Winter escape to Italy: Venice (2)

In my last blog, regarding another book that influenced my Italy trip is ‘Classic Forms’: A Source Book for Architects, Designers, Turners and Craftspeople. The author Stuart E Dyas, currently lives in York, always shows his wisdom and patience in conversation with me. Interestingly, he has something related to Taiwan, that is, his son once worked in Taipei (the capital city).

The author: Stuart E Dyas

He took thousands of photos of Venice and there are about 90 drawings of balusters in his book. According to Mr Dyas, ‘In Venice, the classical style can be seen in Renaissance architecture. […] The other styles in Venice are Gothic and Bizantine, which look quite different.’

Thanks to him and his book—it was a pretty prelude to travel to Italy. I then spent my journey with an aesthetic view. In many ways, Italy indeed offers a good arena for people doing art and architecture research. 

Many churches in Venice

Mr Dyas studied visual forms from many artefacts including columns, pedestals, vases, balusters, basins, tables, candlesticks & lamps, stair rails, table & chair legs., etc.   

Apart from that, he also studies oriental pottery such as ’meiping’ (梅瓶). When he unexpectedly spoke that word in Chinese; I embarrassingly cannot understand what he said so that I asked him to repeat again and again, and finally, we find the vase on google.

This reminds me that we all need some skills in communicating with a foreigner. The example above was not because of his accent (actually he pronounced it well), but due to my lack of knowledge of ‘Meiping’.

The same thing sometimes happened to me: talking something that even locals don’t understand. For example, when I used the term 'chum'. In fact, I learned it from a native but a British young girl told me that they don' t use that at all, so you can imagine how the usage of English could differ in the ethnic, area, age and class. I think this situation can be improved if using alternative words or adding more information and contexts to help illustrate the whole meaning.

However, Venice is the starting point where I learn to appreciate vase-related ideas and designs.

冬季之旅義大利: 威尼斯2

在我上一篇博客中，關於另一本影響我義大利之行的書是“經典形式”：建築師，設計師，車工和工匠的資料書。作者Stuart E Dyas，目前居住在約克，在與我的每次談話中總是表現出他的智慧和耐心，有趣的是，他有一些與台灣有關的事，就是他的兒子曾在台北--台灣首都工作過。

他拍了數千張威尼斯照片，書中有大約90幅欄杆畫。 根據Dyas先生的說法，“在威尼斯，文藝復興時期的建築可以看到古典風格。[...]威尼斯的其他風格是哥特式和比斯坦式，看起來則完全不同。

由於他及他的書 - 這是前往義大利的一個很好的前奏，接著我便以美學觀點展開了我的旅程。在許多方面，義大利確實為進行藝術和建築研究的人們提供了良好的舞台。像Dyas先生的研究包括柱子，基座，花瓶，欄杆，盆，桌子，燭台和燈具，樓梯扶手，桌椅和椅子等各種文物中的視覺形式。

除此之外，他還研究東方陶器，如'梅瓶'。當他出乎意料地用中文說出這個詞時，我尷尬地無法理解他說的話，所以我要求他一次又一次地重複，最後，我們在google上找到了這個花瓶。這提醒我，我們都需要一些與外國人交流的技巧。上面的例子不是因為他的口音（實際上他發音很好），而是因為我缺乏'meiping'的知識。

同樣的事情有時候發生在我身上，說一些甚至當地人都不理解的事情;例如，當我使用術語'密友'時。事實上，我是從一個本地人那裡學到的，但是另一個人告訴我他們根本不會使用它，所以你可以想像英語的使用會在民族，地區，年齡，階級方面有所不同。

我認為如果使用替代詞或添加更多信息和背景來幫助說明整個意義，可以改善這種情況。

不管怎樣，威尼斯是我學習欣賞與花瓶相關想法和設計的起點。