When I opened the door, inside was an enormous room filled with vast amounts of tools and tables and high lights. I immediately realized upon coming to this room that I’d happened on Nido’s workshop. It became very evident to me that Nido had in fact made at least most, if not everything in his house. There were workshops for nearly anything you could imagine. There was a carpenter’s section, filled with woodworking tools for both fine carpentry and more rough carpentry. There was also a glass blowing section, adorned with glassworks that Nido had made, and tools to shape these beautifully figured things. There was a section for rope-working, with slings and so on made out of rope; apparently Nido was interested in constructing such things all the time. There was another section for metal-smithing of various kinds. There were sections I couldn’t even describe their general functions, save to say that they were used for many creative endeavors. Some of the sections were used for higher technologies like electronics or even what looked to be pipes for plumbing. I couldn’t see anything like a computer or anything like that, and figured that if Nido had computers in his works, he dealt with that elsewhere. On the walls around this enormous room were huge paintings of beautiful landscapes that were rather reminiscent of the Alps. Coming to look at it, it seemed as if the landscape changed its appearance as the day went on. The ceiling too was domed and completed the look of the Alpine landscape around the room, I noticed that Nido had made a light projector near the center of the room, that simulated clouds and the rising and falling of the sun.
I asked Kelly what she made of this and she told me that it was beyond impressive and now there was no doubt in her mind that Nido was actually responsible for almost everything we’d seen. She asked me why I thought Nido might keep all of these workshops together in one room. I answered her by saying I was sure it was because he wanted the inspiration his creativity to be plentiful, and seeing what all he was capable of in one area must have helped in that regard. I also mentioned that it was quite likely because of the collaborative efforts between mediums that he could accomplish this way. There seemed to be the handy skills of carpentry, glassblowing, metal working and so on, all on one side of the room, and then there seemed to be the studios and more art oriented things on the other. The art filled side looked like an immense studio filled with paints and canvases and stone-working things like chisels and clay working things like pottery wheels and such. In the center of these two sections was a huge square table with a small closeable pathway opened and in the very center was a circular hole and a stool inside of it, as if this is where it all came together. I walked around to each section and Kelly went to others just to see the amazing projects Nido was working on before his death.
I started at the carpentry section, which was notably perhaps one of the biggest sections in the room. As I looked through, I found many of his tools, and it appeared to be a mixture of more traditional tools like the carpenters of yore, and modern tools with electricity. I wasn’t sure why Nido might use the traditional tools, but they did appear to be well used. My guess was, Nido had a point to prove to himself more than anything else, plus I am sure that Nido had gained a deep satisfaction with using his hands so much to accomplish a beautiful thing. I could even tell which tools Nido may have used on some of his works, to some extent or other, though most of them weren’t terribly discernable. One piece I’d found Nido had made with the hand tools, was a simple wooden box, that had recently been lacquered, or as recently as possible considering how long ago Nido had died. Other things Nido had made include large pieces of furniture, much like I’d seen in the first room, some of them weren’t finished yet, but it was amazing to see the interior of some of the chairs and so on that Nido had in fact made. There were trick lockboxes, elaborate puzzles, figurines, and all sorts of interesting woodwork that looked like it took the most skilled hands to make. Perhaps the most interesting thing that Nido had built was what appeared to be an elaborate set of drawers, and this thing was exposed in the middle of what I could only describe as Nido’s plans. It was apparently his latest work of the carpentry persuasion. I say this because on one of the tables beside it were pieces of paper with very detailed notes about how to make the thing. It had many drawers, with trick drawers and hard to open locks and so on. The interesting thing about Nido’s woodworking I could see was that he barely used nails or screws, in fact looking more closely, there was none at all.
