History, Sun, And Fresh Air: Museums With Parks And Gardens (Untold London).
Discover London Trails (24 hour museum), including Historic Gardens Museum Trail and Bright Lights and City Squares.
RSA Anniversary Treasure Trail. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Ethnomedica: Remembered Remedies - Researching the Herbal Traditions of Britain.
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Friday, July 08, 2005
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
'The Philosopher's Garden' at the Gallery of Modern Art. consists of photos by Robin Gillanders of Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden, Little Sparta, and the garden at Ermenonville, the latter illustrating Rousseau's Reveries du promeneur solitaire.
"The taste for solitude and contemplation grew up in my heart along with the expansive and tender feelings whichare best able tonourish it. Noise and turmoil constrain and quench them, peace and quiet revive and intensify them.I need tranquility if I am to love." (Tenth Promenade)
"The taste for solitude and contemplation grew up in my heart along with the expansive and tender feelings whichare best able tonourish it. Noise and turmoil constrain and quench them, peace and quiet revive and intensify them.I need tranquility if I am to love." (Tenth Promenade)
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Seen at the Affordable Art Fair: work by Francois Houtin. He trained as a landscape architect, and has etched some amazing cabanes (French garden buildings more splendid than sheds but more practical than summer houses or pagodas) Cabanes really are amazing places - there are some great examples in Vagabond'Art's online exhibition, Une cabane, des cabanes.
More about Francois Houtin on the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery website.
More about Francois Houtin on the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery website.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
One of the treasures presented on earthly pursuits is The Flowers Personified: being a translation of Grandville's 'Les Fleurs Animées' by N. Cleaveland, including the wonderful, wonderful plates.
For professional reasons, I was interested to see what The Flowers Personified had to say about tobacco, and was surprised to find that it was not personified. 'A Trick of the Flower Fairy' reveals the reason:
"...the Flower Fairy was inconsolable after the departure of her companions.
In her vexation, she determined to play upon them some clever trick in her own way.
“The flowers,” said she, “have become women. As such, they cannot do without the homage of men. If I can contrive to deprive them of that, they will soon be disgusted with the earth.”
She was thinking at the time of a genius, young, handsome, and brilliant – a genius of intrigue, if ever there were one, who had suddenly relinquished all intercourse with fairies, and who, in the retirement of his grotto, had given himself up to the pleasures of smoking...
“What is the condition of woman in the East – in all those countries where opium is smoked? A plaything, and nothing more. The men, absorbed in the perpetual delights of intoxication, never think of their wives; or if they do, it is but to make them the subjects of their capricious whims. The Chinese woman has lost the use of her feet; her complexion is hidden beneath a mass of paint; her eyebrows are eradicated; and she is nothing else than a curious animal – a living screen-figure, with which her possessor amuses himself in the interval between two ecstasies. But, “said to herself the Flower Fairy, “opium is not suited to the climate of Europe. We must put tobacco in its place.
“If we teach man to smoke, he will, like the genius, drive woman away from him. This shall be my revenge.” It was thus that tobacco was invented...
For a little while the fairy believed that she had actually succeeded in her enterprise. Woman was entirely deserted; her empire had ceased to exist. Some husbands even began to talk of confining their wives in seraglios – of dislocating their ankles – of boring their noses with fish-bones – and of painting them blue.
But the women turned away the storm, and their subjugation lasted but a little while. They very soon found a way to reconquer man: they began to smoke themselves.
The Flower Fairy, if she would accomplish her object, must pull some other wire."
-- 'A Trick of the Flower Fairy' in The Flowers Personified on earthly puruits
For professional reasons, I was interested to see what The Flowers Personified had to say about tobacco, and was surprised to find that it was not personified. 'A Trick of the Flower Fairy' reveals the reason:
"...the Flower Fairy was inconsolable after the departure of her companions.
In her vexation, she determined to play upon them some clever trick in her own way.
“The flowers,” said she, “have become women. As such, they cannot do without the homage of men. If I can contrive to deprive them of that, they will soon be disgusted with the earth.”
She was thinking at the time of a genius, young, handsome, and brilliant – a genius of intrigue, if ever there were one, who had suddenly relinquished all intercourse with fairies, and who, in the retirement of his grotto, had given himself up to the pleasures of smoking...
“What is the condition of woman in the East – in all those countries where opium is smoked? A plaything, and nothing more. The men, absorbed in the perpetual delights of intoxication, never think of their wives; or if they do, it is but to make them the subjects of their capricious whims. The Chinese woman has lost the use of her feet; her complexion is hidden beneath a mass of paint; her eyebrows are eradicated; and she is nothing else than a curious animal – a living screen-figure, with which her possessor amuses himself in the interval between two ecstasies. But, “said to herself the Flower Fairy, “opium is not suited to the climate of Europe. We must put tobacco in its place.
“If we teach man to smoke, he will, like the genius, drive woman away from him. This shall be my revenge.” It was thus that tobacco was invented...
For a little while the fairy believed that she had actually succeeded in her enterprise. Woman was entirely deserted; her empire had ceased to exist. Some husbands even began to talk of confining their wives in seraglios – of dislocating their ankles – of boring their noses with fish-bones – and of painting them blue.
But the women turned away the storm, and their subjugation lasted but a little while. They very soon found a way to reconquer man: they began to smoke themselves.
The Flower Fairy, if she would accomplish her object, must pull some other wire."
-- 'A Trick of the Flower Fairy' in The Flowers Personified on earthly puruits
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Today we finally got round to seeing The Writer in the Garden exhibition at the British Library.
My favourite discovery was Newman Flower's War Garden:
"In 1919 an English gardener and writer, Newman Flower, travelled to the battlefields of Northern France and gathered the seeds of wildflowers he found growing there. He returned to England and planted them in what he described as 'my war garden.' When Flower's 'patch of remembrance,' which bloomed year after year, was reported in a national newspaper, he was inundated with requests for seeds.
'I sent little packets of seeds away to those who lost relatives on the Somme - even so far away as New Zealand. And probably they have made little gardens of remembrance by now.'"
-- exhibition guide card accompanying Through My Garden Gate by Newman Flower. London, 1945
My favourite discovery was Newman Flower's War Garden:
"In 1919 an English gardener and writer, Newman Flower, travelled to the battlefields of Northern France and gathered the seeds of wildflowers he found growing there. He returned to England and planted them in what he described as 'my war garden.' When Flower's 'patch of remembrance,' which bloomed year after year, was reported in a national newspaper, he was inundated with requests for seeds.
'I sent little packets of seeds away to those who lost relatives on the Somme - even so far away as New Zealand. And probably they have made little gardens of remembrance by now.'"
-- exhibition guide card accompanying Through My Garden Gate by Newman Flower. London, 1945
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
British Plants by Beatrice Corfe
The Natural History Museum presents a selection of Beatrice Corfe's work, which was gifted to the museum upon her death in 1947.
The Natural History Museum presents a selection of Beatrice Corfe's work, which was gifted to the museum upon her death in 1947.
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