industrial relics in the port of Antwerp

I left a piece of my heart in Antwerp already years ago and when I stumbled on these photos it just confirmed me that this city is loaded with fabulous design, inspiration and amazingly good taste – from my point of you! I am now dreaming myself into this wonderful house . The two founders of CSD Architecten,Britt Crepain & Stefan Spaens build this house for themselves in a narrow street in the Center of Antwerp, Belgium. In the designing and construction process, they focused on materials as natural as possible in colors flowing into each other. The inspiration for the color pallet was found on a beach in France (driftwood, pebbles, the color of the sand). Honestly, I felt a slightly jealousy…

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Found on archinect

Amongst all the wonderful boutiques in Antwerp’s shopping district is a relative newcomer – De Kleine Wolk.

Opened in July 2008 this store sells the top Belgium design labels of Quincy, Simple Kids and Anne Kurris.

With a retro 60’s style shopfront which suits the off primary brights these labels prefer the stock is still currently winter but will soon be switching to summer styles such as those from Anne Kurris below.

De Kleine Wolk, Lombardenvest 64, 2000 Antwerpen. Tel 03 / 226 81 61

Anne Kurris's wonderful metallics for s/s 2010

Contacts

www.annekurris.com/

www.quincyforkids.com/

Who am I? – That is the question. But just like any other question, the answer can never be completely satisfying. So I can only give you an indication of who I am. It is your job to find out who I am. Follow me through my journey and you will get to know me better, but not only me. I was born in the late 80’s in one of Belgium’s biggest towns, Antwerp. This means I am a big town girl. You could compare me to Carry Bradshaw of Sex and the City, only I am younger and I haven’t found my Mr. Big yet. Or maybe I am more like Samantha Jones: independent, successful and sexually confident.

I am used to the hectic city life, and I love it. I could not see myself living in the green suburbs, surrounded by nature. My nature is the buildings that surround me. As I said earlier, Antwerp is one of the biggest towns, with an estimated population of 472.000 people. It is well known for its historical buildings combined with luxurious fashion. Antwerp is a paradise for fashionistas, like myself. It has its own fashion academy with famous graduates such as the “Antwerp Six” (Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee). Antwerp’s history goes way back and it has buildings to prouve it. Maybe you prefer the Cathedral of Our Lady, build in the 14th century with its famous Rubens paintings? Or do you prefer the Boerentoren, build in 1932 and the oldest skrycraper in Europe? If all the sight seeing makes you hungry or thirsty, you can always stop at one of the local bars and enjoy some of the local specialties such as a Bolleke (a local beer) or Antwerpse Handjes (delicious cookies). Last but not least, Antwerp is known for its diamond industry. “Cut in Antwerp” is the trademark as nearly 70% of the world’s diamonds are cut here. Especially the quarter around the central station hold many diamond stores. Remember: “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”.

Living in a multicultural city has advantages and disadvantages. One of the biggest advantages is the variety of men. Not that I need that much of a variety because I got mad love for my strong black brother. Still, variety is the spice of life. So I do I want to duty wine with a laid back Jamaican guy or do I want to shake my booty to the beats of P-Square’s Bizzy Body with a Nigerian hunk? Or do I rather dance to the Ndombolo with a dark toned Congolese dude?

Follow me on my journey and discover the forbidden fruits this town carries within!

Just random shots around Linkeroever, testing the weather-proof capabilities of the 7D. No really interesting pictures

ISO4000

Magnificent Two Tone Gold Victorian Locket With Rose Cut Diamond Star Motif

It could be well possible that this locket was made to celebrate the passage of Halley’s comet. The passage of Halley inspired jewellers to make jewels in the shape of celestial bodies. This comet appears every 76 years. In 1705 Edmond Halley predicted, using Newton’s newly formulated laws of motion, that the comet seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 would return in 1758 (which was, alas, after his death). The comet did indeed return as redicted and was later named in his honor.

Or the maker of this beauty was just into stars…. who will tell after so many years?

Click the picture for more information on this beauty.

Stylish Art Deco Platinum Diamond Bracelet 7.50 Carats

In the frosty Garden of Adin,
(while pelting snowballs at his beloved offspring)
much to the Gardener’s joy and surprise
a bracelet was found
sparkling with glimmering ice.