Moving on to the next section, I found the rope working section. This was filled with all sorts of ropes of different kinds and materials. It was actually beyond fascinating to me, because most of these arts I’d seen or thought of in one way or other, but with rope, Nido had apparently made his own art. He had elaborate things woven into what I can only describe as practical and aesthetic sections. He had small statues woven out of rope to make what appeared to be small statues of different kinds of nets that were somehow fastened together in a way that they stayed rather fit. At one end of the section where Nido kept some of his better works were statues of things like the Venus de Milo, and the Eiffel Tower, but by far the most interesting of these ‘rope statues’ was the Laocoön, replete with the tormented faces and anguish the figures were suffering. How Nido accomplished this with the mere use of rope was beyond my appreciation for his abilities. I almost thought to call over Kelly, but figured she would see it eventually herself. Nido even had many statues that seemed to originate from his own design that he was proud enough of to keep next to these other overwhelming statues. Aside from just the aesthetics of statues and arty things, Nido had made more pragmatic structures, like chairs, cots, storage facilities. Some of these occasionally had wooden frames to support them, but often they were completely independent. Many of them hung from the ceiling, and Nido had surely used these in most conceivable ways to help him with his other sections, with rope nets hanging down and propping up tools and so on.
After thoroughly inspecting this section I kept on going at my normal pace just to see more of Nido’s various masteries. The next section was an electronics one. It was filled with all the tools and things any electrician would need for about any job. It had a uniform hanging that Nido used while conducting electrical tasks. Additionally there were the pipes and so on and various amounts of books on the subject so that Nido could figure out the proper voltages and amps and everything for whatever his tasks would be. It appeared, though I am no expert to really say, but it appeared that Nido actually was making things to get the most efficient use out of his electricity as he could. There were of course the various things that Nido had made like the other sections of his sort of ‘showcase’ if you want. In this section were creations of a Nikola Tesla variety, that I suspected if I had lit them up would have shot out wild sparks and volts of electricity in a terrifying fashion. There were of course several plugs in this section and all of Nido’s inventions here were unplugged for what I could only guess was safety reasons. As I went to plug them in, it occurred to me, that Nido had actually made his own style and system of adapter. The outlets were larger than the American standard I was used to, they seemed almost European, but stuck out in a triangular fashion. I plugged in a machine that I thought looked of more interest and when I did, the great bulbous blue sphere on the top of it began to glow in a blue haze. It was visually awesome, and gave a terrifying low electric hum. What the machine actually did, I wasn’t entirely sure, but I went to press one of the buttons and suddenly it lit up in a most disturbing manner creating an eerie portrait out of electricity in three dimensions. The device itself was shaped in a most unusual way. It had a somewhat large slanted base with little pins sticking out about every inch or so and on the ends were eight arms that stuck out with poles coming out of them and orbs.
The blast that came from this thing would make pictures out of electricity and in the center of the pins were different sources of light to give the pictures color. The pictures weren’t as clear or precise as perhaps they ought to have been, but coloring a picture with pure and raw electricity is by no means an easy task. There were other gadgets here as well, but they seemed to mostly be of use only with other things that Nido had made. One thing that did interest me a great deal was what looked to be an elaborate system of tubes that were intertwined with each other and what appeared to be viles of gas. At the base of these tubes were rods for what I could only guess was electric transmissions. I plugged this device in, and hearing the same low hum, I pressed some of the buttons, and suddenly a great show of electricity erupted in the tubes, making the brightest neon colors I’d ever seen. It was awesome to see, and suddenly I started to notice the currents going in certain patterns as if making specific sequences, like a lisic song. This danced and flashed for a couple of minutes and suddenly stopped.
Satisfied with Nido’s electric works I went to his pottery station next. The pottery section had a couple of refrigerators with a few different kinds of clay inside of them. The jars and pots and things he made were confessedly less interesting than some of the stuff I’d just seen but I was quite happy to look on and see what Nido had actually done. There were vases with beautiful paintings on them, the textures of the pots and things he’d made were very strange. They could vary from very course and hard to soft and almost pliable. Some of the things he had sitting out were pots and so on that were actually shaped like people, animals and various other things. He made a very large scale replica of what looked like the Taj Mahal. Inside, were what seemed to be holding bins for many things. I guess Nido liked to hold some cookies and things in this particular large shaped pot. The cookies and bread that were inside of these pots were the only thing that showed signs of aging since Nido’s death, being very stale, but otherwise okay. I had guessed that Nido had made these cookies days before he died, and kept them in here for snacks and so on while he was working. I had actually began to wonder how often Nido would eat while he was doing stuff like this. He must have constantly been eating while he did things, or he would surely have starved otherwise with how busy he seemed to be. I don’t know if Nido ever actually would stop when he was creating.
