Olivia von Halle

Olivia von Halle (née Falconer, born 1983) is a British fashion designer who runs "Olivia von Halle", a manufacturer of silk pyjamas.
Early life.
Von Halle was born in 1983 in Newcastle upon Tyne. She moved to Fairseat, Kent aged two and attended Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls and Combe Bank. After studying Fashion and Textile Management at Leeds University, Olivia von Halle worked for The Future Laboratory in London as a trend forecaster for clients including Louis Vuitton, Gucci Group and Lamborghini. In 2008 she moved to Shanghai, China where she continued working as a trend forecaster and as a luxury brand consultant.
Career.
von Halle initially worked as a trend forecaster at The Future Laboratory in London. She moved to Shanghai, China in 2008 where she continued working freelance for The Future Laboratory and WGSN. In 2010 von Halle appeared in an ITV documentary ‘Piers Morgan On...: Shanghai’.
In September 2011, von Halle launched her eponymous label at London Fashion Week. The collection is now stocked in over 50 stores in 13 countries including Harrods and Liberty in the UK, Neiman Marcus in the US and Tsum in Moscow. The brand has been featured in global publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harpers Bazaar, Elle and Tatler.
Awards.
In 2013, von Halle was announced as a ‘Walpole Brand of Tomorrow 2013’, in association with Mishcon de Reya.
von Halle was declared Lounge and Nightwear brand of the year at the UK Lingerie Awards during an awards ceremony at the Freemason’s Hall.
In 2013, von Halle was awarded the Blue Butterfly Trust Mark for Positive Luxury for the company's strict corporate social responsibility program.
Family.
She is married to Hugo von Halle. The couple have two sons, Hieronymus Vladimir Azax and Dionysus Cosmo Chaos, and a daughter, Triptych Alabama Bliss.


Supriya Lele

Supriya Lele is a British-Indian designer with an eponymous fashion brand founded in 2016. Lele was a finalist of the LVMH Prize 2020 and shared the €300,000 prize fund with the other 7 finalists when the final leg of the competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Personal life.
Lele grew up in Meriden, West Midlands, UK, taking yearly trips to visit family in India during the holidays. Both of her parents are from India's central region—her mother from Nagpur, her father from Jabalpur. Her parents were both medics—her mother a clinical director and her late father a consultant specialist surgeon.
Education.
Lele started out at the University of Edinburgh, studying architecture but realising it wasn't for her, switched over to do an art foundation course. She also holds an MA from the Royal College of Art.
Work.
Lele's MA collection caught the eye of Fashion East director Lulu Kennedy and in 2017, she debuted her brand at London Fashion Week as part of the Fashion East showcase. In 2020, Lele was a finalist for the LVMH prize.


New English Art Club

The New English Art Club (NEAC) was founded in London in 1885 as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy. It continues to hold an annual exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Mall Galleries in London, exhibiting works by both members and artists from Britain and abroad whose work has been selected from an annual open submission.
History.
Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886. Among them were William Laidlay, Thomas Cooper Gotch, Frank Bramley, John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, George Clausen and Stanhope Forbes. Another founding member was G. P. Jacomb-Hood. An early name suggested for the group was the 'Society of Anglo-French Painters', which gives some indication of their origins. As a note in the catalogue to their first exhibition explained, 'This Club consists of 50 Members, who are more or less united in their art sympathies. They have associated themselves together with the view of holding an Annual Exhibition, hoping that a collective display of their works, which has hitherto been impossible, will prove not only of interest to the public, but will better explain the aim and method of their art.'
The Society held regular Spring and Autumn exhibitions, a number of which were held at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, until its demolition in 1905.
The Impressionist style was well represented at the NEAC, in comparison to the old-school academic art shown at the Royal Academy. For a time, the NEAC was seen as a stepping-stone to Royal Academy membership. Today the NEAC continues in a realistic, figurative style, while the Royal Academy has embraced abstract and conceptual art.
Current NEAC members include Peter Brown, Frederick Cuming, Anthony Green, Ken Howard, Charles Williams, Richard Bawden and Martin Yeoman.
Historic NEAC members and exhibitors include: Thomas Kennington (founder member and first secretary), Prof Fred Brown (founder member), Frank Bramley (foundation member), Walter Sickert, William Orpen, Augustus John, Gwen John, Ambrose McEvoy, Philip Wilson Steer, Henry Tonks, James Whitelaw Hamilton, Alfred William Rich, James Dickson Innes, Margaret Preston, Charles Wellington Furse, Katie Edith Gliddon, William Rothenstein, Lindsay Bernard Hall, Thomas Cooper Gotch, Mary Sargant Florence, Henry Strachey, Clare Atwood, Evelyn Dunbar, Eve Garnett, Frank McEwen, James Jebusa Shannon, Cecil Mary Leslie, Mary Elizabeth Atkins, William Brown Macdougall, Neville Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl of Lytton, Muirhead Bone, Robert Polhill Bevan, Dugald Sutherland MacColl, Neville Lewis, Charles Holmes, Carron O Lodge, Geoffrey Tibble, Alexander Mann, Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, Thomas Esmond Lowinsky, Frank Hughes, Albert Julius Olsson, Helen Margaret Spanton, Margaret Green and Leslie Donovan Gibson.
The NEAC is one of the member societies of the Federation of British Artists. A history of the Society from its foundation to the year 2000 was written by the art historian Kenneth McConkey and published in 2006.


James L. Schoppe

James L. Schoppe is an American production designer and art director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film "Return of the Jedi".


