{"title":"Sanctuaries — Singles (service)","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"enlightened-minaret","title":"Enlightened Minaret","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"long-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first time you take your shoes off at the door of a house in another country, you are not sure what you are walking into. You read up the night before. You wore the right things. Somebody at the entrance gave you a smile and pointed you at the room. From here on the building takes over. The floor is cool under your feet. The voices around you are low. Nobody is watching to see whether you are doing it correctly. The rules are easier than you feared, and most of them turn out to be variations on the same one: you came in peace, so you are welcome.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, in Muscat. The courtyard opens to visitors most mornings, no questions asked beyond the obvious ones about how you are dressed. After half an hour you walk back out, put your shoes on, and notice you have not checked your phone the whole time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA natural fit for \u003cem\u003eThe Map of Love\u003c\/em\u003e by Ahdaf Soueif, \u003cem\u003eThe Pillars of the Earth\u003c\/em\u003e by Ken Follett, or any book opened on a long flight to somewhere you have never been.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Fine Art of Bookmarks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58112174981504,"sku":"TFAOB-S13-B061","price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2346\/9440\/files\/enlightened-minaret-fine-art-bookmark-fine-art-bookmark-cover.jpg?v=1780057034"},{"product_id":"golden-summit","title":"Golden Summit","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"long-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou decide to walk somewhere instead of driving. The first hour is fine. The third hour is when the conversation with yourself opens a door. The blisters develop on the second morning and disappear by the fourth. The strangers you meet at small inns along the way become, briefly, the most important people in your life, and then you never see them again. By the time you arrive, you are not the person who started. That, not the destination, is the thing you came for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA summit in Sichuan with a golden Buddha at the top, four-faced, watching in every direction. People have been walking up here for over a thousand years. Plenty arrive and find the cloud has settled in, and they cannot see the statue at all. They mostly do not seem to mind. The statue was the destination. It was not really the point. The walk was.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSits alongside \u003cem\u003eSiddhartha\u003c\/em\u003e by Hermann Hesse, \u003cem\u003eThe Snow Leopard\u003c\/em\u003e by Peter Matthiessen, or any book carried in a backpack on a long climb.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Fine Art of Bookmarks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58112175014272,"sku":"TFAOB-S13-B062","price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2346\/9440\/files\/golden-summit-fine-art-bookmark-fine-art-bookmark-cover.jpg?v=1780057085"},{"product_id":"misty-pagoda","title":"Misty Pagoda","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"long-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou travel to see something specific and you arrive on the day the something specific is hidden. The view is in cloud. The exhibition is closed. The famous square is being repaired and is fenced off. Most travellers go home disappointed and complain online. A few notice that what they were given, instead, was the half view, the closed door, the partial answer, and that the partial answer is often more memorable than the full one would have been.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA pagoda on a peak in southern China, almost completely lost to the cloud that has come in for the afternoon. Tomorrow it will all be visible again. Today the mountain has decided otherwise. There is no view to be earned, no postcard to take home. Some pilgrims come specifically for this.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReads alongside \u003cem\u003eThe Tale of Genji\u003c\/em\u003e by Murasaki Shikibu, \u003cem\u003eMemoirs of a Geisha\u003c\/em\u003e by Arthur Golden, or any book read on a day when not everything was on offer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Fine Art of Bookmarks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58112175079808,"sku":"TFAOB-S13-B063","price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2346\/9440\/files\/misty-pagoda-fine-art-bookmark-fine-art-bookmark-cover.jpg?v=1780057086"},{"product_id":"snowy-chapel","title":"Snowy Chapel","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"long-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe chapel at the centre of a village. The room at the back of a house where the family has eaten together for forty years. The corner of a field where somebody scattered the ashes of their father. None of these places are large. None of them are famous. They do most of the actual work of holding a life together, which is a job that does not require square metres.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA tiny chapel in southern Iceland, in a country that gets very little built and protects what it does. White walls, red roof, room for forty people if everybody is friendly. The mountains behind it are immense, snow-streaked, often half-invisible. The chapel does what chapels in places like this have always done. It marks the spot. It holds the funerals and the weddings of three generations of farmers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBelongs in the same shelf as \u003cem\u003eIndependent People\u003c\/em\u003e by Halldór Laxness, \u003cem\u003eBurial Rites\u003c\/em\u003e by Hannah Kent, or any book read in a long northern winter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Fine Art of Bookmarks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58112175112576,"sku":"TFAOB-S13-B064","price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2346\/9440\/files\/snowy-chapel-fine-art-bookmark-fine-art-bookmark-cover.jpg?v=1780057131"},{"product_id":"stormy-sanctuary","title":"Stormy Sanctuary","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"long-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe bad years pass. The argument ends. The illness either resolves or you learn to carry it. The job you hated stops. The relationship you thought would not survive does, or it doesn't, and the next one is built on what was learned. Whatever was loud at the time turns out, looking back, to have been weather. The thing under it kept going.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the Balkans somewhere, on a wooded hill at the edge of a village, a small church faces a sky going dark with the next storm. Down in the village, somebody is closing the shutters. Somebody else is bringing the laundry in. The lights inside the church will not come on tonight, but they will come on tomorrow, and the bell will ring at the usual time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA natural fit for \u003cem\u003eThe Tiger's Wife\u003c\/em\u003e by Téa Obreht, \u003cem\u003eBroken April\u003c\/em\u003e by Ismail Kadare, or any book read with a candle in case the lights go out.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Fine Art of Bookmarks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58112175145344,"sku":"TFAOB-S13-B065","price":14.9,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2346\/9440\/files\/stormy-sanctuary-fine-art-bookmark-fine-art-bookmark-cover.jpg?v=1780057162"}],"url":"https:\/\/thefineartofbookmarks.com\/collections\/sanctuaries-singles.oembed","provider":"The Fine Art Of Bookmarks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}