Summer doesn`t officially end until tomorrow, but chances are that the hectic routine of autumn has already kicked in.
You know: Go to work every morning, come home tired every night, too many things to do, not enough time to do them, the days are getting shorter and first thing you know, it`ll be Christmas.
Memories of your summer vacation can fade rapidly-unless you have brought some of the vacation home with you.
This means having something around, in the home, that will trigger the feelings and sensations, the memories, of that time away from the routine.
Almost everyone brings back pictures and souvenirs-a little Eiffel Tower from France, a beer stein from Germany, maybe some lace from Ireland. Some people, however, return home with objects that are not only a pleasing reminder of places they`ve been and people they`ve met, but also add to the decor and style of their homes. Bonuses, when one brings the vacation home in this manner, are the spirited conversations that can be triggered from vacation-inspired design.
Guests availing themselves of Mary Hamlin`s powder room, for example, have been known to stay in the little room for inordinately long periods.
Hamlin, who lives in Wheaton, has filled the walls and shelves with pictures, dolls and other small artifacts from her many travels. ”It`s like a happy museum in there,” said one guest recently, after seeing the bathroom for the first time. ”You want to look at everything.”
Likewise, people walking through the front door of Susan Eckert`s Evanston apartment find themselves face-to-face with two large, magnificent gold-framed papyrus paintings that she bought two years ago in Egypt. It`s a show-stopper entrance.
Margaret Burroughs, who lives on the south side of Chicago, is apt to ask her guests to stand with their arms outstretched as she wraps them in colorful swaths of fabric that she`s brought back from her travels to Africa. ”Stand tall,” she says, ”this is a kingly outfit you`re wearing.”
And in Richard Farrell`s Lincoln Park apartment, a window is one of the first things a visitor will see-but it`s not a window looking out over the park. It`s a window that he brought back with him from Morocco and has hanging in his front hallway.
Unusual, charming, startling, expensive and inexpensive-bringing back the vacation can be all these things. Here`s more on each of these four travelers who bring their trips home in style.
Small things mean a lot
Mary Hamlin picked up a little wheel attached to a handle, one of two such pieces on a chest in her front hall.
”It`s a mani chorker, a prayer wheel. They`re so significant for life in Tibet,” she said. ”So many people are on the street corners, twirling these wheels, and you come away remembering. I think of Tibet and that`s one of the things I think of. They`re sending prayers out. Twirling the wheel releases the prayers to the heavens.
”Tibet is the most esoteric place in the world. It`s incredibly beautiful, the air is so clear and there is all this religious art, which we had studied before we left.”
Hamlin, an art teacher in the Wheaton-Warrenville school system, doesn`t just go on trips. For months in advance, she studies about the places she`s going to. Tibet had fascinated her since her son, Ed, did his graduate work several years ago in Tibetan language and literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Two years ago, she took a field studies course at the College of Du Page, Glen Ellyn, which culminated with a three-week trip across China and into Tibet.
In the last 10 years, she has traveled to Iceland, Japan, Egypt, Greece, Russia, among others, and she has brought back remembrances from everywhere.
The tastefully quiet blend of objects in her condominium reflect her artistic eye.
”There`s probably nothing of great value. I like to get small things that I don`t have to ship and mean something to me rather than investment objects,” she said.
There`s a Byzantine picture of the Madonna she bought at a monastery in Greece that she remembers as ”being so peaceful and calm, at the top of a mountain, and so historic.” Two woodcuts come from a Japanese woodblock artist, who served tea and almond cookies to her travel group when they visited his studio. A cow bell from Switzerland is in the bathroom. ”It`s probably corny, a cowbell, but to be on top of the mountains in Switzerland and hear nothing but cowbells is very memorable.”
About that bathroom, the happy little museum: ”I just had no other place to put all those little things; it seemed like the bathroom was appropriate. And then, after a while, it became something of a game to see how much I could put there. It`s fun.”
Out of Africa
Margaret Burroughs` Chicago home is filled with the fabrics, masks, carvings, statues, copperware and other artifacts she bought on her many trips to Africa. But she doesn`t bring them back just for her own memories and enjoyment.
She takes them to various Chicago schools and does ”show and tell” with the younger children, while the older kids get to play some of the African musical instruments. The objects go with her on her regular visits to the Stateville Correctional Center, Joliet, where she gives talks on her African visits and teaches art and creative writing.
”When I put one of these (African) robes on one of the prisoners, he stands about 10 inches taller,” she said. ”I tell them to think kingly and walk kingly.”
And many of the African artifacts end up at the Du Sable Museum of African American History, which she helped found in 1961 and which was in her home until 1973, when it moved to its present location at 740 E. 56th Pl.
”Wherever I`ve gone, I`ve collected, and I collect to share,” she said. ”Every tribe in Africa has its own distinctive art. I was a teacher for so long (she taught high school art and retired in 1979), and I always realized that knowing your heritage is so important in having self-esteem.
