With A Classical Journey Ken Tate gives us his first book since 2005. Filled with photographs of homes across Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, Journey sets an easy pace into Tate’s world of “intuitive classicism” with beautiful foldout reflections, poetry, quotations and mini-interviews.

Half of the homes featured in Journey are in Mississippi and one of these is the House of Light and Shadow in Jackson, Mississippi. Ken Tate elaborates on the architecture of this understated work:

“This is not one of those Southern houses with big columns that say ‘Come on in,’ over the door. You have to follow a circuitous path just to get to the front door.”

He also mentions the Argentinian writer Jean Luis Borges as an inspiration for this home:

“Borges’ writing is very non-linear and contrary to Western rational intelligence. He had a fine understanding of mystery, and he was also very sensual. His descriptions of quintessential Latin American spaces are exquisite.”

“‘It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness of covered entranceway, arbor, and wellhead.’ I thought of that line as I designed the ‘dark friendliness’ of the porch. The whole experience of walking through this house is a bit lit reading a Borges story. There is a narrative that unfolds as you move through the dark passages toward bright, wide open spaces where the soul expands, the mind breathes, and the senses take over or toward duskier ones, filled with contemplation and interior dialogue.”

Ellen has been in a couple of Tate’s homes in Jackson. She has this to say:

“In Ken Tate’s homes you truly feel like you are standing in something that is built to last, while not looking like a bunker. I once heard architecture described as the most logical form of art and I think Ken’s style is just that and more. It is logical, functional and beautiful. The trifecta if you will.”

I cannot resist concluding with Ken Tate’s closing excerpt from The House of Breath by William Goyen. I am afraid that Ken Tate’s book has an appeal to lovers of literature as well.

That people could come into the world

in a place they could not at first

even name and had never known before;

And that out of a nameless and unknown place

they could grow and move around in it

until its name they knew and called

with love, and called it home,

and put roots there and love others there;

so that whenever they left this place

they would sing homesick songs about it

and write poems of yearning for it . . .

and forever be returning to it or leaving it again!

Join us Saturday as Ken Tate signs A Classical Journey at 1:00.

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