Taj Mahal, Design through Time

If you've been following, you know I'm in Delhi for a few weeks working on designs with Donna Larrabee, our design director. Donna had never been to the Taj Mahal, so after work the other day, we headed to Agra so she could see this wonder of the world. I am always inspired by this great monument's spirit and majesty...
The Taj Mahal feels like a white mirage, a magical layered architectural preciseness that is like looking at a mist with absolute confonding clarity. A mastery of design and geometry and therefore beauty the perfectly proportioned building fills one with its mystery, and a deep appreciation of being in its presence.

     Though all around it swirls and thunders modern India, the shrine remains a shrine and a witness to superb craftsmenship commisioned by love and money and toiled over by artists and craftsmen who suffered to commit to stone, to posterity this truly timeless beauty... I draw a big sigh for the carved, naturalistic, white marble tulips and lilies framed with moldings and buttressed by flowers of semi precious stones. They made me and others stroke their beauty and feel their soft glowing whitenss.
     I wanted to get out a pencil and start to draw the same tulips. For they are tulips that we too have seen, full blown and graceful, in gardens in the spring. The lilies with their stamens reaching upwards -sunward. How good that made me feel, to think that these artisans had experienced the same gift of nature that I have. That they have immortalized it in perfect stone, should every seed and garden and blade of grass be lost.
     Honeymoon couples, families, and seeming entire villages, even police cadets in training were strolling the grounds and taking thousands of pictures, delighted to be in such an important and inspiring spot. And creating their own colorful tableaus against this backdrop of white. We came for inspiration and indeed we were inspired, as have been so many for centuries before us. 
     
April
Feel Beautiful, Be Beautiful, Live Beautiful

Maple Leaves and Fleur de Lis

Hello Canada, Canada bonjour,

    That’s my home – maple leaves and fleur de lis.  Shining Red and French Blue – or is it periwinkle?

     I come from the beautiful Franglais nation. I am an Anglo child of Quebec, a maritime daughter of Nova Scotia, a sister of mountainous British Columbia, a lover of cosmopolitan Toronto. Canada, it is my home, my nest, my place, my center and my own personal history. Canada is an active giving source of inspiration, a repository of my memories. A fractal that explains my life. My family reaches from coast to coast. My customers do too. 

     From Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, and beautiful Newfoundland, and home sweet Quebec, and oh so big Ontario, sweeping the Prairies, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, bold Alberta and the over endowed British Columbia, from our Northern Reaches, from the Yukon, and Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, and, excuse me, is not Alaska almost ours?

     Across this beautiful land, where I had my start, my beginning, my success and many happinesses, I say today – Hello to my customers, Bonjour to mes amies, because today we launched our Canadian website- www.aprilcornell.ca and www.lacache.ca – after months of work, refining and designing, crafting and drafting- it is ready for you!
    Today I came back home. Please come and visit chez moi – an abundance of beauty awaits.
See you, a bientôt!
April