With Purposes Long Forgotten

We were up at Johns Hopkins this morning for M.'s graduation. After a wonderful lunch in Little Italy at a place whose name I've forgotten, we headed over to one of my favorite salvage shops---Housewerks. Corbels, finials and column capitals in every style abound. Radiators, stained glass and religious effigies intermingle with old gas station signage, a fortune tellers booth from a carnival, fireplace mantles representing the major American architectural styles.



All of this is arranged in a beautiful late-Victorian building that was formerly the Chesapeake Gas Works. The tableaux are presented in a consciously haphazard manner around an airy space that, in my mind, may have appealed to a 21st-Century John Soane.


The items pictured are mundane--trash to some. They are anonymous and rigid, almost frantic in their need to convey information for purposes long forgotten. Their beauty lies in the composition and makes me think about our cultural definition of art---who defines it and how it is assigned.