Aside from the great Taj Mahal, Nido made many things out of clay of various shapes and sizes, but seemed to mostly like making little figures of what I could only guess was a model town he seemed to be making entirely out of clay. I didn’t know if he did anything beyond that, for these figures, my guess is, if he had, I would see it later. Some of the faces and so on that he had made were quite expressive, so again, it was interesting to see this, and it seemed to me that this must be only a small fraction of what he actually made in all. Tired from looking around so much, I decided I needed to rest for a while and so sat down in a chair that Nido had sitting near by. Sitting back and just looking around at this alpine simulated landscape of immense creation and stimulation, I became almost sleepy. I called to Kelly and asked how she was doing and what she had found and she was so overwhelmed that she barely acknowledged me. I just looked back at the sections I’d already seen and began to wonder just what Nido’s schedule was like that he would constantly work on all of these things and do so much. It occurred to me that maybe Nido would work and work and never quit for a few reasons. The first is, I doubt Nido was ever happy as an idle person and would just eat up all opportunities to constantly work and do things or he would probably fall into many hard feelings he wouldn’t have wanted otherwise. I could definitely understand this sentiment since whenever I was left for too long with nothing to do I’d feel the same, but then perhaps that was pure projection of Nido’s feelings about things on my part.
I considered further that if a man had been left purely to himself for fifty years and was too afraid to be hurt again to try and really reach out to people, he must have a lot of free time to create innumerable things. It appeared that Nido certainly didn’t lack funds for all of his projects, and with a brilliant mind such as his appeared to be, it would be surprising if he didn’t do something at least vaguely like this. What I still couldn’t figure out was why he would work as a janitor and not actually just work on these projects full time. I also didn’t understand why he simply wouldn’t relax more often, or for that matter really not try to find someone again, I mean the death of Joy must have been an excruciating hardship for him, but surely, he must have eventually gotten over it. I couldn’t imagine with a mind as diverse and able as his that he would be fixated on one person for so long. After thinking about these things for a while and coming to no real good conclusions or answers, I decided to move myself on to the next section, the glassblowing section.
The glassblowing section was perhaps my favorite overall. As a child I’d seen a man blowing glass and had always been interested in how they make some of the structures and things they had. Here again, Nido had many fancy and elaborate vases, and glasses, statues, and figurines and such. He used many different colors of glass to create these effects. The functional glassworks he made were actually the most interesting of the lot. I inspected many of these in a very thorough and hopeful way. It had always been a dream of mine to actually be able to make my own glassworks, and now that I had inherited this estate from Nido, I could now do it if I wanted, or any number of other things. Some of the things he made of a more practical nature I thought were pretty amazing were a chair, with good workmanship and quite comfortable to sit in, as well as a sleigh bed. I wondered how someone could sleep in these things or sit in them or anything without making them immensely dirty, but I supposed Nido wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing with his cleaning system. It did make me wonder in retrospection how Nido would have prevented melting and things like that with the intense heat his cleaning system would use.
The glassblowing and clay sections both shared a system of ovens and things like that, which looked surprisingly clean. The workshop seemed to be cleaned in a different way than the rest of the house, both due to its size and the particles of things and so on that must have floated throughout the area. This was made more evident when I would look around to each station and see a number of cleaning supplies. The glassblowing section had many interesting tools, and what I found to be the strangest thing in all of this, was how many moveable things there were. There were animate statues and figurines and so on, there were clouded glass structures, and I must confess my favorite thing of the more aesthetic side was a glass sword Nido had somehow made with various kinds of jewels incrusted in it. Also this sword had a sheath that it easily fit into. Taking hold of it, I feared it was fragile, since it was made out of glass after all, and extracting it from its scabbard looked at it in awe, at how noble and beautiful it really looked. Being so careful didn’t prevent me from accidentally dropping it onto the table where Nido did his glassworks, and as it hit the table it bounced slightly, but otherwise seemed as sturdy as if, I suspect it had been made of metal. It was actually quite sharp and cut slightly into the wood table too. I was a little surprised by this I must confess. That Nido would have made an actually sharp sword and have it sheathed in such a way was a surprise and I didn’t understand why he might create such a thing, but then I figured what was the point of creating something without the potential of pragmatic function anyway.