Osbert Lancaster

Sir Osbert Lancaster, CBE (4 August 1908 – 27 July 1986) was an English cartoonist, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general public about good buildings and architectural heritage.
The only child of a prosperous family, Lancaster was educated at Charterhouse School and Lincoln College, Oxford; at both he was an undistinguished scholar. From an early age he was determined to be a professional artist and designer, and studied at leading art colleges in Oxford and London. While working as a contributor to "The Architectural Review" in the mid-1930s, Lancaster published the first of a series of books on architecture, aiming to simultaneously amuse the general reader and demystify the subject. Several of the terms he coined as labels for architectural styles have gained common usage, including "Pont Street Dutch" and "Stockbroker's Tudor", and his books have continued to be regarded as important works of reference on the subject.
In 1938 Lancaster was invited to contribute topical cartoons to "The Daily Express". He introduced the single column-width cartoon popular in the French press but not until then seen in British papers. Between 1939 and his retirement in 1981 he drew about 10,000 of these "pocket cartoons", which made him a nationally known figure. He developed a cast of regular characters, led by his best-known creation, Maudie Littlehampton, through whom he expressed his views on the fashions, fads and political events of the day.
From his youth, Lancaster wanted to design for the theatre, and in 1951 he was commissioned to create costumes and scenery for a new ballet, "Pineapple Poll". Between then and the early 1970s he designed new productions for the Royal Ballet, Glyndebourne, D'Oyly Carte, the Old Vic and the West End. His productivity declined in his later years, when his health began to fail. He died at his London home in Chelsea, aged 77. His diverse career, honoured by a knighthood in 1975, was celebrated by an exhibition at the Wallace Collection marking the centenary of his birth and titled "Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster".
Life and career.
Early years.
Lancaster was born in London in 1908, the only child of Robert Lancaster (1880–1917) and his wife, Clare Bracebridge, "née" Manger. His paternal grandfather, Sir William Lancaster, rose from modest beginnings to become the chief executive of the Prudential Assurance Company, Lord of the manor of East Winch, Norfolk, and a philanthropist in the field of education. Osbert's mother was an artist, known for her paintings of flowers, who had exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy; his father was a publisher, who volunteered for the army on the outbreak of the First World War, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Norfolk Regiment, and was killed at the Battle of Arras in April 1917.
Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill, where Lancaster was born and raised, was an upper-middle class area. The family maintained a staff of servants, including a cook and a nurse. Such was the mixed nature of London in the early years of the 20th century that a short distance away were the deprived and dangerous Notting Dale and the Portobello Road, where, as Lancaster recalled in his 1953 memoirs, it was said to be impossible for a well-dressed man to walk and emerge intact. From an early age Lancaster was aware of the variety of classes, nationalities, and social attitudes around him.
In 1918 Lancaster was sent to St Ronan's preparatory school, Worthing. The régime at the school leaned heavily towards sport, in which he was neither interested nor proficient. The headmaster, Stanley Harris, was a celebrated amateur footballer and occasional first class cricketer, but he was reasonably tolerant of Lancaster's disdain for games, and on the whole Lancaster enjoyed his time at the school. His education there was, he later commented, of more importance to him than anything he learned later in his school and university career. He left St Ronan's in 1921, aged thirteen, and went to Charterhouse, where his father and uncles had all been sent. There he was shocked by the bullying and bad language, but in addition to its sporty, philistine "bloods", the school had an intellectual and aesthetic tradition. Lancaster's biographer Richard Boston writes, "The hearty Baden-Powell, for example, was offset by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Graves, while talented Carthusian artists had included Thackeray, Leech, Lovat Fraser and Max Beerbohm". The art master, P.J.("Purple")Johnson, encouraged Lancaster, insisting that a sound technique was a prerequisite for effective self-expression in drawing or painting; in that respect the boy's time at the school was valuable, though otherwise the headmaster found him "irretrievably gauche... a sad disappointment". Lancaster shared Beerbohm's view that being an old boy of the school was more pleasurable than being a pupil there.
At the age of seventeen Lancaster passed his final school examinations and gained entrance to Lincoln College, Oxford, to study history. He persuaded his mother to allow him to leave Charterhouse at once, giving him several months between school and university, during which he enrolled on a course of life classes at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. In October 1926 he started at Oxford. There, as at Charterhouse, he found two camps in which some students chose to group themselves: the "hearties" presented themselves as aggressively heterosexual and anti-intellectual; the "aesthetes" had a largely homosexual membership. Lancaster followed his elder contemporary Kenneth Clark in being contentedly heterosexual but nonetheless one of the aesthetes, and he was accepted as a leading member of their set. He cultivated the image of an Edwardian dandy, with large moustache, a monocle and check suits, modelling his persona to a considerable degree on Beerbohm, whom he admired greatly. He also absorbed some characteristics of the Oxford don Maurice Bowra; Lancaster's friend James Lees-Milne commented, "Bowra's influence over Osbert was marked, to the extent that he adopted the guru's booming voice, explosive emphasis of certain words and phrases, and habit in conversation of regaling his audiences with rehearsed witticisms and gossip." Lancaster's undergraduate set included Stephen Spender, Randolph Churchill, and most importantly John Betjeman, who became a close friend and lifelong influence.
Lancaster tried rowing with the Oxford University Boat Club, but quickly discovered he was no more suited to that than he had been to field games at school. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), acted in supporting roles, designed programme covers, wrote, and choreographed. He contributed prose and drawings to "Isis" and "Cherwell" magazines, engaged in student pranks, staged an exhibition of his pictures, attended life classes, and became established as a major figure in the Oxonian social scene. All these diversions led him to neglect his academic work. He had made things more difficult for himself by switching from the history course to English after his first year, a decision he regretted once confronted with the rigours of compulsory Anglo-Saxon, which he found incomprehensible. Making a belated effort, he extended his studies from the usual three years to four, and graduated with a fourth-class degree in 1930.
1930s.
Lancaster's family believed that art was a suitable hobby but an unacceptable profession; they agreed that the best career for him would be the law. He dutifully attended a crammer and joined the Middle Temple, but repeatedly failed his law examinations. His studies were abruptly bought to an end by his health. A chest ailment was diagnosed as possibly tubercular, and he was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland. After three months he was declared fit, and following a holiday in Venice – a lifelong love and aesthetic influence – he returned to England in 1931. He abandoned all thoughts of becoming a lawyer and enrolled full-time at the Slade School of Art in London.
At the Slade, Lancaster enjoyed most of his classes, but particularly those in stage design run by Vladimir Polunin, who had been Diaghilev's chief scene-painter and had worked with Picasso. Among Polunin's students was Karen Harris, daughter of the banker Sir Austin Harris. Lancaster fell in love with her; his feelings were reciprocated, but she was only seventeen and her parents thought her too young to marry. At first they were cautious about Lancaster's suitability as a husband and provider, but they came to approve of him. He and Karen were married in June 1933. They had two children: Cara (born 1934) and William (born 1938); the former became a stage manager, the latter, an anthropologist.
Lancaster earned a living as a freelance artist, producing advertising posters, Christmas cards, book illustrations and a series of murals for a hotel. In 1934 he secured a regular post with "The Architectural Review", which was owned by a family friend and of which Betjeman was assistant editor. The magazine had a reputation as "the mouthpiece of the modernist movement", employing leading proponents such as Ernő Goldfinger and Nikolaus Pevsner. Despite describing the Bauhaus style as "balls", Lancaster was not anti-modernist, but he joined Betjeman and Robert Byron in advancing the countervailing value of more traditional architecture. Chief among his many activities for "The Architectural Review" was reviewing books, particularly those on art. His biographer James Knox comments that Lancaster's taste was already assured, appreciating the diverse gifts of contemporary artists including Edward Burra, Giorgio de Chirico, Edward Wadsworth and Paul Nash.
Knox singles out as Lancaster's most lasting contribution to the magazine a series of illustrated satires on planning and architecture, under the title "Progress at Pelvis Bay". The collected articles were turned into a book, under the same title, published in 1936. It lampooned greedy and philistine property development in a typical seaside resort. Reviewing the book in "The Observer", Simon Harcourt-Smith wrote, "Mr Lancaster spares us no horrifying detail of the borough's development... [his] admirable drawings complete the picture of progress and desolation. I hope that every local authority and real-estate developer will be compelled to read this ghoulish little book." Lancaster followed this with "Pillar to Post" (1938), a lighthearted book with roughly equal amounts of text and drawings, aiming to demystify architecture for the intelligent lay person. The architectural scholar Christopher Hussey remarked on the author's inventive coinage of terms for period styles such as "Banker's Georgian", "Stockbroker's Tudor" and "By-pass Variegated", and described the book as both perceptive and shrewd.
In 1938 Lancaster agreed to help Betjeman write a series of articles for "The Daily Express". He became friendly with the paper's features editor, John Rayner, who responded positively to Lancaster's praise of "the little column-width cartoons" popular in the French press but not, so far, seen in British papers. Rayner dubbed them "pocket cartoons" after the pocket battleships then much in the news, and invited Lancaster to contribute some. The first appeared on 3January 1939. The early cartoons accompanied the "William Hickey" gossip column; later they were promoted to a front-page slot, where they remained a regular feature, with only brief interruptions, for more than forty years, totalling about 10,000. The popularity of Lancaster's cartoons led to attempts by other papers, including "The Times", to lure him away from the "Express", but he resisted them. Although he thought the "Express's" proprietor, Lord Beaverbook, "an old brute" and "a bastard", he found him "an ideal employer as far as I was concerned: he left one's work absolutely alone".
Second World War.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, Lancaster joined the Ministry of Information. He spoke good French and German, and because of that and his journalistic experience, he was recruited by the section handling British propaganda overseas. Several other prominent figures were members of the section and there were many clashes of egos and few tangible achievements. In July 1941, Lancaster was transferred to the Foreign Office's news department. His duties included giving daily news briefings to other public servants and the British press, monitoring German propaganda broadcasts, and drawing caricatures for leaflets in German, Dutch and French for aerial drops in enemy-held territory.
In addition to his official duties Lancaster was art critic for "The Observer" between 1942 and 1944, and continued to contribute the pocket cartoons to the "Express"; from 1943 he also drew a large weekly cartoon for its sister newspaper, "The Sunday Express", under the pen-name "Bunbury". Despite the wartime shortage of paper, the publisher John Murray produced a collection of the pocket cartoons every year from 1940 to 1944.
In December 1944, the war approaching its end, Lancaster was posted to Greece as press attaché to the British embassy in Athens. After the occupying Germans had withdrawn, opposing factions brought the country to the brink of civil war. Fearing a communist takeover, the British government supported Georgios Papandreou, prime minister of the former government-in-exile, now precariously in power in Athens, backed by British troops. When Papandreou's police fired on a civilian demonstration in full view of the world's press, British support for him came under international pressure. The British embassy, at which Lancaster arrived on 12 December, was the target for gunfire from various anti-government groups, and he joined the ambassador (Reginald Leeper), the British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean (Harold Macmillan) and a staff virtually under siege.
Following an initiative by Macmillan and the personal intervention of Winston Churchill, a new government took office in Athens acceptable to all sides, and peace was briefly restored, in January 1945. Lancaster's task was then to restore trust and good relations between Britain – its government, embassy and military – and the international press corps. In this he was generally thought to have succeeded. After that, he took the opportunity of travelling in the country beyond Athens during the months before civil strife returned in 1946. He explored Attica, Boeotia and Arcadia, and also visited Thessaly, Epirus and some of the islands. He fell in love with Greece, which he revisited repeatedly throughout the rest of his life. During his excursions in 1945 and 1946 he sketched continually, and the results were published with his accompanying text as "Classical Landscape with Figures" in 1947. Boston describes it as "an unflinching but lyrical account of the conditions of post-war Greece"; "The Times" called it "a fine work of scholarship" as well as "an outstanding picture book".
Postwar.
During the three years between his return from Greece and the end of the decade, Lancaster published two more books, one a comic story originally written for his children, "The Saracen's Head", and the other a further satirical book about architecture and planning, "Drayneflete Revealed". In 1947–48 he was the Sydney Jones Lecturer in Art at Liverpool University, following earlier appointees including Sir Herbert Read, W. G. Constable, Frank Lambert and H. S. Goodhart-Rendel.
The 1951 Festival of Britain gave Lancaster new opportunities to expand his artistic scope. Despite the hostility to the festival shown by his main employer, Beaverbrook, Lancaster was a major contributor. He and his friend John Piper were commissioned to design the centrepiece of the Festival Gardens on the south bank of the Thames. Boston describes it as "a 250-yard succession of pavilions, arcades, towers, pagodas, terraces, gardens, lakes and fountains, in styles that included Brighton Regency, Gothic and Chinese". The main site of the festival, around the new Royal Festival Hall, was intended to convey the spirit of modernist architecture; the gardens were designed to evoke the atmosphere of Georgian pleasure gardens, such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh.
The gardens attracted about eight million visitors during the 1951 festival. "The Manchester Guardian" called them "a masterpiece... fantasy on fantasy, red and gold and blue and green, a labyrinth of light-hearted absurdity".
Lancaster's association with Piper led to a second departure in his professional career: stage design. In connexion with the Festival of Britain, Sadler's Wells Ballet mounted a new work, "Pineapple Poll" by John Cranko, and approached Piper to design it. He could not take the commission and recommended his colleague. This was an opportunity Lancaster had keenly awaited since he was eleven, when his mother took him to see Diaghilev's production of "The Sleeping Beauty". He recalled "the dazzling beauty of the Bakst sets and the intensity of my own response... There and then I formed an ambition that was not destined to be fulfilled for more than thirty years". Cranko's exuberant ballet was an immediate success – "the hit of the season", in Knox's phrase – and turned Lancaster into one of the country's most sought-after theatre designers. During the rest of the 1950s and the 1960s his costumes and scenery were seen in new productions at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, the Old Vic, Aldeburgh and in the West End.
Although he had provided drawings for a few books by other authors in the 1930s it was not until after the war that Lancaster was continually in demand as an illustrator. He illustrated or designed covers for a wide range of books, both fiction and non-fiction. His commissions included drawings for works by friends such as Nancy Mitford, Alan Moorehead and Anthony Powell; for best-sellers including C.Northcote Parkinson and P.G.Wodehouse; and for other modern authors including Ruth McKenney, Violet Powell, Simon Raven and Virginia Graham. He also illustrated new editions of classic works by authors from Shakespeare to Beerbohm and Saki.
Later years: 1960–1986.
