Magic alert: The most magical thing I've seen in a long time—the promotional trailer for Wild Folk Tales from the Stones by Jackie Morris and Tamsin Abbott. Whole worlds of inspiration about friendship, age, place, workspace, art, and myth in this five-minute video, plus word of a must-have book.
Picturing a World
Roman glass bowl
January 25, 2022
Blog post alert: As if to prove yesterday's point that colored glass might prove a vector into historical fiction (or simply an object of admiration), up pops the discovery of a pristine n eighteen-hundred-year-old Roman bowl. Cool.
Ann Southeran's glass
January 24, 2022
Blog post alert and website links: Yea! Women continue to make gorgeous stained glass. Spitalfield Life's post on windows depicting champions made for an Oxford Street pub led me to artist Ann Southeran's website. A Google search then quickly turned up Stained Glass Ceilings: 5 Women Artists Working In Glass That You Should Know.
Sleeping with a dog
January 13, 2022
My husband drew my attention to an article, How our ancestors used to sleep, which included an image of this window. I already knew that people went to bed at sundown and generally slept in two nightly stages (I've come across the phrases "first sleep" and "second sleep" as early as Chaucer and as late as Emily Brontë). What interested me here were a dog sleeping on the beds with its people and stained glass.
Margaret Rope's stained glass
January 8, 2022
Blog post alert: Margaret Rope's East End Saints at Spitalfield's Life calls attention to the work of stained-glass artist Margaret Rope, especially a series of windows she made for St. Augustine's Church off the Hackney Road in London in the 1930's. They depict miracles within settings of everyday life in the parish. Doesn't the world of stained-glass artistry beckon as a topic of exploration—and the possible setting for, what, a series of historical mystery stories?
World's Fair (I): Glass
April 1, 2013
The World's Fair of 1878, or Exposition Universelle, was held to celebrate France's prosperous return to the world stage seven years after the Franco-Prussian War. It was big, it was grand, it was modern. The glass-and-steel domes of the Main Exhibition Hall may look old-fashioned to our eyes, but it is still impressive for its airy joie de vivre. If you click on the image to the left, a link will take you to a French site with photos chronicling its construction. And, no, this isn't an April Fool's Day joke! Read More