Saint John's University Abbey Church by Marcel Breuer and Richard Bresnahan's pottery studio

…today started with a visit to the studio of Richard Bresnahan, where we drank delicious green tea out of his earthy sumptuous cups and teapot (similar to the one I have at home in LA, which I discussed in this New York Times story a few years ago) around a warm wood hearth-like square filled with a zen garden expanse of sand (that I was happy to be able to rake with a little wood tool on hand), before he took us for a short walk down the hill near the lake for a visit to the massive walk-in wood burning kiln which he only fires up every two years or so (when it is tended 24 hours a day for ten days, next time will be October 2012 when I plan to return to fire something of my own!), then to the center of campus to one of favorite buildings anywhere, Marcel Breuer‘s masterpiece Abbey Church (which I grew up visiting regularly and mentioned in another New York Times story by Susan Morgan), and finally downstairs for a special tour from Richard of the 32 chapels under the Abbey, whose ceilings are lined with warm dark umber colored Swedish cork (whose vivid early childhood memories inspired the dark cork lined den of the Bernardi Residence from 2006) which I was surprised to discover still aromatic with it’s smokey scent after 50 years.