Click the picture for more information on this beauty.

A while ago I went for a little road trip with some few friends. We took off from Malmö and headed on to Denmark, into Germany, through Anwerp, Belgium. And finally stayed in Calais one night before we drove to England and the beautiful countryside outside London. We stayed in Sussex. Now, the countryside in England is actually stunningly beautiful. I know a lot of us only associate British countryside with daily soap-operas such as “Emmerdale”, or maybe Post Man Pat. And well, it is quite gray, it is quite wet, but – the fields and the nature is absolutely stunning! Now, unfortunately my camera didnt work that well during the trip and I didnt get any decent shots from UK.

But here is one from Calais.

And heres a shot I took a few years ago in Sussex. Just look at it!

In Three Sheets To The Wind, Pete Brown decides that the Belgian people are committing some kind of massive practical joke on the rest of the world. Perceived wisdom seems to be that Belgium is a tedious country with nothing to see beyond the wonderful beauty of Bruges (if you haven’t been to Bruges, go. If you can’t afford to go, watch In Bruges, it’s very funny and makes the city look as stunning as it actually is).

This, as Pete Brown attests is very wrong. Not only are Belgian people, almost to a man (or woman) very entertaining, but their cities are fantastic and, most of all, the make the most interesting and diverse beers you can dream off (the legendary beer writer Michael Jackson wrote a great book all about the range and brilliance of Belgian beers).

My affection for Belgium brought me back to the country (via a quick trip to Lille, which is in France, but was once a part of Flanders, which is in Belgium) for the third time and coincided with drinking a fair few fantastic beers.

So, the holiday starts with leaving the Eurostar (a truly great way to travel) and arriving in Lille. This being a beer blog, I’m not going to go into detail about the architecture (partly because I can’t), the historic points of interest or the culture I’ve seen. Rather, I’m going to launch into the beer, bars and occasionally the food (the three are intrinsically linked).

So Lille, we hit a bar called Les Trois Brasseurs. It seems like a lovely little micro-brewery and brasserie (although it turns out it’s actually a small French chain with micro-breweries in most of it bars, but Lille is the original site). We start off with a tasting platter of four of their beers, before I pick out their stout (smokey, malty thick and chocolatey) and my girlfriend goes for the blond (a strong, Belgian style blond ale, crisp, simple and refreshing). We wander the streets, doing some culture and that, getting food, before returning for a 75cl bottle of their speciality beer, La Belle Province, a dark red beer which is refermented with maple syrup. It’s good, but far from stunning. An ample warm up for the treats of Belgium though.

Antwerp Train Station - not bad, eh?

Lille being very far North in France, and Belgium being tiny, Belgium can be travelled around at very little cost and in very little time, so we start with two nights in Antwerp (0r Antwerpen, if you’re being Flemish). Antwerp is very wealthy. They have the biggest diamond market in Europe, a fair few champagne bars and a thriving fashion scene. It’s a great city for wandering around and gawping, with magnificent squares, some amazing imposing architecture and a giant sculpture of a hand in the middle of the main shopping street (Antwerp means thrown hand, apparently).

That doesn’t mean it’s all swanky, fancy beers here though. We start our Belgian drinking at De Vagant, an old-fashioned style bar that specialises in Jenever (a kind of Belgian gin) but also stocks a good range of beers. Plus, they do hearty portions of soup and bread for a mere €3 and have a lovely old cat milling around. It’s a classic old style bar, long wooden benches, stone tiles, candles and quiet classical music piped across (all the best bars play classical music, it’s probably why drinking here is so placid with no hint of aggression). We have a couple of beers, including a sweet and dark Grimbergen, and De Konnick, a good, but unexceptional pilsner brewed in Antwerp. It’s the local brew of choice, apparently.

It’s actually surprising how many people drink pils here, instead of the richer, stronger abbey-style beers. But then if you spent every night on beers that range between 7% and 12%, your liver would struggle, I guess.

The real highlight, drinking-wise in Antwerp comes in Kulminator that night. A small, crammed smokey bar with strings of sausages flopping around the bar, two cats dancing around the window front, loads of cheese (including aged stuff from the Rochefort and Orval breweries) and shelf-upon-shelf and crate-upon-crate of beer. What’s really noticeable is the ancient, dust-laden bottles on the top shelves. See, while Kulminator do a great range of standard bottles, and some amazing draft beers (we take two very strong, dark, Christmas ales, a Stille Nacht and Bush Noel) and, most interesting of all, lots of very old beer.

