Elemen-tea-ry

Momma and I have been longtime Sherlock Holmes fans, and we've especially enjoyed the recent treatments in both Sherlock and Elementary.

We especially enjoyed Sherlock's Season One episode, The Blind Banker, because the teapots that Momma collects had a starring role.

Some internet sleuthing told us the teapots for the show were indeed Yixing and were supplied by the British tea company, Canton Tea Club.

A few months ago the production team for Sherlock (the new BBC series) approached us for some authentic Chinese teaware including yixing teapots that would comfortably pass for priceless museum artifacts. The star of the piece was our Shi Piao yixing teapot, ably supported by our bamboo tea accessories all used so tenderly by the beautiful but tragic Chinese heroine in her role as a Tea Master.

Remind me to tell you someday about the more than 100 teapots Momma has, including one from the 18th century.

 

Pipe dreams

According to my friend Betsy, I am now a Perfectly Awful Girl.

You see, she caught me with a pipe ... one that does not work since there is no hole in it!

So why a non-functional pipe? Tis the season!

1. Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows is coming out Dec. 16.
   
   I need to practice my sleuthing skills ... and appearance. Sidney Paget in his illustrations usually had Holmes smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Paget is also credited with giving the first deerstalker cap and Inverness cape to Holmes, something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never mentioned.
   
   
2. Santa smokes one.
   
   "The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
   And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath"

   A Visit from St. Nicholas
   Clement Clarke Moore

3. And even some of the boys in Betsy's Crowd!

Betsy started reforming Phil. He smoked. He smoked a pipe. He was the only boy in Betsy's circle who smoked, except behind the barn. It was a wonderful evening when Phil gave Betsy his pipe. She hung it on a ribbon over her dressing table.

Betsy in Spite of Herself

Sometime before she had revived her last year's successful experiment in “reforming.” Phil's pipe still hung beside her dressing table. She discovered that Dave had a pipe and secured it to hang beside Phil's. Dennie gave her a sack of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Cab contributed a cigar.

Betsy had protested that. "You don't smoke! You're giving me one of your father's cigars."

"Well, gosh, Betsy!" Cab grinned. "If everyone else is going to be reformed, I want to be reformed, too."

Her father teased her about this enterprise....

"Have you heard about Betsy turning Carrie Nation?"

Betsy was a Junior

So now she has gone all Carrie Nation on Me and is demanding my pipe!

She even called me in front of the rest of The Crowd hoping I'd give in.

Betsy doesn't know me very well yet, does she?

Dumas vs. Verne

What would have happened if Jules Verne wrote The Three Musketeers instead of Alexandre Dumas?

Something like this, I'd wager.

I admit I'm not a purist. I like it when someone can give a fresh look to something that has been done a thousand times before.

I love Guy Ritchie's version of Sherlock Holmes so I admit my curiosity is piqued by this alternate take (one scathing review said "steampunk'd"!) of The Three Musketeers.

But imagine my excitment when I learned they have a flying war machine!!!  From the same review:

Leonardo da Vinci, we learn, has drawn up plans for a deadly flying “war machine,” a combination of dirigible and seafaring galleon. In the prologue Athos, Aramis and Porthos sneak into Venice on a special-ops mission.

Woo hoo! Count me in!

My only difficulty is choosing which boots to wear since nothing can compare to those worn in the movie....

Hurrah for the Pirate King!

Shiver me timbers! One of my favorite literary heroines is taking on pirates on Sept. 6, 2011!

In Pirate King, the eleventh Mary Russell novel by Laurie R. (ARrrgh!) King, Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, take readers into the frenetic world of silent films, where the pirates are real and the shooting isn’t all done with cameras…

In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, at the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate the criminal activities that surround Fflytte’s popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for movie-making for a generation or sink a boatload of careers.

Nothing seems amiss until the enormous company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, where the 13 blonde-haired, blue-eyed actresses Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell feels a building storm of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with secrets, ominous currents between the pirates, decks awash with budding romance—and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their dangerous outlaw leader, La Rocha. Plus, there’s a spy on board. Where can Sherlock Holmes be? As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout.

A suffragette, Sherlock Holmes, and pirates! Does it get any better than this?! And just in time for International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Sept. 19!

Nancy Who?

Move over Sherlock, there's a new Detective in Town.

Oh, don't think I've given up on my aspiration to be the world's Greatest Girl Detective, too!

Thanks to Jennifer I now have (or soon shall) my own Deerstalker Hat!

Look closely, and you will see I already have the magnifying glass.

What else does a Famous Girl Detective need other than a Fabulous Sense of Style?

And a Mystery about an Old Clock seems rather Steampunkish to Me.