Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Two

Dial Tones
Enamelists of the Swiss watch industry grope for a future.
by James Malcolmson, for Arts & Antiques Magazine

In some ways Dominique Baron seems much like the other artisans who practice the traditional craft of enameling in the French-Swiss Jura Mountains. Working from her home atelier in the town of Les Rousses just over the border in France, Baron is the master of a variety of techniques that she plies in the service of the internationally known Swiss watch brands who commission elaborate enamel dials. During the 18th and 19th centuries, such watches were important status symbols for aristocrats in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ “Lady Arpels Centenary” watch presents a simplified, modernized enamel painting technique on a rotating disk.

Today, Baron and a handful of fellow craftspeople are the last of a once-flourishing profession that has dwindled due to changing tastes and its own failure to train young apprentices. But unlike her peers, many of whom are elderly and in the twilight of their careers, Baron is in her mid-30s and something of a revolutionary in enameling circles. In cooperation with some of her watchmaking clients she is changing time-honored techniques to make them more responsive to modern tastes and, she hopes, to enable them to survive for years to come.

All the traditional enamel techniques (among which are grand feu, cloisonné and miniature painting) share the same basic properties. Powdered glass tinged with metal oxides for color is applied to a surface—in this case a watch dial—and then fired in an oven until it emerges with an intense translucence. The process is repeated many times to give depth and form an image, but doing so carries risk. Any given firing may crack the piece and ruin it altogether.

Grand feu uses extremely high temperature to achieve colors of exceptional color and quality. The pictorial art of cloisonné, on the other hand, uses a thin gold wire to create cells in which different enamel colors are laid, creating a mosaic-like effect. The most exalted art of enamel is undoubtedly miniature painting, which shares many characteristics with both oil and watercolor painting. Color is applied with a brush, but it must be applied in a strict order and riskily fired many times during the process.

Miniature painting on watches evolved from miniature enamel portraiture during the 17th century, especially in France. One early master, Jean Petitot, became famous for adapting vivid English watercolor techniques to enamels, working on both sides of the Channel. The genre soon became a highly prestigious form of vanity art throughout the courts of Europe, but as many of the artisans were Protestants, a large contingent sought refuge in Geneva after the religious persecutions of Louis XIV. There, they turned their attention to watches, perfecting their skills on beautiful enameled timepieces decades before watchmakers were able to achieve consistent accuracy. Their work is the overlooked basis for Switzerland’s reputation as a center for luxury watchmaking.

Miniature painting at the scale of a watch dial takes precision.

Considering their place in history, it is not surprising that the old enamel techniques are held in such reverence in Switzerland, even as they have faded into commercial irrelevance. Today, miniature painting in the Geneva style, the most traditional and prestigious form of the craft, is practiced by a small handful of mostly aging artists who may spend weeks or months on a single dial. They hoard their pigments, many of which were made by companies that closed decades ago. Customers can wait years for watches from companies like Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin, which take commissions mostly for reproductions of well-known 19th-century Romanticist and realist paintings. The wait is so long because of the manpower shortage; few young artists get the chance to learn the techniques. Baron experienced this first-hand. “The masters are reluctant to share their skills,” she says. “Sometimes they take apprentices but don’t show them everything.”

Baron herself managed to become a master of miniature painting, but she had to learn circuitously, in the process working with some of the companies that had begun to break with the enamel tradition. After graduating from art school, she accepted a job at Jaeger-LeCoultre under enamelist Miklos Merczel, who established his own style in the 1980s. Merczel is best known for his Art Nouveau-style reproductions of the work of Alphonse Mucha, which are often placed on the case back of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso model. These pieces feature brilliant coloration and fine detail, but are not true Geneva enamel, as they receive only half as many firings as in the traditional technique.

After leaving Jaeger-LeCoultre, Baron worked for a time at Roger Dubuis in Geneva, but her work on various subjects, some of it erotic, very much reflected the personal vision of the firm’s president, Carlos Diaz. Baron really hit her artistic stride when she took a position at the boutique Geneva watchmaker Delaneau, whose president, Christina Thevanez, is as obsessed with preserving traditional enamel techniques as she is with redefining women’s watch designs. Under Thevanez’s guidance, Baron was able to flourish as an artist capable of capturing a fine level of detail and expression, from the subtle coloration of a butterfly’s wings to the whiskers on a tiger.

While she still performs Geneva-style enamel for Delaneau, much of Baron’s time is now spent as a consultant for Stern Creations, a dial-making company through which she is bringing enamel to new audiences.

Dial design from Jaeger-LeCoultre’s latest enamel series, Reverso à Éclipses.

