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In the Caribbean Style
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10875 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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7 / 1986 |
1,603 Words |
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Rochelle Larkin
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Caribbean is such an evocative word, sensuous even on the tongue as one says it, calling up images of sea and sand and sky, colors of aquamarine and rose and gold and flashing greens. The light of the Caribbean resonates with intensity and clarity simultaneously, giving its skies and its waters opaline brilliancy quite unlike any other in the world. It is a habitat of gorgeously plumaged birds and dramatic flora, peopled by a rainbow of racial types, most of whom had to be dragged to this earthly paradise in chains. Of the original population, Carib and Arawak Indians, none are left, save in some minute amount in the multinational gene pool.
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, European invaders struck the islands with nearly the same frequency as the ominous hurricanes that still wreak havoc here. In the architecture of the various islands, traces of the invaders' influences are still evident. English, Dutch, Spanish, French, and Danes have left their marks, but always adapted to the climatic conditions of the tropics, so different from that of the old World. Then the permanent population had added its own touches to create an ambience and a style that is truly Caribbean and indigenous to the area.
The dwellings that dot the islands much as the islands dot the sea, range from the lavish to the lowly. Although most of the great estates, built on the vast slave-worked sugar trade, are long gone, many houses, restored and refurbished to pristine eighteenth-century elegance and authenticity, remain. The slave quarters, built meagerly out of the commonest materials at hand and not meant to withstand the annual hurricanes that devastated long swathes of the area, are of course long gone, but a popular house form called the case has come into use for basic housing for the mainly poor mass of people. It is in these dwellings that some of the most fanciful and ingenious folk creativity ahs arisen within truly Caribbean "look."
A group of professional admirers of the look have put together a handsome volume entitled Caribbean Style. Published by Clarkson N. Potter/Crown, the book is a collaboration of Suzanne Slesin, assistant editor of the "Home Section" of The New York Times; Stafford Cliff, creative director of Conran Associates, London; the late Jack Berthelot, architect, of Guadeloupe; Martine Gaume, French architect in Guadeloupe; Daniel Rosensztrtoche, Paris designer; and Gilles de Chabaneix, widely published photographer of French landscapes and interiors. There is also a foreward by the travel writer Jan Morris of England. The result is a stunning evocation of the islands, interiors, exteriors, and landscapes that cuts across many layers of social, economic, and cultural differences.
Thus it moves from the well-situated plantation manors, built on hilltops to capture whatever prevailing breezes could offset the deadly heat of the tropical climate, to the crowded, eclectic jumble of town streets, to the still poor but more isolated dwellings of fields and villages. It is these that most embody the Caribean look, due to the overlay of color and ingenuity that serve to disguise the poverty beneath. This is not a guidebook for the casual tourist seeking out the travel brochure's promises of fun and sun. It is a rewarding insight into a genuine aesthetic for these travelers who do want to know more about the true lives being lived in these places.
It is also richly rewarding for design-conscious
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