Saturday Why?
It Saturday, when I chew the fat and decide whether the week has been good or bad. Never a particularly accurate straw poll, so will not stand the test of the Which Report. So of course the results often remain unanswered. This week, my two daughters jumped two mighty hurdles and landed unscathed; one with a very nice and much deserved promotion and the other had her the last two pins removed from her newly repairing broken leg. I had my request for a reduction of working hours approved. So after several weeks of uncertainty we all celebrated.
However as we all silently anticipated the future even with our new found ‘energies’, we are still touched with fear for various reasons. But are truly thankful for these medals of success.
Today I am going to London to see an exhibition at the National Gallery, or so I thought. During the anxieties earlier this week (these aforementioned joys were not without trepidation on Tuesday) I booked the tickets, but without care these online transactions need, I mistakenly didn’t notice the lack of receipt of payment. I did not become aware of this oversight until last night to anything about it except grizzle about my ‘failure’ Why is that?
Friday’s Library snapshot …
I was given a gift this week; always a delight but this was a book and particularly special; it is a catalogue of Eric Fraser’s work. I was surprised at the magnitude and diversity of his work as I only ‘knew’ him through the Radio Times, with his programme illustrations and advertisements in the national papers.
He was an illustrator first and foremost but he also designed trademarks, exhibition murals, coins, stamps, church windows, pub signs, posters and packaging. He worked with pen, brush and a scraper. He was a draughtsman with a strong sense of line, a painter with a strong sense of colour, an experimenter in combinations of line with colour washes and in new twists of an ‘old’ medium like lino-cut.
Eric George Fraser (1902-1983) born in London where lived all his life. Fraser illustrated scenes from mythology, such as Beowulf fighting a dragon. With pen and ink he drew legendary and several works of Shakespeare. In the 1960s he designed the the jackets for the Everyman’s Library series. He also illustrated J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, such as the Folio Society edition of Lord of the Rings in 1977.
So I will really enjoy dipping into my gift and seeking out some ‘original’ works we may have in the library. I found one or two …
Alphabe Thursday … F is for Doctor Foster
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain:
He stepped in a puddle,
Right up to his middle,
And never went there again.
Although making a regular appearance in recent nursery-rhyme books, Doctor Foster has little traceable history and was first printed by James Orchard Halliwell in The nursery rhymes of England in 1844. The rhyming of middle and puddle, however points to the old form of the word piddle having been used originally. Boyd Smith (1920) suggests that the rhyme describes the incident in the travels of Edward I, whose horse, the story goes, once stuck so deep in the mud of a Gloucester street that planks of wood had to placed on the ground before the creature could regain its footing. Edward is said to have refused to go there ever again. A rhyme in Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1810) tells a different story.
Old Doctor Foster went to Gloster,
To preach the word of God.
When he came there, he sat in his chair,
And gave all the people the nod.
Wednesday’s Wood Engraver … Mabel Annesley
Lady Mabel Marguerite Annesley (1881-1959) was a wood-engraver and watercolour artist. Her work can be found in British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of New Zealand. She also exhibited in the Festival of Britain in 1952.
At fourteen she studied at the Frank Calderon School of Animal Painting in London At eighteen she was elected a member of the Belfast Art Society and exhibited with them for many years.
It was some years later when she learned the art of wood engraving at the Central School in London. She was soon regarded with Robert Gibbings and Gwen Raverat as the leading wood engravers in Britain. She was unusually articulate and her autobiography, as well as describing vividly scenes and people in England, Ireland and New Zealand and places where she had lived in the world, it throws light on the abstract and physical values on things she had encountered. It would seem that she had collected material over many years for what was to be a picture book; it includes thirty-five wood engravings that are an intimate recording of the world she describes. The book called As the Sight Is Bent, was left unfinished at her death. It was was published by the Museum Press in 1964.
Weekly Photo Challenge … from between
Each week, watching out for the weekly photo challenge is a bitter/sweet moment. The prompt always seems more difficult than the previous week. Although this seems a little melodramatic after a day or two of mild trepidation, and tearing out of what little hair I have remaining, I do get a good idea. Then I can relax for the rest of the week.
This week, I did have a couple of ideas but again my choice came out of the blue. Or rather from between the folds of a map used many years ago during a family holiday. A buttercup; unceremoniously poked into a safe place and sadly never to be looked at again; until now.
It was not carefully preserved; so not a particularly attractive sight and it did not survive long.
I had been rummaging among the old maps looking for collage materials to use that evening. Sacrilege! I hear the map lovers cry. Not finding exactly what I wanted, I thought the tiny flower might suffice but it didn’t make the journey to the art class.
