Sometimes it's just refreshing to see an acid wit, especially when they are commenting on something beyond popular culture and the latest summer movie.

The clash of a several hundred year old culture with one of several thousand sure makes an awful din.
Isn't it fun!

Bamboo -

Yes, & especially so because his "Bauhaus' tag is so disconcertingly apt.

This made me wonder what it would look like in combination with a swastika, since both Bauhaus and the swastika are symbolic of the first half of the 20th century. So I tried it as a cut-and paste picture: the lantern doesn't actually exist, at least not with the swastika.

I think that, in a way, the lantern and swastika suit each other - but if it looked like "something from the ghastly Bauhaus" before, now it really does look "Horribly Bauhaus", doesn't it?

I probably won't actually make one like it, unless by way of a curiosity, because I doubt it'd look quite right in our garden. Besides, it might upset some visitors - think of the trouble that poor Prince Harry got into.

Click here to see it

Herb, I didn't find it funny at all. Your friend's attitude of supiority can hardly be construed as dry wit. His use of the 'N' word for a person from Nippon is very distasteful in my opinion.

Bauhaus doesn't go with the swastika at all well Herb. The nazis were extremely antagonistic to the bauhaus which is why many of their movers and shakers went to America and took it's influence into US modernism.

http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa022101b.htm

It is a mistake to associate the Nazis with brutalism in architecture or any other form of modernism. At heart the Nazis had a deeply conservative love of neo-classicism. Speer's designs may have tried to impress on a giant scale but really it was all rehashed Greco-Roman. Give me Frank Lloyd Wright any day!

I know that my friend recognises that to many people "Jap" is distateful, so he never uses it - & that's why he uses "Nip" for somebody from Nippon just as he uses "Brit" for somebody from Britain - but I'll pass the comment on.

Leaving the swastika out of it, I still like the general shape of this style of lantern. The mention of Frank Lloyd Wright has supplied me with an excellent come-back because I think the lantern's shape & his style of architecture show a great affinity.

I'm going to tell my friend that his "Bauhaus" slur was quite mistaken, that his misplaced admiration for Gaudi (whom I call the Termite Mound Architect) probably explains his lack of perception, and that the affinity is obviously not with the obnoxious Bauhaus, but with the Frank Lloyd Wright's work.

I don't know what Frank Lloyd Wright thought of Gaudi, but he detested both the International style and its proponents, and is reported to have described them as "totalitarians" who were "not wholesome people."

Herb-
There's no comparison between Brit and Nip. The first is a generally accepted shortening of a place origin and the other isn't. In my experience, while many Britons call themselves Brits, I have yet to hear one of my Japanese friends refer to him/herself as a Nip. I'm not trying to pick a fight, or lecture you. I also recognize that you didn't use the term Nip yourself, but your friend is on thin ice with this one.

The Japanese would have been comfortable with Frank Lloyd Wright he was of short stature and referred to tall people as "weeds" they stick up above the crop.
As a result most of us would have to duck in doorways he preferred.

Herb, at least it wasn't done with malice or predjudice. In some circles I can see where no harm is intended. Perhaps I should have worded my response a little softer. I think 'thin ice' describes it best. I guess I was thinking of all the WW11 propaganda movies and it's use there. I can see where it might be legitimate in some countries. Thanks for your explanation.

This is one for the dustbin. Not funny, not erudite, not relevant. This was probably written 30 years ago (By Herb) and is in no way current. I am a Brit, which only occured to me in another country and is a term of, perhaps, endearment. Jap and Nip on the other hand? Connecting the Bauhaus with Nazism is equally spurious and comparing Gaudi with FLW is the same. Welsh people and Japanese people are generally not as tall as some others so the doors need not be as high?, give me a break.
The swastika has a history way beyond Hitler but including it here, in this context is offensive.

Inky -

I happen to be a Brit too, but l'm passing on what you say to my friend (who happens to be a Paddy). The thought of your quivering with such indignation is so enjoyable that it needs to be shared.