One of its clients, Van Cleef & Arpels, released some of this work last year in its “Lady Arpels Centenary” watch, which features a hand-painted enamel disk, only a part of which can be seen as it slowly rotates once per year. These pieces, like the work of Merczel, are fired less than the Geneva process, and are abstract, an area the traditional painters rarely touch.

Perfectionists like Thevanez, whose company, Delaneau, manufactures pieces in much more limited series, are quick to point out the difference. “True Geneva enamel should be perfectly smooth on the surface with no rough spots,” she explains. “You can easily tell the difference if you look carefully.”

Pieces like the “Lady Arpels Centenary” and its newer variants can made in much larger series at a more affordable price, because they do not require so many firings and can be executed by Stern Creation’s larger staff of young artisans. They have also achieved a level of commercial success that still eludes traditional pieces, particularly in the United States, where large series of branded pieces can be marketed much more easily than exquisite one-of-a-kind creations. In so doing, they offer the possibility of further life for all the techniques and for future enamelists to learn the craft.

“It was so hard for me to learn what I know,” Baron says. “It has been wonderful to be able to pass it along.”

James Malcolmson has been writing about the Swiss watch industry for more than 10 years. A frequent contributor to Robb Report, Chicago Social, Angeleno, Celebrated Living and several others, he visits the factories and workshops in Switzerland several times annually.

* * * * *
Luxury Erotic Watches For Just Over $100k
From TrendHunter

They say you reach the classification of ‘Super Rich’ when you earn more interest that you can spend.  I think you reach that point when spend over $100k on an erotic watch.

However, if you have the spare cash flow, why search for free porn on the net when you can buy a $160,000 watch with customized porn?  Blancpain, an extremely high end watch company, has introduced its new line of Erotica Watches.  Flip the classic watch over, and on the back, you’ll see a mechanically animated source of erotica.

“The two-sided nature of the erotic watch is aptly illustrated by Blancpain, one of the most stolidly conservative Swiss manufacturers and also one of the leading makers of the traditional erotic automaton watch. For $160,000, you can purchase a classic Villeret minute repeater with your choice of erotic scene underneath the sapphire caseback.” – Robb Report

If this is your style, but you don’t have the $160,000, you may want to check out Erotica Watches, who offers an array of automation watches for those of you looking to spend closer to $150. 

* * * * *

Erotic Watches through Time
From WatchLuxus

A (very) short history of erotica is achieveable by an attentive look at the collections of luxury watch brands.

In tribute to the couple that started it all: Corum’s Golden Bridge Adam et Eve.  The handpainted miniature images required 36 hours of painting artistry and 15 hours to dry in various stages in an oven.  Great time was involved to also delicately engrave the bridges and mainplate by hand, then expertly assemble some 137 components and encase them within four specially shaped and cut sapphire crystals.  In the words of Corum: ‘Such a beautiful creation could only be a labour of love’.

Next, the period of Romanticism when greater importance was given to the emotions and the imagination.  Depicted with Angular Momentum’s ‘Eglomise Romanticism’; sapphire crystal reverse painted by an artist.  In the words of Angular Momentum: ‘A perfect fusion of elegance and technology, Angular Momentum watches catch the spirit of the time’.

Finally, Fortis Art Editions - a collection of watches designed by contemporary artists which ‘set different standards in the watch industry’.  Pictured is a piece from the Charles Wilp collection which represents Wilps’ new strategy of product-advertising: sexy American Pin-Up-Girls from the American artist Mel Ramos and respectable brands.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Monday, October 08, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Nineteen

XXX Family Values
Sunny Lane’s Parents Say She’s ‘the Girl Next Door, Turned Hard Core’
From ABC News Internet Ventures

Sunny Lane is a porn star whose parents help manage her career.

As a girl, Sunny Lane wanted to be a professional ice skater.

Her mother, Shelby, decorated her glittery competition costumes, and her dad, Mike, cheered for his only child from the sidelines.

Years later, they’re still at it—only now they’re helping their daughter chase her dreams of becoming a porn star.

“I like to be in front of the camera,” Sunny said. “I like to show my talent. I have many, many talents in a lot of different areas, and I want to show them.”

But it’s more than just showing off the physical assets and the innocent pouts that have earned her the nickname the “Shirley Temple of Porn,” because she looks much younger than she is. Sunny will only say that she’s in her 20s.

“It would totally mess the fantasy up for my fans,” she said about her reluctance to reveal her age. “I look very young, which I’m very grateful [for].”

Sunny sees more than the opportunity to show off her talents; she also sees dollar signs in an industry that made almost $13 billion last year, and she demands hands-on control of her career.

“I’m a businesswoman,” she said. “I have an empire, and I have a massive team backing me.”

