Please welcome the Creative Museum

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I am honored to announce that the founders of The Creative Museum have joined me to become authors on this blog.

The museum’s extraordinary collection includes magnificent works from Africa, North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the South Sea Islands, and also spans centuries. Just as it took a world-class collector’s eye to gather such combs, it took the same eye to photograph them so carefully. The Creative Museum has written a history of the world through comb making.

As I get older, I realize that the convictions I had when my energy was boundless were not the lone leaves on the tree at the end of the world. I was not alone. My conviction that hair combs were profound works of art was shared.

And now, our audience of art lovers and comb collectors can enjoy other points of view. The most wonderful addition is that Creative Museum posts will be written in French! I will translate them into English in the comments section.

Bonne chance, mes amis!

Peine Del Viento (Wind Comb)

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Piene Del Viento II (1959) by Eduardo Chillada is being auctioned at Sothebys in London on Feb. 11, 2011, for an estimated price of $1,269,439. It will go higher.

Using steel, Chillada chose a comb as a metaphor to bring wind to life. He saw the wind as an invisible hand that combed the sea and the woods as well as the hair of men and women. This early sculpture is a hand opening its fingers to let the wind of the open seas pass through them.

Eduardo Txillida Juantegi (in Basque) was a sculptor who gave life to space and emptiness.

In a dialogue with his friend Martin Heidegger, they both understood space as a material medium, and the body as already beyond itself.

Chillada wrote, “I believe in perception, which is riskier and more progressive than experience. Perception is the present with a foot firmly planted in the future. Experience is the present, with your foot planted in the past.”

The most famous Peine Del Viento, number XV, is a set of three massive, haunting abstract steel forms, which emerge out of the rocks of the Bahía de la Concha (Shell Bay) al final de la Playa de Ondarreta (at the end of Ondarreta Beach) en San Sebastián, País Vasco. (in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastián, Basque Country.)

Edo Water God

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18th-Century Edo comb. One idea: A dragon in the clouds. In Japanese mythology, dragons were water gods in charge of rainfall, lakes, rivers, and oceans. The serpentine dragon on this comb was typical — large and wingless, with clawed feet. The artist worked with the tortoiseshell’s natural color gradations, painting the dragon in the exact place where his tongue would be the deepest red.

Collier Comète Hair Pin

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On November 1, 1932, Coco Chanel exhibited her first collection of fine jewelry in her Paris apartment. Two offer her most enduring innovations were putting diamonds in invisible settings you could seem their brilliance without distraction, and the Collier Comète. The necklace was collar made to imitate fabric. The jewelers spent 9 months designing spring for arch. Her revolutionary designs are still replicated today. This comet hairpin made from reals diamonds and 18K white gold.

Van Cleef & Arpels also created Atlantide, jewelry inspired by mythological sea creatures. These Diadème Cleita was centerpiece of collection. The diamonds in replica weigh almost 8 carats.

Both pieces sell for around $13,000 each.

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The African Aesthetic

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Catherine Olliveaud and Alain Touzinaud, whose inspiring collection is featured in The Creative Museum have acquired some notable pieces of African art, which has a rich tradition of anthropomorphism, or carving emotions into animals, which display a profound understanding of the human condition.

From the Akan people of Ghana, this painted wood comb portrays the “Sankofa bird and means “go back and fetch it”. It is a traditional Akan symbol as is the Sankofa heart.” This knowledge was contributed by our member, Robert Belcher. Thank you, Robert!

This comb reminds me of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” but it is decorated with a traditional diagonal mask from the Lwimbi people of Angola.

This comb reminds me of Magritte, but it is a symbol of feminine power made by the Dan people of the Ivory Coast.

The Yaouré people of the Ivory Coast elongated the neck and beak of this bird so it would hold a comb on top of a mask. This technique of exaggerating animal features was famously used by Lalique when he interpreted Japanese combs through the lens of French Symbolist philosophy. I love the fact that skewed features were used in Africa independently of European Western thought.

This is another superb piece of ivory carving by the Yaouré people of the Ivory Coast. It has been dyed with palm oil.

Our last comb is ivory in remarkable condition, and comes from the Akan people of Ghana. It portrays two ancestors standing in arches carved with intricate sacrificial decoration.

African Crowns of Ancestors

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There is a book called, “Powerful Headdresses: Africa and Asia,” which documents the collection of Mrs. Myrna Brind, the wife of Philadelphia philanthropist, Ira Brind. On the cover is a chief’s crown of the Dogon People, who live in the central plateau region of Mali. The bird atop this bronze crown represents ancestors.

However, alain-t, whose meticulous taste in collecting I know well from E-bay, gave a gift to the hair-comb world with this Creative Museum. It has a Dogon crown, which is much more complex and stunning. To me, it looks like the chief on top is crying as he remembers his ancestors, who are sculpted beautifully in brass below. This crown is a story. Well done, alain.

The Portland Tiara

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This tiara was made by E. Wolff & Co. for Garrard, the crown jewelers since 1843. It was made c. 1889, shortly after the marriage of the 6th Duke of Portland.

Ivy, formerly the Marchioness of Titchfield, became the Duchess of Portland when she married the 7th Duke. There is a miniature portrait of her wearing this tiara, which required several pieces of family jewelry to be dismantled for its construction.

It has 12 graduated sapphire and diamond clusters, a diamond-set openwork frame, button-shaped pearl and diamond borders, and pear-shaped pear finials. Sale price: 763,650 GBP, or $1,188,239 on Dec. 1, 2010.

Amie Louise Plante

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From her home in Cranston, RI, Ms. Plante creates stunning, unique pieces from silver, amethyst, pearl, brass, and enamel. One of her hair pins includes Capiz shell, which is the outer shell of Placuna placenta, a marine mollusk found in the shallow coastal waters of the Philippines. Every element of her hair combs is hand sculpted. Her work reminds me very much of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and of Dartmouth, she has won the Art Jewelry Forum’s Emerging Artist Award. Her shop can be found on Etsy, and these combs are $1200 each.