FOUR YEARS IN REVIEW

I can hardly believe it's been four years since ATELIER IVAAN opened its doors on Dupont Street.  I've learned so much - about jewellery, about business, about people, about trust, about luck, and about stupidity - that I probably should be much older than I actually am.  At least I'm wiser.
There have been some high points, some low points, some very funny things that have happened along the way, some things I'd have done differently and some very poignant moments I've had the privilege of witnessing.

I bought this building on Valentine's Day 2012 from a woman who owns an interiors store called Pimlico Design Gallery.

She and her husband had bought a larger building in the neighbourhood and were expanding her business.  I learned a lot from Tatiana about running a retail operation.  She was generous with advice and suggestions, and forthright enough to tell me frankly about things I needed to know, or to do differently.  I credit her enormously with getting me through the early days when I was a total imbecile.  I came to realize how gracious her help was, because in opening up a store in another artistic field, I was becoming in some ways a competitor.  She was definitely a mentor.

I also credit the Vice President of ATELIER IVAAN, my nephew Ivor, who has spent more holidays here than either of us can remember.  Inventory, I.T. support and persuading me to move from a POS terminal to another payment system are some of Ivor's improvements.  He has taken me out to dinner on so many occasions to talk things over, been my most trusted employee (I actually trust him far more than I trust myself) and been my confidant.  He has dragged me kicking and screaming into the 21st century.  Even now when he's away at university, he has carte blanche to make financial decisions for us both.

Everybody knows ATELIER IVAAN as "the store with the guy in the window".  I hear this all the time.  The "guy in the window" is an oil on canvas portrait of Ivaan by Daniel P. Izzard.  Sometimes I move the painting into the store so I too can enjoy looking at it.  Immediately, I get complaints from people who like to see it when they pass by.  So back it goes into the window.  I don't think Danny anticipated his painting would become a kind of landmark on Dupont Street, but I appreciate it every single day.

I have found myself among fantastic neighbours.  On both sides, I have restaurants owned by terrific people.  We look out for each other and I know if I ever need any help from Vinny's Panini or Universal Grill, I can count on them.  My next-door upstairs neighbour, Sam, saved my life one winter evening.  I was feeling unwell, had a bad headache and decided to sleep it off. Long story short: Sam had come home to an apartment filled with natural gas.  It took a few hours before a gas leak was discovered in the basement next door.  If I'd gone to sleep, I would not have woken up the next day.

I'm lucky that some of the funny things that have happened did not turn out badly.  Once, the summer after I opened, it was a very slow day and I decided I'd rather be having a pedicure than running a retail store.  So I got my purse, set the alarm, and headed to the nail salon in Yorkville.  Two hours later, I returned to find that the door was unlocked.  In my haste to leave, I'd forgotten to lock the door.  It's a testament to how slow it was that day: if anyone had come in, they'd have set off the burglar alarm.  But not a soul had come in.  It took me a while to calm down.

On another occasion, I'd gone to church on Sunday with my close friend Crystal and her children.  As we went into the church, my phone started ringing so I turned it off.  I could feel it buzzing all the way through the church service.  I ignored it....until on the way home I turned it on and learned the alarm company had been calling me for three hours.  Something had triggered the motion sensor in the store, and security personnel were stationed outside, but luckily nothing untoward had happened.

On another occasion, I was chatting to my friend Lesia on the phone when the store door opened and an older man walked in, with some clothing draped over his arm. He held up a pair of trousers and said he wanted them fixed.  I explained that we were a jewellery store and we did not take in mending. He pointed to the window and asked, "So why does it say "Alterations Ivaan" on the sign?" Lesia quipped, "Would it have killed you to hem his pants?"

Some of the very touching experiences I've had involved making engagement and wedding rings for clients.  It feels wonderful when a guy bursts through the door shouting, "She said yes!"  And on one memorable occasion I made lots of wedding rings for the mass wedding at Casa Loma which was an important part of Toronto's Pride celebrations. Being part of such an occasion felt very special.  "Pride" had extra meaning for me that year.

One evening, I was open late when a couple named Michael and Roxana stopped in on their way to dinner at Universal Grill.  That was their traditional "date night" restaurant.  Roxana was intrigued by our rings and tried on a few gold ones, until one in particular caught her eye.

