02/10/2024
The photo for October features mostly traditional eye beads and amulets from Turkey—a country with bead traditions that go back at least 7,000 years.
I'd like to talk about the central piece around which the photo was designed.
In the mid-1980s I went to a store named Byzantium in Cleveland, Ohio, where I met the owner, Libby Gregory. This piece was prominently displayed on a wall. Libby was a unique person and I liked her immediately. It was only a few years later that I heard she had died in a terrible plane accident. She was returning to Ohio after having been at the Gift Show in Los Angeles (no doubt to buy stuff for her store). Her plane was on a runway, preparing for take-off, when it was collided by another plane—essentially killing everyone. (I think the second plane must have been landing; and someone was in the wrong place.) It was a sad loss for a lot of people.
The next time I was in Cleveland, I went to the store, and this hanging was still there. I offered to buy it. But the current manager explained to me that this piece, for them, represented Libby herself, and that they would never sell it.
In 1995 when I began to plan the calendar project, and when the subject of Turkey came up, I remembered the Byzantium hanging—and I asked to borrow it. And they were kind enough to loan it to me.
So, this is the only photo that is dedicated to a single individual, who was taken-away too soon; and is still missed.
