Versailles
Lighting some of the most historic fountains on the planet is no small responsibility, reports David L'Heureux and George Ayer of fountain designer and manufacturer Crystal Fountains. Equipped with both the necessary experience and technology, the company was tapped to bring illumination to the legendary fountains of Versailles – and the results are beautifully illuminating.
It's happened before: I'll write one of these blogs or a Travelogue, and within a few minutes of releasing the newsletter a reader will send me something that either adds to, explains or (rarely, thank goodness) contradicts something I've written. Back in December, for instance, I wrote about the
My family moved away from Chicago when I was just four years old, but I have three vivid, very specific memories of the place: icicles hanging from the eaves of our home in Evanston; the long freight trains that ran constantly on tracks at the far edge of the open field across the street; and Buckingham Fountain in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park. When I returned to the Windy City on business in the early 1980s (several years before I became directly involved with watershaping), it wasn’t to Evanston I went; instead, once I’d checked into my hotel on that bright spring day, I made a beeline to the
When you approach a design challenge, it always helps to be aware of the work of those who’ve gone before. That’s why college programs for designers, including architects and landscape architects, so often incorporate courses intended to teach students about the history of art and architecture. It’s a foundation that
Ever since the hydraulic principles of ancient Persia were 'rediscovered' by Europeans during the Renaissance, the sky has literally been the limit for watershape designers. At the 17th-century Dutch Palace of Het Loo, for example, fountain jets that trace their developmental history at least as far back as 8th-century Persia make an emphatic statement about the power of those who commissioned them. We all marvel, and rightly so, at the waterfeatures of Renaissance Italy, the pools of Versailles in France, the fountains of the