In "Osbert: A Portrait of Osbert Lancaster", Boston comments that after the dramatic events in Athens his subject's later life was uneventful and industrious with "a somewhat dismaying dearth of rows, intrigues, scandals or scrapes to report." The Lancasters had a Georgian house in Henley-on-Thames, and a flat in Chelsea, where they lived from Mondays to Fridays. He worked at home in the mornings, on illustrations, stage designs, book reviews and any other commissions, before joining his wife for a midday dry martini and finally dressing and going to one of his clubs for lunch. After that he would walk to the "Express" building in Fleet Street at about four in the afternoon. There he would gossip with his colleagues before sitting at his desk smoking furiously, producing the next day's pocket cartoon. By about half-past six he would have presented the cartoon to the editor and be ready for a drink at El Vino's across the road, and then the evening's social events.
Karen Lancaster died in 1964. They were markedly different in character, she quiet and home-loving, he extrovert and gregarious, but they were devoted to each other, and her death left him devastated. Three years later he married the journalist Anne Scott-James; they had known each other for many years, although at first she did not much like him, finding him "stagey" and "supercilious". By the 1960s they had become good friends, and after Karen died the widowed Lancaster and the divorced Scott-James spent increasing amounts of time together. Their wedding was at the Chelsea Register Office on 2January 1967. After their marriage they kept his Chelsea flat, and lived at weekends in her house in the Berkshire village of Aldworth, the house in Henley having been sold.
Though generally a commentator rather than a campaigner, Lancaster made an exception for the protection of Britain's architectural heritage, where he became a leader of public opinion. The historian Jerry White has written that the demolition of the Euston Arch in London in 1962 alerted the general public that "without vigilance and sturdy resistance, London was in danger of losing its landmarks one by one, in the interests of either profit or a misconceived public weal". Lancaster had been pressing this point since before the war. In 1967 he was appointed to the Greater London Council's Historic Buildings advisory committee, joining Betjeman, Pevsner and Sir John Summerson. They played a major role in defeating the Labour government's plans to demolish the front of the Tate Gallery. In 1973, with Betjeman and others of like mind Lancaster campaigned against the Conservative government's imposition of entry charges to hitherto free galleries and museums; the charges caused admissions to drop drastically, and were soon abolished.
In June 1975 Lancaster was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours. He and his wife collaborated on "The Pleasure Garden" (1977), a history of the British garden. Although great gardens such as Stowe were given full coverage, her text and his drawings did not neglect more modest efforts: "The suburban garden is the most important garden of the 20th century and there is no excuse other than ignorance for using the word 'suburban' in a derogatory sense". The following year Lancaster was made a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts, a distinction in which his predecessors had included the artist and architect Hugh Casson; the typographer Eric Gill; Charles Holden, London Transport's architect; Barnes Wallis, the wartime engineer; and a modernist architect with whom Lancaster had vigorously crossed swords, Sir Basil Spence. There would not be another theatre designer RDI until Stefanos Lazaridis in 2003. In 1978 Lancaster suffered the first of a series of strokes, and his health began a slow decline. He designed no more for the theatre, drew his last pocket cartoon for the "Express" in May 1981, and published his last collection, "The Life and Times of Maudie Littlehampton" the following year.
Lancaster died at his Chelsea flat on 27 July 1986, aged 77. He was buried with previous generations of his family in the churchyard at West Winch. A memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden in October 1986.
Works.
Architectural history and comment.
In 2008 the architectural historian Gavin Stamp described Lancaster's "Pillar to Post" (1938) – later revised and combined with the sequel "Homes Sweet Homes" (1939) – as "one of the most influential books on architecture ever published – and certainly the funniest". Lancaster felt that architects and architectural writers had created a mystique that left the lay person confused, and in the two books he set out to demystify the subject, with, he said, "a small mass of information leavened by a large dose of personal prejudice."
From an early age Lancaster had been fascinated by architecture. He recalled his first trip to Venice and the "staggering" view of San Giorgio Maggiore from the Piazzetta, and as a young man he went on what he described as "church crawls" with Betjeman. His concern for architectural heritage led him to write and draw what Knox describes as "a series of architectural polemics in the guise of disarming 'picture books'". Harold Nicolson said of Lancaster's work in this sphere, "Under that silken, sardonic smile there lies the zeal of an ardent reformer... a most witty and entertaining book. But it is more than that. It is a lucid summary of a most important subject". Four of Lancaster's books are in this category: "Progress at Pelvis Bay" lampoons insensitive planners and avaricious developers; "Pillar to Post" illustrates and analyses the exteriors of buildings from ancient times to the present; "Homes Sweet Homes" does the same for the interiors. "Drayneflete Revealed" is in the same vein as "Progress at Pelvis Bay". In all these Lancaster employs something of the technique he prescribed for stage design: presenting a slightly heightened version of reality. The twisted columns in the "Baroque" section are not drawn directly from actual baroque buildings, but are the artist's distillation of the many examples he has seen and sketched. By such means, he set out to make the general public aware of good buildings, and "the present lamentable state of English architecture".
Lancaster's sketches and paintings in and around Greece are rarely satirical; they are a record of his love for, and careful scrutiny of the country. When his contempt for tyranny prevented him from visiting Greece while it was under military rule he went instead to Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Syria, always with a large sketchbook, in which he wrote and drew. From these sketches he produced "Classical Landscape with Figures" (1947), "Sailing to Byzantium: An Architectural Companion" (1969) and, in a different vein, "Scene Changes" (1978), in which he ventured into writing poetry to accompany his drawings. Dilys Powell, a well-known Hellenophile, wrote that Lancaster was "one of the few who could make a joke about the Greeks without giving offence; he was devoted to Greece; he was born to celebrate her".
Cartoons.
Although the Beaverbrook papers were editorially right-wing, Lancaster was never pressured into following a party line. His inclination was to satirise the government of the day, regardless of party, and he felt that his overtly partisan colleagues such as David Low and Vicky were constrained by their political allegiances. He wrote, "It is not the cartoonist's business to wave flags and cheer as the procession passes; his allotted role is that of the little boy who points out that the Emperor is stark naked".
In the late 1940s Lancaster developed a repertory company of characters in whose mouths he put his social and political jokes. The star character was Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton, who managed to be shrewd and flighty simultaneously. She began as what her creator called "a slightly dotty class symbol", but developed into "a voice of straightforward comment which might be my own". Maudie's political views were eclectic: "on some matters she is far to the right of Mr Enoch Powell, and on others well to the left of Mr Michael Foot". Her comments on the fads and peculiarities of the day caught the public imagination; the art historian Bevis Hillier calls her "an iconic figure to rank with Low's Colonel Blimp and Giles's Grandma". Various candidates have been proposed as the model for Maudie, but Lancaster maintained that she was not based on any one real person.
Other regular characters included Maudie's dim but occasionally perceptive husband Willy; two formidable dowagers: the Littlehamptons' Great-Aunt Edna, and Mrs Frogmarch, a middle-class Tory activist; Canon Fontwater, a personification of the Church Militant; Mrs Rajagojollibarmi, an Asian politician; and Father O'Bubblegum, Fontwater's Roman Catholic opposite number; they are seen in the illustration to the right, from the 1975 collection "Liquid Assets". Lancaster's younger contemporary Mark Boxer remarked on the way some characters such as the Canon had developed "square characteristics to fit into the shape of the cartoon box". In his wartime cartoons Lancaster often caricatured Mussolini and Hitler; later he rarely portrayed current politicians, although Knox includes a few pocket cartoons from the 1960s in which General de Gaulle, Harold Wilson and others appear. Richard Nixon featured in a few pocket cartoons during the Watergate scandal; in one he is drawn standing by a flushing lavatory, saying innocently, "Tapes? What tapes?"
The novelist Anthony Powell commented that Lancaster, having carefully invented and stylised his own persona – "bristling moustache, check suits, shirt and tie in bold tints" – created similarly stylised characters for his cartoons, achieving "the traditional dramatic effectiveness of a greatly extended cast for a commedia dell'arte performance".
Stage design.
Lancaster's career designing for the theatre began and ended with Gilbert and Sullivan. His first costumes and scenery were for the Sadler's Wells Ballet's "Pineapple Poll" (1951), John Cranko's ballet with a story based on a Gilbert poem and music by Sullivan. His last were for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's revival of "The Sorcerer" (1973). In between, he designed more productions for the Royal Ballet, as well as for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Old Vic and the West End. It was a matter of mild regret to him that of the twenty plays, operas and ballets that he designed between the two, only one was for a thoroughly serious piece, Britten's "Peter Grimes", for the Bulgarian National Opera in Sofia in 1964.
Three of Lancaster's theatre designs have remained in use in 21st-century productions, all by the Royal Ballet: "Pineapple Poll",
"La fille mal gardée" and "Coppélia". In an article on the second in 2016, Danielle Buckley wrote, "Lancaster's surrealist and stylized designs for "Fille" amplify the story's pantomime quality, and the exaggerated burlesque of its comedy – but the backdrops of fields that roll into the distance, bundles of hay, dreamy skies and village cottages provide the idealized, pastoral context that the story needs". Buckley adds that Lancaster's designs have been criticised for locating the ballet in no particular time or place – "except, that is, of a 1960s London view of idyllic country life".
Lancaster's stated view was that stage sets and costumes should reflect reality, but "through a lens, magnifying and slightly over-emphasising everything which it reflects". Sir Geraint Evans commented on how Lancaster's designs helped the performer: "[His] design for Falstaff was superb: it gave me clues to understanding the character, and reflected that marvellous, subtle sense of humour which was present in all his work."
Character and views.
Lancaster's old-fashioned persona, together with his choice of a countess as his principal cartoon mouthpiece, led some to assume his politics were on the right of the spectrum. But despite what he described as his strong traditionalist feelings he was a floating voter: "I've voted Tory and Labour in my time and I think once, in a moment of total mental aberration, voted Liberal." He distrusted the Conservatives for what he saw as their persistent bias in favour of property developers and against conservation. He rarely let his own views show obviously in his cartoons, but his hatred of political oppression was reflected in his portrayal of fascist, communist and apartheid regimes, and he refused to go to his beloved Greece while the military junta was in power from 1967 to 1974. In religion he described himself as "a C of E man... with that embarrassment induced in all right-thinking men by any mention of God outside church."
Legacy, honours and reputation.
Exhibitions.
Apart from an exhibition as an undergraduate, Lancaster had four large-scale shows of his works. The first was in Norwich in 1955–56, when Betjeman opened an exhibition covering the range of Lancaster's output, including posters from the 1930s as well as cartoons, stage designs, watercolours and architectural drawings. In 1967 a London show concentrated on his costumes and scenery, with examples of work from plays, ballets, opera and, exceptionally, film ("Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines", 1965). In 1973, at the instigation of Roy Strong, the National Portrait Gallery mounted "The Littlehampton Bequest", for which Lancaster painted portraits of Willy Littlehampton's supposed ancestors and offspring, in the style of artists down the centuries, from Holbein to Van Dyck and Lely, and then to Reynolds and Gainsborough and on to Sargent and Hockney. Strong wrote an introduction to the book Lancaster published of the collected portraits. To mark the centenary of Lancaster's birth, The Wallace Collection staged an exhibition titled "Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster" from October 2008 to January 2009. It was curated by James Knox, the editor and author of a lavishly-illustrated biography and catalogue with the same title as the exhibition.
Honours.
Lancaster's honours included his knighthood, his CBE in the 1953 Coronation Honours and an honorary D.Litt from Oxford, as well as honorary degrees from Birmingham (1964), Newcastle upon Tyne (1970), and St Andrews (1974).
Reputation.
In 2008, the year of Lancaster's centenary, Peter York called him "A national treasure... arguably Britain's most popular newspaper cartoonist, certainly our most effective, popular architectural historian and illustrator and one of the most inspired 20th-century theatre, opera and ballet designers." But York added that in recent years Lancaster had been largely forgotten: "People under 40 don't know him", as they still knew Betjeman from his many television programmes. The "Oxford Companion to English Literature" called Lancaster "a writer, artist, cartoonist, and theatre designer, whose many illustrated works gently mock the English way of life: he was particularly good at country‐house and upper‐class architecture and mannerisms, but also had a sharp eye for suburbia." The obituary in "The Times" described him as "the most polite and unsplenetic of cartoonists, he was never a crusader, remaining always a witty, civilized critic with a profound understanding of the vagaries of human nature." Sir Roy Strong wrote that Lancaster's cartoons were those "of a gentleman of the old school... He never crossed into the brilliant savagery of Gerald Scarfe or "Spitting Image". The one-liners in his pocket cartoons were Cowardesque".
Although he was much praised at the time – Anthony Powell said, "Osbert kept people going by his own high spirits and wit" – Lancaster was conscious that the work of a political cartoonist is ephemeral, and he did not expect longevity for his topical drawings. His legacy as a pocket cartoonist has been the genre itself; his successors in the national press have included Mel Calman, Michael Heath, Marc, Matt and Trog. Despite the topical nature of Lancaster's cartoons, they remain of interest to the historian; Lucie-Smith quotes a contemporary tribute by Moran Caplat: "No social history of this [20th] century will be complete without him. He has joined the handful of artists who, over the last three hundred years, have each in their time mirrored our nation."
"The Times" said of Lancaster's stage designs, "When the history of Glyndebourne comes to be written, high in the roll of honour will stand the name of Osbert Lancaster, who has the great gift of designing décor that invigorates every opera". But although theatre designs are less ephemeral than topical cartoons, in general they have a practical lifetime measured in years or at most a few decades. The survival of Lancaster's costumes and scenery for "Pineapple Poll" and "La fille mal gardée" into the 21st century is exceptional, and most of even his highest-praised productions for repertory works have been succeeded by new designs by artists from Hockney to Ultz.
Lancaster's prose style divided opinion. Betjeman teased him that it was "deliciously convoluted"; Boston and Knox both echo this view. But Beaverbrook's right-hand man, George Malcolm Thompson, said of Lancaster, "The annoying thing at the "Express" was that he was not only the only one who could draw; he could also "write" better than anyone in the building."
Lancaster's most enduring works have been his architectural books. "Pillar to Post" and its successors have been reissued in various editions, and at 2018 are in print as a boxed set entitled "Cartoons, Columns and Curlicues", containing "Pillar to Post", "Homes Sweet Homes" and "Drayneflete Revealed". Reviewing the new edition in "The Irish Times", Niall McGarrigle wrote, "The books are of their time, of course, but their legacy is part of the strong heritage culture that we rightly fight for today". Alan Powers wrote in "The Financial Times", "At least old buildings are now cherished rather better, and the house fronts around Lancaster's birthplace in Notting Hill are jollied up in his favourite pinks and mauves... now we understand that the compact streets and houses of the past provide the best opportunity for social encounters and save energy, and that even bad buildings can make us smile. For both of these revelations, we owe Osbert Lancaster a lot."
Stage designs by Lancaster.
Source: "Who's Who".


