Casa Taller Delfin - Lima, Peru

Casa Taller Delfin Sculptures

We were kicking around the Barranco District for our last few days in Peru, staying at the 3B – Barranco’s Bed & Breadkfast. We picked up a map of the district (Descubra Ruta Turística) at the Tourism Information Center inside the Biblioteca Manuel Beingolea in the Parque de Barranco. On the map is the first time we saw a mention of Casa Taller Delfin. When we walked up the entrance on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it seemed closed. The web site is cryptic in that it just prompts you to send an email and gives no further information, but don’t be afraid to send an email to schedule a visit. We ended up going two days later and were led on a pleasant 45 minute tour. Casa Taller Delfin is a B&B (www.secondhomeperu.com), and home to Delfin (“casa”), his studio (“taller” - see the Facebook page for photos), and a gallery. The property is perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean. As you enter from the street, Jr. Domeyer 366, you immediately encounter the main house which is formal and stately. As you make toward the ocean, you realize that many of the interesting parts of the property, like the studio and gallery are out of sight, clinging to the side of the cliff. Scattered all around the property are interesting sculptures by Delfin.

Victor Delfin (1927 - ) is a Peruvian sculptor and painter who is the creator of the popular and large El Beso (“the kiss) sculpture in the El Parque del Amor (Love Park) in the Miraflores district of Lima. If you visit Casa Taller Delfin, you’ll get a good sampling of his work and likely get to see him working in his studio. When we were there we was working on a large canvas, and he took a break to chat with us for a few minutes. It’s amazing how open Delfin is to visitors and sharing his house.

Left: Victor Delfin at Work in His Studio; Right: Hands Holding Lights (made by Delfin)


Sculptures at Casa Taller Delfin


El Beso (The Kiss) in El Parque del Amor (love Park), Miraflores

Church + Lie Stencil

We saw a few of these stenciled images while walking around the Miraflores and Barranco districts of Peru.

Church + Lie and Hand Shadow (a gallinazo?)

Larco Museum, Lima Peru

Left: View of Larco Museum Entrance from Garden;
Middle: Chimu Idol - Imperial Epoch;
Right: Shelves in the Pottery Storeroom

After our trek to Machu Picchu, we spent a few days in Lima. One of the places we were eager to visit was the Museo Larco and we were not disappointed. We spent about five hours there which included a leisurely lunch in the museum café.

The museum setting, a 18^th century vice-royal building and a central garden area, is just the kind of ambiance you might need to take a break from the hustle and bustle of Lima. The museum was founded in 1926 by Rafael Larco Hoyle (1901 – 1966), who is considered as one of the founders of Peruvian archaeology.

A cool fact: Before radiocarbon dating was invented (1949), Larco Hoyle proposed a chronology of pre-Columbian cultures based on the El Niño phenomenon, which occurs every 18 to 25 years. With the phenomenon, the Peru coast get torrential rains that lead to a distinctive alluvial deposit for each event. Counting the layers, he developed a way to place the different Peruvian cultures in time. This chronology is the starting point for you visit in the museum (also here on online). It’s a grid with locations in Peru (north, central, coast, mountains) for the columns, and “Peruvian Epochs” for the rows. Note that the Inca are in the second row, the Imperial Epoch.

Left: Peruvian Pre-Columbian Cultures; Right: Three Pitchers (Urpus)

In one sense, the museum isn’t large, but in another sense, there is a lot to engage visitors interested in learning more about ancient Peruvian cultures. The explanations in the permanent exhibition space are excellent and are provided in six languages (Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, and Japanese). One of the rooms of the exhibition spaces is a reference room where you can relax for a few moments, review one of many reference books, or use a computer to view the online catalog.

Speaking of online catalog, kudos to the museum’s website, which is one of the best I’ve encountered. It’s informative and allows you to get details (images included) of pieces you might have seen. The interactive map of the permanent exhibit lets you choose a room and a location in the room to view the items there. (For information wonks like us who want to reconstruct the details of what we saw, this is heaven.) The museum’s pieces can also be viewed in Google’s Art Project, which provides a compelling way to browse the collection.

Other parts of the museum to not miss: the erotic gallery and the pottery storeroom. The erotic gallery is located near the café in two rooms, separate from the main gallery. The pottery storeroom, is just off the main reception courtyard, and is mind-boggling in that you are allowed to visit it and for its orderly shelves of 35,000 pieces of pottery.

Left: Chimu Metal Work; Right: Gold Headdresses Moche, Florescent Epoch (1 AD - 800 AD)

Left: View of Central Garden in the Larco Museum; Right: Pottery Storeroom - Mochica Portrait Ceramics



The Storeroom, the Other 95% of the Collection

The Gallinazo of the Barranco District

Iglesia La Ermita de Barranco with Gallinazo (Black Vultures)

It’s the little things that stick in your mind, like why would all these vulture-like birds be perched on a church in the Barranco district of Lima? Yeah, the Bridge of Sighs (Puente de los Suspiros) and the walkway to the sea (Bajada de los Baños) are cool, but those birds are much cooler.

The church in question is the Iglesia La Ermita. It has a nice, ochre-colored front, but on closer inspection, the church is abandoned, with the ceiling barely holding together. When we asked at the information center in the nearby Parque de Barranco and showed the women the picture of the church with the birds (flapping our arms for emphasis), she said the word “gallinazo” which would be a Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus).

According to the Wikipedia entry for the Barranco District, “[t]he cliffs of Chorrillos shield Barranco from colder and more humid winds coming from the South. As a result, Barranco has a micro-climate that is warmer and drier than many of the other districts of Lima, which are generally more humid, especially between May and October.” We are wondering if this micro-climate is why the vultures congregate here. Or, it could just a convenient (abandoned) location near the coast that they can easily ride the thermals or scavenge fish. We never saw them eating anything, so perhaps they dine in other Lima districts and just sleep in the Barranco?  We noticed that while the vultures perch on the church during the day, they seem to go to the trees in a nearby park to roost for the evening. 

Left: The Chorrillos District as Viewed from the Barranco District; Center and Right: More Views of the Iglesia La Ermita

Birds on Crosses – Symbolic?

The Ice Cream Man Cometh

We spent a few days recently in Lima, specifically the Barranco and Miraflores districts. What struck me immediately were the ever-present D’Onofrio Ice Cream vendors. They pedal around on their three-wheeled bikes with a bright yellow cooler of goodies. Their alert call – made on something like a kazoo – sounds like a strange duck. The vendors are both men and women, usually older in age. They ride up and down the malecons (esplanades) that run along the cliffs of these two districts.

(The title of this post is a play on the title of the play, The Iceman Cometh.)

D’Onofrio Vendors in the Miraflores District of Lima, Peru 2013
 

Two Faces - Museum of Contemporary Art, Peru

In the Barranco district of Lima, we captured these two faces in the garden of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Lima.

Image: Mural Part Showing Two Faces at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Peru