[Note: I copy the article in full below because eventually the link may go dead, so at least we have the text for posterity]
From
http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_5060118:
Lib at Large: Shrinky Dink autobiography tells storybook life of Russian prince in Inverness
Paul Liberatore "If certain historic events had turned out differently - the Bolshevik Revolution, for instance - Andrew Romanoff, a distinguished if unconventional Inverness artist, could have been the emperor of Russia.
Admittedly, that sounds more than a little implausible, but stranger things have happened. And it isn't that hard to picture this dignified, remarkably youthful, mustachioed octogenarian - regal even in blue jeans and a fleece vest, an ever-present scarf worn dashingly around his neck - as a royal personage, even a Russian czar.
Given a choice, there are probably some people who would prefer him over Vladimir Putin, but that's neither here nor there.
Romanoff, who celebrated his 84th birthday Sunday, is the grandnephew of Russia's last czar, the ill-fated Nicholas II, who was executed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks along with his wife, Alexandra, and their children.
The rest of the Romanoff family was rescued from Russia by King George V of England, who invited them to live in a 23-room "cottage" on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
Although he's of royal Russian blood, Andrew was born in 1923 in London and spent an idyllic, if oddly insular, childhood behind the castle gates.
"It was a strange atmosphere," he recalls over lunch in the sunny kitchen of the 1906 Victorian in Inverness where he lives with his wife, the artist Inez Storer. "I didn't know who the hell I was."
In a new autobiography, "The Boy Who Would Be Tsar: The Art of Prince Andrew Romanoff," he paints a pretty picture of his boyhood.
"The Windsor grounds made for a fantastic playground, with vast lawns, curving paths along the River Thames, fish ponds, polo fields, greenhouses full of exotic plants," he writes.
The book is an enchanting volume illustrated with Romanoff's whimsical folk art, miniature drawings done in a medium originally intended as a children's toy, a material called "Shrinky Dinks." He paints on plastic sheets that shrink when baked in an oven.
Earlier this month, he was feted at a reception at Gallery 16 in San Francisco, where his book, his drawings and paintings will be on exhibit through Feb. 24. Published by Urban Digital Color, the book is available through
www.gallery16.com"We had people calling us all week before the opening, saying, 'Oh, what a great story. Is it actually true?'" says Vanessa Blaikie, assistant gallery director. "I told them, 'Absolutely, the whole thing.' It's just so fantastical to imagine that this is somebody's life."
One of those people whom everyone in West Marin, it seems, has something nice to say about, Romanoff and his wife have lived for four decades in their wood-shingled, three-story, century-old home at the end of a verdant lane.
As his book makes clear, he settled there at the end of a rather remarkable journey.
Educated at the military Imperial Service College, he served in the British Navy during World War II. After the war, he worked briefly on a farm in Kent, "the garden of England," before sailing to the United States in 1949 aboard a freighter with some other thoroughbreds - horses bound for the Kentucky Derby.
In 1970, the height of Marin's hippie migration, he came to Inverness to work as a carpenter, building houses with a Russian cousin.
But more people know him for a more countercultural venture: as the owner of a West Marin company that manufactured jewelry and "smoking paraphernalia."
"People get absorbed in the preposterous nature of his story, the arc of his life," says Gallery 16 owner Griff Williams, an old friend who encouraged him to write the book. "And it is an amazing tale. You don't go from being royalty to selling hash pipes in Bolinas and have people believe it."
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