Books

Looting the Islands

The writer's affection for the Islands is not their beauty but the treasure trove of antiquities that she found there

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands


Take my ad­vice and don't go to Palma in the sum­mer. In spring and au­tumn it must be de­light­ful, but now in July it is all so white and bare and glar­ing. I sup­pose we should have been wiser to stop at one of the ho­tels down by the shore, but then, they are very re­mote, and taxis are hor­ri­bly ex­pen­sive. After Barcelona prices it was a shock to pay four pe­se­tas to drive two blocks! As it is, we are at the edge of a new de­vel­op­ment that some day, when it is ad­e­quately planted, will be quite at­trac­tive, but now our one re­lief, at the end of a tor­rid af­ter­noon, is to climb up to be com­fort­ably cool on the roof. [...]

And there are many churches, for Palma is a very re­li­gious place—if you blas­pheme in the tramway you are haled be­fore the civil au­thor­i­ties and fined! We have vis­ited them all,—the churches, not the au­thor­i­ties,—the most in­ter­est­ing being Santa Eu­lalia, through whose por­tals Ramón Llull, the sin­ner, rode in pur­suit of his in­namorata, and San Francesco where he, be­at­i­fied, is buried, and the place were locked in as we hunted through the dark aisles for his tomb. I am sorry to de­stroy a leg­end, but a light does not un­ceas­ingly burn be­fore his mar­ble ef­figy; we never should have found it with­out the aid of a young priest who heard us clam­or­ing to be re­leased, and came to our res­cue. But pray don't think him a prophet with­out renown; here in Mal­lorca he has great honor, and even shops are named after this holy man. [...]

But noth­ing in the whole city, not even the su­perb Lonja, is so mag­nif­i­cently beau­ti­ful as the Cathe­dral, that great Ship of God for­ever moored by a per­pet­u­ally blue sea. The ap­proach, too, is gra­cious; up a wide stair­way street, the walls hung with a ta­pes­try of ivy-gera­ni­ums, and plumbago, roses and laven­ders woven upon a dense back­ground of green. You pass the Al­mu­daina, once the an­cient palace of the Moor­ish kings, then cross the plaza to the Cathe­dral, the church to “Our Lady, Saint Mary”, that Don Jaime built di­rectly after the Con­quest.[...]

Per­haps [...]the most re­mark­able thing about the Cathe­dral is that no an­tiq­uity shops clus­ter round its base; hence my vis­its were purely spir­i­tual. Not that my en­thu­si­asm wanes; I have been back sev­eral times to Casas's ware­house, for the two larger Palma antigüedades are closed in the sum­mer, and all I could do was to look through the high iron gates and watch the pome­gran­ates spilling their crim­son blos­soms over the pa­tios. [...] I got the setee; I knew Orde couldn't re­sist it, an­ti­quer though he isn't. And for fif­teen pe­se­tas I bought one of the finest trays I have ever seen—a great pie-crust, black, with a glow­ing cen­tre of pow­dered gold and a very gay long-tailed bird. Spain un­doubt­edly is the coun­try for trays; a piece like this would cost six pounds in Eng­land and sev­enty-five dol­lars at home.

And I got some pretty, vivid tiles for a pe­seta each, and for you, and the new house in Nor­wich, two odd lit­tle wrought-iron knock­ers, the sort that dec­o­rate the old doors in the Cathe­dral close—five pe­se­tas for the pair. Ex­cept the set­tee, my only other pur­chase that amounted to any­thing was an oak box, sev­en­teenth-cen­tury, I should think, and very rus­tic; prob­a­bly meant to hold some peas­ant girl's jew­elry. The carv­ing is charm­ing, though rather naïve: four mas­sive lion's-claw feet, two lit­tle fishes on ei­ther side of the key­hole, a mod­i­fied egg and dart pat­tern round the edge, and, best of all, the lid in­laid in lemon­wood with some of the de­signs that adorn the great four­teenth-cen­tury Mu­rador por­tal of the Cathe­dral—the sun and moon and a heart pierced with ar­rows. I won­der if it be­longed to the daugh­ter of some lay­man in the Church's ser­vice. [...]

For al­most twice as much I could have bought an ex­cel­lent knife box, ma­hogany, with a mar­quetry of Sher­a­ton shells. You may think this a strange thing to find so far away from home, and it is amaz­ing to see so much fur­ni­ture of the Eng­lish type lying about. The ex­pla­na­tion is sim­ple enough: off and on through the eigh­teenth cen­tury, Mi­norca, the sec­ond of the Balearic group, was under British con­trol, and a great deal of fur­ni­ture was ei­ther made here under this in­flu­ence or else brought from over­seas. I could have bought drop-leaf ta­bles, slant-top desks, and chests of draw­ers for about a fifth of what I should have had to pay in Eng­land. Be­fore you fur­nish your house, come over with me, and [...] we'll loot the Is­lands.

Alice Van Leer Carrick

Pere Gifra

During the early twentieth century, many wealthy Americans relied on an extensive network of dealers, agents and auctioneers to purchase abroad the expensive art objects that later on they carefully treasured in their stately mansions at home. For those with equally artistic propensities yet emptier pockets, the solution was to travel, haggle and purchase the decorative wares on their own. This is true of Alice Van Leer Carrick (1875-1961), who during the inter-war period popularized the hobby of antique collecting among middle-class Americans thanks to a number of books, articles and lectures at women's clubs and fine arts societies. She believed that collecting was not so much about owning objects as about tracing and contextualizing them, and that thanks to their contemplation and study one could gain a wider knowledge of the cultures they came from. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Carrick was educated in Roxbury and Bosto, and began writing at the age of 18, mostly stories for children. In 1901 she married Prescott Orde Skinner, a professor of Romance Languages at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and resided in an on-campus cottage that, after years of incessant antique-hunting, became a true museum of colonial heirlooms. Helen Sheumaker notes that Carrick “supported the Colonial Revival aesthetic, which embodied ideals of patriotic virtue in contrast to the supposed decline in morality and in the conduct of life in her era”.

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