Moving to the next station, the metal smithing one, I was quite excited. Smithing, I figure has to be one of the hardest, yet most worthwhile of the industrial arts to actually know and do. I was pleased to find this section was, like the carpenter’s section, enormous. It had many great and magical sorts of things hanging down from it. There were tons of tools and again, some of them were electric, others were more traditional, but all in all, it was almost a charming section, if not only because I figured Nido must have used this section more than any other to aide the other parts of his work. It was actually amazing, but Nido seemed to make some of his own tools, and here, is where the magic of that happened. The actual tools for smithing were quite varied from what I would have expected on one hand, and much like I would have expected on the other. There was a traditional forge and anvil, and several different kinds of hammers, and coolants and things like that, almost like one would have seen at the end of the 19th century. On the other hand there were several power tools and things like that, I supposed it depended on Nido’s mood and project for which set he preferred to use on a given day. The things he had surrounding this station were no less impressive than the ones he had around other stations.
Along the wall were skeletons for other projects he must have had in mind. There were great projects and small projects alike, but the same amount of craftsmanship and dedication went into all of his works it seemed, metal works and otherwise. One thing in particular stuck out to me that Nido had built, that being a tall sphere made of what appeared to be a spring like system. What this did, I wasn’t really sure at first, it just looked like a great sphere of nearly two meters in length that looked a little dangerous. I cautiously approached this thing, and when I touched it, the thing collapsed in on itself making it a small fraction of the size it had been. It actually frightened me, because the thing was so loud when it closed and I was sure the springs would make it snap back out again. This being done, I ran from it, and sure enough it sprung back open at such an alarming rate. I could see no real practical application to this, other than that it served to see if Nido could make it. I had no idea how many pieces of metal this must have taken to create, but I did know it would have been a massive undertaking, especially for one man working with the dangerous spring contraptions that lay inside. It made me wonder if Nido ever actually received help from anyone, or had in the past, but knowing what I did about him, I highly doubted it. Apparently the sound this collapsing ball had made had startled Kelly and she came bounding over to me and asked if I was alright, to which I affirmed that I was, so she attended back to the tailor section she had been looking at.
Looking aside from the great springy spear I had just discovered I noticed a series of other great works that I found quite interested as well, such as a mechanical replica of the solar system. This actually used a little of Nido’s rope and glassworks for the celestial spheres in the heavens. The great systems of gears in this and a good deal of things he made were actually almost charming in their utter simplicity of design. I had seen models of the solar system produced before of course, but in the center of all of these celestial spheres was a model of the sun that shone so brightly I’d be likely to think it was the sun itself if I hadn’t seen the source before its illumination. At the base of this system was a foot crank that one would have to pedal like a bicycle if he wanted to watch the model solar system move, there was an electric switch too that would move the pedals for you, but it was less satisfying to watch in that way. It was actually quite lovely to know that a person could make the solar system operate through his own energy. The size of this thing was actually fairly immense, stretching out maybe as far as three or four meters in total, and being suspended high from the ceiling. I might point out, that the room itself seemed to be about half the size of a soccer field, perhaps more, and was built low in the depths of the ground, in order to accommodate all of this. The model seemed to have the first eight planets, except Pluto, which I assume is due to both its irregular orbit and because Nido probably didn’t consider it a planet, and I don’t doubt that his obsession with the number eight had a bit to do with it. The model also had the larger moons represented, including many of the rings of Saturn and a couple of the other Jovian planets. The planets were not proportional to their relative sizes, I assume for the sake of aesthetics and clarity on behalf of the observer.