Squonk Opera

Squonk Opera is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Led by artistic directors Jackie Dempsey and Steve O'Hearn, Squonk Opera formed in 1992 and has created fourteen distinct shows and performed in over 250 venues in 35 of the United States. Squonk Opera has been touring internationally since 2003 - to Scotland, Belgium, Germany and twice to South Korea, where they opened both the Busan International Performing Arts Festival and the World Music Theater Festival. In 2017, Squonk was one of the first western acts to perform at the Qingdao International Beer Festival in Qingdao, China. Over 500,000 people have seen Squonk around the world, and reviews include “a multimedia troupe of infinite jest with an imagination to match” from The New York Times, "insane majesty" from The Scotsman, and "...surreal and poetic" from USA Today.
Squonk Opera's shows consist of music, visual art, and acting elements in an attempt to make a form of opera accessible to all people. Dempsey says "we like to think of ourselves as a wacky, provincial opera company." They named the group "Squonk" after a description of a jazz saxophonist's playing as a "squonk-fest", rather than the legendary creature of the same name.
In 2000, Squonk Opera took their show "Bigsmörgåsbørdwünderwerk" onto Broadway from its previous off-Broadway run. Though the venture wasn't a commercial success, the exposure it gained them was ultimately beneficial.
In 2011, Squonk Opera performed on the popular television show "America's Got Talent". They were sent directly past the Vegas round into Hollywood, and thus did not compete until the first quarterfinals. The group was eliminated, being buzzed by Sharon Osbourne and Piers Morgan.
Squonk Opera has received over 100 grants and awards for their work, including eight NEA awards, an American Theater Wing Award, and grants from other national funders such as the Rockefeller M.A.P. Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Jim Henson Foundation, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additionally, Squonk Opera has been supported by numerous local and regional funders, including Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, PNC Charitable Trust, Grable Foundation, Buhl Foundation, The Opportunity Fund, and many others.
Shows.
Places 'Squonked' include:
Albany, NY;
Baltimore, MD;
Bloomington, IN;
Bradford, PA;
Central College(Pella, IA);
Charleston, WV;
Charlotte, NC;
Chester County, PA;
College Park, MD;
Columbia, MD;
Edwardsville, IL;
Hardin County, KY;
Houghton, MI;
Indiana County, PA;
Jersey Shore(Manasquan, NJ);
Newark, DE;
Pittsburgh, PA;
Raritan Valley, NJ;
Reston, VA;
South Orange/Maplewood, NJ;
St. Louis, MO;


Three Blind Mice (radio play and short story)

Three Blind Mice is the name of a half-hour radio play written by Agatha Christie, which was later adapted into a TV movie, a short story, and a popular stage production.
1947 radio production.
The original radio play was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme at 8.00pm on Friday 30 May 1947.
It was part of an evening of programmes in honour of the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary. The BBC had approached the Queen some months before and asked what programmes she would like to hear. Amongst a selection of music and variety, she requested something by Christie who was a writer she admired. Christie agreed, asking that her fee of one hundred guineas be donated to the Southport Infirmary Children's Toy Fund.
The idea for the play came from a real-life crime tragedy, the Dennis O'Neill case, of 1945 with the death of a boy in foster care. Christie's official biography states that the name of the boy was Daniel O'Neill but contemporary newspaper reports state the name of the boy as Dennis O'Neill.
No recording of the original radio play exists and the script is not commercially available.
Director/Producer: Martyn C. Webster
Cast:
"Barry Morse" played Giles Davis
"Belle Chrystall" played Molly Davis
"Gladys Young" played Mrs Boyle
"Richard Williams" played Major Metcalf
"Raf De La Torre" played Mr Paravicini
"Allan McClelland" played Christopher Wren
"Lewis Stringer" played Detective-Sergeant Trotter
"Lydia Sherwood" played Mrs Lyon
Other parts were played by Marjorie Westbury, David Kossoff and Duncan McIntyre
1947 television short.
Later, the radio play was developed for television, and broadcast as a 30-minute BBC short on 21st October 1947. The television version was directed by Barrie Edgar, and starred John Witty as Giles Davis.
1948 short story.
At some point soon after transmission of the radio play, the suggestion was made to Christie that she turn it into a short story. This was published in the US in "Cosmopolitan" magazine in May 1948 and then in the 1950 US collection "Three Blind Mice and Other Stories". The story has never been published in the UK, at Christie's request; she asked that the short story not be published in the UK as long as the stage play "The Mousetrap" continued to run.
1950 television movie.
The story was adapted as the ninth episode of the CBS anthology series "Sure as Fate", airing on 31st October 1950.
1952 stage play.
Christie saw the potential of expanding the half-hour radio play into a full theatre play and in 1952, "The Mousetrap", the play that has the longest initial run of any play in the world, first came to the stage. As another play had run on the stage just prior to the Second World War also with the title "Three Blind Mice", Christie had to change the name. It was her son-in-law, Anthony Hicks, who suggested "The Mousetrap", which is taken from Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". Allan McClelland, in the role of Christopher Wren, was the only actor to make the transition from the radio production to the stage play.
The text of the play was published in 1954 by Samuel French as 'French's Acting Edition No 153' and also in the HarperCollins 1993 collection "The Mousetrap and Other Plays" ().
1956 Brazilian television adaptation.
The story, under its Portuguese language title of "Três Ratinhos Cegos", was adapted for Portuguese television, being broadcast on 21 January 1956.


