April 2012
2 posts
8 tags
Life Patterns : decorative detail under the...
Whilst visiting Copenhagen, I stumbled upon an intriguing ceramics and textile exhibition at the Danish Art & Design Museum. Set in the textile sample room - drawers upon drawers of fabric and textile examples from around the world displayed in wide oak map drawers - Danish ceramicist and designer Helle Hove has incorporated the existing collection with her own ceramic creations.
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7 tags
Berlin: A concrete canvas for Urban Expression
Berlin could be described as the Louvre for modern street art – not conventionally navigated like typical galleries or museums, instead through backstreets and underground passages, lit by daylight or the dim glow of street lights. Berlin is a gallery of graffiti, stencilling and tagging that is free to view but exclusive to those who dare to scratch beyond the city’s surface.
Berlin...
March 2012
4 posts
7 tags
A city to stroll and wander, the perfect pace for...
John Lennon Wall, Prague
Prague at the melting end of winter is as magical and captivating as I what imagine the setting of a romantic fairy tale be – decorative iron finials atop age-old stone buildings reaching into clear blue skies and craftily-carved gargoyles lapping up the warmth of the low afternoon sun. There are regular references to romance in Prague – the John Lennon wall proclaims...
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Cultural colour against a grey past | Part 2
Wycinanki Paper Art, Hand Crochet, Hanging Wood Decoration.
However grey the weather or the past, Polish handicrafts are a complete and vibrant contrast. Distinctly colourful, bold, and contrasting colours are evident across a range of techniques including weaving, wood carving, wycinanki (paper cut-out), ceramics and embroidery. The use of simple, repetitive and symmetrical designs is...
8 tags
Cultural colour against a grey past | Part 1
The Jewish Quarter - Krakow, Poland.
I have just returned from a rather grey and bleak trip to Poland. Needless to say the country is only in the early days of spring; still showing bare branches of trees, lifeless yellow grass from the weeks of winter snow cover and a bleak sunless sky that casts a dull light over the country.
The grey backdrop of a faded winter seemed fitting for the history...
7 tags
The intrepid adventures of a flower hunter
The art of a flower hunter, Ellis Rowan
Intrepid adventure these days seems like a fading concept as travel to all corners of the globe is comprehensively documented by photographs and videos streamed online accompanied by personal bloggings of travellers. Very few places seem genuinely remote to the tourist traps, and it is in stealth that the undiscovered and untouched are reached.
Turning...
February 2012
1 post
8 tags
Augarten Wien - an unbreakable Viennese tradition
The colourful and animated porcelain figurines of Augarten Wien
The history of ceramics in Europe, I find, is quite a fascinating one – closely tied to the days of exploration and merchant trade from the East, charged by an elite but competitive cast of Royal families that many European countries boasted in the 17th and 18th centuries. For a country to have its own porcelain manufactory was...
May 2011
5 posts
April 2011
2 posts