Aside from these mechanical things, Nido also fastened many metal things of more stationary beauty. Naturally, Nido had statues and things of that nature made of his metal working. Perhaps the most prominent was a full sized self image, made from different metals. He used silver and bronze for much of the face. He used tin and gold, and many other metals I couldn’t identify at first for much of the body. Strangely, this representation had Nido wearing a fedora hat, perhaps he wore this a lot when he was out or simply not working, but I never knew him to wear such things. I wouldn’t doubt if he wore it a lot in the 50’s, so maybe he thought of himself as the sort of person who would wear one. It made me wonder how Nido saw himself or anyone in that walk of life may see himself. Did Nido see himself as a young man or an old one. For all of the art and things he did, this was perhaps the first real self representation I had seen. Since the face was made of smithed metals, it would have been harder to have a clear portrait of what Nido thought of himself than otherwise. It then dawned on me not only to look at this small marvel, but also to touch it. When I did, I found it to be surprisingly smooth, and even gentle, at least as gentle as metal can get, to the touch. Running my hand along the metals that seemed to run seamlessly together as far as texture went; I realized Nido’s true skill level with metal working. At one point, when I got to a hand that was slightly outstretched, it moved when I touched it. This startled me at first and I jumped back instinctively in fright. It barely moved the first time I touched the hand, so I wanted to see if it would move more when I touched it again, which it did, but when It touched it this time, the head turned slightly. It wasn’t too exotic, and nothing else happened when I touched the rest of it, but I did wonder if there was some purpose to this.
Next to the statue of Nido, were smaller statues of other things, and so along the same principle of touching them, I found that they all moved like this, but they did different things. It almost reminded me of a child’s action figure, when you touch one arm another would move. The difference was, that these moving statues became more and more elaborate, and the clockwork structure on the inside must have been very tricky to design. When you would touch the arm on one of the figures, it actually walked a few paces and turned around. There must have been a spring loaded system on the inside of this one, because the payout of movement for the amount that went in didn’t seem equal by any means. I wanted to find out if there was some particular purpose for all of these clockwork metal figures, and soon I found my answer by simply opening a set of doors about half way up the wall, by the display to find a whole little village of figurines. When I opened these doors lights came on and a small panel of buttons sat there. There were four buttons in total, and I was quite eager to discover which each did, as I had been with all such panels in this house. I pressed one button, and all of the figures began to move as if they were in some sort of mechanical play from a bygone era. It was a small village, and the figures began to scurry about their business in a most bemusing fashion. After the process had ceased and all the characters returned to their original positions, I pressed a second button and all the characters danced joyously, and from a small wooden church emerged a newly married couple. It was actually very entertaining, and I remembered loving little displays like this very much as a child.
I was curious why Nido would keep so many of his finished works here, rather than displaying them throughout the rest of the house, but induced that he must keep many of them here, because maybe he didn’t have better places to display them in the rest of the house, or they didn’t have any pragmatic function there. It also didn’t elude my thoughts that maybe he kept these things here to draw inspiration from to work hard to achieve the highest qualities in his works. Finally, I concluded that since Nido was addicted to his endeavors, or terrified of idleness, he would spend probably the majority of his free time here, simply working, so the things he would create he would want to keep around. I decided again to move on to the next station and found myself in the stone working shop. He kept all sorts of stones to work with here, and I recognized only a few of them, since I am no geologist. He had many different types of gems, some of them very valuable, others less so. Perhaps the most notable thing he had here was lots and lots of marble. He had chiseled many sculptures that sat around, I noticed immediately that there was another sculpture of Joy, but in a different pose as the first one we had seen by Nido’s office on the stairway. She looked down at the floor here and sad. One thing that was different here, and I may admit experimental, was that the eyes were actually blue, and then I noticed that they had very delicately cut sapphires there, with a sort of black opal for the pupils.