The "Wave" ring, as it's known, has three diamonds spaced evenly around the band.  They have three sons, she had just lost her original wedding ring, and this one fit her perfectly: one diamond for each son.  I suggested she take it next door and wear it during dinner to make certain she was comfortable with it,  But she was adamant this was intended to be her new wedding ring, and I think of the two of them every time I show someone a "Wave" ring.

I try not to dwell on the low points I've experienced, because they tend to suck all the joy out of the room: If I had to do it all over again, I think I'd have opted not to move into the unrenovated apartment upstairs to help out a friend who needed a place (mine)  to stay for a couple of months while in between residences.  No good deed goes unpunished! That spontaneous act of kindness set in motion a series of unpleasant events that have brought me grief ever since.  I learned a lot about trust and the peril of ignoring warning signs about people. I have mostly managed to retain my sense of optimism and my belief in the value of being a good person, in spite of how others behave.  The people we know don't always wish us well.

Four years ago, just after I opened the doors of ATELIER IVAAN, I travelled to Iceland with family.  Last month, in celebration of four years on Dupont Street, I returned to Iceland with a close friend.  Revisiting some of my favourite haunts, I felt quite nostalgic for the days four years ago when I didn't know what on earth I was doing, and I felt extraordinarily satisfied that four years later I had the wisdom to know that ATELIER IVAAN would survive even without me here at the helm, making new mistakes and new friends every day.

THE ONE THAT DIDN'T GET AWAY

Ivaan would never have admitted it, but the best thing about being married was that it drastically reduced his almost infinite capacity for losing things.

Some people lose things and are quickly able to accept the fact that the item has vanished from their life.  Ivaan was not one of those people.  When he lost something, he tortured himself about it.  And he wasn't one to suffer in silence, so there was usually plenty of torture left over for me and for anyone else who would listen.  The average person would recognize that their uncanny ability to lose track of things was hindering their progress in life and develop a system for not losing things as often. Nothing about Ivaan was average, however, and this tendency of his was one of the many quirks that I would just have to accept, because trying to change Ivaan would be like trying to change the weather.

In 2003, when we moved his studio to a warehouse building a couple of doors away from our house, I had a set of narrow shelves built to accommodate his rubber jewellery moulds.  While a few moulds dated back to the mid 1970s,  Ivaan didn't start making moulds of his work in earnest until 1979.

Normally, if a client came and wanted to order a piece of jewellery that already existed, Ivaan would have to start searching randomly through heaps of rubber moulds. His only concession to order was  his habit of drawing a little picture of the item on the side of the mould.  His drawings were so good that it was usually possible for him to identify a mould by the illustration. Still, it was a hit-and-miss endeavour.

So I decided to add a layer of organization to the rubber moulds by sorting them by year.  Ivaan thought this was an insane waste of time, but as the years went by, and more and more it was me being dispatched to find a mould, I heard fewer and fewer complaints. Anyway, while I was sorting his moulds according to year, Ivaan was busy losing people's diamonds, trying to build a jewellery tumbler out of an old stereo turntable, and imagining things had been stolen because he couldn't remember where he put them. (It's worth pointing out that jewellery tumblers existed and were readily available at every jewellery supply company in town, but Ivaan would not give in and buy one.  He figured if he made his own, he wouldn't have to admit that someone else had had a good idea.

Some of Ivaan's jewellery is specific to a particular year or two.  Other styles transcend the years and exist in several decades.

Last week, K and her husband P dropped by.  We've known and liked them for ages. K had bought a yellow gold ring from Ivaan over a decade ago.

K'S RING,.  © ESTATE OF IVAAN KOTULSKY 1989

  She was so attached to that ring, it was like a member of her family.  She asked if I could make her the identical ring in white gold.  Sure, said I.  All I have to do is find the mould.  I knew Ivaan had made me a similar ring for our second anniversary, so I figured 1997 would be a good year to start my search.  No luck.  Not 1998, 1999 or 2000.  Doggedly, I searched through until 2005.  Still no luck.  In case I'd misfiled it, I searched right up to 2016.  Nada.

I reversed direction, and searched again, all the way from 2016 back to 1987. Then I realized I'd skipped 1989, so I searched that year.  The second last mould in that bin looked very similar, and it was even her size, a 6 1/4.  I refused to let myself get optimistic.  I picked up the last mould in the bin.  It looked a bit similar and it was the same size.  I turned on the wax injector, injected a wax - and there it was.