Lawyers, a publicist and image consultants are on call for Sunny, but the foundation for her team is still in the Lane apartment, where Sunny lives with her parents.

Sunny Lane is her stage name, and her parents also go by the same last name. For the last year and a half, life in the apartment has revolved around the business of selling Sunny, whom they market as “The Girl Next Door Turned Hard Core.”

On a recent afternoon, Shelby answered the phone while Mike sat nearby in the living room. Upstairs, Sunny packed a suitcase for an evening full of appearances and outfit changes. Shelby helped, filling small plastic bags with costumes, makeup and music.

Once Sunny has worn an outfit, Shelby puts it—unwashed, of course—back in a small plastic bags to one day auction off on their Web site. Sunny’s underwear can bring in a lot of cash.

“They’ll pay $50 to $100 for panties,” her mother said.

‘Dreams Do Come True’

“We’re not kinky parents,” Mike said.

Married for 29 years, he and Shelby say that their own secret to staying monogamous was watching porn movies. For them, Sunny’s co-stars are her “dates,” and they say they’d rather her have sex on a porn set than with a “civilian” who might eventually break her heart.

“She does her thing, safely, in a good environment, and I don’t worry about that. When she comes back home, I just ask her how her date was,” Mike said.

Mike and Shelby are proud of Sunny’s success. Mike said that when he first saw Sunny on the Playboy channel, his reaction was, “Well, dreams do come true, I guess.”

“To me, it’s all entertainment. I see it all as entertainment,” said Shelby.

Mike and Shelby say they fast-forward through the sex scenes in their daughter’s movies, despite having made a cameo appearance in one of her early films. If she has a good scene, Mike relies on her fans to let him know whether it was good or bad.

“And if it’s good, that means the movie’s going to be good, her scene’s going to be good, and everybody’s going to make a lot of money hopefully,” he said.

To keep making all that money, Sunny promotes herself relentlessly—giggling, bouncing and blowing kisses at red carpet events and private parties.

“I’m a product,” she said, “And I know that, and I’m a dang good product.”

Promoting the Product

At the adult video convention in Las Vegas in January, Sunny was there to market herself, and her parents were right there beside her. But Shelby and Mike seem to have taken their support to a whole new level. While at the conference, they looked into getting life-size, anatomically correct sex dolls molded of their daughter.

“I do want to have a doll that looks exactly like me,” said Sunny. “[My parents] support anything that I have to do with my business, and it’s my decision. And if I want a doll, I want a doll.”

But what does the industry think of her parents? Mike says he and Shelby are involved in Sunny’s career to look after those people who want to use her. He sees himself as the porn equivalent of Jessica and Ashlee Simpson’s father, Joe.

“Some of the industry has accepted us very, very well, and some of the industry don’t understand any of it,” Mike said.

But Sunny is adamant that her parents are only there for support.

“They do not make money off of me. If anything, I pay them. I pay them in return for everything that they have loved and supported me after all these years.”

‘Why Am I Doing This?’

A few miles away in the San Fernando Valley, another young woman who achieved early success as a porn star made the difficult decision to leave this industry.

Unlike Sunny, Sophia Lynn entered her career in pornography alone, with no family support. After only being in the business for a few months, she already seemed to be an experienced pro. The blonde glamour girl says she comes from a devout Christian family and only got into porn to make some extra money. She had gone through a divorce and had a young child to help support.

“When you have bill collectors calling you every five minutes, you start to feel hopeless,” she said.

She started out modeling and was encouraged to give porn a try.

“I kept thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But then I reminded [myself] [that] my car payment was due.”

These days, many girls look up to porn stars like Jenna Jameson, who’s had a best-selling autobiography and recently sold her own adult entertainment company, Club Jenna, to Playboy for millions.

A Contract Girl

Today, there are more girls clamoring to enter the business than 10 years ago. Like any business, more product means less profit, so girls are often asked to do more degrading acts for fewer dollars than they used to.

“Would I want to be a young woman getting into the adult [business] right now? Perfectly honestly, no,” said porn legend Taylor Wane.

When she got into the business in 1989, Wane said it was more about women exploring their sexuality. Nowadays, she said, it’s about pushing the envelope to extremes.

Newcomer Lynn was lucky to escape that path. Within a few weeks of leaving her child with her ex and arriving in Los Angeles, Lynn was on the path toward becoming a new Jenna Jameson. She signed on as a contract girl with Adam & Eve, something only a tiny fraction of girls in the business get offered.

As a contract girl, she had the potential to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but only needed to film a few days each month. She was able to make more female-friendly and couple-friendly films, rather than the gonzo videos that try to outgross each other.

