Website alerts: Oh, my! Two things I love already, Narnia and book sculptures. And now, voilà: Instructions for making your own sculpture of Lucy's first visit to the lamppost, complete with PDF's of some of the elements. I'm not a crafter, but, I might just make up a story about someone who is.
For those who want to take such things to a professional level, moreover, Su Blackwell has a new book out, Into the Dark Woods, which comes with an booklet of instructions for making the sort of talismans she included to illustrate her retold fairy tales. Well worth mooning over.
Picturing a World
Narnia and a darker wood
May 12, 2022
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Reframing Cézanne et al
May 9, 2022
Blog post alert: A reprinted article, Reframing at the National Gallery, London: Part 1, at The Frame Blog shows several paintings in both their old frames and the frames chosen fifteen years ago. Different eras, different tastes, different impact on the viewer.
Leman silk designs
May 6, 2022
Blog post alert: A post on James Leman, Silk Designer at Spitalfields Life recounts the career of an 18th C silk designer and reproduces several double-page spreads from his album of samples. The album is now at the Victoria and Albert and is obviously a great straightforward historical resource. It can also prompt suggestions for stories.
Episodic?
May 3, 2022
I have just read two novels back to back: Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) by John Buchan. Written almost a hundred years apart, they are totally different in structure and complexity; yet they both raise a question: Is it okay for a novel to be episodic?
Celtic village (CGI)
May 1, 2022
Blog post alert: I have always adored scale models; and as technology improves, virtual reconstructions get better and better. The History Blog just sent me to a fabulous one of a Bavarian Celtic village and fort. What better way to learn about construction details or imagine a character arriving at a new town (or home)?
Hodges and Goudge: City of Bells
April 29, 2022
C. Walter Hodges, jacket design, A City of Bells (1936)
Looking for bedtime-for-grownups reading, I pulled Elizabeth Goudge's novel, A City of Bells, from my shelf and noticed for the first time that the jacket illustration is signed by C. Walter Hodges—the illustrator of The Little White Horse. I had thought of Hodges primarily as a major researcher into Elizabethan theater; but it turns out, he had a highly productive career as an illustrator of children's books and jacket designer. This isn't really leading me anywhere except to ask, isn't it tantalizing to see various previously unrelated interests join up?
Food and fiction
April 21, 2022
Blog post alert: Food history and children's fiction are two of my hobbies, so I was delighted to stumble across an old post, Biscuits (Cookies) w/ Sugar Flowers | The Little White Horse, at Fiction-Food.com. As it happened, when I found this site, I had just reread A Wrinkle in Time and so was amused to see that the blogger's archive included a post on Sandwiches & Hot Chocolate. And her recipe for a Sugar-Topped Cake looks just right for Mr. Tumnus' tea in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. A good diversion when I was supposed to be doing something else.
Snowdrop
April 18, 2022
My recent interest in book jackets led me to an excellent group biography, Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship. Eric Ravilious lived and worked among artists and designers many of whom had studied or taught at the Royal College of Art in the 1920's. Contemporaries of the Bloomsbury set, they were just as bohemian and just as dedicated to their work; but they were not so, well, self-important. One artist who didn't make it into the biography, or at least under the name Claudia Guercio, designed the cover and this illustration for Ariel Poem #20, A Snowdrop by Walter de la Mare.
Shadows
April 16, 2022
Blog post alert: Somehow in these troubled times, a study of light and shadow seems more fitting for the weekend of Passover and Easter than any explicitly religious imagery. Thank you, James Gurney, for Unifying Shadow Shapes.
Mapping the story
April 9, 2022
Kathleen Jennings' recent post on Mapping movements in stories sent me surfing the 'net. Eventually, I landed on Misty Beee's map, winner of a 2021 Atlas Award at the Cartographer's Guild. Oh, to be able to create something like it or like Jennings' whimsical communicative sketches! Actually, I do sometimes make rough maps and house plans to help me with my stories, and I highly recommend non-verbal exercises as a way to broaden a writer's experience of her worlds. Here's one adaped from Jennings' post: