17th Century

REX HOLLOWAY and Katie Hurley go together like skin and bone. Holloway, the 29-year-old apparel designer for the street-cool Rogue Status label, and Hurley, a 38-year-old architect and industrial designer, began their furniture collaboration with a simple notion: "Hey, let's tattoo some chairs," the heavily inked Holloway recalls saying.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but this one has inspired many more, because it has become a departure point for how Europeans became acquainted with Asia. When the Getty acquired an 17th century drawing by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, "Man in Korean Costume," at a 1983 auction, it was already well known among the cognoscenti. Then six years ago Getty curator Stephanie Schrader learned that it had inspired two books in Korea - a bestselling novel in 1993 and a nonfiction volume by a Jesuit historian in 2004.

Space-saving furniture has been a necessity for centuries. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the gateleg table was popular. A section of swinging table legs moved to hold up a leaf that enlarged the size of the tabletop. When the legs were folded in, the top was smaller, the table could be placed against a wall and it would take up less space. By the 18th century, the drop-leaf table was designed.

SANTA BARBARA - Chinese scrolls often show landscapes of mountains, deep-cut gorges and paths that spiral through them and past caves in foliage. On these paths, often barely visible, smallish robed figures walk alone or sit in a group. Even people relatively familiar with this kind of art have peered at the finely drawn figures and wondered: Who are they? What are they up to? The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is offering an unusually comprehensive answer to such questions with a far-reaching show called "The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in 17th Century China.

In "Properties of Silence," an intriguing hourlong dreamscape from About Productions, 17th century rebel and literary troublemaker Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz leaves her own world to visit a brave if deeply flawed new one: late 20th century Phoenix, land of real estate mavens and swimming pool peddlers. Something is off here. The "vital mainspring of the human clock," as Sor Juana puts it, needs repair.

The Shakespeare Society has unearthed a relic from the Shakespearean apocrypha called "The Puritaine, or the Widdow of Watling-Streete." Published in 1607 with an attribution to "W.S.," it was included in the Shakespearean folios of the late 17th Century. But now most scholars believe it to be the work of someone else.

The intrepid gang at Meadows Basement shows formidable range in "Isabella's Fortune," an updated romp freely adapted from an obscure 17th century scenario by Flaminio Scala. The group's recent production, "Eighteen," was an elliptical and terse three-character drama about a husband, a wife and the troubled teenage niece who triggers their familial meltdown.

Rose Tremain is one of a number of British writers who have been breathing new life into historical fiction. Unlike earlier practitioners of the genre, from Walter Scott to Mary Renault, not many of this later generation, which includes A.S. Byatt, Peter Ackroyd, A.N. Wilson, Jeanette Winterson and Hilary Mantel, have made it their specialty. But few have been entirely able to resist the temptation to transport their imaginations into the strange, yet in some ways familiar, world of the past.

A student once asked the grand American painter John Singer Sargent to recommend some old master mentors, "Begin with Frans Hals," said Sargent. "After that go to Madrid and copy Velazquez. Leave Velazquez until you have got all you can out of Frans Hals." By a blessed coincidence we have a chance to see what Sargent meant in two rare exhibitions. Here within the D.C. beltway the National Gallery shows about 60 of Hals' prime paintings (through Dec. 31).

When the last of three Colonial coffins unearthed here was finally opened Friday, there were no quick and easy answers. The initials or date that scientists expected to find spelled out in brass tacks on the inner coffin lid simply weren't there. Nor was there a flesh-bearing skull. They, apparently, were optical illusions produced by high-tech fiber-optic and gamma-ray examinations.

The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, a Search for Family Joe Mozingo Free Press: 304 pp, $25.99 Joe Mozingo's captivating debut, "The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, a Search for Family," had the luxury of slowly developing as a series in the Los Angeles Times before being rewritten in book form. One wonders why more books don't start out like this, because the nonfiction story unfolds like an adventure novel.

