drink.

In the bar the nice tourist asks him something ironic:

“So, how many have you caught since this morning?”

“You are the eighth” Peio replied.