Its taken me three days.  I've opened over 4000 moulds in search of this one.  I have found some terrific other rings during my search. Best of all, tomorrow I get to phone K and P and tell them with as much nonchalance as I can muster that I've found the mould.

I suppose you'll want to see what it looks like, after all that.  I made a whole lot of waxes, and the most perfect of them became K's new ring.

K'S NEW RING 

I feel like someone in a fairy tale who undertakes an impossible task and when she succeeds, she gets to marry the prince.  Except I'm already married to the prince.

NO FIXED ADDRESS

Ivaan never went anywhere without a camera. He had a massive collection of classic cameras, mostly from the 1940s and 1950s - over 700 film cameras, not including the various lenses, flashes and accessories that accompanied them.  To say he was an inveterate collector was an understatement.  He subscribed to magazines devoted to reselling camera equipment, and in 2005 when we got our first home computer, Ivaan discovered eBay.  He'd often buy the same camera he already had, forgetting what was in his inventory.  He rarely sold one, but several times I've had people tell me they treasure a camera Ivaan gave them.

In 1995, a young man we knew named Laas Turnbull, who was making a big name for himself in the print media industry, mentioned Ivaan to John Macfarlane, the editor of Toronto Life magazine.  He explained that Ivaan took a different camera out every day and shot a roll of film, just documenting who he saw on the streets of Toronto.  These weren't necessarily homeless people, but they were the people that who are part of the urban streetscape. People we pass by every day. We don't know their names but we've all seen them.  Ivaan did this every single day for a decade: a new roll of black and white film, which he then developed and printed.

Over the years, he came to know many of his subjects and gave them copies of their photographs.

Laas Turnbull borrowed some sample photographs from Ivaan, showed them to John Macfarlane, and suggested that Ivaan do a first-person account of his photographs for Toronto Life magazine.  John agreed.  Photographs were selected and the accompanying text was written.   It was published under the title No Fixed Address by Toronto Life magazine in July 1996.  Ivaan wasn't happy about the title.  He had wanted it to be called World Class City: an ironic commentary on Toronto's well-documented inferiority complex, as well as an acknowledgement that his subjects were not necessarily homeless.  But Toronto Life felt its readers would be offended by Ivaan's choice of title.

I was pretty excited.  We were newly married, about to head to the UK on our honeymoon, which was a dance holiday in Torquay with our ballroom dance friends, so I could bring copies of the magazine to show off to all my relatives. Best of all, Ivaan had asked me to photograph him for the masthead of the magazine.   It was extra sweet that Ivaan wanted to ensure that his wedding ring was prominently visible in the photograph: not solely to signal that he was married, but because he had made the ring, and he figured that it would be good advertising.

© TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 1996

©TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 1996

©TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 1996

© TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 1996

©TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 1996

The following year, No Fixed Address was nominated for Canada's National Magazine Awards.  We attended the awards banquet. I am usually pretty well behaved in public, but it's no exaggeration to say I was screaming with excitement when it won both a Gold and a Silver.  I remember Ivaan going up to the stage - twice - to collect his awards.  He thanked Laas Turnbull most particularly for having championed his work, and he thanked John Macfarlane and Toronto Life magazine for having the courage (well, that's not actually the word he used) to print his photographs.

The photographs were controversial, and people wrote letters to the editor saying that Ivaan was exploiting his subjects. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth.  The one thing that people lack when they are on the margins of society is photographs of themselves.  Years later, when Ivaan was in a wheelchair, I'd be wheeling him along Queen Street West and people he'd photographed would rush up to us, hug him, and pull out of their pockets large folded photographs of themselves taken by Ivaan.  These were among their most prized possessions.  When you have photographs of yourself, it's proof that you exist.

In 2001, Toronto Life published a 25th anniversary edition entitled Great Reads.  It was a compilation of the best articles that had appeared in the magazine over a quarter of a century.  No Fixed Address was one of them.

©TORONTO LIFE MAGAZINE 2001

The previous year, Ivaan suffered the first of five strokes and he was feeling uncertain about the future.  The success of his article buoyed him up immensely, and in 2003, following his second stroke, we decided to mount an exhibition of his photographs as part of the Contact photography festival.  The photographs from Toronto Life magazine were the foundation of that exhibition, which was called - you guessed it - World Class City.

The most prominent photo in the exhibition was the one above.  I got to have a small supporting role in the exhibition, as Ivaan asked me give titles to each of the photographs.  This one was called World Class, My Ass.