The back of the menu is selling beers for beyond €30 a bottle, and it’s because they deal in vintaged bottles of beer. You can, if you ask nicely and have the cash, get 25 year old geuze, or two year old Chimay, or, just about any Belgian beer you can ever want.

An old guild building in Ghent

One way to tell an especially strong beer, is a warning at the bottom of the menu that they will only sell you three of said beer. Thus was the case when we visited Ghent and Het Waterhuis Aan De Bierkant. This lovely canal-side bar (Ghent, like Bruge, is full of canals. In fact, Ghent is like a larger, more lived in Bruge. But not quite as beautiful). In this bar, one of their house beers (or Huis Biers – Flemish words often look and sound like English word spoken in a childish tone, thanks lot is “dank u well”), named Klocke Roeland – named after a bell in the city’s Belfry, the middle of three big towers in the city – is rich, strong, slightly red and full of aniseed and banana notes. It’s gorgeous, heavy and kicks in at over 11%.

In retrospect, a beer that strong wasn’t the best thing to drink before going to t’Velootje. Velootje (meaning small bicycle) is, by far, the strangest bar I have ever entered. As you reach the bar there is nothing, other than an Orval plaque, that suggest you are at a bar. The stack of bikes pilled outside the bar, the stiff door that needs a real shove to open, the long curtain than you’re then faced with, then the dim, smokey darkness, don’t scream ‘this is somewhere you would be welcome’.

As your eyes adjust to the gloom, it doesn’t get any easier to get your head round. The ceiling is full, absolutely packed, with hanging, rusting bicycles. The walls carry old beer posters and religious imagery. The tables (two long wooden tables with matching benches either side) have paper and packaging piled around them, alongside a pail holding archaic beer mats (all of them filthy) and religious artifacts and tat. In a corner an old man in shorts and sparkling tights skulks by a fire. A computer sits by him with a cat curled up nearby.

After a few minutes, the tight wearing man comes up to us. “So, you want a beer, he asks?” “Yes”, we reply. That the last option we’re given. He heads off to the back and returns with a beer called Kerst Pater, a 9% sherry-ish Christmas beer, complete with a deep, curranty flavour. We get no glass, and don’t really want to ask.

While we chat with the drunken locals (who work through Duvels and Monty Python quotes at speed), the owner approaches us. “What are your names?” he asks, and we tell him. “The police might arrive, if they do, we are friends, and you are not paying for your beer.” Ok, we nod in agreement and take his name, Leuven, for surety.

Sure enough, the police do arrive (the locals give us a mixed bag of reasons, a trouble neighbour, the open fire, the lack of fire exits and ventilation, the fact it’s an anarchist bar) and stick around for a fair while filling in forms, while we do our best to appear like friends enjoying a few beer in Leuven’s open front room.

Thankfully, the police soon leave, and we ask Leuven for one more beer. He returns with a monster that I know was 12% (my head told me that much the next morning), again with no glass. We drink it willingly, singing along with Leuven’s choice of music (60s psychedelic pop, 50s rock’n'roll, great stuff) as well as some Flemish drinking songs, and, odd enough, Abba’s ‘Thankyou For The Music’.

That’s definitely the last beer of the night. We leave our new friends and head off back to our room. “Will you be open tomorrow?” we ask. “Maybe,” he says. “I might clean”. We somewhat doubt that.

There’s one more city left, our favourite and two more bars to tell you about. Bruges, as I have already mentioned, is magnificent. Beautiful canals, nothing but gorgeous old architecture, grand town houses and old arced bridges. It’s all you could hope it would be, especially if you avoid the two bustling shopping streets and all the tourists.

The bars are good too, if you leave the obvious places and tourist traps. De Garre is, probably, the best. It’s hidden down a narrow alley between two famous old squares. You would barely notice it was there, but after one visit you’d be heading right back. The small, two floor bar is fancy, but not pretentious or too expensive. It’s rustic-feeling, with old wood tables, wonky twisted stairs and a squat bar. It’s table service done with aplomb and the real treat is their own beer Tripel Van Der Garre. A proper, powerful Belgian Tripel that, like the rest of the beers at the bar, comes complete with a small portion of tasty cheese (truly one of the best things about drinking in Belgium).

