Design Cruise Wrap-Up

We’re home from our cruise! It took a good 10 days to get over the jet-lag, but I discovered that I can be very productive when I wake up at 4 AM. Too bad it didn’t last…

What continued to amaze us on the cruise, country after country,  is the continuity of ancient design influence throughout the Mediterranean rim.

You see the same stuff everywhere: the Greek key pattern, fluted columns, ram’s horn and acanthus, post and lintel, etc. We’ve seen it from Italy to the Greek islands, to ancient churches in Israel, and into Egypt. When we got home to Austin, we saw the Greek key pattern on the back of some guy’s Aloha shirt!

Good design is good design, no matter how old it is.

I thought of it all as Greek influence until we went to the Sphinx. But the temple ruins, over four thousand years old, have the post and lintel construction. Then we saw the same construction again, at a bus stop in Alexandria:

I kept thinking of Cleopatra taking Julius Caesar to see the Great Pyramids, how he must have stood there awestruck, thinking, “Damn, that’s old.”

And he was there in 55 BC. Now we think of Julius Caesar’s time as antiquity, and the pyramids are older still.

I bought 17 scarves on this trip, several from each country we visited. My current fave is one with the double blue “eye” design around the edge. That’s an ancient Turkish symbol for good luck. But I bought this particular scarf at Chico’s before we left on the trip.

Ancient design is everywhere. It was beautiful then, and it’s beautiful now.