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Journey Around The Earth

You do not need a passport to travel to Egypt or to any other English colony. A visit card will do. In Alexandria, I made friends with the tropical flora: date trees that bear almost 100 kg of fruit each year, bananas or the cursed fruits because they grow without any effort

At Winder's - The Dragomans - Mishka - Ibrahim - A Motley Crowd

*On Handak street, which meets Anastase street a few steps away from the place where I'd eaten, the bustle was at its height. Although lazy and indifferent when they have nothing to do, Arabs are very much alive and quick when there's a chance of making some money.

My Aunts From Tel Aviv

excerpt Big scandal occasioned by Remembrance Day and Independence Day (Yom Ha-Zikaron, Yom Ha-Hatzmaut), because the Minister of the Armed Forces ordered 40,000 Israeli flags in Taiwan instead of the domestic industry, preferring foreign silk,and this friend of mine who

Between Odessa And Piraeus

*I intended to be concerned with literary form in this series of reportage. I can see I have done better than I expected. At the moment, my problem is preserving the chronological order of events. Our departure from Odessa was marked by a small, insignificant in fact, incident,

Aristide Caradja, Princeps Biologorum Romaniae

I did not meet the great, indefatigable entomologist Aristide Caradja (1861-1955), but everything I have found out about him from firsthand sources has helped me understand he was a unique personality, an absolutely fascinating man. It is undoubtedly an indirect kind of

How I Became A Collector

The feelings for beauty and for art in general are multiple and diverse; they follow an ascending path, turning into a passion for the sensitive person, who loves it and who vibrates with emotion in front of any artistic manifestation situated on the realm of perfection.

Victor Eftimiu

Would you please not rank me among collectors, although I pretend I am a connaisseur, in the meaning of the French word, academician Victor Eftimiu told me on one occasion in 1965, seated on a bergère, clad in a night gown, rather worn down but adorned with fine embroidery,

Poor Ioanide

excerpts IV In his office on the ground floor, Saferian, on a chair and surrounded by four men, all standing, was contemplating an oil portrait, set near them against the back of an ordinary straw chair. It is an Ingres, most certainly, said one of the four, a man with trimmed

The Collector Onic Zambaccian

If his consuming passion for art gained Krikor Zambaccian a familiar fame amongst the collectors in Bucharest, particularly by dint of his acquisitions in the field or foreign art, few know that his younger brother, Onic (1891-1975), yet another aficionado of beauty, was

Kollectian

Just think that I paid it once, and it pays me off a lifetime instead. * Zambaccian on a canvas by Pallady Having great collectors represents as big a chance for a culture as having great artists. Flourishing arts are hardly imaginable when wealthy art-lovers are missing,

Once Upon A Time, At Mişu Weinberg's

It was in May 1972, when I paid my first visit to the Weinbergs. I still have a warm dedication from the host as testimony. I was coming from the Museums Review to record a few thoughts about the Weinberg collection, the foundations of which had been laid in the tumultuous

Delight In Barbu Slătineanu's House

After six years' work in the Sanitary Technical School I was admitted to the History of Art Institute. I was a researcher and I wasn't yet allowed to research the monuments of our medieval art I was so attracted to. Going through the pages of the history magazines