For the first time in Lynn’s life, she was making real money. She was being told every day that she was beautiful, meeting celebrities, boosting her confidence. Still, she missed her daughter, and she chain-smoked and drank sugary drinks to deal with nerves.

“You have a million people tell you you’re beautiful every single day, a million—and not one of them really give a s--t about you,” she said.

‘I Let a Lot of My Morals Go’

Between her own red carpet appearances, movie sets and how-to sex books, Lynn appeared to be going through the motions. She was distracted, tired and often disoriented.

“I made a very, very large risk in coming out here,” she said, “by being away from my child so much. I’ve gone through some pretty good times and pretty bad times here. The hardest point is when I realized that I let a lot of my morals that I thought I had go.”

While Lynn ultimately decided to leave the industry, she said there was no guarantee she could stay out.

“There’s never, ever any certainties in life. … I don’t know exactly what my future holds,” she said. 

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Number Ninety-Three

COUPLES VOTE SEX HOTEL A HIT
by Patrick Barkham, The Guardian

Upstairs, Gina Walker toys with the black straps hanging from the ceiling. “You sit here, your arms go in there and your legs are spread out there. The big ladies, they have a whale of a time swinging all over the place. Oooh, it’s a fab club.”

Downstairs, surrounded by smoked-glass mirrors in a softly lit bar, thirtysomething couples in smart casuals sip champagne cocktails on leather sofas. The Ricky Martin song She Bangs plays on the sound system. 

The Liberty Hotel squats in the Leicestershire countryside on the edge of the A5, a convenient 10 minutes from the M1 and the M6. BMWs and Mondeos line up in the car park. It looks a comfortable stop for a sales rep. 

But at weekends Liberty becomes Liberation, a high-class club for swingers that is set to transform the seedy image of swinging and the staid hotel industry. What once seemed an outré lifestyle is fast becoming a common secret for an estimated 500,000 couples in middle England. 

Such has been the hotel’s success since it opened on Valentine’s Day that a 140-bedroom branch is proposed outside London. Other Liberation franchises are likely to be established near Leeds, Carlisle and across the UK. 

Lone perverts are out; jazz, spa baths and fluffy white bathrobes are in. As couples enter the bar, paying £25 on the door and a £30 annual membership fee, there is little to indicate anything other than an ordinary country club. Beyond a discreet glass cabinet displaying a “cordless micro-pleasurer” and a “vibrating finger vibe”, lies the “playroom”. 

Ms Walker, 37, a guide and “door supervisor”, shows guests the voyeurs’ room, and a series of other rooms in dark red decor, with double beds, mirrors, lava lamps, and various contraptions, including stocks and “the swings”. In the corner are wet wipes, bowls of condoms and piles of clean towels. 

The club is the brainchild of former KPMG accountant Neil Armstrong-Nash, 37, and his wife, Lianne, 35. They tried several swinging clubs but were put off by what Mr Armstrong-Nash calls “the shag and go” concept: sleazy dives with drinks in plastic tumblers, where couples are plagued by that habitual irritant of the swingers’ scene - the single bloke who has paid to get in and feels entitled to sex. 

Liberation is “couple centred” - 90% of its 1,000 members are heterosexual couples. It has strict rules - no cameras or mobile phones; a closed door means a couple don’t want to be disturbed; staff never join in - and an emphasis on people only doing what they are comfortable with. 

No professions are barred, but single men and women are vetted. “We have one 25-year-old single guy who comes here,” said Ms Walker. “It’s his recreation. He’s really good-looking and the women just love him.”

Friday night is “new swingers” night. Eight visibly nervous couples are greeted by Mr and Mrs Armstrong-Nash, who give them an introductory speech, champagne and dinner. 

“Swinging is a very positive step so long as you are in a stable, long-term relationship; it is not something you should do to fix your relationship,” said Mr Armstrong-Nash. 

In the bar, more experienced swingers, including Lindsey, 37, and Craig, 33, arrive. Preferring to go under assumed names, the couple, a company director and an operations manager who live in the Midlands, say that swinging must remain “the biggest secret you have” because of the misconceptions. They have been coming to the hotel for seven months, finding it “more sophisticated”, with better “etiquette” and a nicer class of cliental than traditional swinging clubs. 

“The one thing about swinging is that everyone respects boundaries,” said Craig. “It’s not about putting your car keys in a bowl and swapping partners. There are no people running around naked. There are no mass orgies. It is all a choice. Nothing is a foregone conclusion.” But, he conceded: “Once you have been here a few times the boundaries will move.”

Craig added: “It’s a liberating feeling coming to a club like this. During your working day it gives you more confidence. If I’m honest, the reason I come here is because it’s so naughty.”

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©