My assignment: Read almost 300 literary biographies in more than 800 pages, all of English-language authors, beginning in the 17th century and ending in the present day. "That's like reading a reference book!" said a shocked friend. Yes, but no: Every entry in "Lives of the Novelists" is written by just one person, British critic John Sutherland, so the book has an internal continuity that makes it read like history, not an encyclopedia. And Sutherland's writing is just plain delightful.

A drawing by Rembrandt was stolen from an exhibit at a luxury hotel in Marina del Rey over the weekend in what authorities called a carefully planned heist. The small pen-and-ink drawing, valued at more than $250,000, was taken from the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey during an exhibit Saturday night. Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators said a man working with accomplices is believed responsible. After reviewing hotel surveillance footage, detectives believe the theft of the artwork from a private exhibit in the hotel was well orchestrated, Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

The Getty Museum is the first museum in North America to agree to return a painting to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a noted Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose huge collection was dispersed after he fled the 1940 Nazi invasion of Holland, with many of the prime works taken for the personal collection of Adolf Hitler's chief deputy, Hermann Goering. The museum's two-paragraph announcement Monday said it had bought "Landscape With Cottage and Figures," painted around 1640 by Pieter Molijn, "in good faith" at a 1972 auction.

This 2-year-old house inspired by the historic homes of Belgium feels as if it could be sitting in the countryside rather than in a Santa Monica neighborhood just blocks from the boutiques on Montana Avenue. The house, completed in 2008, is constructed with 17th century limestone floors, Belgian bluestone details, elaborate ironwork and refitted antique doors. The living room, which features a fireplace with a floor-to-ceiling stone face, has twin sets of iron doors that open to a cobblestone courtyard and fountain.

Want to try something different and interesting for Thanksgiving? A beautiful floral Alsatian Gewürztraminer like this one can hold its own with the myriad flavors of the holiday table. Spicy and a touch sweet, the 2007 Albert Mann Gewürztraminer has a lithe acidity and a fresh, delightful finish. This inexpensive beauty comes from one of Alsace's top estates and a family of winegrowers whose history goes back to the 17th century. If you want to spend a bit more money, look for the estate's grand cru Gewürztraminer "Furstentum.

The English novelist George Eliot delighted in Dutch paintings for their "rare, precious quality of truthfulness" in portraying the lives of ordinary people. The fictional connoisseur Charles Swann of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" loved the delicate and elusive qualities of Vermeer. And the paintings of 17th century Dutch artists have manifestly also exerted their fascination on British novelist Deborah Moggach.

It was almost a cliche, this midlife crisis that Robert J. Begiebing found himself going through. Here he was, a professor with tenure at New Hampshire College. He had published three books of literary criticism. He had written free-lance articles for publications like the Gypsy Scholar and Essays in Literature. His poetry had appeared in Connecticut Quarterly, Country Journal and elsewhere. He had been married to the same woman for almost 20 years. He had never been divorced, not even once.

This year when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, think about tulips, windmills and wooden shoes. Think about a town in Holland where, for a brief golden moment in the early 17th century, people of disparate faiths could worship as they saw fit -- French Huguenots, Roman Catholics, Jews, Quakers, Lutherans, Dutch Mennonites and a small group of religious dissenters from England, later known as the Pilgrims. Think about Leiden, 25 miles southwest of Amsterdam. It gave the Pilgrims refuge from 1609 to 1620 before they crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Mayflower, landed on Plymouth Rock, suffered through a brutal winter and then plucked the first Thanksgiving turkey to celebrate their survival.

A high-pitched voice, questionable sexuality and ear-grabbing melodies -- the new Decca album "Sacrificium" may sound like a posthumous Michael Jackson collection; instead, it's a collection of 17th century opera arias written for castrati -- the gelded singers who were the superstars of the European music world for almost two centuries. "Sacrificium" is hardly likely to reach "Thriller"-like global ubiquity, but Cecilia Bartoli, an Italian mezzo-soprano with a large following (not to mention obsessions and image control that recall the King of Pop)