Dulle Teve in t'Bruges Beertje

Perhaps the biggest draw for beers lovers though is t’Bruges Beertje (aka The Bruges Bear). You can tell the Bear is a beer-lovers haven because it has a photo of Michael Jackson (the writer) above a mantelpiece, a thick, bound beer menu and loads of people in it all drinking great Belgian beer.

Like Kulminator, there’s plenty of aged stuff here, and loads of Christmas beers too. I go for Straffe Hendrick though, a tripel beer brewed by Halve Moon brewery within the walls of Bruges. It’s actually not as great as I had hoped (having tried and enjoyed the brewery’s blond beer Bruges Zot and its dark sister on a previous visit to Belgium), strong, certainly, but lacking any distinctive flavours. Much better is the Dolle Brewer’s (literally, mad brewers) Dulle Teve (aka Mad Bitch), it packs a massive punch and comes with flavours of tropical fruits and licorice in its golden sheen.

A fellow Brit recognises us from our trip to De Garre and indulges in some serious beer one-up-manship with us. ‘Oh so you like Rodenbach? Have you tried the Gran Cru?’ ‘Yes, yes we have’ and so on. His beery tales and experiences far over shadow ours though, and we give up. His parting shot is to recommend the Christmas beer by Gouden Carolus. When he returns to our table a little later, he’s upset to see we haven’t tried his suggestion. Lucky for us, he vanishes for a moment, and returns with a glass of the stuff, a deliciously thick, malty, treacly beer that’s a perfect Christmas warmer. What a nice chap.

And with that, we bring a close to my commentary on Belgium. This is obviously nowhere near a full account of the holiday. We visited museums, churches and galleries (including an Anime exhibition in an old monastery in Ghent), saw some really famous paintings by the Belgian masters (all of them deeply religious), loads of amazing guild buildings, walked along canals, trod the streets of the city and caught up with a Belgian friend. Oh, and ate a fair bit too (plenty of cheese’n'beer, plus the obligatory soups and, best of all, a beef stew made using Leffe).

If you’ve read this and not visited Belgium before, I hope you might reconsider now.

Belgium

In the west of Europe there is a country named Belgium. It’s a relative small country with a coastline on the North Sea and one of the founding members of the European Union. Around 59% speaks Dutch in Belgium and the rest talks Belgian French. And there are around 10,5 million people in Belgium. There are a lot of great places to visit and in this article I am going to talk about three of them namely Bruges, Antwerp and Gent. I have been there many times and I really love Belgium I hope to give you a small idea of Belgium and maybe inspire you to go there also.

Bruges

Bruges is one of the most beautiful places of Belgium and has 117.000 inhabitants. Bruges is very famous for its historical and cultural inheritance. A lot of tourists visit Bruges every year and in the centre of Bruges there are over a 100 hotels and more then 9000 beds. An estimated 2 million people visit Bruges every year. Antwerp tries to keep as much cars as possible out of the centre and limits the speed to 30km an hour. There are a lot of things you can visit there like:
- Grote Markt
- The Burg
- Hof of Gruuthuse
- The Guido Gezellemusuem
- The city gates
- And the fish market
- The Monastery
- The holy chapel
- Jerusalem church.

Antwerp

Antwerp is the capital of the province Antwerp in Belgium. There are about 464.000 inhabitants in Antwerp. And this city has several nicknames like sinjoren that’s from the Spanish word senor but it’s also called the cookie city because of it’s famous coffeecookies. This is also a very religious city, most people are Roman-Catholic but there are many more like Protestant-Church Orthodox-Church and also Islam and Jews.
The official language of Antwerp is Dutch and in some circles they speak French. There are also a lot of things you can see here like the Hessenhouse that was completed in 1564 in the north of Antwerp. The building has been used for several reasons but now they show some great expositions there. There are a lot of different bars in Antwerp and it is also a great city for Shopping and a lot of great museums there like:
- Etnografisch Muserum
- Museum aan de stroom
- Museum Mayer van den Bergh
- Museum Ridder Smidt van Gelder.
- Stedelijk Prentenkabine
- Photomuseum
- Fashionmuseum

Gent

Gent is a great city in Flanders Belgium and is the capital of East Flanders. Gent is a very old city and there were already humans in Antwerp starting at the Stone and iron Age. Hostorians think that the name Gent is derived from Ganda and means confluence. A lot of medieval architecture is intact and therefore Gent is a beautifull city full of historical buildings. No cars are allowed in the centre and there are numerous cafes chruces theatres. Gent is also famous for its Mastel that’s a sort of sweet bread and is famous for there big cultural events such as the Gentse Feesten, I Love Techno and Festival van Vlaanderen.