After Ivaan's death, his collection of street photography was acquired by the City of Toronto Archives.  It formed the backbone of their highly successful 2014 exhibition, entitled Life On the Grid.  I appreciated the irony in that choice of name, because at the time Laas Turnbull, who had put the wheels into motion, was the publisher of an excellent Toronto newspaper called The Grid.  I ran into Laas on the street a few weeks ago. He lives in the tonier end of my neighbourhood (a few zeros away, as Ivaan would say). I thought of Laas in recent weeks, as Canada's National Magazine Awards were again in the media.  I realized it has been 20 years since Laas stuck his neck out for Ivaan.

Ivaan and Laas,  this blog post is a tribute to the pair of you: two people who were never afraid of a little controversy.

NAUFRAGE

Sometimes I'll mention Naufrage in passing and observe a quizzical expression on the face of my listener.  I forget that it has become part of my existence with almost no effort on my part.

About nine years ago, Ivaan and I went to Prince Edward Island by train, accompanied by our nine-year-old nephew Ivor, who hopped on board at Kingston.  We were travelling first class, as Ivaan was in a wheelchair and that entitled him to a free-of charge able-bodied companion (me).  So with all that money we were saving, it made no sense not to invite Ivor along.  The train took us to Moncton, New Brunswick, and we had a rental car waiting at the train station, so we climbed in and continued on our way.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I didn't realize the Confederation Bridge is not actually in Moncton.  In fact, it's almost 100 kilometres away, so for a couple of hours we searched in vain.  Eventually, a local took pity on us and pointed us toward the highway.  By that night, we were in Summerside PEI.  Our plan was to drive around the perimeter of PEI, starting in Summerside and finishing up in Charlottetown.  Ivor got to pick the hotels, which was fine by us.  We'd drive into the parking lot, send him into the lobby, where he'd approach the front desk and ask the clerk:  "Does your hotel have a swimming pool?  Does the pool have a water slide?  How long is the water slide? Is the water slide straight or curved?"  You know, the important questions.  If he leaned out the front door with a "thumbs up", that meant we'd found our hotel.  Thumbs down?  We kept on driving.

On the north shore of PEI we passed through a town called Naufrage, which means shipwreck.  It's a barren coast and there's a lighthouse, so it seemed self-evident how the name came to be.  We were all lovers of lighthouses (phares, in French) and best of all there was a little family restaurant that had plenty of vegan items on the menu, including fried zucchini which was delicious.  We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Naufrage.

It became a recurring theme between Ivaan and me,  after our return:  what would you want to have with you on an ocean voyage?  I've crossed the Atlantic by ocean liner three times and so mostly I know what I don't want: parsnips and artificial whipped cream.  Ivaan had crossed the Atlantic once as a refugee in 1949, and ocean liners always fascinated both of us.

2015 was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania and it seemed like an auspicious occasion to launch a small subsidiary shop that sold provisions you might like to have on an ocean voyage, or anything maritime in flavour, although no cutesy little lighthouse-shaped salt-and-pepper sets. Everything had to be well made, genuinely beautiful, useful, and not easy to acquire. Naufrage seemed the logical name, in honour of the Lusitania and our trip to PEI.

Here's a photo from inside Naufrage.

And because no shop bearing Ivaan's name would be complete without its own postcard, we did up a Naufrage postcard, too.The shipwrecked liner is, in fact, the Lusitania.  Its stark beauty would entrance Ivaan, as it does me.

So now you know. Keeping items in stock is a real challenge, as many of them come from afar, but I've noticed that a hostess gift from Naufrage is always received with pleasure when I dine with friends.

A lot of water has passed under the Confederation Bridge since our trip to PEI, but Ivor (now an Engineering student at U Ottawa) was here last week, and we reminisced about our adventures in PEI.  So I thought I should tell you about Naufrage.

LA TOCCA FINITA

I finally finished restoring and replating the liturgical implements for Ivaan's beloved Priest and for the Cathedral.  To say it was more work than I ever dreamed possible is an understatement.  But the satisfaction of returning everything in perfect condition, gleaming and new looking, is profound.

The cross on the left was a gift from the family of another Priest who is recently deceased.  Ivaan's Priest was looking forward to wearing it in memory of his deeply respected colleague, but it had been well worn and loved for many years.  It was engraved on the reverse side, attesting to the fact that it had originally been a gift to the late Priest.

