Fechin

So, in our last thrilling episode, I was talking about the time Martha, David, and I all went to Taos with my parents. It was also the time, I said, that I fell in love with the city.

I can’t remember what year it was. I do recall David was still a teenager. He was in high school, and as you might expect of anyone who was my son, he was fighting the boredom and routine of school tooth and nail. But that’s a long story, and I’ll tell it another time. (Quick aside, though. There was the day he told his history teacher, “Sir, you are the only man on the planet who could make the Renaissance boring.” The terrifying thing? He was absolutely right. Not particularly politic, but boy! Was he ever right.)

Anyway, we got there, and discovered my parents had booked us into what was then called the “Fechin Inn.” Today, it’s the Wyndham “WorldMark Taos,” and I gather it is now a combined hotel and timeshare operation.(1) Right then, though, the Fechin was a stand-alone operation. It was gorgeous, and I was grateful to my parents for getting us there.

About the photos: First, here is a small small self-portrait of Nicholas Fechin that is on Wikipedia, and is reportedly in the public domain. Second, unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of Eya Fechin. However, if you do a search for her name on the web, you’ll turn up several--all copyrighted, however, which is why I’m not reproducing them here. But, this AI-generated image looks sort of like her, I think. (The prompt was “watercolor style portrait of a long haired, brown haired, young woman from the early 20th century.”)

Finally, just because I like the shot, here’s Martha at a local restaurant here in Georgetown, The Simmer Down Cafe. This photo dates from just about a year ago. But, we have breakfast there this morning. (Not bad omelets!) An aside, Simmer Down was featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares Season 9, Episode 11. Decor changed, but the food seems much the same. Which isn’t a bad thing, IMHO.

I should explain the name. The Fechin Inn was named after Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955). Fechin was one of the innumerable talented people who settled in Taos to be part of the art colony there. Though his story was a little more complicated than most.(2) He was a refugee, for one thing. He’d been born in Russia, grew up there, and established a very successful career as an artist and a sculptor. But, then came World War I, and the Russian Revolution. He and his wife, Alexandra, and their daughter Eya, barely survived the chaos.

Somehow, they got out of the country, and emigrated to the United States. For a while, they lived in New York, but then Fechin came down with tuberculosis. This was before antibiotics and at the time doctors advised their TB patients to move to areas where the air was “dry and pure.” Can’t get much drier and purer than Taos air, and besides there was already a thriving art colony there, so in 1927, they packed up their bags and moved west.

Once in Taos, the Fechins established themselves as valued members of the community. At about the same time, Fechin began work on a house for himself and his family. He’d acted as his own designer, and soon produced a fascinating home that combined (as Wikipedia puts it) “Russian, Native American, Spanish, and Art Deco traditions.”(3) Naturally, this became known as the “Fechin House.”

Unfortunately, Fechin and Alexandra divorced in 1933. Alexandra remained in the Fechin House until her own death in 1983. Fechin and daughter Eya, meanwhile, went back to New York and then traveled together around the United States and the world. He finally died in 1955 in California.

Eya (1914-2002), meanwhile, had a remarkable life of her own.(4) She was at various times a model (particularly for her father, but other artists sought her out as well) and a rather famous dancer. Later still, she became a mental health specialist, and she was known as one of the first practitioners of what we’d call “art therapy.”

She returned to Taos in the 1970s, and began restoring the Fechin House. She, like her father, was a superb designer, and added important touches of her own. Soon, the Fechin House was a museum devoted to the art of Fechin and his friends and family. And, a little later, an extension to the building became the Fechin Inn. (Today, World Mark Taos.)

I met Eya once. It was during that visit, in fact. Martha, David, and I had just toured the House and we emerged into a kind of entry area. There, a group of three women were engaged in conversation -- an older woman, and two younger, presumably volunteers with the House. They smiled at us, and we all introduced ourselves. That was when I realized that the older woman was Eya herself.

She was by then quite old, but there was still something of the dancer about her. You noticed it in how she moved. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Grace never quite vanishes entirely.

Yet, less pleasantly, I also recognized places where she was in pain. When the leg moved *there*...to the left...and the arm moved *there*...to the right. And you saw the stiffness. I’ve known ballet dancers. They have consistent injuries--stress fractures, tendinitis, degeneration of the joints.

Anyway, she was very pleasant, pleased that we were there to admire her father’s (and her own) achievements, and we left after a short time. We did so, however, knowing that we had had a remarkable experience. It isn’t often that you are in the company of genuine greatness.

But, we left and found ourselves, logically enough, in the gift shop.

We didn’t know it, but we in general...and our son in particular...were about to have a most amazing experience.

More to come.

Footnotes:

1. WorldMark Taos, https://www.hotelsone.com/taos-hotels-us/worldmark-taos.html

2. “Nicolai Fechin,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Fechin

3. “Nicolai Fechin House,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Fechin_House

4. “Eya Fechin,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eya_Fechin

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~mjt

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