Word: birkner
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...parties, mostly on weekends, like every weekend, for 80s parties, 60s parties—a lot of students.” Others flock to the Garment District just for the sake of preserving their wallets. “It’s cheap,” Paul Birkner, 17, said simply, grinning as he sorted through a bin of clothes marked: “T-shirts: $1, Sweats: $2.” Located at the back of the store on the first floor is Dollar-a-Pound, where customers wade through mountains of clothes and accessories, picking and choosing merchandise...
...chase reached a peak of sorts on the great estates of 17th century Germany. Johann Casimir, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, was renowned particularly for his great bear and boar hounds, bred to the size of yearling steers. To record his chases, Duke Casimir hired a court painter named Wolfgang Birkner. The result was one of the most complete hunting chronicles ever produced...
...original series of watercolors has since disappeared, but after Casimir's death in 1633, Birkner set about doing another hunting book as a memorial to the duke. He copied many of his own drawings from the first series, added depictions of lark netting, partridge and duck hunting. For years, this second hunting "book" lay quietly in the library of the Friedenstein castle in Gotha, East Germany. Merrill Lindsay, a Manhattan gun collector, heard about its existence while attending a conference in Rome last year. Lindsay launched what proved to be elaborate negotiations to get the book into the hands...
Little is known about Birkner other than that he was born in Bayreuth in 1582. He was commissioned by Casimir to do eight designs for the baptismal font at the city church in Bayreuth, and between 1616 and 1630 he completed 24 oils that are now in the Coburg art collection. He painted a portrait of himself as a rifleman, and also one of the duke. But the hunting book was his most important work. He very likely sketched from life, since he often portrays himself sitting in a corner of the picture, sketch pad in hand...
...Casimir's has been found, but some idea of the number of game taken on such chases can be had from accounts left by two neighboring dukes, Electors Johann George I and II, who together killed no fewer than 228,478 animals, including more than 110,000 deer. Birkner had none of the great compositional powers of Cranach or Velasquez, both of whom painted accounts of the chase. But Casimir could not have wished for a more faithful descriptive artist. Birkner spared no blood or gore, and no detail escaped his eye. At the same time...