Gaetano Previati

Gaetano Previati (1852 – 1920) was an Italian Symbolist painter in the Divisionist style.
Biography.
Previati was born in Ferrara. He relocated to Milan in 1876 and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Giuseppe Bertini, Giovanni Morelli, and Federico Faruffini. He became strongly attached to the Divisionist style, and even published a treatise on "I principi scientifici del Divisionismo (1909).
He won the Canonica competition in 1879. In 1880 at Turin, he exhibited "Gli ostaggi di Crema" and "Cesare Borgia at Crema". Having settled in Milan definitively in 1881, he came into contact with the Scapigliatura movement. In 1881 at Milan, he displayed the genre painting "Preferenza" as well as "Christ Crucified" (1880); "Abelard"; and "At the entrance of the Harem". In 1883, he exhibited "Un angolo del solaio", "May", and "Saleswoman". At the 1883 Mostra of Rome he exhibited "Angels" and "A November at Ferrara". In 1884 at the Mostra of Turin, he displayed the following oil paintings: "Oporto"; "May: First Communion"; and "Crepuscoli"; and four watercolors: "Aurora"; "Herb Market"; "Suonatori"; "Storia di un nudo: Studio".
1886–87, at Milan and Turin, he exhibited the patriotic historical painting titled "Tiremm innanz" (Fire away). Lorenzo Benapiani wrote about "Fire Away" in his book titled "Ars". The canvas depicts the execution of the patriot Antonio Sciesa who had been active in the rebellion in Milan against Austrian rule.
At Venice, in 1887, he exhibited "L'Haschich" and at the 1888 National Exhibition of Fine Arts of Bologna: "Christ and the Magdalen"; "Oporto" and "Le fumatrici di haschisch".
He took part in the 1st Brera Triennale in 1891 with a work clearly showing his adoption of Divisionism, of which he was also a theoretician, and Symbolist themes. He took part in the Venice Biennale by invitation from 1895 to 1914, including solo shows of his work in 1901 and 1912. He was involved in the creation of the "Dream Room" at the 7th Biennale in 1907 and exhibited at the Salon des Peintres Divisionnistes Italiens organised in Paris by the art dealer Alberto Grubicy. It was Alberto and his brother Vittore who founded the "Società per l’Arte di Gaetano Previati" in 1911, purchasing a large number of his paintings and showing them in exhibitions in Genoa (1915) and Milan (1916 and 1919). Grief-stricken over the death of members of his family, he died in 1920 at the town of Lavagna in Liguria, where he was in the habit of staying for long periods.


Jankidas

Jankidas Mehra (1910 – 18 June 2003) was a prolific Indian film actor of Hindi Cinema, cyclist, production designer and writer. He made over 1000 film appearances between the 1930s and 1997.
Biography.
Sports.
Jankidas served as the only Indian member of the International Olympic Committee at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and was the only Indian to have broken the world record in cycling between 1934 and 1942.
In the 1940s, along with Sohrab Bhoot, he founded the Cycling Federation of India.
Films.
Jankidas debuted in films playing a major role in "Khazanchi" (1941), produced in Lahore. He was not seen again till 1946, when he would appear in "Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani". From then on he would continue to play roles with increasing vigour over the years.
As a production designer, Jankidas was responsible for the founding of many famous Indian actor's careers. He was responsible for Madhubala's role in Sohrab Modi's "Daulat" in 1947, and introduced Meena Kumari in Nanabhai Bhatt's "Hamara Ghar", and Khushboo in Sunil Dutt's "Dard Ka Rishta". He also introduced actress Mala Sinha in Hamlet, produced and directed by Kishore Sahu.
In 1985, he wrote the script for the film "Yaadon Ki Kasam".
Jankidas was the recipient of numerous national and international awards. In May 1996, he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association.
Jankidas was also an author and wrote numerous books on Bollywood and the acting profession. He published " My Misadventures in Filmland" and "Acting for Beginners".
Death.
Jankidas was suffering from a heart ailment for a substantial period of time, but was discharged from the local hospital two days before his death. He died of cardiac failure at his Juhu residence on Wednesday 18 June 2003. He was 93.
Jankidas is survived by two sons, and two daughters.


Robert Hyatt

Robert Morgan Hyatt (born 1948) is an American computer scientist and programmer. He co-authored the computer chess programs Crafty and Cray Blitz which won two World Computer Chess Championships in the 1980s. Hyatt was a computer science professor at the University of Southern Mississippi (1970–1985) and University of Alabama at Birmingham (1988–2016).
Early life and education.
Hyatt was born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1948. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970 and an M.S. in 1983, both from the University of Southern Mississippi. His master's dissertation was titled "Cray Blitz: A Computer Chess Playing Program". Hyatt earned a Ph.D. in computer and information sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1988. His thesis was titled "A High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees". Bruce Wilsey Suter was Hyatt's doctoral advisor.
Career.
Hyatt is co-author of the computer chess program Crafty and the co-author of Cray Blitz, a two-time winner of the World Computer Chess Championships. He has been actively involved in computer chess since he first started to program a computer to play chess in 1968. These efforts have been supported by various computer vendors such as Univac (1978), Cray Research (1980–1994), and more recently AMD via their developer's lab. Crafty is freely available both in executable form (from many different web sites) and in source form (from Hyatt's home page). Crafty presently participates in many computer chess tournaments (and an occasional human chess tournament). An old version of the source of Cray Blitz is also available on the internet for those interested in seeing what computer chess looked like in the late 1980s.
Hyatt taught computer science for 46 years, from 1970 through 1985 at the University of Southern Mississippi and from 1985 through 2016 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He retired in 2016 as an associate professor of computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (1988–2016).


