February 20, 2011
This was my bedroom, before. Crusty, water-stained walls and semi-ruined tiles from the early 1900s.
 Bedroom Before I plastered, painted, and had the floor professionally scrubbed and polished. The tiles look better but are still very distressed. But that’s OK. After all, I moved to Sicily to embrace antiquity, didn’t I? They’re refreshingly cool in August, ice-rink cold in December. Someday I hope to afford an antique Sicilian lace curtain.
 Bedroom After  Bedroom After Nice old blocks of sandstone were discovered on one wall, so I left it raw.
 Bedroom After I added a new knob to the squeaky old door. For €20 you can get a glass one made in Venice!
 Bedroom After My gaudy plastic chandelier lights up my life.
 Chandelier from Coin (sort of an Italian Target)
Dogs bark in the distant canyons at night. Mornings I wake up to sunshine, gonging bells, and fluttering doves.
The room is still a work in progress. I’d love to hear if you have a design idea. And please don’t say “pull down that horrid chandelier.”
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September 21, 2010
Spotted in a Sicilian antique store: Baroque armoire of honeyed rosewood. Curlicues. Cornices. Roomy shelves. Way out of my range.
I keep going back. Just looking, I say, petting the piece. The price drops. But still…
“Bellissimo,” rasps the bleached antiquaria, pulling on a cigarette like it’s oxygen itself. “One of a kind. From the villa of a barone.”
I imagine it in its former life, surrounded by Chinese porcelain, bibelots on the mantle, gilt-framed mirrors, Persian carpets, embroideries heavy with tassels. I fork over a wad of euro-cash, and she stubs out her cigarette and says two delivery guys will be on the job posthaste. And won’t it be absolutely gorgeous in my salone.
I don’t have the heart to admit it’s going in my bagno, bathroom, just steps from a toilet.
My buzzer goes off and two rosewood-laden guys heave into the house. My joy sinks a notch when I see her, the antique dealer, imperiously bringing up the rear.
I point toward the bathroom. When she sees how I’m violating Sicilian protocol, she exhales a puff of black smoke, utters a curse, and waves her cigarette around.
Later, I wipe out the centuries of baronial grime, fill it with my plebian doodads, and sweep up her long trail of ash.
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For all of you who love Stromboli, or the Aeolian Islands, or Sicily, or Italy–would you help save a gorgeous (earthquake-damaged) church on Stomboli by signing a petition? It’s the project of one of Baroque Sicily’s readers, Beatrice Ughi. Signatures can only be collected until the end September. The link is in Italian, but it’s simple: go to the 3 long, thin boxes at the bottom and put in your name, email address, and the verification code. Mille grazie!
http://iluoghidelcuore.it/san_bartolomeo-stromboli-isole_eolie
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August 19, 2010
I’m furnishing my home with trash.
The orange trash guys drop by on a daily basis. One day they’ll cart away secco, dry stuff. The next day it’s umido, wet stuff. Another day it might be plastica or carta or lattine. I still can’t figure out what the last thing is. To make matters worse, each kind of rubbish must be tightly wound up in a different-hued bag: lava-black for secco, pistachio-green for umido, and so on. I don’t expect to ever really catch on to a system that’s as complicated, in its own way, as Sicilian codes of honor.
But all that’s beside the point. What matters is not the debris they haul away from the house, but what they bring in. Last week one of them, eyes ablaze, said, “I hear you like old stuff, Signora.”
“You heard right, Signore.”
“Well, I have a piece of an old Sicilian cart. Do you want it?”
I took it, of course, along with his picture in the too-bright sun.
Then the next day along comes this: a rusted grinder, still smelling seductively of caffè.
So we’re in business, me and the garbage guys. Will the house soon look like a moldering antiques bazaar?
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July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
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June 15, 2010
We make up a long list—masking tape, towel racks, electric drill, olive tree, hooks—and drive through the scabby detritus of Upper Ragusa’s industrial zone to Brico, a do-it-yourself Sicilian version of Home Depot.
The smell of the sea fills our nostrils as we pull into the blazing parking lot. I don’t approve of big-box stores or the mall-ification of Sicily, but my hardware-hungry husband has landed on the island, we have a rental car, and I’m a hypocrite.
Kim tries to get in the exit doors, but they remain stubbornly shut.
 We finally escape the hot fingers of the sun into cool Brico-dom. Kim marvels at the dainty shopping baskets, wondering where all the flatbed carts are.
We’re a little frustrated that we can’t decode what’s in all the pots and the tubes.
 Floor space at Brico is devoted to garbage cans no bigger than my purse, and to jars for canning marmalade. We buy an olive tree for the tiny balcony and a rug made in Iran. Matinee idols deliver service with a smile (where are the Home Depot employees when you need them?).
At Home Depot you get boring batteries and drill bits at check-out. Here you get great pots of basil and fragrant mint.
We agree that the best thing about Brico is the aromatic do-it-yourself coffee bar with mod Italian tables and chairs.
For forty cents you can get not only a delicious caffè espresso, but a caffè lungo, caffè macchiato, cappuccino, caffè corto decaffeinato, caffè macchiato decaffeinato, mocaccino, cappciocc (what’s that?) cappuccino decaffeinato, cioccolato forte, cioccolata al latte, latte, latte macchiato, latte al cacao, and te al limone. Plus at the press of a button you decide if you want the above dolce or amaro. It’s Starbucks (but much better) in a machine the size of a jukebox.
Can you beat that, Home Depot?
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All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
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