Ernestine Lassaw, 101
In the last entry of her day book, Ernestine Lassaw wrote, “At 101 I believe I have had a magic life.” Ms. Lassaw, who lived full time in Springs for half of her long life, died at Southampton Hospital on Aug. 15.
“As a summation of one’s life this is a happy and satisfied view to inhabit,” her daughter, Denise Elaine Lassaw, said, noting that “this way of looking at one’s self was not something that arrived in old age, which she never acknowledged, but rather just the way her mind worked throughout her life. She knew how to flow.”
In 1982 her mother wrote that she loved privacy and that poetry was the second best way to maintain privacy after visual arts. “It seems to me looking back over so many years that my quest has been to dissolve the inner and outer into one whole. Why aren’t great works and great living synonymous?” she asked. Although she started out wanting to become a visual artist she gave up painting to create a life that was the art of great living, her daughter said.
Ms. Lassaw was born on March 8, 1913, in Shreveport, La., the first child of Ben Blumberg and the former Sadie Mannheim. Her parents encouraged her interest in painting. At 16 she had a job drawing operations in a hospital and another as the illustrator for a column her friend Katherine Kaufmann wrote about visiting celebrities. Perhaps this early introduction to people who lived public lives removed any illusions she might have had about its desirability, her daughter said. Throughout her life she knew many famous people but she never let that influence her relationships with them. Her friends, rich or poor, were all equal in her mind. She was a friend to those she loved, in emergencies at 3 in the morning, on fine sunny days, or even beyond death. As she said about the artist Elaine de Kooning, whom she met in the mid-1930s, “Elaine never disappointed me except when she died.”
Ms. Lassaw worked as the coloring editor for Famous Funnies, the first comic book, from 1935 to 1945, and continued to do so from home for some years. In 1944 she met and married Ibram Lassaw, an abstract sculptor, and their daughter was born in 1945.
Ms. Lassaw was a pioneer of loft living when it was illegal in New York City. Her artistic eye took charge of the spaces she occupied. Using her own carpentry tools, she made them beautiful and functional. She was also known as a great cook and served up meals whenever friends dropped over.
Middle-class life had no attraction for Ms. Lassaw, her daughter said, adding that her mother made her own clothes and shirts and jackets for her husband. They were part of the vibrant art scene in New York and knew the artists, musicians, poets, museum directors, and collectors of that time. The famed Artists Club was founded around their dining room table. They attended gallery and museum openings and a million parties, but generally lived happy private lives. Mr. Lassaw was once described as the “happiest sculptor in New York,” and he was the first to give his wife credit.
In 1954 they bought land in Springs and in 1955 built a one-room shack on posts, which became the first room of the house Ms. Lassaw later designed. They began living full time in Springs after 1963. Together and as a family they traveled and camped in the American Southwest and in Europe, and visited Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece, and Russia.
Ms. Lassaw was instrumental in helping the Springs Improvement Society and its Fisherman’s Fair raise money by gambling for artwork at a roulette wheel. The couple sold 23 acres of woodland near Fireplace Road and School Street to the Town of East Hampton in 2000, at what was reported to be a bargain price, retaining small parcels for their house and a separate bungalow.
One of Ms. Lassaw’s greatest passions was finding “magic” rocks. She walked on the beach every day possible, finding smooth, banded pebbles, and she once found an amethyst at Ditch Plain in Montauk. She also loved visiting caves and always wanted to have large boulders near her home, which to her disappointment no one could pick up and carry for her. Her rocks will be placed around the large stone she shares with her husband in Green River Cemetery in Springs.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Lassaw is survived by a sister, Flo Kornman, nieces and nephews and sisters-in-law, and her friend Serge Lecomte. Her husband died in December 2003, and she also was preceded in death by two brothers. The Dalai Lama is to say prayers for her, and butter lamps will be lighted at a temple in Dharmasala, India.