The Idolmaster Dearly Stars

 is a Japanese life simulation video game developed by Microvision and published by Bandai Namco Games. It was released on September 17, 2009 for the Nintendo DS. The game is a spin-off of "The Idolmaster" series and its timeline coincides before the events in "The Idolmaster 2".
The gameplay in "Dearly Stars" is similar to previous games in the series, but with new elements and differences to the minigames. The gameplay was adjusted to allow the player the option to quickly play through the game's story, but head director Toshihiko Kujioka also wanted to add in gameplay elements that would add another layer of challenge. The story is told from the perspective of Ai Hidaka, Eri Mizutani and Ryō Akizuki—three prospective pop idols introduced in "Dearly Stars" as they enter the talent agency 876 Production, and deals with their training on their way to stardom. The player has access to the three idols' different scenarios when playing, and each one involves a branching plot line.
Development for the game began in 2008 as the first game in the franchise's next stage called "2nd Vision". The development team wanted to introduce a new talent agency separate from 765 Production, the main agency in the series, to better suit the details of the story. When developing the game's three idols, two of them were decided to be girls, but Kujioka suggested that the third idol Ryō be male instead. The game features 10 songs the idols perform, later released on several music albums. Three manga adaptations were also published by Ichijinsha. "Dearly Stars" sold 30,786 copies in its first week of release in Japan, and ranked as the tenth best-selling video game in Japan that week. Reviewers have praised the game, and it has been described as suitable for beginners to "The Idolmaster" series.
Gameplay.
"Dearly Stars" is a life simulation game in which the player assumes the role of one of three pop idols at a time: Ai Hidaka, Eri Mizutani or Ryō Akizuki. An idol's statistics are divided into three categories: vocal, dance and visual image. As these increase, an idol's overall image level will also increase. The game is largely divided into two modes: a story mode which encompasses normal gameplay, and a separate stage mode for performing songs outside of the story mode. At the start of every in-game week on Monday, the player is shown current popularity trends in vocal, dance and visual image ranked first, second and third in popularity. This gives the player a guide on how to gain popularity by augmenting an idol's statistics via the choice of song they will perform and what costumes they wear during an audition. Also on Monday, the player is first given the option to choose which costume and accessories to wear for performances, and to choose one of the available songs. Each costume, accessory and song have either a vocal, dance or visual attribute. The player can also modify the choreography and camera positioning used during performances at this time.
The player is given the option to check any available messages at the start of every in-game day. This is followed by deciding on the daily schedule for Monday through Saturday from four choices: taking a lesson, doing promotional work, taking an audition, or taking the day off; Sunday is always a day off. The lessons are in the form of three minigames which serve to increase or decrease an idol's statistics in either vocal, dance or visual image. For example, if the vocal lesson is chosen, it will not only increase an idol's vocal statistics, but also decrease an idol's dance and visual statistics. Each lesson is divided into six parts, and the player is given ranked with either a letter grade from A to E or simply a "bad" rank for each part depending on how well the lesson is performed. The lessons become harder over time the better they are performed. The lesson's overall performance is ranked from bad, to normal, good and finally perfect.
The promotional phase of the gameplay mainly deals with the idol conversing with various other characters and doing events, some of which are necessary to progress the game. There are also times when the player is given choices that directly affect the idol. Over the course of a conversation, text progression pauses when the player is given multiple responses to choose from. Depending on which choice is made will effect how well or poorly the communication is received, which results in either bad, normal or good memories. A bad memory will decrease an idol's enthusiasm, which is displayed at certain points throughout gameplay by a horizontal bar in the top-left of the lower screen. An idol's enthusiasm ranges from blue to yellow and finally to red as enthusiasm increases. A normal memory will reward the player with a heart point, used later during auditions. A good memory will reward the player with two heart points and increased enthusiasm. If the player chooses to take the day off, an idol's enthusiasm will automatically increase. Days off also give the idol the chance to either stay at home, or go out into town and meet with other characters. The player can check on days off if there are any presents fans have sent the idols, which contain in-game items.
When taking an audition, a judge evaluates the idol over a 30-second period. The judge's interest level continuously decreases in 10% increments, but this can be increased with another minigame. The heart points obtained up to the audition are used in the minigame as the number of times the player is given to successfully appeal to the judge until all the points are exhausted. For instance, three heart points indicates the player will have three chances to increase a judge's interest level. At the end of the audition, a judge's interest level determines if the idol passes or not. If an idol passes the audition, he or she is chosen to do a televised performance of the song previously chosen. A performance serves to increase an idol's number of fans, which in turn can increase an idol's rank if enough fans have been obtained for a given rank. For example, an idol starts at rank F with below 10,000 fans, and the next level up is a rank E with between 10,001 and 99,999 fans. The ranks continue from D to C, B, A and finally S.
Each of the three scenarios follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and the story's divergence mainly depends on whether an idol passes or fails an audition, though this is not always the case. Some outcomes, such as failing to pass the first audition, can lead the game to end prematurely and offer an alternate ending to the plot. An audition marks the end of a chapter, after which the story will progress onto the next stage. In the game's stage mode, the player is able to freely customize a stand-alone performance, including options for the song, costume, accessories, choreography and camera positioning. Up to 16 players can participate via Wi-Fi in the stage mode by offering three types of cheers during one player's performance. If the game is played on a Nintendo DS with a camera, such as a Nintendo DSi or a later model, the camera may be used to scan QR codes found online or in magazines to obtain in-game items.
Plot and characters.
"Dearly Stars" occurs prior to the events in "The Idolmaster 2", and revolves around characters related to the talent agency 876 Production (876 Pro), a rising studio located in a small office. The three main characters are Ai Hidaka, Eri Mizutani and Ryō Akizuki—three prospective pop idols introduced in "Dearly Stars". In Ai's story, she is an energetic girl who wants to be an idol like her mother Mai had been, but she becomes discouraged after failing to pass so many idol auditions. One of the judges at her most recent audition was 765 Production's (765 Pro) Haruka Amami, who catches up with Ai in a nearby park and decides to introduce her to 876 Pro. The president of 876 Pro, Minori Ishikawa, immediately hires Ai and wants to promote her as Mai's daughter, but Ai insists on becoming a popular idol on her own.
At the beginning of Eri's story, she is a shy shut-in who has made a name for herself online as an Internet idol under the name "Ellie". This leads to her being contacted by freelance idol producer Reiko Ozaki, who wants to train her as a real-life idol. After they meet, Eri agrees to start work as an idol. Lastly, in Ryō's story, he is a soft-spoken boy who wants to be an idol so he can be seen as a "cool" guy. He consults his cousin and 765 Pro idol Ritsuko Akizuki about it, who introduces him to 876 Pro's manager Manami Okamoto. At 876 Pro, Ryō ends up covering for a female idol, much to his chagrin, and he does so well that the agency decides to hire him, but only if he debuts as a female idol. Ishikawa assures him that once he proves himself as a female idol, that she will help him make the transition into being a legitimate male idol. Manami is the manager for both Ai and Ryō in their respective scenarios. The rest of the story deals with the training Ai, Eri and Ryō go through on their way to stardom.
Two other idols are introduced in "Dearly Stars" as supporting characters. Eri is friends with Ayane Suzuki, a high-ranking Internet idol known as "Cineria" whom she also chats with online. She is against Eri transitioning into being a real-life idol, and seeks to take her back into being an Internet idol. Ryō's story also involves Yumeko Sakurai, a talented idol and rival to Ryō. Throughout the story, other idols from 765 Pro also make appearances.
Development and release.
"Dearly Stars" was primarily developed by Microvision in conjunction with Bandai Namco Games. The game was directed by Toshihiko Kujioka of Bandai Namco Games and co-directed by Yoshimasa Koyama of Microvision. In 2008, while Bandai Namco Games was in the process of developing "The Idolmaster SP" and downloadable content for "The Idolmaster Live For You!", Kujioka and Bandai Namco Games producer Bunkei Tanaka submitted the proposal for "Dearly Stars" to Yōzō Sakagami, the main producer for "The Idolmaster" games. It was announced in May 2009 as the first game in the franchise's next stage called "2nd Vision", which was described as "The Idolmaster"s next project that would further expand the series' world.
The development team wanted to introduce a new talent agency that would be separate from 765 Pro to better suit the details of the story, such as how the idols at 876 Pro are just starting out while the idols at 765 Pro already have an establish fanbase. Tanaka would go on to say that the scenario in "Dearly Stars" would not have worked without having a different company president—in this case, the president of 876 Pro, Minori Ishikawa. The gameplay was adjusted to allow the player the option to quickly play through the game's story. However, Kujioka also wanted to add in gameplay elements that would add another layer of challenge, such as the introduction of the choreography panel to make adjustments to an idol's dance sequence or the positioning and manipulation of in-game cameras. The staff also altered how the lessons and auditions operate in "Dearly Stars" compared to previous games in the series, which also modified the game's degree of difficulty.
When developing the game's three idols, the staff first decided on going with an archetypal "cheerful" girl and "slightly brooding and negative" girl. When thinking about what to do with the last idol, Kujioka suggested having the idol be male instead, and Tanaka thought this would be okay. It was also suggested that one of the 876 Pro idols be related to one of the 765 Pro idols, leading to Ritsuko Akizuki being chosen to be Ryō's cousin. When developing the idols' characters, creating one idol's details resulted in equivalent changes to the other two idols. For instance, this development technique ultimately led to the image color for the idols being decided based on the idols' surnames. The design of the characters was split between two artists: Toshiyuki Kubooka, who had been the character designer since the original arcade version of "The Idolmaster", and Kiyotaka Tamiya, who designed the characters introduced in "Dearly Stars".
When writing the story, the staff wanted to incorporate Hibiki Ganaha and Takane Shijō, who had already been introduced in "The Idolmaster SP", but because the two games were being developed simultaneously, Hibiki's and Takane's role in the main story of "Dearly Stars" was kept to a minimum. For the dance sequences during performances, Kujioka chose to employ talent star Fumi Sakura, as opposed to professional dancers who had been used in "The Idolmaster" games up to that point. Kujioka wanted the dance sequences to be closer to what he calls an "idol's aura"—a certain emotional charm that is not a part of an idol's skill at dancing, according to him. Also, because of the idols in "Dearly Stars" are young and are just starting out, Kujioka told Sakura to purposefully mess up some dance portions to reflect this inexperience.
Despite "The Idolmaster" originally being targeted at a male audience, there were also advertisements and promotions for "Dearly Stars" geared towards young girls. Despite this, the game has a CERO rating of C (ages 15 and up) and an additional icon for "sexual" themes. The game was released in Japan on September 17, 2009.
Music.
"Dearly Stars" features 10 songs the idols perform written and composed by a variety of songwriters. The chief music director Kōji Nakagawa told Satoru Kōsaki, the composer of the game's theme song "Hello!!", that he wanted it to be "similar to the opening theme of an anime." It was decided beforehand who the three composers would be for the other three songs introduced in "Dearly Stars"—"Alive", and "Dazzling World". When discussing who would compose which song, Go Shiina said he wanted to compose the song for the game's main idol, so he was given in charge of composing Ai's song "Alive". Producer Yōzō Sakagami pointed out that as a ballad, "Alive" does not seem like a typical idol song, but as noted by Nakagawa, the song is meant to reflect the fact that Ai's mother Mai originally sang the song once she became a prominent idol. When recording Ryō's song "Dazzling World" sung by Yuuko Sanpei, Nakagawa decided on the spot to record the song used in the game in two versions: one with a female voice and the other in a male voice. Of the 10 songs in the game, Kujioka specifically wanted to include .
The four songs introduced in "Dearly Stars" were released by Nippon Columbia on a four-part CD series titled "The Idolmaster Dream Symphony" in 2009. The first release was the single for "Hello!!" on September 9. This was followed by three compilation albums, one for each of the idols: Eri's album was released on October 14, Ryō's album was released on November 4, and Ai's album was released on December 2.
Related media.
An Internet radio show to promote "Dearly Stars" titled broadcast four main episodes and one special episode between July 11 and August 31, 2009 on Niconico's channel Tarukitei. A 176-page guidebook of the game titled "The Idolmaster Dearly Stars Delicious Album" was released on November 6, 2009 by Enterbrain. The book contains five chapters that detail the plot and characters, gameplay system, data related to in-game items and game mechanics, and interviews from the cast and development staff. Three manga adaptations were serialized in Ichijinsha's "Comic Rex" between the September 2009 and March 2011 issues. They included: "The Idolmaster Splash Red for Dearly Stars" illustrated by Anri Sakano which deals with Ai's story, "The Idolmaster Innocent Blue for Dearly Stars" illustrated by Reiichi which covers Eri's story, and "The Idolmaster Neue Green for Dearly Stars" illustrated by Kōsuke Kurose which has to do with Ryō's story. Each manga was released in three "tankōbon" volumes between July 9, 2010 and July 27, 2011. A limited edition of each of the third manga volumes contained a different drama CD.
Reception.
"Dearly Stars" sold 30,786 copies in its first week of release in Japan, and ranked as the tenth best-selling video game in Japan that week. The game received a score of 30 out of 40 from the Japanese video game magazine "Famitsu". Critics have described "Dearly Stars" as suitable for beginners to the "Idolmaster" series for drawing out the series' essence and reorganizing it into a simpler and easier-to-understand form. At the same time, "Famitsu" reviewer Sekai Sandai Miyokawa thinks that fans of the series will feel from "Dearly Stars" the growth of the 765 Pro idols and the overall growth of the series. Reviewers note that despite the change in the game's details compared to previous games in the series, such as the change in perspective from the producer to the idol, "Dearly Stars" still plays like an "Idolmaster" game. However, another "Famitsu" reviewer stated that because other aspects of the gameplay in "Dearly Stars" are similar to previous "Idolmaster" games such as doing lessons and auditions, the sense of enjoyment is not that different from other games. A reviewer for "Famitsu" felt it was easier to empathize with an idol when the story was told from their perspective.
Despite the technical limitations of the Nintendo DS compared to other games in the series that have been developed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation Portable, Miyokawa described the movement of the idols during performances as "better than expected," and welcomed shots of the audience waving glow sticks. While another reviewer for 4Gamer could not deny the lower visual quality of the performances compared to previous "Idolmaster" games, the unexpectedly high sound quality of the songs in combination with well-done dance sequences, albeit on a small screen, was considered by this reviewer as "thoroughly enjoyable." Miyokawa also praised the additional gameplay that goes into minutely adjusting an idol's choreography, but described it as extremely difficult to do well. However, the game's overall degree of difficulty compared to previous "Idolmaster" games is described as having decreased. The songs introduced in "Dearly Stars" such as "Hello!!" have been called "wonderful".
The introduction of Ryō as a cross-dressing idol has been praised by one reviewer who called him the cutest out of the three playable idols because of both his appearance and his personality. Miyokawa suggested that Ryō may have been created to lessen any sense of awkwardness that male players would feel from playing as female idols, but upon playing his scenario, Miyokawa noted that the player is naturally able to get into the story, in part due to the comical events surrounding Ryō's story that deal with him cross-dressing.


Fred Cockerham

Fred Cockerham (3 November 1905 - July 8, 1980) was an American fiddle and banjo player of American folk music.
Cockerham was one of the seven children of Elias and Betty Jane Cockerham in North Carolina. He was one of the most accomplished of all the "Round Peak," North Carolina musicians but is most commonly known as the banjo accompanist to Tommy Jarrell. He played the fiddle in a more modern style than Jarrell, but played the fretless banjo in an old clawhammer style much like that of his old mentor, Charley Lowe.


