The news from Burma, what little can get out, is appalling - it is now estimated that over 100,000 have died due to the cyclone. Rangoon is without power, many regions remain - days since the cyclone - still submerged, there isn't adequate drinking water and petrol is in short supply. Despite this, Rangoon's airport sits practically empty - most relief teams have not been issued permits and planes filled with disaster-relief experts and desperately needed supplies remain grounded, the Burmese government will not allow them to land.

Sarah Newhall (my step-mother) runs PACT - a global community building, aid organizing and community-level impacting organization of enormous reach and integrity. PACT also happens to have been working in Burma for over a decade, with a number of development projects already flourishing including HIV/AIDS prevention and micro-lending programs specifically in the delta areas hit hardest by the cyclone. While the access of most organizations remains, for the time being, blocked by the military government, PACT is in place and so uniquely positioned to truly effect change and implement the aid immediately.

Please contribute what you can to PACT's initiative and pass this post along to friends and colleagues so that they may do the same. (For PACT's tracking purposes, please mention this blog.)




(In Burma in 1997, I trekked outside government boundaries into Shan State; I spent time in a Palong village. The Burmese were to a man/woman/child: kind, hopeful, resourceful – they stole my heart. The tragedies they've known, perpetrated by their own people - ignored by the world, have wrought a nation of all-too-human souls. Demanding aid without implementers, the Burmese government has essentially charged us as global citizens to get step in. The Burmese people must know the world cares deeply, and right the wrongs of our historical inaction.)

SWOON Kitchenbar - sort of Balthazar-handsome but with more soul and less crush - is a short walk from the shop down Hudson's Warren Street. For this I am grateful. I couldn't create a more perfect local; I get a rush of can-this-really-be-an-establishment-where-they-know-my-name-and-drink? giddiness each time I walk in, am greeted. SWOON is top notch in every category (even NY Times said so) and fellow shopkeeper Able Sun and I are at David's long plank bar at least one night each week.

The other week, by fantastic chance, I was asked to review a Hudson Valley brunch for the NY Post's new Page 6 Magazine and my SWOON pitch was okayed. So Easter Sunday Able and I sat to Duck Confit Hash (me) and a very fancy Reuben (Able) on the Post's dime.

(May be bad form to mention here and I may never write for the Post again, but I gave SWOON far higher marks than the article does, and my bloody mary gripe was minor...)

And note to other editors in need of Hudson Valley reviews: I am local, loyal, available and brim-full of story ideas. Please email me.

Circa's spring newsletter was a shot of bright color - ikat energy.

If you're not yet on the newsletter list, sign up here.

We've celebrated Chinese New Year, hosted a Christmas party, brought in many yurt's worth of Mongolian textiles and sold some of my favorite characters, a pair of santos. And, of course, there's been lots of other things which I'll report very soon but please keep checking in as I have been updating this site with new items, just on the sly...

If you're not on the Mailing List you're simply going to have checking here when you want to know what's afoot. And you're bound to miss things. And there'll be special things - greetings and sales and secret things - you simply won't know.

My recommendation - especially after I've spent the time I have wrestling the latest Circa Holiday newsletter into formatting submission?

Saturday December 1st, is the 13th annual Hudson WINTER WALK from 5 - 8pm.

Mostly a town-sponsored event to show off the newly hung lamp-post wreaths, spur the town's antique vendors to festively dress/re-dress their shop windows, it is also a genuinely family-friendly and neighborhood-ly sort of evening of new faces on Warren Street and, in the best of all worlds, new and holiday-giddy buyers to discover Circa Trade and Hudson Supermarket (Circa's Hudson home at 310 Warren Street).

We're busy decorating - shopping floating candles and pricing pine-bough ropes - and it looks like I'll have the much-delayed-but-keenly-anticipated new Circa Trade Texas inventory just in time.

So - if you're near Hudson NY please stop by. Even if you're in the city - come up for the day and there's still time to catch the last train (8:40pm) home...

In December ELLE Decor, Alexander Gorlizki and his wondrous artwork created with Jaipur-based Indian Partner Riyaz Udin, is given a lovely big 2 page spread and much heady praise.

Alex, a British artist living in Brooklyn with his small family, drawing from a physical and imagined archive of Indian patterns and pictures past, concocts fresh settings, Magritte-like juxtapositions and wholly modern treatments that are both technically masterful and wonderfully approachable. I've visited Alex in his east village studio a few times and inevitably leave impressed by his calm clarity and optimism - that in arriving at a mode of expression that marries cultures, times and sensibilities there's really no limits to what might be born from his imagination and Riyaz's camel hair brush.

You can see (and buy!) Circa's collection of Alex and Riyaz's works here
here and I'll try to get the rest up shortly. The pictures do little justice to the pieces themselves so please schedule that Hudson NY visit soon...

India-hand, entrepreneur and globally stylish roamer/writer/publisher of the Love India series of guides, Fiona Caulfield, and I met for coffee last week. Across our tiny cluttered table she passed a peacock-blue silk wrapped copy of the new Love Bombay guide though I won't have copies to sell for a few more weeks but a quick browse determined both natives and newbies will find it invaluable. Of note: it boldly addresses the “Bombay” vs. “Mumbai” question, though won’t divulge conclusion here.