These are not items that sit around looking decorative.  They are used on a regular basis.  I'm pretty sure they will remain in good condition for a very long time, but I smile when I think of Ivaan  beaming down on me and saying, "Nice job, dear, but you'd better come and join me on this side of the great divide before they find something else that needs to be repaired."

COINCIDENCE?

We know a guy named Klaus who was kind enough to have his collection of Ivaan jewellery photographed for our website.  His collection includes a couple of bracelets, a couple of brooches, an earring, a couple of rings (including his wedding ring, which is a particularly nice piece of art, but that's another story).

Among the items is a bangle style bracelet, which is shaped like a bicycle tire. I'm always really glad when someone sends me a  half decent photo of Ivaan's work.  Here it is:

At about the same time, a magazine in Alberta which is featuring an article about Ivaan wrote to ask me for some high-resolution photographs of Ivaan to accompany their article.  Since the article is about both Ivaan's Alberta connection  and his art, I thought it would be good if I could find some photos that showed him at work.  I frequently say that the word "paranoid" is often thrown around loosely, but that in Ivaan's case, it's probably not strong enough to describe his hypersensitivity to people watching him at work.  So, unless the KGB really was doing surveillance, there likely are no photos of him at work.

So I sent them a photo of Ivaan in the late 1980s in his workshop, posing beside a piece of equipment. Was he working at the time?  Definitely not. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and most of Ivaan's work involved flames, hot wax and flying pieces of metal. But in looking at the photograph, I  noticed that the wax of Klaus' bicycle tire bracelet, in embryonic form, was lying beside him.   It was a long, long way from completion, and it's almost chilling, realizing how much work went into making it into an elaborately embellished sterling silver bracelet.  But, as you can tell from the photograph of Ivaan below, he was young and perhaps thought he had a long life ahead of him.

Today is our  21st anniversary, and now whatever work gets done is done by me.  It is a lot of work (says she through gritted teeth.)  Sure hope you don't want a nice bracelet like Klaus has.  If so, you may be waiting a while.   Happy Anniversary, Ivaan.  I miss you for much more than your art, but when I look at this bracelet, I miss you profoundly for your intense devotion to creating beautiful things.

ALL THAT GLISTERS

Lots and lots of exciting things have been going on at Atelier Ivaan lately, not the least of which is new lighting. For years, I've had a grudge against the recessed lighting in the shop window. Those pot lights illuminate absolutely nothing. And, although I'm an impulsive person, it was taking me a long time to decide on a replacement.

There is a terrific store on Queen Street West called Old Faithful Shop, which sells really well-made things for the home. That's why it's called Old Faithful: because the items it sells are going to be around and working well, for a long time. They have some very interesting and well made light fixtures. One day it hit me: their pendant lights are the exact length to be perfect in my window. They're not exactly cheap, but I rationalized that they are in Canadian dollars, and I like supporting Canadian small businesses.  So I did.

After the pendant lights were installed in the window, I turned my attention to the lighting inside the store.  I love my store. The only thing I disliked about my store was the horrible Ikea track lighting overhead. It flickered like strobe lighting when I first turned on the lights and made everything look nasty.  (I didn't buy the track lights; they came with the store.)

So one day I was trolling around on Kijiji and I saw an ad for a pair of very sculptural new schoolhouse-type pendants. I corresponded back and forth with the owner for a while, and realized these were high-quality light fixtures that would probably look perfect in the store ..... if only I had four of them.  So I went to pick them up. When I arrived at the seller's home, she invited me into her kitchen, and there she had a whole row of these light fixtures overhead. I was just bowled over by how perfect they looked.

Sold!  I scuttled off home with them, intending to search for more of them, and by a miracle I was able to find another two.  The third arrived by courier yesterday, minutes before the electrician arrived. The fourth one won't be delivered till next month, but I love anticipation.

And then yesterday afternoon, while the electrician was installing them, I received a phone call from the gold platers to tell me that all the altar pieces I'm having repaired and replated for St. Volodymyr Cathedral were completed. I picked them up this morning and they look beautiful. You can see the ones made by Ivaan; they're the ones with the gemstones on them.  This is my gift to the Cathedral this year, in honour of Ivaan.



All that glisters is not gold, said Shakespeare.  The Bard was wrong, of course. Generally speaking, if it glisters, it's gold. I can already feel Ivaan beaming down on me, saying "Not bad!"