"Simplicity, and the principle of the wave just waiting to be discovered!"

Thanks to Tiny's unplanned exposure to the backside of a skunk yesterday, this transcendent utilitarian objet is in the pipeline.

The award-winning Alfi La Ola thermal carafe in Orange/Cobalt Blue (above), featuring "alfiDur vacuum hardglass liner and screw stopper" -- designed by Brit Julian Brown and made in Germany -- caught our eye as we were doing our part for the stumbling economy, shopping online this morning to replace the cylindrical white, International-Style coffee carafe that met its demise after many years of service yesterday when a skunked Tiny sprung out of our grasp and knocked it to the floor as she made her escape.

"Tiny washes her paw atop one of the Walpole tables on Goomp's terrace in the early morning light at Camelot-by-the-Sea. The light fantastic is exactly the same one Maxfield Parrish saw when he painted the most-reproduced image ever at that point in time, his evocative 'Daybreak,'" we captioned this image in our post "Daybreak and all that" a couple of summers back.

The colors of our new carafe called to mind those of Maxfield Parrish's "Daybreak":

We were delighted to read at Wikipedia that "Maxfield Parrish, famous partly for the intensity of his skyscapes, used cobalt blue, and cobalt blue is sometimes called Parrish blue as a result." Who knew?

No wonder we love Julian Brown's orange-and-cobalt-blue carafe. The formal design is an abstraction -- in reverse colors -- of a heavenly sphere rising out of the horizon, the essence of daybreak. In the real world the orb is orange, the landform blue:

"The sun also rises on Mother's Day 2007 at Camelot-by-the-Sea this morning with some of Mummy's -- and our own -- favorite colors, blues, purples, lavenders, pinks and pale orange-yellows, framed by the dark silhouettes of Goomp's amelanchier and apple in the foreground and the awesome 19th-century summer cottages in the middle ground on Eastern Point across the river," went the caption of this shot of the moment before daybreak.

In Brown's inspired interpretation, the colors are in reverse, the cobalt blue orb rising out of the orange horizon. In the artist's own words:

"The La Ola design is outstanding for its simplicity, and the principle of the wave just waiting to be discovered!"

Be sure to check out the information- and image-rich website of HBO's new series, John Adams: Timeline, trailers, cast and crew, "conversations" with the main actors, Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, producer Tom Hanks and author David McCullough.

Our shopping appetite whetted, we moved on to ordering HBO so we can watch the forthcoming "Epic 7-part miniseries event" John Adams, based upon David McCullough's Pulitzer-prize-winning biography of the second president, when it premieres Sunday, March 16 at 8 p.m. Goomp worried that the program might be "politically correct in the actual presentation," but the trailers look awesome, and McCullough himself -- who "worked closely with [screenwriter Kirk] Ellis on the screenplay" -- says "I don't think any film that's ever been done about this all-important part of our story has ever been done with such authenticity."  Produced by Tom Hanks and starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, the series was "filmed on location in Williamsburg and the greater Richmond, Va. area, as well as Europe." A few fun facts from a Quincy Patriot-Ledger article last year:

“People who watch this are going to see the 18th century as it was in more ways than they’ve seen it before,” said McCullough, a consultant to the seven-part, $100 million production. “They’re going to see people with bad teeth. It’s not a costume pageant” . . .

Local Adams devotees were chagrined that the project spurned Quincy and Boston, where the events actually happened, but McCullough and others have said it wasn’t really possible for a production like HBO’s to use the actual locations, since they’re too urbanized now. Instead, Playtone recreated the John Adams and John Quincy Adams birthplaces on location near Richmond, Va.

Sounds like a keeper, and who knows? It might open the eyes of some of our heretofore history-challenged fellow Americans.

Update: Lots of furry keepers at Modulator's Friday Ark #181.

Update II: Elisson turns the prose of polypropylene into lyric poetry.

Comments

[Venomous Kate]

That's a gorgeous carafe! With a sunny color like that, I think I'd be half-awake before even drinking my first cup of coffee.

[Teresa]

I do love it when you have one of your terrific pictures and then find a complimentary work of art using the same coloring. How I wish I had that eye for color and knowledge of art work.

[Tim Abbott]

"Parrish Blue" was the name of the band formed by my best friends from High School after we graduated in 1986 (replacing the more adolescently oriented "Under the Influence"). They were hip to the color, and also to Maxfield Parrish, who attended Haverford College (also my alma mater).