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Artwork Gifts and Art Gifts for Adults
Here at Kipling de Freitas we believe that art can be, should be, used to elevate the human spirit, to expand our awareness of the world around us, to embrace each other. Art, of various kinds, has the potential to do exactly that. But art, as well as being a vehicle of personal expression, is also a cultural medium. It reflects the times we live in.
Renaissance of Beauty
And thus we would like to recapture that reverence for beauty that was so apparent in past ages. We will wander through time looking for beautiful objects with the hope that, when discovered and contemplated, they will cast their awful power upon us. This store will be dedicated to unwrapping such gifts to the discerning eye. We’ll keep you posted on our discoveries.
A Man for All Seasons
There is a remarkable illustration of portraiture now hanging in a gallery of the Frick Collection in New York. It shows a determined Sir Thomas More, that valiant antagonist of Henry VIII, looking intently at something; or perhaps, his pose is simply one of inward reflection. The painting is by Hans Holbein the Younger and it’s on oak panel. Through it, one gets a sense of the character of the subject: high-minded and idealistic. He was the author of Utopia and a man who paid more attention to the calls of conscience than the dictates of a king. He was a man who would not lie even to save his own life.
Chocolate: Food of the Gods
It’s been written that the ‘Mayans used cacao beans to pay for prostitutes in their early version of whorehouses. The going rate was around eight beans per woman. And the great Aztec ruler Montezuma… was reported to have consumed as much as fifty cups of chocolate elixir before heading off to his harem.’
All that Glitters is not Gold
A 15th-century English statute forbade young men from wearing certain items of silk and cloths of gold for fear that such superfluities would contribute to their moral decline.