Browse Items

Franco-Flemish double-manual harpsichord. Two 8-foot registers, one 4-foot. Proper temperament for Baroque repertoire. I wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier to prove every key was playable. This instrument proves it. Tuning included -- I'll come tune it at your venue.

I'll teach you to paint a face that looks like a person, not a photograph. We work in oil on canvas, natural light from one window. The secret isn't technique -- it's empathy. You have to love the face you're painting, even the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones.

Every play, every sonnet, every poem. Annotated with historical context, word definitions, and stage directions. 1,200 pages. This is the entire human condition bound in leather. Borrow it, read one play, return it. Or keep it for a month and read them all.

Aluminum scaffolding tower, adjustable height up to 6 meters. Platform, guard rails, locking casters. I spent 4 years on scaffolding painting the Sistine Chapel. You probably need it for a weekend to paint your ceiling. Trust me, a ladder is not enough.

Learn buon fresco: painting directly onto wet plaster so the pigment becomes part of the wall. You have about 8 hours before it dries. No corrections. No undo button. The technique is 3,000 years old and it's still the most permanent form of painting that exists.

Quills, iron gall ink, parchment. The tools I used to write 14,233 lines by hand. I'll show you how to hold the quill and form the letters. Your handwriting will never be the same.

Read the Comedy with someone who wrote it. I'll explain the cosmology, the politics, the theology, and the jokes (yes, there are jokes). Also available: Italian language lessons through poetry. You'll learn Italian the way Italians actually feel it.

We read poetry. We sit in silence. We spin. This is not a class -- it's a practice. Bring nothing but yourself. Leave your opinions at the door. The heart knows things the mind will never understand.

My improved astrolabe design. Measures the altitude of stars and planets, tells time, finds latitude. The GPS of antiquity. Brass construction, hand-engraved. I'll teach you to read the sky.

Hands-on physics lessons using real machines. We'll build levers, compound pulleys, and test buoyancy in water. You'll understand why ships float, how cranes work, and how I held off the Roman navy with math and mirrors.

Small group poetry workshop in my garden. We write, we read aloud, we revise. I focus on lyric poetry -- short, intense, personal. Bring something you've been afraid to say. That's where the poem lives.

Learn to compose and perform epic poetry from memory. No writing allowed. I'll teach you formulaic composition -- the technique of building poems from reusable phrases so you can improvise for hours. Bring wine. It helps.