Strong Design French Art Deco Jabot Pin Signed G.fouquet

One of the major design events of the 1920s, if not the most important, was “L’exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” which is French for “The International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts”. This World’s fair was held in Paris, France from April to October 1925.

The term Art Deco was derived by shortening the words Arts Décoratifs in the title of this exposition and described designs in terms of a broad decoratively “modern” style, influenced strongly by Decorative Cubism. One of the members of the Admission Committee for the jewelry department of this trail-blazing fair was the maker of the pin we show here, Mr. George Fouquet.

George Fouquet (1862-1957) is recognized as one of the very few and best known artist jewelers of his time. He won many international awards and worked closely together with artists of his time, like Alfons Mucha.

George Fouquet’s jewelry can be found in collections of many important museums all over the world; from the Victorian & Albert in London to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He bequeathed his archive and designs to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris

The so-called jabot-pin by George Fouquet we show here, is as close as one can get to the source of pure Art Deco jewelry.

Click the picture to get to the descriptive page of this pin.

Superb French Baroque Cameo In Golden Mounting. A True Collectors Item

Two weeks ago we were lucky being offered an impressive private collection of antique jewelry. The person who brought it to us inherited it from his parents, antique jewelry dealers who retired some 30 years ago, and he wanted to find a good home for it. We felt honoured that he came to us and were amazed by the quality of this collection. One could see the love these people had for antique jewelry.

Among the many high quality pieces we got was one truly amazing cameo. It took us many hours to determine where the cameo came from and what it depicted and the result is amazing.

If you want to find out about this cameo just click the picture.

Filigree Necklace Gold Fontenay

It is with great pride that we offer this magnificent necklace here. A true museum piece that we are thrilled to have in our collection.

The continuous uniform fringe decorated with beads, wirework and florettes of this necklace is typical for the work of Eugène Fontenay. A demi-parure of very similar design is illustrated in French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century, Henri Vever, translated by Katherine Purcell, p. 643. and a similar necklace plus matching earrings were sold last year at Sotheby’s for $ 52,000!

The archaeological revival is the appellation for neo-styles of the 18th and 19th centuries that where inspired by discoveries in the excavations of Roman, Egyptian, Hellenistic and Etruscan sites. The first revival in the 18th century, which is called neoclassicism, came after excavations of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The second revival was inspired by finds in Etruscan burial sites (in Italy). In jewelry, this style is characterized by granulation and filigree decorations.

There is some discussion among experts on who rediscovered the granulation technique. To some it was Castellani in the 19th Century but various methods of manufacturing and handling of granules have been described by Pliny in 79 AD, V. Biringucchio in 1540, G. Agricola in 1556, B. Cellini in 1568, M. Fachs in 1595 and A. Libavius in 1597/1606. In fact never since it was first used has granulation been a lost art. Until far into the 19th Century, the time of its alleged ‘rediscovery’, this technique has thrived continuously in many places like Russia, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Tibet and Persia. This also holds true for Swiss, German and Dutch folk-jewelry.

Eugène Fontenay (1823-87) was one of the foremost goldsmiths in France during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was a great admirer of the ancient techniques of granulation and filigree, and became best known for his outstanding work in the ‘archaeological’ style. Fontenay was no doubt inspired by the Campana collection of ancient jewellery, acquired by Napoleon III in 1860, and his firm produced much work in the antique style based on Greek, Roman and Etruscan examples.

Click the picture to see a close-up of this magnificent necklace.

Platinum Art Deco Diamond Pendant With Huge Magnificent Moonstone

Once upon a moonlit night
Two hearts blended
Love surrendered
With embracing arms
Remember

(borrowed from a song by Frank Sinatra)

Click the picture to see a close-up of this beautiful moonstone pendant.