”When you take a child and put a headcloth on her, it gives her an experience of patterns and colors used by African kids, and they love it. Some of these people can`t come to the museum, so I bring it to them.”
Burroughs has made about 25 trips to various African countries, including Egypt and Morocco, and also has traveled to the West Indies, studying the African influence in the Caribbean.
She has brought back hundreds of items from all those trips, and she keeps a big bag ready for her portable program to enable others to learn: Have memories, will travel.
Even pros do it
When Susan Eckert was traveling in Turkey a couple of years ago, she saw the rug she had been looking for. It was copper-colored around the edges, beet-red in the middle, with a design of wonderful animals. It was the right size for her living room, 9 by 12 feet, ”was about 75 years old and was beautiful, the most luscious colors I`d seen. And he was asking an outrageous price. So I thought, `Well, I`ll offer him half and we`ll barter.` I offered him half, and he said, `Okay.` ”
”Obviously, then I knew I should have offered him one-fourth, but how could I have known that?”
Actually, there was more haggling after the price had been settled than before. He wanted her to carry the rug home, she wanted it sent. He offered to show her where she could buy a big suitcase to put the rug in, she said no. She spoke only English and he spoke only Turkish, making for a tricky conversation; ultimately, it was shipped.
These memories come back every time she tells someone about the rug, now in her living room. It stretches between a fireplace on whose mantle rests a three-foot-long Haitian carving and a large display case that holds dozens of artifacts she collected while working for the Peace Corps in West Africa.
Eckert does a lot more traveling than most people, because her business is organizing and leading tours for women (her company is Rainbow Adventures in Evanston). So being ”on vacation” is apt to mean being at home; but while at home, she wants to be surrounded by things she has loved in other countries.
”When I first started (traveling), I was very spartan; I didn`t think I wanted to accumulate a lot of things,” she said. ”But then you start falling in love with a country, and you want to bring a piece of it back because of the feelings you have.
”It wasn`t until China, though (in 1987), that I started bringing back big things, like furniture. I got two end tables in Beijing at a little store- it was about $75 for the two of them. It cost that much to ship them home.
”We went to a cloisonne factory where I saw a vase than stands about 2 1/2 feet tall, beautiful white herons all over it, with a blue background. But it was expensive, about $1,000, so I didn`t buy it. Then I went into a store, and there was a pair of the same vases, both for $250. It was amazing. I thought, `I cannot not buy them.` China was full of contradictions like that.”
Eckert recently bought land in Montana where she plans to build a home. She already has the first deck furniture: two leather-and-wood rocking chairs bought last year in Costa Rica.
”These things all mean a lot to me,” she said. ”I look at this folk art (from Ecuador), for example, and it`s like I can feel the humidity, see how they had it stretched out on a frame so it wouldn`t buckle. I like to live with these things. They bring back all the feelings that I`ve had on the trips.”
Primitive and proud
”I would never want to go to a country and not buy things to bring home with me,” says Rick Farrell.
”But also, I`d never want to go to a country whose culture didn`t stimulate me. I`m not stimulated by grand sights. I`d rather go visit the hill tribes of Thailand than stay in the Grand Palace in Bangkok.”
Farrell has made traveling a serious avocation-a top priority, really-since he was a kid, and says his mother is primarily responsible for his intense interest in Third World countries. ”I was raised wanting to travel,” he said. ”She is truly obsessed with traveling; she`s been to over 150 countries, she is always willing to go anywhere, anytime.”
Bringing the vacation home is one thing, but displaying it is clearly of prime importance to Farrell, who recently started his own interior design company, the Richard P. Farrell Design Group. His objects don`t just sit on tables or mantles. He has tribal costumes hanging on forms from fish wires, fabrics and masks displayed behind clear acrylic, spears and other artifacts attached to walls.
”Primitive art is difficult to display; a lot of people don`t have the confidence,” he said. ”You see something in a souk (an open-air Middle Eastern market) somewhere, and it`s all dusty and dingy-looking, and you have to be able to see how it can come alive in your home. If you don`t display it well, it can look dull and frumpy in your home too.”
He points to a long drum that he bought recently in Morocco.
”I bought this in a souk in Marrakech. It was very dark, very crowded-you can`t really go into one of these without a guide. I have a picture of myself giving a guy a high five after we got through negotiating. At first, I had said, `Let`s cut the bull (of bartering),` and he said, `Sir, this is a way of life for us.`
”And of course, you have to respect their way of life, their customs.”
Just in this last year, Farrell has been to Ecuador, Guatemala, China, Thailand and the Philippines.
”I know it`s a lot, I spend a disproportionate amount of money and time on travel. But I go to these countries at the same cost as some of my friends will spend on a week in Aspen or Cape Cod. I travel as cheaply as possible and bring back as much as possible. And there`s not a thing I have that doesn`t bring back the shops, the people, the surroundings of the place where I bought it.”