Epesi

Epesi is an open source, PHP/Ajax framework for rapid development of web based, database driven applications. The framework includes the Epesi CRM (customer relationship management) multiuser application. It requires PHP 5.x and MySQL or PostgreSQL database server on the server side and can be accessed using any modern browser. Epesi framework and Epesi CRM application are released under MIT license.
History.
Between 1995 and 2006, Teknaspan Corporation, a small IT consulting company run by Janusz Tylek, was providing computer-related services in the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area. Many of its customers - mostly small, local companies - were looking to share easily information especially in remote offices. Setup based on Microsoft's Exchange Server, Outlook and SharePoint was too expensive and difficult to set up and manage and did not meet with a good response.
In the same time period, Internet connection became a norm and mature, free and open source software like Apache, MySQL and PHP became available. Teknaspan started offering open source solutions to its customers, among them SugarCRM. This application was difficult to set up, upgrade and most of all - difficult to extend its functionality. After experimenting with a number of other solutions like dotproject, mantis, and many other open source solutions, it became clear that there is a need for a modern framework with a set of reusable components upon which an application can be developed.
At the beginning of 2006, Teknaspan Corporation was acquired by another IT consulting company. Janusz Tylek left Teknaspan and formed Telaxus LLC, a small software startup company focusing on development of web-based applications. The framework using latest standards like AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3 was born.
The original requirements were:
In the summer of 2006, the work on the framework started after a meeting of Tylek (jasiek) and Pawel Bukowski (shacky), who designed the first set of modules. By the end of 2006, the first commercial application was released - a warehouse management system. In May 2007, the core of Epesi framework was released as open source software and published on SourceForge. It included Record Browser - CRUD engine, designed by Arkadiusz Bisaga (ethnar), which is a high-level database abstraction layer, handling not only Create/Read/Update/Delete operations, but also automatic pagination, lazy delete, full record history, sorting, filtering and more. During the next twelve months, the application was expanded with customer relationship management (CRM) functionality and this package is now available as EPESI, an alternative to products like SugarCRM or vtiger.
From November, 2012 Epesi can be installed with Softaculous Autoinstaller
In August 2013 EPESI was added to Enterprise-Ready Open Source Projects on SourceForge and ranks as one of the top CRM and ERP applications with 5 star rating.
Screenshots.
Dashboard
Calendar
Record browser
Features.
EPESI framework takes advantage of some third party libraries like database driver ADOdb or jQuery. The framework allows development of new modules, especially when utilizing Record Browser - a module that automatically generates views, limits queries, stores historical data, etc.
The dashboard approach allows every user customize his or her workspace using applets - mini view of data stored in the module. For example, an applet may show only phone calls to be returned today.
A distinct feature is the Watchdog utility, which allows a user to subscribe to a record (or category of records) and have the system monitor it for you. This way a user receives a notification (Subscriptions applet) when a record was changed by another user - a meeting was canceled, a phone number or an address was updated, a project status changed from Completed to Billed or even when a note was attached to a record.
Every record can have an unlimited number of notes or attachments in any possible format.
EPESI incorporates Roundcube IMAP e-mail client and provides single instance message archiving. When a user receives an e-mail it can be archived into epesi system. An e-mail message is extracted from e-mail client and stored in the database in e-mails table. Attachments are stored as files with reference links. Then a link to this e-mail (or e-mail with attachments) is created under history of two contacts: a sender and a recipient. This way the e-mail becomes a public note for all users to see. This reduces e-mail traffic - instead of forwarding coworkers an e-mail with attachment resulting in wasted space a single instance of this e-mail is sufficient. Additionally, reference links can be created in as many modules as needed (for example, a meeting or a task can have reference links to this e-mail).
Versions.
EPESI is available as open source application and distributed free of charge. The base version includes the Epesi framework and set of modules providing CRM functionality:
The functionality of Epesi can be extended with Custom modules (created by end-users for example) or by installing additional Premium modules. Most Premium modules are commercial and require a license fee.


Worpswede

Worpswede (Northern Low Saxon: "Worpsweed") is a municipality in the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teufelsmoor, northeast of Bremen. The small town itself is located near the Weyerberg hill. It has been the home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century, with over 130 artists and craftsmen working there.
History.
Its origin goes back to the Bronze Age. The first time it was mentioned however was in 1218. Then it belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen.
In 1630 it was occupied by Sweden for a short period of time. In 1648 the Prince-Archbishopric was transformed into the Duchy of Bremen, which was first ruled in personal union by the Swedish and from 1715 on by the Hanoverian Crown. However, it took another 120 years (1750) until the colonization of the Teufelsmoor was started by Jürgen Christian Findorff by drainage of the bog. In 1823 the Duchy was abolished and its territory became part of the Stade Region.
Church of Zion and cemetery.
 Moor commissioner Jürgen Christian Findorff carried out the construction of Lutheran "Church of Zion" (), following the plans of Johann Paul Heumann, Hanoveran court architect of King and Elector George II Augustus of Great Britain and Hanover. The church was built between 1757 and 1759 during the wearisome Seven Years' War, which had its American version as the Anglo-French and Indian War.
 George II, being as "summus episcopus" the supreme governor of the Hanoveran Lutheran church, provided financial support for the construction of the "Church of Zion". The hall church is oriented. Its else rather modest interior is beautified by a typical Protestant "Kanzelaltar", combining pulpit and altar table, created in Rococo forms. It bears the Tetragrammaton "יהוה" in a top medaillon and to the left of the pulpit the king’s ornamented initials "GR" (Georgius Rex, hidden on the photo by a painting).
There are heads of cherubim by Clara Westhoff and floral ornaments by Paula Becker at the pendentives and the columns, connecting to the ceiling. After in 1900 both artists, then still students, had rung the church bells for fun, which was generally understood as a fire alarm, they were fined. They could not pay and were allowed to perform instead by way of offering these decorative elements to the church. Lofts (or matronea) span between the outer walls and the columns.
 The church tower with its spire in baroque forms had been added at the eastern end of the actual church building only in 1798. The "Church of Zion" is located on the "Weyerberg", and with its tower it is a landmark, often used as subject of paintings by the artists.
The cemetery is a churchyard, thus it actually spreads around the church building. It was designed after plans of Findorff and attracts many visitors because of its elevated location on "Weyerberg" and due to the graves preserved there. Among them those of 80 known painters, authors, musicians and artisans, such as Fritz Mackensen and Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Culture.
Worpswede is famous nationwide for its long tradition as an artists' colony. Nowadays, about 130 artists and craftsmen and women live there permanently; though one should really include most of the inhabitants of Worpswede, since many are artists or have at least to do with any kind of arts. As an example, the owner of the small "Café Vernissage" also displays her paintings in the Café. There are a number of museums on life, art and crafts in Worpswede, such as the Barkenhoff, the Grosse Kunstschau, the Haus im Schluh, Worpsweder Kunsthalle, the Museum am Modersohn-Haus and the Torfschiffswerft Schlussdorf in Worpswede's outskirts.
Artistic community.
In 1884 Mimi Stolte, the daughter of a shopkeeper in Worpswede, met Fritz Mackensen, a young student of arts, while she was staying with her aunt in Düsseldorf. Since he was destitute, she invited him to Worpswede to spend the holidays with her family.
In 1889 he settled in Worpswede, accompanied by other painters such as Hans am Ende and Otto Modersohn (who married Paula Becker), and followed by others such as Fritz Overbeck, Carl Vinnen, and Paula Becker. Other artists came, for example the writers and poets Gerhard Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, and Rainer Maria Rilke who was married to the sculptor Clara Westhoff.
Fritz Mackensen remained a good friend of Mimi Stolte's family to the end of his life. A memorial tablet created by Mackensen can be seen in front of the Kaufhaus Stolte.
Heinrich and Martha Vogeler.
In 1895 Heinrich Vogeler joined the first artists around Fritz Mackensen. He was not only a painter but also a draftsman, designer and architect. Since the growing industrialization made it necessary to find new ways of transporting goods and all sorts of materials, the idea came up to build a railway through the Teufelsmoor-area. So Vogeler was charged with the building of railway stations along the route. In 1910 the railway station at Worpswede was opened. It is the only railway station on the Osterholz-Scharmbeck - Bremervörde route still kept in its original "shape". Nowadays it is used as a restaurant.
In 1895 Vogeler bought a cottage and planted many birch trees around it, which gave the house its new name: Barkenhoff (Low German for Birkenhof, literally translated Birch-Tree-Cottage). It became the cultural centre of the artistic scene of Worpswede.
Vogeler's participation in World War I, in which Hans am Ende was killed, made Vogeler contemplate about life. As a result he became a pacifist after the war had ended and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was at that time that he and his wife Martha divorced. From that point on, he wanted to work from an ideological perspective. He left his former way of painting romantic scenes and started to make proletarian content the center of his work. In 1931 he emigrated to the Soviet Union and was deported in 1941 by Soviet authorities to Kazakhstan, where he died in 1942.
Meanwhile, the Barkenhoff became a children's home. It was recently restored and has re-opened as a Heinrich Vogeler Museum in 2004. After their divorce, Vogeler's wife Martha built up her own childhood dream with the "Haus im Schluh". It still exists and belongs to the descendants of Martha and Heinrich Vogeler. As during the time of Martha herself, it contains a museum, a boarding-house, a weaving-mill, and offers different cultural events such as exhibitions, concerts of songs, etc.
Second generation of artists.
The first generation of artists was followed by a second one. The probably most important of them was Bernhard Hoetger, the creator of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen.
Like Vogeler he was a 'Jack-of-all-trades'. Many buildings in Worpswede have been built by him: examples include the "Lower Saxony Stone" ("Niedersachsenstein"), "Kaffee Verrückt", "Grosse Kunstschau" and his own house Hinterm Berg. He also created many sculptures, such as the "Bonze des Humors", the "Träumende", "Schlafende", "Wut" etc.
Worpsweder Käseglocke.
Worpswede "Cheese Bell" (because of its resemblance to the bell-shaped glass cover conventionally used for cheese plates) is the colloquial term for a residential building located in the artists’ village of Worpswede in Lower Saxony. It was built by the writer Edwin Koenemann in 1926 following the architectural draft of Bruno Taut. Nowadays, the wooden house is under preservation and in the last couple of years has been fully renovated. The building, which caused quite a stir because of its unusual igloo shape, received the name "Cheese Bell" by the inhabitants of Worpswede.
Edwin Koenemann
Edwin Koenemann came to Worpswede as a young man in 1908 with the aim of becoming an artist.
After failed attempts in different artistic genres he managed to get by as a tour guide. Today Koenemann is one of the most well-known citizens of Worpswede.
His former home was reopened to the public on May 1, 2001.
The story of Koenemann’s posthumous fame started in the early 1920s.
The architect Habich was based in Worpswede and worked closely with the German artist Bernhard Hoetger. Habich gave Koenemann, who was interested in expressionism, one particular edition of the Taut-magazine "Frühlicht" published in 1921/22. In the magazine Koenemann came across the plans for a Taut-one-family-house, which was supposed to be built on the Central-German Exhibition in Magdeburg, yet the building was never built there. There was talk about a house with a cupola or the shape of an igloo, which at that point in time had never been built before.
Initial Draft by Bruno Taut
The main idea for the igloo had already been expressed by Taut at the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in 1914, inspired by the Glass Pavilion. The igloo belongs to a series of post-war experimental architectural trials at the beginning of the 1920s. Living in the igloo allows one to reside cosily whilst feeling protected. Architecture is devised as an organic form of nature without any décor or any applied academic rules. The Chimney of the igloo forms the main axis, around which the stairs wind up to individual chambers, similar in appearance to a snail shell. The Dormer windows look as though they have simply opened up out of the shell, thus making a concession to human use.
Koenemann, who also dabbled as an architect, recognised his opportunity in the draft which was only published in limited circulation. He took the rough sketches from the magazine "Frühlicht" and used them as direct templates for his own house on the Weyerberg in Worpswede. Koenemann’s house, which he called “Glockenhaus” (the bell house), was completed in 1926. Koenemann and his appointed carpenter closely abided by Taut’s specifications when constructing the outer façade. Only in detail were there changes made, such as both of the small windows next to the front door not being rectangular as in Taut’s design, but rather triangular.
Interior Design
Inside, Koenemann designed a unique room layout. The central hall, which was arranged with an expressionistic mantelpiece composed from misfired pottery, became the principal position, while the living room was the central room in Taut's design. On the ground floor of the igloo, situated next to the hall and a small toilet, are the bedroom and the kitchen. Upstairs there are two tiny guest rooms and a generous studio room.
The house, with a diameter of ten meters and exclusively sloping walls, proved so spacious that the upstairs was repeatedly rented out by Koenemann. Problematic, however, was the heating of two separate flats, which was done by the central heating system of the fireplace in the hall.
Place of Interest
Comparable to the Hoetger-buildings, the “Cheese Cover” became an attraction of the artists’ village. During his lifetime the house was already known as a museum for an outsider. In the late 1920s, while Bruno Taut was working on the "Hufeisensiedlung" Britz in Berlin, he repeatedly visited the Worpswedian garden planner Leberecht Migge. As Migge lived right next to Koenemann, Taut must have seen an imitation of his draft, but it is not known exactly how he felt about the plagiarism committed by Koenemann. The latter, however, still presented himself as the ingenious creator of this type of architecture.
Long after Koenemann’s death an art historian noticed Taut’s drafts for "“Frühlicht”" and thereby discovered a building of Taut in Worpswede. The registered association “Freunde Worpswedes” (“Friends of Worpswede”) acquired the dilapidated building “Cheese Bell” from the estate of Koenmann’s widow in 1994. With the financial support of the preservation orders devotedly began a detailed restoration of the dome building, which is situated under treetops. Lacquer coats were removed and colors true to the original were applied. Some of the pieces were specially manufactured and door handles were reconstructed. The green tar paper, which is similar to the dilapidated original version, had to be shipped from Canada.
Koenmann’s life and living environment is displayed inside the „Cheese Bell“. The original furniture didn’t remain intact, thus the association “Friends of Worpswede” presents not only traditional but also modern arts and crafts works, such as rustic furniture, chairs made by Bernhard Hoetger and cupboards made by Heinrich Vogeler, including an arm’s cupboard of the pacifist.
The garden, a disarrangement of wall fragments and grotto buildings, is also a draft of Koenemann, which is most likely inspired by Bernhard Hoetger. Currently, the construction is being restored to its original condition. Another project of the “Friends of Worpswede” on Koenmann’s estate is the reconstruction of the guesthouse from the 1930s: a narrow ‘Nurdach’ house.