Some of the marble statues were different colors other than white, and there were what looked to be incomplete busts of different people, some of whom were wearing Roman style togas of different colors. Others, Nido had used an onyx for the hair, and beards and so on. It was actually more impressive than the busts he had chiseled in the hallway. I am guessing that nearer to the time of his death he learned how to incorporate the different materials together to make some really cool things. Along these lines were also chiseled pillars of different styles. The pillars came in all of the classic varieties like Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, even some Egyptian lotus columns were there, all of this truly seemed impressive. On the worktable in this section was a bust that was on it’s side with something I hadn’t really expected to see. Now I’ve not seen the construction of statues or of busts or things, but in this particular bust it was hollowed out, and I could see that Nido was preparing to put something in it. I noticed too that the face was cut in a way so that it could actually move slightly. Next to the table I saw what I’m sure must have been Nido’s latest finished creation, and when I went up to it, I touched what appeared to be a button near the base, and suddenly it started talking to me.
The bust was a clean shaven man, that looked like the god Apollo, but sterner and with shorter hair. When it spoke, its mouth moved in a slightly rigid but eerily realistic manner. It said “I am Klax, god of chaos and war! You dare disturb my rest, now you will pay insolent mortal!” As it spoke, its eyes opened from what appeared to be a sleeping position and it turned its head slightly as if to look at whoever had disturbed it. If I hadn’t actually seen the hollowed out bust first, I am sure I would have been greatly spooked by the sight. It did seem to scare Kelly, I may add, as she shrieked and was looking intently at it. I explained what it was, and she went back to what she was looking at in the carpentry section. I wasn’t sure how Nido achieved the deep quality in the voice, and I doubt he had anyone else record the voice for him. I wondered who he was working on now, and where the innards for the current project were. The most amazing part I suppose about this bust was that it had no signs that it could be animate when it was inanimate; there were no jowl lines, it didn’t look like a dummy or anything, and inside of the mouth was actually a whole set of teeth and things. Somehow, Nido seemed to fasten an elastic surface with the actual marble mouth, so curious I touched the mouth to feel it suddenly open again and say. “Now you dare touch my mouth, have you no humility for the gods.” This scared me senseless and I must have jumped back three whole feet. A little shaken, I went back and determined to figure out how Nido did this, I touched the mouth again, and it said the same thing, so, I figured there must be a button inside, and actually learned that there was a very deceiving piece of latex on the mouth to cover the areas between the mouth and the cheeks. It seemed actually on a deeper inspection that the whole head was covered with this same material, and though it was still chiseled underneath, the effects of animation could be better achieved in this way.
Not feeling I could take any more of the stone working section I moved on to what appeared to be the tailoring section. Again there were many diverse materials, and it appeared that Nido liked to make outfits belonging to many different eras. Why, I wasn’t sure. There were all the necessary tools, and looking at it closer, I noticed something particularly interesting about all of this, the garments that were hanging up were extremely festive and bright with many different colors. It felt like I was looking at renaissance costumes of long and baggy clothing and I couldn’t imagine they were at all comfortable. I went up and touched the material, and from the feeling of the exterior of the outfits, I thought I was surely right in my assessment, but touching the interior, Nido had designed them to be very soft and comforting to the touch. Looking around further, I found several prints of various pieces of clothing that Nido had drawn. I knew he had drawn them because they only had his language written on them. Something else that I came across but didn’t really understand the significance to until a little later was a measuring stick with units I simply hadn’t seen before. Looking back on it later, I realized that these measuring tools were all over the room, at every station and table. They were a little more prominent here because they were in more forms and seemed to be of more use as tailoring apparently needs very precise measurements to work well.
Many of the garments that were hanging here had a great deal of variety to them. Many of them were simple and had an easy design, while others were extremely elaborate and looked like they would have taken several days to consider all of the intimacies to make. Here too, were hats and other things besides simple clothes. There were shoes and accessories, and beyond just stuff to wear looked like an upholstery section, since there were actually chairs and even tables and things here that had a great deal of cloth and more textile stuff to it. Something I found a little strange was a rope that appeared to be attached to a cloth that was attached to the ceiling. When I pulled this thing, an elaborate blanket with many pockets dropped down to provide various things Nido may have needed, like ribbon and so on like that. It was actually a very clever idea, and I noticed that next to it, were what seemed to be sacks of things dangling from the walls in similar fashion. After lowering a few by the pulley system above them, I found lots of different types of cloth.
