Exhibitions at Birmingham (part two) - Victorian Radicals

The other exhibition we saw while in Birmingham was Victorian Radicals at the City Museum and Gallery.  There are some really good stills of the exhibition on the site and much better photos than mine!  This exhibition again featured Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings, but also ceramics, sculpture, enamels, jewellery, stained glass, textiles and clothes, from the Victorian age. Above is Paolo and Francesca by Alexander Munro.

This small ink drawing is King Arthur and the Weeping Queens by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Again, being able to get up close meant we could see so much detail.

This is a sketch for a textile design by William Morris and it was beautiful.  

One of William's daughters, May Morris, was a skilled embroiderer and ran the embroidery department at Morris and Co. for some time.  Her embroidery is featured on this dress.

You can see it a little more clearly here.

This necklace was much brighter in real life.

A sketch of a boy used in Rossetti's The Beloved.  The painting is in the Tate here.

'The Last of England' by Ford Madox Brown is full of details, from the cabbages hanging at the front, to the children with their mother behind the main couple and the child inside the mother's shawl.  Apparently the pink ribbons took the artist four weeks to paint.

Kate Bunce's 'The Keepsake' featured the most stunning dress materials although you can't really see them that well in my photo. 

I do like the Persian pottery of William de Morgan - all those lovely blues!  (The 'Medea' by his wife was featured in the Scent exhibition in my previous post).

Wouldn't these tiles look lovely in a bathroom or kitchen?

This exhibitions showcased some wonderful work by some very talented artists and craftspeople.  I was really pleased to have seen it and it was well worth the entrance price (£11.00).   The people we met in Birmingham were really helpful, (particularly when we had gone the wrong way to the train station) and were very friendly too.

'Life' by Luxmuralis at Lincoln Cathedral

On Friday night, we went to Lincoln Cathedral to experience a sound and light show - 'Life' by Luxmuralis.  This group have created experiences all around the country, in Cathedrals and other large buildings.  You can read about them here.  As we slowly made our way around the Cathedral, there were films on a loop so you could stay and watch them for as long as you wanted. There were various themes in different parts of the building. (Unfortunately, my camera does not like low light conditions, so the photos are not the best, but they do give some idea of the spectacle.) The first film showed images of how we are damaging the planet. 

The second showed many different cultures through their art and textiles.

This section was my favourite with the William Morris patterns projecting onto all the arches. 

People became part of the show as the projection went onto them.

It was beautiful.

In the nave, projecting onto the back wall was the story of life, starting with a day, thunderstorms and moving up through sea life and then to insects and up through the animal kingdom, focusing on endangered animals and finally the sun setting.

The moths and butterflies looked like they were flapping their wings.

 

Finally, the last section showed time, with clocks and watches and then showing the earth slowly revolving.  How much time does the planet and all that is on it have left?  

It was a fabulous experience but was also thought provoking - how much damage humans have done.  However, there was also the celebration of what humans have achieved in art and culture, so there were positives too.

This has been the most popular event held at the Cathedral and was sold out.  There is a report about it here with a video clip that will give you more of an idea of what it was like. There are also more photos here which are just a little better than mine! I felt like I was in a giant kaleidoscope and am so pleased I was able to be there.  If a show like this is coming to a building near you, do go and see it.

In case you are interested, a blogger called Vix went to see a show near her and posted about it including a couple of video clips too.  It is about half way down the blog post. You can see it here. (I would have loved to have seen this one too).

Ned, Top and me - an unexpected meeting

At the stone masons' festival on Saturday, there was a tent which showed all the conservation and restoration skills from the Cathedral workshop, including joinery, lead work, stone carving and stained glass.  I was having a wander round when some brightly coloured Victorian-looking stained glass caught my eye.  Two panels of a window were shown and the window was originally in St Mark's Church, Lincoln, which was built by William Watkins in 1871-2 and demolished in 1971.

A coloured postcard of St Marks Church, Lincoln (I think) from  www.slha.org.com

 

I read the accompanying information and could hardly contain my excitement!  The windows were from a design by Edward Burne-Jones (Ned) and made by Morris (Top) & Co. Anyone knowing my love for all things Pre-Raphaelite can imagine how I felt, coming face to face with these in such an unexpected way. However, on reading further, I discovered that they were made around 1921 and it was Dearle, the then principal designer, as Burne-Jones and Morris had died by then, who actually made them. 

The windows had been saved, albeit in a rather sad state and had been in the Cathedral stained glass workshops since 1971, never having been displayed since then.  The stained glass workshop craftspeople are now starting to restore them and the plan is to then find an ecclesiastical home for them, possibly even in the Cathedral.

Apologies for the photo - the light was all wrong!  This is the unrestored state of 'The Virgin Mary', dirty, with large chunks missing and unstable lead work.

The restored panel of 'St John', showing the whole image in gleaming colour.

 I particularly liked the floral patterns.  However, I was leafing through the biography of Burne-Jones by Fiona MacCarthy, 'The Last Pre-Raphaelite' (details here), and she mentions this type of window, created from Burne-Jones' designs from 1914 onwards:
Burne-Jones would not have approved of these late windows.  The colour is much cruder than he or William Morris would ever have allowed. There is the heavy mass of foliage and incidental detail Henry Dearle, still Morris & Co's principal designer, could not resist (p.523).
I still think it is beautiful though.

 

 Another photo of the Cathedral, for no other reason than the sun was shining and it looked beautiful.  Perhaps the restored windows may one day be seen somewhere in there.

Wombat Friday, Jane Morris and extolling the virtues of lemon curd

Here is my offering for this week's Wombat Friday.  Accompanying my wombat today is the painting 'Proserpine' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti - the first painting of his that made an impression back in my teenage years.  He painted several versions of this image of Jane Morris and I was fascinated by the colour of her dress, ranging from teal green, through green/turquoise and purple/blue, depending on which version you see.  I was also fascinated by the model - feminine but with a masculine jaw.  Was she real and if she was, did she really look like that?  Yes and yes was the answer.

Jane Morris was the wife of William Morris (the Victorian version of a 'Renaissance Man') and she really did look like that.  I was particularly envious of her beautiful curls as my hair was (and still is) fine and straight as a poker.
I have also managed to include cake this Friday, which is homemade lemon curd and buttercream sponge.  The lemon curd came about as I had been seeing it on various blogs which I follow and decided I needed to make some.  Having bought lemons, I set to, following Nigel Slater's recipe ( link here):

Nigel Slater's LEMON CURD

Most lemon curd recipes instruct you to stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. I find that stirring lightly with a whisk introduces just a little more lightness into the curd, making it slightly less solid and more wobbly.

Makes 2 small jam jars
zest and juice of 4 unwaxed lemons
200g sugar
100g butter
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk

Put the lemon zest and juice, the sugar and the butter, cut into cubes, into a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, making sure that the bottom of the basin doesn't touch the water. Stir with a whisk from time to time until the butter has melted.

Mix the eggs and egg yolk lightly with a fork, then stir into the lemon mixture. Let the curd cook, stirring regularly, for about 10 minutes, until it is thick and custard-like. It should feel heavy on the whisk.

Remove from the heat and stir occasionally as it cools. Pour into spotlessly clean jars and seal. It will keep for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator.

 It made two and a half small jars of the most delicious, mouth watering lemon curd.  I didn't have unwaxed lemons, so just omitted the zest (I don't really like 'bits' in the lemon curd anyway).  I am going to make some sponge buns with lemon curd in their middle as I think that would be gorgeous too.  With the weather the way it is at the moment, and winter still very much in charge, we all need some sunshine, whether in the floral form of daffodils, or the edible form of lemon curd.