Fiona reported on status of the guides-to-come (Rajasthan and Delhi among them), of larger plans and that the guides had found their way in to editor's hands (as well as the many travelers) and mentions are all about. Here's a recent one in TRAVEL + LEISURE.

A Circa Trade suzani is in this month's House Beautiful.
It's the main event: representing all suzanis, everywhere - it is suzani towards which other stitch-work aspires and from which many were begot.

or something.

Check the now-available November House Beautiful, page 58. The magazine's on-line edition features an additional CIRCA suzani (image #14): CIRCA suzani in House Beautiful on-line.

If you missed CIRCA's first-ever off-site exhibition just now
(hosted by Shanti and ASHA VEZA - 69 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope Brooklyn),
then please stand-by for the next and join Circa Trade's Mailing List to receive news of future exhibitions.

Sourcing: Round Top Texas trip, photos.

"It will rival your most exotic rummage (you can shop for miles)"
she said.
So we flew south, then drove west, till we were smack between Houston and Austin in gorgeous rolling farm country.
There, amidst more tents, stag horns, extra-long trailers and enormous styrofoam ice-teas than I could have conjured, was Round Top Texas - off-season (the antique fair is 2x yearly) pop. 77.

Sun-up to drink time and I could have gone days longer - Round Top was both wholly foreign and, as a rummager, wholly-familiar - different contexts requiring different visual edits but same finder's thrill and delicate dance of bargaining.

And, yes, there be Buddhas and wonders from the world-over in our deep south…

To celebrate a great summer, and usher in fall, Circa will have a shop-wide sale August 31st - September 3rd (Labor Day). Pickle Pots will be discounted, Faux-Shagreen Cask Stools a bargain (you'll want a pair) and treasures throughout the collection ready to follow you home. Labor day is also an ideal time to check out the Hudson Valley so make a weekend of it and come for a visit.

There's lots on Hudson town in last month's Travel + Leisure.

Visit Circa Collection pieces in their latest/second home - the design and antique showcase, Vintage & Modern.

Morocco by-photo tour

(Marrakesh - Fez - Essaouira)

Should have mentioned this before -
am just returned from a fantastic sourcing trip,
and traveling trip,
to Morocco.
Marrakesh and Fez, from the medinas and souks of both, will be coming Berber carpets and nomads' blankets from the rugged Atlas Mountains.

While those photos and shipments are in the works,
Photos of the Trip and Tales of the Trip.

Announcing the PHOTOS category (in Adornments).

And still more trip photos.

Context to the collection (homelands) and why the travels will never ever stop.

Photos are available as limited edition prints. Contact me for pricing and details.

Circa Trade in the NY Times House & Home .

There's been a clamor for the Antique Sari Throws.

February 17, 2007

ASHA VEZA Trunk Show at Circa Trade, Hudson NY 5:30 - 8pm.
Not your mother's trunk show.

Founded by the globe-spanning, world-helping and fashion forward Shanti Crawford, Asha Veza (Hindi asha for hope and Bosnian veza connection) is a socially conscious clothing company that tethers the invention and creation of pioneering fashions to women either surviving, or at risk for, sexual exploitation and trafficking in Calcutta and Bosnia.

100% of Asha Veza profits go to create sustainable economic opportunities for women with few options and tattered hopes.

Come, see, try on (model) and take home blouses of silk, jackets of quilted antique saris, dresses of ribbons…

Available nowhere else - don't miss a CIRCA TRADE and Hudson Valley first.

Oh, the places we'll go this year. And, because we are a shop and therefore a service of sorts, the places we'll take you along to via treasures gathered and the tales told.

So, stay tuned, watch this space and settle into the armchair.

Also, if you haven't already, sign up for the CIRCA TRADE newsletter. I've fiddled too long (formatting wiggles) but it will hit in the next few days.

Hudson at holiday time: as charming as you'd imagine a well-preserved, town of a certain age inhabited by the design-obsessed (and those who love them) would be.
Wreaths and holly, store windows showing the most inspired styling/propping north of Barneys and frantic shoppers swinging about.

Our theme for the year? The never-tired WORLD PEACE and we did this window to sing it out.



(PRIZE to the linguistic super-hero who identifies all scripts.)

Home to New York - safe, sound and sourced.
I did a full albeit too-fast circle, through a few of India's shopping destinations (Cochin, Pondicherry, Jaipur...) and found pieces that I'll introduce into the collection in the months to follow.
(chappals, Banjara pillows, ceramic Puja figures, rings of horn, camphor chests ...)
Continue to check my blog for travel tales and photos: Fromacafe - Courtney's blog.

I'll be traveling India, begining in Bombay, for 3 weeks.
Read tales, and see photos of my travels on my blog (interspersed with other parts of my life, but mostly travel for the rest of this month):
Fromacafe - Courtney's blog.

At long last, CircaTrade.com re-launches.

(and Courtney returns to India for exploration and more buying.)

Circa Trade opens in Hudson Supermarket - 310 Warren Street, Hudson NY.