Herb

This is a real person Herb? Silly me, with such old fashioned views I thought "Paddy" was you. Please share my view correctly if you don't mind and use this phrase if you can "uneducated, uninformed, drivel" thank you kindly.

and on the other hand, I think its outrageously humourous, worth many a chuckle with re-reads, and appreciate the ghastly overlaid depiction, rendered in words and timbre that I even understand as normal.

-perhaps its all in the Sir Donald Tsang and 'Sir Bow-Tie' that implies the manner of understanding the term 'nip' contextually.
-perhaps some are forgetting Nihongo/Nippongo from earlier dictionary editions, not to mention the 'Japanese' word contextually referencing Herbs lantern as 'implying (perhaps) -coarsely Japonaise', and generally missing the boat as not even being related to Japanese beyond the misnomer of Nip. Japanese was used twice indicating he knew its use well, yet chose to insult Herb with a nip where it counted.
This isn't even mentioning the dabbling that Japanese architects did with the post- Bauhaus concept WITH the ghastly geometric gravel gardens surrounding the entire concrete edifice...

..though regretably, I must disagree with the 'deeply conservative love of Neo-classicism' viewpoint of the Nazi regime in regards to the closing of the Bauhaus 'school'. The website does not mention the reasons for closing the Bauhaus.
At some other time or place I would be curious to know where this perception came from, Nazi's hating and being antagonistic towards Bauhaus -design-... or (lacking?) modernism... considering the modernism that has been introduced into N. American infrastructure that was invented and introduced by the Nazi regime.
Are we sure that the Nazi's did not hate the organizational ability of the 'grass-roots movement' of the 10's-30's hippie era of communal art colonies, of which Bauhaus was an irreverent misbegotten sport that refused to wear the armband of compliance in order to practise?
(besides the armband was clothing that interfered with nudism as a necessary precept for natural craft design... now where did that term 'blockhead' come from??? and why was Tsang referred to as Sir Bow-Tie? --- it matters not)

I still think the entire is funny and only poking at Herb's lantern, and perhaps his taste.. :), or lack of.

Edzard -

You've made a valiant attempt to find a link between Sir Donald Tsang's famous bow tie (see the pictures link below) and my Irish friend's use of the word 'Nip' but I don't believe such a link even crossed his mind and it certainly didn't cross mine..

The title 'Sir Bow Tie' was bestowed on Sir Donald not by me, nor by my Irish friend, but - quite recently - by the (Brit) writer of a hilarious Hong Kong blog - which can be found by Googling the word 'Hemlock'.

Inky's description of my friend's comments as "uneducated, uninformed, drivel" is probably also to what he'd say about the delightfully politically incorrect Hemlock - though unlike Inky, Hemlock actually claims to be obnoxious.

Herb

Click to see Sir Donald Tsang

I don't claim to be obnoxious Herb although I do recognize it when demonstrated. What I do claim is a nose for pseuds, in a corner or not. I will give him this though: A lantern designed by "Guardi" (sic) would be an interesting prospect.
The little thing, your quote, contains so many clichÂd opinions, Tom Wolfe ("From our house to Bauhaus") would wipe his nose in it.
It is fun though Herb.

Inly -

It's even more fun to note that it appears, from your endorsement of Tom Wolfe's ridiculing of the Bauhaus, and from Cytania's disclosure about the antagonism of the Nazis to the Bauhaus, that FLW, my Irish friend, I, Tom Wolfe and you - along with the Nazis - are all, with repect to the Bauhaus, in that very same corner......

Now isn't that a laugh?

Then let me be the first to stand in support of the distilled purity of great Bauhaus design. Watch "L.A. Confidential" and see if Richard Neutra's Lovell House doesn't appear serenely elegant. Modern architecture and Japanese gardening have been successfully complimentary since before FLW worked in Japan. When Walter Gropius fled the Nazis in the early 30's, he built a strikingly original home in Lincoln MA, nicely integrated with a Japanese garden in back.