Going again to the next section, I came upon what appeared to be his painting studio. This section was filled with elaborate artworks, and many logical puzzles of a most interesting nature. The paintings were quite surrealist, and I noticed that Nido had painted a lot of people that looked rather familiar in them. In one that reminded me quite a lot of Rene Magrite’s Son of Man, but where the apple was more of a translucent color, was a portrait of what I assumed Nido himself. In another where there was a woman that seemed to be made out of a waterfall was what I was guessing was probably Joy. What I saw next actually shocked me, not because it was something particularly devious or clever, but because I just didn’t expect it. It was a portrait of me, and one done apparently by memory since there were no photographs around. In this painting I was sitting at my desk at work, but the background around me appeared to be swirling in a tempestuous way. I couldn’t believe it, and exclaimed to Kelly to come and see this if she hadn’t. She was almost as shocked as I was, and commented on how well done it was to me. I asked her what she thought it meant, and she was equally as baffled as I was. After a little while of thinking about it, she suggested that maybe it was actually a flattering commentary on me. I asked her to elaborate, and she did, saying that it must mean that Nido saw our work environment as stormy and unstable, and in the midst of that, perhaps he saw me as being clear and orderly beyond the chaos. I was slightly doubtful of this assessment, but it was better than anything I could think of, so I accepted it.
The subject matter Nido would paint or sketch was actually quite diverse. He would do a simple still life sketch of an egg in one picture, and an overly elaborate painting of a street scene from medieval Constantinople in another. Whatever he chose to capture with his brush or pen, he was a master of it, and it appeared he made no mistakes no matter what he did. I was curious how long it took him to achieve this kind of skill, and figured it was something he must have practiced from a very young age. Even though all of his arts were about equally developed, Nido’s skill with the brush was surely the single most outstanding of all. He even did a couple of copies of old masters, like the School of Athens by Raphael, except in this particular rendition were Waldorf and Stadtler from the Muppets in the center as Plato and Aristotle. I was really warming up to Nido’s sense of humor by this point so laughed rather loudly when I noticed that particular detail. There were also several lovely landscapes of places that I wasn’t sure if Nido had seen himself or not, but they had a definite late romantic picturesque quality to them. It was all just quite beautiful, and I was glad that something so pretty could bring such joy to this man’s soul. After this I decided to finally go and look at the final station.
The final station was for paper craft of all things. Nido, in addition to being a master of everything else, took very kindly to origami, and had some of the most precise and elaborate structures of origami I’d ever seen in my life. Here Nido had many different kinds of paper, most of which looked handmade and quite expensive. Many kinds would have different designs and things on them that were quite interesting. Some would be very bright and dazzling; others would be more mellow and soothing to look at. The paper itself was actually a lot more interesting than I knew paper could be, there would be many kinds of different textures and thicknesses. Above the paper, it was marked where the different varieties would come from, places like Italy, England, Japan, even a few countries in Africa, like Egypt and the Congo. The papers were tucked away on some shelves in fairly large sheets. Most of them appeared to be handmade, and I found a very large pile of one, above it was marked ‘Nido’s Stack’, so I came to the realization that Nido, like everything else, had even made his own paper. His own particular paper was actually extremely sturdy, yet malleable. I was sure that he used this paper for most of his origami, because of its great practicality for the job itself. On the table were many tools for cutting and folding and otherwise manipulating paper for different purposes.
