Shriner Gothic

          So I was at a conference the other day, held in the wonderful old El Jebel Shriner building in Denver. It was built in 1928, and it has the warmth and human scale and eccentricity that you expect of old buildings, and the lack of which makes new buildings so unlovable and unpleasant.

          I would have loved this building anyway, with its period architecture and its solid sense of its own history, but then I chanced to stroll down a hall and beheld this lamp and lost my heart utterly. For who would not adore to own a truncated arm sticking out of a wall holding a mosque-like lamp? Who would not be smitten by its whimsical grotesquery? Who would not long to give it pride of place in their own house? 

          As I have said before, K and I do not always find common ground on questions of interior décor. When I showed him this photo, and merely suggested that a pair of these delights, placed one on either side of the fireplace, would add a certain je ne sais quoi to the living room, he came very near to a fit of apoplexy.

          Quietly, I withdrew my suggestion. But I am biding my time.