The Ringling, Rugs, and Religion

As predicted, yesterday dawned grey and wet.  While that meant that it was a perfect day NOT to feel guilty about not working outside, the weather also meant that we would have to battle rain as we drove an hour and a half south to get to Sarasota.

My nephew Jon sings in the choir at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota, where he is a senior.  The choir is presenting The Gospel in Song as their spring concert tour in the south, so we wanted to drive to Sarasota to attend.  The choir is singing in numerous churches in Florida, but that was the congregation nearest to our house.

Since we have never been to Sarasota, we decided to make a day of it.  Rick's research and Steve's suggestion lead us first to The Ringling, the estate and art museum built by John and Mabel Ringling of the famed Ringling and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  We actually learned while on the estate that John made his fortune primarily from investments in the railroad and in oil even though the circus was highly successful also.

Ca'D'Zan as seen from Sarasota Bay. 

The Ringling includes the estate house itself, called Ca'D'Zan or "House of John," the Circus Museum, the Museum of Art, and numerous gardens. Since the rain was fairly substantial when we arrived, we started with the estate house itself.

One of the fountains in the Museum of
Art's courtyard.  Such a statue will NOT
ever adorn the gardens of Gladys!

The house is a Venetian-inspired palace on Sarasota Bay started in 1924 and completed only two years later. The 26,000 sq. ft. house was built for $1.5 million (at 1926 prices!), and plays homage both to Italian architecture and "gilded age" culture.  No detail was left undone (including hand-carved marble bathtubs in some of the 15 bathrooms in the house), and the result is a magnificent structure that served as a winter playground and retreat for the Ringlings, their families, and their rich and famous friends.  Sadly, the Ringlings spent very little time there.  As mentioned, the house was completed in 1926, and the docent who led our tour told us that John and Mabel spent only 4 - 5 months a year there in the winter. (They also had homes in Wisconsin and in one of the New England states for the summer.) Ca'D'Zan was their dream house, yet only three years later in June of 1929, Mabel died of Addison's Disease.  John was devastated with the loss of his beloved Mabel and chose not to spend much time at the house.  Of course, in October of that same year, the stock market crashed and John lost much of his fortune.

In 1927, John had decided to build a Museum of Art to house his vast collection of Renaissance and Baroque art including several massive works by Peter Paul Rubens called the Triumph of the Eucharist.  John wanted the museum open to the public, and it has been that way since it was completed in 1930.  The courtyard of the Museum of Art contains several bronze and stone copies of famous Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque statues including a 16-foot tall reproduction of Michelangelo's David.  The sun actually peeked through the clouds enough in the late afternoon so I was able to sneak out into the courtyard to get some pictures.

One of the plaster sculptures in the garden.

A copy of David overlooks the courtyard
at the Museum of Art.

Neither Rick nor I are terribly thrilled with the circus, so we spent very little time in another building that housed the actual Circus Museum.  They had several wagons and some costumes, but truthfully, better wagons are housed in the circus headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  Part of Florida's Circus Museum was the Howard Brothers' Circus Model which is a 44,000-piece miniature model of the whole circus experience.  The model starts with loading and then unloading the circus from the trains, using a circus parade to transport the circus to the fields, setting up the Midway and the Big Top, to the behind-the-scenes tents and wagons where the performers lived, trained, and worked.  That was more interesting to me than the actual wagons in the museum!

After The Ringling, we went to a store that Rick found online called Rugs As Art.  The final furnishing we needed for Gladys was a rug for the living room.  We looked at one traditional Oriental rug but felt that the colors were too dark.  Then a nice designer named Sandra offered to help.  We talked about the room and the fact that we wanted the house to have a palm tree/ tropical theme.  She found a rug for us with a fun pattern in the colors that we were looking for and told us to take it home.  She said that we had 30 days to decided if we liked it; if it did not work, we could bring it back for a full refund.  The rug was within our budget, and since we were able to fit it into the Camry, home it came.

Our fun, tropical rug in the living room gives the area definition and gives
it a pop of color.

We liked the rug last night, but we were tired and the lighting at 10:30 p.m. was not great, at best.  This morning dawned cloudy and grey again, but at least we had some natural light.  We both decided that we really liked the rug, so with a sigh of relief, I feel we are done with buying furniture and rugs.  Other than a little artwork for the dining room and perhaps the bedroom, the inside decorating of Gladys is complete. She is fresh, bright, beautiful, and smiling.

After we purchased the rug on Thursday, we went to Publix Supermarket, bought some delicious sandwiches, and had an inside-the-car-since-it-is sprinkling-again picnic at a city park.  We watched the bay for a bit and then drove over to the church for Jon's concert.  The 60-mermber choir delivered an eight-part harmony of beautiful, inspiring music.  We thoroughly enjoyed the concert and had a good time afterward visiting with our nephew for a few minutes.

The rain had stopped by this time, so our drive home was completed in record time.  We were home by 10:30 p.m.  Although the day was full, we had an enjoyable, successful day.  Once in a while, we need to treat ourselves to days away from work and from remodeling. We love transforming Gladys, but life is too short to work every day.  The work in Gladys will wait for us when we are ready to do it.