Marilyn's Photos - Sep 4 2025 - Where's your Labubu

 

It's a new day and there's a new "toy" to learn about.  Naomi Osaka, tennis star, brought a small glittery stuffed tennis figure to the match, telling people it is named Althea Glitterson in honour of former tennis start Althea Gibson.  Here's the picture.  The CBC article says she has 4 Labubu tributes - Arthur Flash, Billie Jean Bling, Althea Glitterson...and the fourth?  Who knows.   The stories are mounting about the concerns over Labubus.  "A psychologist has given her verdict on the reason why people find Labubus ‘so addictive’ as the craze for the furry dolls continues to grow. For those not familiar, the viral toys are collectibles that were created by Hong-Kong born artist Kasing Lung and they come in a variety of different colours and collections The main appeal for most people is the ‘blind box’ element - meaning you don’t know which one you’ll get until you open up the packaging and take it out. So you can imagine TikTok's many unboxing videos.  And the addiction element is clear:  "The rarest Labubu dolls are often ‘secret’ colourways or limited edition releases, such as the Monsters Zimomo I Found You doll. So, if fans don't get the colour they hoped for, they simply buy more." They come in small at $15, medium at $13-16, large at $960, special editions (i.e. auctions).

Think of bling, and I think of Tiffany's - this is the window in the Carmel California store.     Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 6 2024 - Breakfast at Tiffany's Today

 

Remember the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's?  A fantasy idea. Wait. Stop. There is a cafe there now called The Blue Box Cafe and the chef is Daniel Boulud.  Isn't that so perfect?  It is fulfilling the fantasy of the movie, it seems. As a room, it evokes the late 1950s early 60s to me.  I see women with white gloves sitting at the tables.   Could we could create this atmosphere ourselves with these blue boxes hanging from our ceilings?  They seem to be available from Amazon, Postmark (used), and Temu.   It is feasible now to get the blue boxes.  But that wasn't the case in the past. Tiffany doesn't sell the blue boxes: “Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy of him for as much money as you may offer; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes.”. And that colour? "Since 1998, Tiffany Blue® has been registered as a color trademark by Tiffany and, in 2001, was standardized as a custom color created by Pantone® exclusively for Tiffany and not publicly available. No matter the medium the color is reproduced in, Tiffany's proprietary hue remains consistent and instantly recognizable." The name is 1837 Blue - named for the year Tiffany was founded.  Tiffany says the box is so desirable because: "It has long overflowed with promises:  of possibility, dreams, and, of course, love."  Sounds like Tiffany has fulfilled itself from the movie.    Well done.     I wonder if this clock was created by Tiffany - it is at the Flagler University in St. Augustine, Florida.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Sep 6 2022 - Tiffany time in the lab

 

Jewellery ads on our radio stations advertise lab grown diamonds.  This sounds interesting and exotic.  Things "grown" in labs. They used to be known as synthetic diamonds. They are created in a laboratory environment. These diamonds can be a more ethical choice than natural diamonds, as mining is not needed to produce them.   Here's what the BBC had to say in their article on lab-made diamonds: "On a grey January morning in 2019 Meghan Markle emerged onto a London street on her way to a meeting. She wore a smart coat and heels, but it was not her clothing that caught the attention of the world. It was a pair of glittering drop earrings embedded with diamonds that had been grown in a lab.  It took just five days to grow the diamonds adorning Markle’s ears according to Sidney Neuhaus, co-founder of Kimaï, the company that made them. Based in Antwerp." A lab-grown diamond is a diamond: chemically, physically and optically identical to a mined diamond.  There are two ways to grow a diamond. Both involve starting with the “seed” (a flat slither) of another diamond. The first lab diamond was made using a High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) system, where the seed is then placed amidst some pure graphite carbon and exposed to temperatures of about 1,500C and pressurised to approximately 1.5 million pounds per square inch in a chamber. More recently, another way to grow a diamond was discovered, called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). This involves putting the seed in a sealed chamber filled with carbon-rich gas and heating to around 800C. Under these conditions the gases begin to “stick” to the seed, growing a diamond carbon atom by atom. The article goes on to demonstrate how mined diamonds are unethical making lab-grown diamonds a likely better choice.  So did the comics and Superman making a diamond out of a lump of coal foretell that lab-grown diamonds would happen?   I look this up and have to be reminded that neither process for forming natural diamonds nor synthetic diamonds uses coal.  Diamonds created in laboratories are formed using graphite.  Here's the conclusion:  " If you hand Superman a stocking full of coal, best case scenario, he can make some real low-grade diamonds that really aren’t gonna fetch you much. A more realistic outcome is that he’s gonna hand you back a fistful of black powder. The good news is if you have an aunt or a grandma that gave you a pack of pencils for Christmas, now we’re in business."

And definitely ice crystals will not result in diamonds in the lab.  These ones looked wonderful to me, inspiring the title of the image Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Next Stop Ponce De Leon Hotel

Today's stop in St. Augustine is Flagler College, the former Ponce de Leon Hotel, built by Henry Flagler as an exclusive resort hotel in the 1880's.   Flagler was co-founder of Standard Oil, and was a millionaire developer who also built the railroad in Florida that went down to the Florida Keys.  His friends included Tiffany for the stained glass, and Thomas Edison for the electricity.  And the twin towers of the hotel were water storage tanks providing water to the hotel rather sourcing St. Augustine water.  St. Augustine water smelled strongly of sulphur.  Today this is a private college.