It was at this section that I noticed a good deal of the models for things in other sections, particularly the carpentry section were designed, or at least tried out, for structural integrity. Apparently, Nido would add weight and things to simulate the structures he was hoping to build. I presume this saved him a good deal of time and effort, so that if something couldn’t be made, it would have cost him a lot less time and materials than if he had tried it outright. Near this section too, was a drafting table where Nido would make grand designs, not only for the paper section but all of them. It stood to reason that this table was nearest the door and that Nido would probably come down and work here first before he went to any other part of the room. The paper he used for drafting sketches, which there were a few on the board now for various sections, seemed ordinary at first. I tried to write on the corner of it with my pen, and found something else. I realized straight away, that this paper seemed to be immune to being written on. I couldn’t fathom why on earth that might be, but saw around the rest of the drafting table that wasn’t covered with papers many tea stains. Feeling the paper closer, I found it to almost plastic, and realized Nido must have used a paper that was incapable of being damaged or marked upon by anything other than his own pen. It wasn’t like laminated paper, mind you, because whatever Nido actually wrote on this with, would stick and couldn’t be wiped up again. I couldn’t tell you if this was a paper made himself or had found somewhere else, but it was good, and it looked expensive, but all of these papers looked rather expensive anyway.
Some of the origami structures Nido had actually made were quite basically simple designs like mugs and things to eat with… I suspect Nido liked the idea of being able to quickly make his own eating ware. He also made some very interesting fantastic characters like dragons and wizards and unicorns. Now much of this origami wasn’t completely linear shaped surfaces that you would be used to when you saw origami, but a lot of it, was actually bent and shaped to be quite three dimensional. Perhaps the most stunning thing of all, but more on a psychological level than any other, was Nido appeared to make a death mask of himself. It was well done for origami, but it made me wonder if Nido had anticipated his own death. Naturally, I thought, we all anticipate it some day, but this looked like it was relatively recently built, and I wondered if Nido was aware of his own pending death. It was a stupid thought I felt, but one that stayed at the back of my thoughts for the remainder of my time there that day. Other things Nido had made appeared to move in some way or other, and how he had structured that I wasn’t entirely sure, but was surprised at just how sturdy all of these things were. Some of the moving origami designs included a fairly large hydra with multiple heads, when one would touch the tail, the heads all moved in different directions. Some of them wagged back and forth others would like down, and others still would open their mouths and appear to be attacking some unknown enemy. Finally, there was what seemed to be a full sized origami fireplace, replete with a mantel, and knickknacks. On the walls behind the statue, were two candlesticks, and finding it irresistible to touch these I did, and discovered the fireplace opened and a stairway leading up emerged into the next room.
Not ready to leave through it just yet, I went back to the central table in the center and also asked Kelly if she had explored and seen everything she wanted to. She said that she had, and in the center, I found some of Nido’s larger collaborative works. Things like large pieces of furniture. His latest collaborative project appeared to be a bed that made itself. It was a canopy style bed, and from the ceiling of the bed, one could raise or lower a cord attached to a pulley system to raise or lower a series of blankets. What was extraordinary about this bed wasn’t the blanket idea, which had its own interesting quality, in that it would always make the bed perfectly, but the extraordinary thing about this bed was the sheer work in mechanics and things that went into making it. The structure made it so that a single cord could easily be pulled to raise a rather heavy blanket evenly and easily. This structure seemed to have much woodwork, glasswork, rope work, and of course upholstery combined together, it wasn’t quite finished, I could see the amount of pulley systems and elaborations that Nido had to conceive of to really make it work. On the table near it, were many schematics and diagrams of how it was supposed to work. He even had the origami model standing nearby for his own conceptions if he needed them. Even the origami structure for this one had an integration of different things, like a small glass head and foot, the way it appeared on the real bed, and further it had small pieces of cloth cut out to replicate the larger blankets, and mattress that Nido had fabricated.
After I finished inspecting this lovely room, I invited Kelly to join me up the stairs into the next room, whatever it may be. So, up we went to find out what this man had made, and on the way toward the stairs, I asked Kelly what she thought about everything, and she just smiled and laughed saying she didn’t know how one man could have so many interests or projects going at once. This was simply too immense, but she was glad that she had the opportunity to see what man could achieve and start in his lifetime, if only he had the inclination and means. I asked her, why every person wasn’t a Frazer Nido, why we all didn’t achieve this kind of output in our lifetimes, and she told me she would get back to that, and as we climbed the quarter circular hallway, we approached a doorway that when opened appeared what I can only describe as Nido’s library.