Being useful even while resting …
I do!! Sometimes more than others! Whether this good or bad I don’t know. Procrastination must be useful! Sharpening pencils between tasks is a joy!
Silent Sunday
Saturday … Blue sky and sun; is that all it takes?
Today is Saturday, the sky is blue, the sun is shining and the birds are singing. That’s enough surely for a good day; sadly I know life is not as easy as that; depression, grief and loneliness are complicated. Miracles remain miracles; but we can make tiny steps. However, while they are celebrated one minute they can be quickly obliterated with a cloud. Sometimes so blocked from view we feel as if our condition has worsened; depression never goes away but we learn to manage it with a personal cocktail of tools and the aforementioned tiny steps.
So while I consider the sun and the sky and debate its value … I spy a picture painted early in my tiny steps onto the art world a few months ago and smile before I put it back over the nasty stain it covers on the wall. 🙂 Thanks 10CC a lovely quote!!!
Friday’s Library Snaphot
Admiranda tibi levium spectacula rerum (the wondrous pageant of a tiny world)
From the frontispiece of Historia Naturalis Ranarum Nostrarum by Augustus Johannes Roesel von Rosenhof, with an introduction by Albrecht von Haller. Four species of amphibians are shown in the picture. In the water are two specimens of the Edible-Frog (Rana esculenta), one with inflated air-sacs: immediately above is a darker-coloured Common Frog (R. temporaria), and to the right a Natterjack Toad (Bufo calamita) with its typical dorsal stripe. Hanging down from the top, suspended by one hind leg, is a European Tree-Frog (Hyla arborea arborea). Climbing up the rose stem to the right and grazing at the butterfly, the rare Mazarine Blue, is a Sand-Lizard (Lacerta agilis). The inscription on the stone is taken from Virgil’s Georgics Book 4, line 3.
This book was published in 1758, and the text is written in both Latin and German. It contains a number of suburb coloured plates illustrating various stages of the species concerned and also their internal anatomy. There are many such books in the Cole Collection; there are few more beautiful.
Alphabe Thursday …. E is for Elsie Marley
Elsie Marley is grown so fine,
She won’t get up to serve the swine,
But lies in bed till eight or nine,
Surely she does take her time.
And do you ken Elsie Marley, honey,
The wife that sells the barley, honey?
She lost her pocket and all her money
Aback o’ the bush i’ the garden, honey?
Elsie Marley is so neat,
It is hard for one to walk the street,
But every lad and lass they meet,
Cries do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?
Elsie Marley wore a straw hat,
But now she’s gotten a velvet cap,
She may thank the Lambton lads for that,
Do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?
Elsie keeps wine, gin and ale,
In her house below the dale,
Where every tradesman up and down,
Does call to spend half-a-crown.
The farmers as they come that way,
They drink with Elsie every day,
They call the fiddler for to play
The tune of ‘Elsie Marley’, honey.
The pitmen and the keelmen trim,
They drink bumbo made of gin,
And for the dance they do begin
To the tune of ‘Elsie Marley’, honey.
The sailors they do call for a flip
As soon as they come from the ship,
And then they begin to dance and skip
To the tune of ‘Elsie Marley’, honey.
Those gentlemen that go so fine,
They’ll treat her with a bottle of wine,
And freely will sit down and dine,
Along with Elsie Marley, honey.
So to conclude these lines I have penn’d,
Hoping there’s none I do offend,
And thus my merry joke doth end
Concerning Elsie Marley, honey
The opening verse of the song was written around 1750; while Elsie Marley was still alive. The writer clearly knew her well. She was born in 1715 Alice Harrison ; but known by her friends as Ailcie or Elsie, She was the first wife of Ralph Marley, and the attractive landlady of the Swan at Picktree. A writer in the Newcastle Magazine met her in her later days and described her as a ‘tall slender genteel-looking woman’ who successfully kept him and his party of horsemen amused with her badinage while she served them. She had a son, Harrison Marley, and a grandson also called Ralph who claimed his grandmother’s ;laziness mentioned in the first verse was poetic licence. She was it seems an active manager of the household! He said that the lost pocket incident happened on the way to pay the brewer’s bill with the money sewn into her pocket. On the way someone jostled her and she exclaimed loudly ‘Oh honey honey I’ve lost my pocket and my money!!’
According to Sir Cuthbert Sharp in 1834 she had already given her name to a spirited and lively song; sung at country fairs. The Lambton lads were bachelor brothers all Elsie’s admirers.
This happy disposition and a wide circle of friends didn’t save Elsie from an untimely end. On the 5th August 1768 in the Sykes’s Local Record the death was recorded of ‘the well known Alice Marley.’ It seems while ‘in a fever’ she left her home and fell in a disused coal pit that had filled with water and drowned.
Coat Hanger Doll's House 