anatomy of flight

I found these a few weeks ago in the Castle Drogo shop and after buying two for some small friends, I ended up buying six for me because I couldn't decide which ones were best. They reminded me that after In Absentia I wanted to make paper bird beaks to stop people from talking. They also employ colour very creatively, which I probably wouldn't have: I always imagined they'd be made with a good, sharp HB pencil.

not the window frame

 Christian Frederik Hansen (1756-1845), Stadthaus G.F. Baur, Hamburg-Altona 1801-1805, 'Fensterrahmung'.

 

Guess what? More interested in the emptiness of the window frame…

season's yield

I remember harvest festivals being a big thing when I was at school: collecting food in assembly to send to 'the poor children in Africa'. At about the same time I was probably looking at books something like this, and although I wasn't much inspired by the contents then, I find something about them rather lovely these days. It's probably nostalgia.

We were thinking that it'd be lovely to revisit this harvest tradition and have a feast with friends to celebrate Michaelmas and the harvest moon. There are some lovely old rituals associated with these historically important days in the calender that I thought could inspire some interesting drawings that I could use in some way for the feast. 

More soon.

ten missing days

In the history books, nothing happened in British history between 3 and 13 September 1752. The change from the Julian to Gregorian calender in 1752 meant that 11 days were lost from history to compensate for the slight inaccuracy over the years of the Julian calender. Many people protested this change, believing that it would shorten their lives.