Oliver Jovanovic

Oliver Jovanovic is an instructor at Columbia University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He has worked as a game designer primarily on role-playing games. He was involved in the high-profile New York case "People v. Jovanovic".
Career.
Oliver Jovanovic was developing a new version of the role-playing game "RuneQuest" for Avalon Hill, and was the lead author of the "RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha" line in 1996. Eric Dott, chairman of Avalon Hill, noted that Jovanovic's version of "RuneQuest" had not been published because the developers repeatedly missed deadlines.
Jovanovic graduated from the University of Chicago, and then obtained a Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia in May 2002. He works at Columbia's Department of Microbiology and Immunology as Instructor and Director of Bioinformatics & Information Technology.
People v. Jovanovic.
In 1996, Oliver Jovanovic was accused of sadomasochistic torture of a woman whom he had met shortly before on the Internet. He was convicted but later freed on appeal. On December 20, 1999, Jovanovic was released from prison when the New York appeals court ruled in a 3-to-1 decision, and in a 40-page majority opinion by Appellate Justice David Saxe, that the state's rape shield law had been misapplied by the judge in charge of the case. The case was dismissed with prejudice. Jovanovic sued the City of New York for $10 million for prosecutorial misconduct, but the case was dismissed in 2010.


Franz-Benno Delonge

Franz-Benno Delonge (1957 – 2 September 2007) was a designer of German-style board games. He has been nominated for multiple best game awards, including Spiel des Jahres and International Gamers Awards. "TransAmerica" won the Mensa best mind game award for 2003. He died of cancer on 2 September 2007.
Early life.
Delonge started boardgaming as a child, often spending extended periods of time with his grandmother and her sisters. These three widows enjoyed all kinds of card and board games, and the most popular card game in Bavaria was for four players. Although quite hard, they made sure he could play by the time he was eight.
Works.
"Big City".
"Big City" (published 1999) is a game with a modular board, each board section representing a neighbourhood of a new and growing city. Players draw cards representing development lots on those neighbourhoods, and then turn the cards in to build residences, offices, and other special buildings. If a building is larger than a single space, then multiple cards must be turned in, representing the adjacent lots. Some buildings have restrictions on where they can be placed, and points are scored based on the size and type of building, with bonuses for location, and the adjacent buildings. Players also have an opportunity to build a streetcar line, which also provides bonus points for buildings.
"TransAmerica".
"TransAmerica" (published 2001), was Delonge's greatest success, and also won a Mensa Best Mind Game award. Players have to build track to connect their five randomly and secretly assigned cities. Delonge attributed much of its success to the simplicity of the rules.
"Fjords".
"Fjords" (2005)
"TransEuropa".
"TransEuropa" (2005)


Estil C. Ball

Estil Cortez Ball (1913–1978) was an American singer-songwriter, fingerstyle guitarist, and country gospel and folk musician from Rugby in Grayson County, Virginia.
Career.
From the mid-1950s until 1975, Ball performed with his wife Orna and their Friendly Gospel Singers in churches and on the radio, especially on WKSK (AM) in West Jefferson, North Carolina and WBOB in Galax, Virginia. Ball's first recordings were made by John A. Lomax on behalf of the Library of Congress at the 1937 Galax Fiddler's Convention in Galax, Virginia, where E.C. performed with his Rugby Gully Jumpers string band (named after Paul Warmack's Gully Jumpers). Lomax recorded the string band and several duets by E.C. and Orna. John's son Alan Lomax recorded Ball three years later, in 1941, at E.C.'s home in Rugby, Virginia, and there again in 1959.
County Records released Ball's first LP in 1967, as "E.C. Ball and the Friendly Gospel Singers". Two more LPs followed in the 1970s on Rounder Records: "E.C. Ball" and "Fathers Have A Home Sweet Home". Ball was also recorded by John Cohen for his 1975 compilation album "High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina".
E.C. Ball's most famous composition was a piece he called "Tribulations," based, as he told Alan Lomax in 1959, "on the last book in the Bible: Revelations." It has been frequently covered by other musicians as "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations."
Ball died in 1978 in Grassy Creek, North Carolina, and is buried at Corinth Baptist Church in Rugby, Grayson County, Virginia.
In December 2009, a tribute album was released entitled "Face A Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album", on the Tompkins Square label, produced by Nathan Salsburg. Singers interpreting songs from E.C.'s repertoire include Jolie Holland, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Jon Langford, the Handsome Family, Rayna Gellert, and Catherine Irwin, among others.


Jelmer Steenhuis

Jelmer Jan Steenhuis (Amsterdam, 25 March 1954) is a Dutch creator of puzzles and games. Steenhuis is best known for his weekly puzzles in the newspaper NRC Handelsblad and magazine Vrij Nederland.
Jelmer Steenhuis used to be a lawyer, an occupation he gradually started to combine with the design of puzzles. From 1987 he was responsible for the cryptic crossword in NRC Handelsblad, the so-called Scrypto, a renowned puzzle that until then was compiled by Henk Scheltes. Later on, from 1990, Steenhuis also started to compile a weekly variety puzzle in the Vrij Nederland, loosely based on similar puzzles in American periodicals.
In 1997 Steenhuis decided to concentrate exclusively on the compiling of puzzles as a profession, resulting in his own business start-up Studio Steenhuis. Studio Steenhuis provides, in addition to the mentioned-above, many other puzzles and games, including the daily newspuzzle In Het Midden (In The Middle) in "nrc.next" and the picture puzzle Gezocht (Wanted) in NRC Handelsblad. Also in magazines such as "Safe", the sponsored magazine from the asset management firm Robeco, and "Resource", the student magazine at the University of Wageningen, one can find puzzles of Studio Steenhuis. The annual Econogram, in which the economic year is cryptically discussed, is a highlight for many readers of NRC Handelsblad.
Besides puzzles on paper, Studio Steenhuis also produces online games (Bouwstenen), TV formats (including Superlink, which was broadcast by the Evangelische Omroep in 2005) and boardgames (4Getit). In addition, Studio Steenhuis and NRC Handelsblad started a subscription-based website in 2010, on which puzzles and games are offered.