A table in CEO-Viking style

in #life2 years ago (edited)

It has been a while since I last wrote on social media - about two and a half week - and kind people, like @nevies and @donnadavisart, have asked if I was alright.

I am. Very much so actually.

There have been a few events that has occupied me, and I have lost a table... at least for the next month. It shows how fine I am actually doing - that a missing table can cast me into first world despair and internet aversion.

First of all: my daughter had a coming of age party, and the week after my niece had one too. Prior to this party my wife and I always made all the food ourselves - it was sort of a hobby back when we were young, making, together with my brother, large feasts for many people. We took it too serious to ever see it as a hobby though. We made two Chinese banquets which i composed. The first with 22 different dishes, the second one with 26. We made several Turkish buffets with several warm and a sea of meze dishes, Japanese mixed buffets, once it was Louisiana Cajun kitchen, some smaller parties with French and Italian food which was inside our comfort zone as my wife and I lived in Italy in our early youth, and then of course also a traditional Danish three course meal for our grandmothers 70 years birthday party which was for around 60-70 people.

This time we had a cook... the son of an artist friend. We held him in our arms when he was not even a week old, but he has in time grown into a very calm and handsome man which takes a lot of muscles to carry around. It made everything easier for sure. But there was still plenty of things that needed to be done - like giving a speech without crying.

And then there's the whole business with the table!

It all started when I had a present from my wife...

She and an artist friend had for an exhibition bought two tables from the city hall of Copenhagen that was sold in bulk because modern offices need height adjustable tables in light imitated wood laminate. These tables was designed by the architect of the city hall to match the building, which was carried out in the local art noveau style. This style is called, Skønvirke, and is about putting as much Viking ornaments into continental European Jugend and Napoleon III style as at all possible. But as modern business and politics demand lousy looking ugliness, and cheap thrill modernism those tables had to go, and my wife bought it with the idea that I could inherit it after it had been used at the exhibition.

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The City Hall of Copenhagen, designed by the architect Martin Nyrop who also designed the tables to fit the building. A building that I and all the other Copenhageners love. (Image by Scythian)

I was... ("am" i suppose) very happy with that table in the style I call Director-Viking. But again... when translating to modern English that habit in modern business - that everything shall have a base and beggarly, "smart" and "businesslike" ugliness to it - I have chosen to translate it into CEO-Viking instead. Nothing sounds as cheap as CEO.

Were am I? What am I babbling about?! Oh yes! The exhibition was so successful that it grew into a franchise and they have made several offspring exhibitions - and then, for one of these, my wife's artist friend wanted to use the tables again!

So I disassembled my computer setup and carried the table, made from solid wood, down from the Wyzard's Tower - all five floors. And then I couldn't be arsed to set up the old table, made from an old door and some IKEA foldable legs from back when IKEA was only known in Scandinavia, and even less be arsed to set up my computer, drawing tablet etc. Even now that it is done I fell tired thinking about it. I mean, what is a Viking CEO without his longship table?

The table will return in a month or so and I will have to do it all in reverse. But at least I can again then fell like a CEO-Viking. Next time I disappear for a couple of weeks it might be because the table has returned.

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Like someone else who commented before I'd really like to see this table too, the idea of an architect designing a table to suit a building is novel and fascinating 👌.

Welcome back, though, since the last post you made before you left talked about diagnosis and stuff I felt you were probably carrying out medical procedures; really great it turned out to be parties. What can you say about your love for cooking, do you think it has something to do with your love and mastery of art?

Yes, going all the way from building a clock tower to caring for the little things like the furniture. It is indeed fascinating.

As for cooking - yes, to me it is very akin to the process of making art, maybe even more grounded and important. I saw a small documentary about Toumani Diabaté, a fantastic musician from Mali, and he said, *in Mali you are always a farmer first, and a musician second."

P.S I'll write you. Maybe we can talk tomorrow or in the weekend.

It has been a while since I last wrote on social media - about two and a half week - and kind people, like @nevies and @donnadavisart, have asked if I was alright.
I am. Very much so actually.

Don't lie you are not alright from the copious amounts of alcohol you been consuming. But it was a good time while it flowed, now you just have a banging party in the nuggin.

As all CEO-Vikings I have a very high alcohol tolerance, so the reason I need to take a rest is purely incidental!

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Always good to see you back here. Sorry you lost your viking table for a while. I imagine you sitting on a big carved throne at home.

Be well and be creative.

!PIZZA

And it has a black lambskin rug on top of it!

What, no picture of the damn table?! A drawing? A detail? Cool building though, so at least there's that.

I couldn't find find one.. and the table was gone. But maybe I can go through my photos again - as I remember it I did take some when it was delivered.

I'm happy to see you back, if just until the table returns. I suppose now instead of being a viking ceo you could be a nordic/scandanavian ceo, I mean are the new 'old' myths going to be about IKEA and the way they too, conquered the world, only with the tools of the modern age, not long boats, long tables (apparently) and nerves of steel, but with innovation, mass production and infiltrating all cities of the world with their wares? I don't know, sounds like IKEA is pretty 'viking' to me :)

enjoy your non 'online' time @katharsisdrill

I am not back to rock solid present on all platforms (decentralised), but I am doing my best.

As for the IKEA phenomenon it was also here in the seventies, and I remember long tedious journeys to this wonderland of cardboard and plywood. Here we are more concerned with design classics from the modernist era in real wood. Especially Finland and Denmark has some very fine traditions in high quality design and every Danish house is packed with PH lamps and Børge Mogensen chairs. The IKEA parts are there too, but regarded the same way as an American would with things bought in Walmart.

Sometimes I find it a bit strange how we obsess over local design, and stuff our living space with it. Older furniture from the fifties and sixties are treated and cost the same as fine antiques, and burglars are systematically targeting chairs, dressers and tables over flat-screen and cash.

We have our fair share in our flat too. In the video on the front of my website I am sitting in a Wegner chair and the small table with the whiskey is designed by Nanna Ditzel. Typically the bookshelf is an age old assembly thing from the seventies that could easily have been bought in IKEA fifty years or more ago by my parents.

Loaning out a table, you don't hear that very often. I hope you're getting something out of it other than the pain of disassembling it and carrying it down 5 flights of stairs, not to mention the general missing and longing for your table lol.

If nothing else I can call myself a supporter of the arts, and not only any art, but my wife's art.

Oh I missed the part about it being for your wife, my bad. Well that makes sense. Gotta keep the misses happy and support family 👍

She has promised that it wont happen again. It is kind of interrupting my workflow, but sometimes it is okay to have time for thinking about the next things I have to do.

It has been a while since I last wrote on social media - about two and a half week - and kind people, like @nevies and @donnadavisart, have asked if I was alright.
I am. Very much so actually.

Don't lie you are not alright from the copious amounts of alcohol you been consuming. But it was a good time while it flowed, now you just have a banging party in the nuggin.

PIZZA!

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