Monday 9 December 2013

A Dauphin

A dauphin, in this context, is a spout for a downpipe. 

This one is one of a pair, on the birthplace of one of the few Europeans to see Angkor Wat before the 20th century and whose collection and documentation of Khmer art established the importance of the site in the eyes of Western art historians.

I will award:
  • 1 point for each of the other meanings for dauphin that you can think of.
  • 1 point for the name of the explorer/artist/curator.
  • 2 points for the name of the town where his house is situated (+ a bonus point if you can tell me exactly where).
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A la cuisine hier: Smoked Fish Paste, a simple way to get your quota of oily fish.

Daisy's Best Boiled Fruit Cake, the very apogee of mid-20th century Australian farmhouse baking. Those of you who know and appreciate this magnificent cake should form an orderly queue by our back door around 4.30 pm of any afternoon in the next 10 days or so. Cake and coffee will be dispensed (this is a serious invitation, by the way). This year's version of The Cake is low on nuts (just a bit of powdered almond) and high on orange coloured fruit (dried apricots and candied orange peel). Thanks to the munificence of our friends Megan and Bryan, who visited back in the summer, The Cake contains proper little chunks of stem ginger and syrup this year too.
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Loire Valley Nature: A new entry has been added for Hummingbird Hawk Moth Macroglossum stellatarum.
A new entry has been added for Water Primrose Ludwigia spp.
Photos have been added to the Knapweed Fritillary butterfly Melitaea phoebe entry.
A photo has been added to the Ladybirds Coccinellidae entry.
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Weather News: It is now cold enough for the grass in our driveway to stay frosty all day and for there to be permanent ice on the water butts in the orchard. The payoff is bright sunny days because there is no cloud blanket.
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UPDATE: chm has been awarded 6 points for getting almost everything I was after plus telling me something I didn't know. Surprisingly, no one pointed out that dauphin means 'dolphin'.

7 comments:

chm said...

As I said before, as a French native I am at some advantage.

Dauphin [from the province Dauphiné] is also the title given to the eldest son of the French king, his heir apparent.

The explorer/art collector/curator/painter is Louis Delaporte, even though Henri Mouhot is credited to have "rediscovered" Angkor Vat before him.

The town is Loches

His house, where his great-grandson Jérôme Hayaux du Tilly lives, is located , can you believe that, 1, rue Louis Delaporte, at the base of the "fortress".




chm said...

The Internet is such a marvelous tool! Before today, I had never heard of Louis Delaporte, nor of Henri Mouhot for that matter.

However, this made me go back in time. I recall very vividly the "Exposition Coloniale de 1931", on the fringe of the "Bois de Vincennes", where the two main highlights were the Zoo and a full-scale replica of the main temple at Angkor Vat.

John said...

I confess I did not know the name, though they are the sort of feature I like to photograph. Interestingly the gaping mouth to these spouts has continued despite mass production, so even cheap zinc spouts are cut to a mouth shape. Occasionally those who install them will even try to improve them with the aid of tin snips. I suppose we should applaud the desire to continue with the tradition even in a debased form. However, the makers of cheap plastic rainwater goods don't seem to have latched on to the commercial possibilities!

chm said...

'Jamais deux sans trois! Something just occurred to me and I want to stress the importance of critical marks in French.

As I said above the dauphin is the eldest son of the king. His spouse is the dauphine, with a silent E. Dauphiné, the southeastern French province, has an accented and consequently voiced E.

Leon Sims said...

Dauphin heir apparent was (as CHM said) living in Chinon Chateau met with Jean d'Arc before defeating the English and my first car, a Renault Dauphine.

Susan said...

5 points to chm, plus an extra bonus point for telling me that Delaporte's descendent still lives in the house, which I did not know.

Many thanks to John, Leon and chm for their additional input and thoughts -- all good.

I am surprised that no one mentioned the (to me at any rate) most obvious alternative meaning of dauphin, which is 'dolphin', and why the spout is shaped and called the way it is.

chm said...

Hi Susan, since dauphin [the marine mammal] was in French in the title of your post, I assumed you meant other French meanings of the word. To me it was obvious that dauphin and dolphin were the same thing, albeit in different languages.

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