Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge

We went up to Cambridge for a bit of Shakespeare, and discovered that the Fitzwilliam Museum, in fact just about every museum, was closed on a Monday - but the geology museum was open. 

What a revelation, just the sort of old-fashioned museum with handwritten labels and cupboards and drawers and vitrines and quirky things that I love.

Professor Adam Sedgwick's walking boots

The obligatory dinosaur

Rocks and fossils large(ish) ...

... and small

Dinosaur bones and ammonites...

... and starfish ....

... and sea-lilies (crinoids)

Microfossils - how do they even find them?

A quiet room with chemical explanations

Fog oak- "Part of a tree found March 1839
near the Reach in Mildenhall Fen at 7 feet from the surface
by men digging for clay. Its head pointed west by north.
Height with its branches 250 feet.
Height to the first branch 159 feet."

The all-too-familiar touristy view of The Backs and Kings College Chapel. Living in Cambridge in the 1970s, I used to cycle from the Sidgwick site, through the gate [now shut] at lunchtime to the market. (The site (departmental buildings) was named after the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, who studied at Cambridge in the 19th century.)

 Across the road is the Fellows' Garden, or is it the Master's Garden -

 It's big.

The evening wasn't particularly warm, and the actors, as night fell, weren't easy to hear. There was a lot of rushing about, if only to get on "stage". No doubt the tower of the University Library has seen stranger things -

The Mathematical Bridge of Queen's College, on the way back to the station -

 ps - what delight to happen upon a labyrinthine sculpture (Between the Lines, by Peter Randall Page), which set off my labyrinthine trousers -

Playing dress-up

The child in us likes to play dress-up now and then, so to give my inner child this opportunity I invented Jacket January. It consists of everyday wearing one of the many "little jackets" that accumulated in my cupboard during The Working Years. 

One of those jackets is not so "little". It's made of Collier Campbell (furnishing) fabric - probably a remnant found in Liberty's in the 1980s, that era of shoulder pads and power dressing. I was all set to wear it today, to brighten up a gloomy day, but either the fabric is overwhelming or the day isn't quite gloomy enough -

 So I went for this ensemble instead -

Note the jaunty cuffs! This jacket too is from the 1980s (I think) - it was found in a charity shop early this century, unfashionable because of its huge shoulder pads. But the fabric is superb, and the label says Jaeger - and I love the cuffs - so I took the trouble to remove the shoulder pads and restyle the shoulders. (Inside was some proper tailoring, a delight to behold.)

The ceramic pin that rests on its lapel came from a craft show at Somerset House in 2009, and I don't remember the name of the maker. It's been printed with various layers of coloured slip, and the design, or the method, cries out to be turned into a woodblock print -

 Back to that Collier Campbell fabric -

The name of the designers hovered near the tip of my tongue for an agonising length of time - how to find it if all you know is that sounds like duh-duh and duh-duh and one of the names starts with C? Finally I remembered seeing an exhibition at the Fashion and Textile museum and could scroll through their archive of shows, what a relief!

Many of their fabrics are shown online, but I haven't been able to find "mine" - I'd love to know what they called the pattern ... "leftover paint", maybe?

Perhaps the best known is Kasak -

(via)

Or maybe Bauhaus?

(via)

 Or Cote d'Azur?

(via)

 In 2013 The Collier Campbell Archive was published; its blurb says:

For the five decades of their partnership, the sisters were at the forefront of textile design, with their vibrant hand-painted patterns.  

They were renowned for their handling of colour with a painter's aesthetic and their signature ability to cheat the repeat in printing: qualities that infuse their work with a sense of fluidity, freshness and exuberance.  

Launching their careers in London during the Swinging Sixties, they made their names with stunning collections for Liberty of London Prints, and their renowned patterns, with a painterly aesthetic, marked a significant turning point in textile design. 

Together, Susan and Sarah painted textile patterns for international clients including Yves Saint Laurent, Liberty, Habitat, Cacharel, Jaeger, Fischbacher, Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser and many others in the UK.  

In the USA, Collier Campbell became a sought-after brand for designer bedding with Martex, Westpoint Stevens, Springs Wamsutta, and Homestead; their decorative fabric was taken up by P. Kaufmann and Fabricut, and their wallcoverings by Manuscreens and Imperial Wallcoverings. 

In 2011, The National Theatre, London, celebrated fifty years of their exuberant designs to great acclaim. Important examples of their work are held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York. 

Susan sadly died in May 2011; Sarah is now working independently under her own name, undertaking one-off special commissions from hand-painted fabric pieces, scarves and stationery, to patterns and textiles for the high street with collaborative lines in both Marks & Spencer and West Elm.

This scarf, which also emerged from years of dormancy in my cupboard, is not a Collier Campbell design, but rather in that spirit -

Productive laziness

It being Monday, I found myself with no reason, or motivation, to leave the house - and a backache brought on, surely, by walking in the mud yesterday. The temptation was to spend the entire day on the sofa with a diverting book, but certain things do need doing. That studio sort-out is top of the list...

So the plan was:  set the timer for 15 minutes and plunge into one or other of the bags in the studio, racing the clock to get it sorted before the timer's PING sounds the blessed release from the task. It starts when the Fitbit's reminder-buzz at 10 minutes to the hour (reminder to take 250 steps and "be active") is the signal to get up from the sofa, jog on the Invisible Treadmill till the Fitbit sends its "good stuff, you've done it" buzz. Then, set the timer and Just Do It. PING - and the rest of the hour can be spent on the sofa with the book.

The plan has been working well, given a head start with the departure of some old French paperbacks -

and also paper and pens gathered and posted on Freecycle, to be collected in the evening -

Adding to the collection of papers has provided an opportunity for a sort-out of the paper shelves - not the thing that's most urgent, but "every little helps". I discovered some lovely papers, including a big sheet of hand marbling ... makes me want to get back to making books -

The middle shelves now look quite spacious (whereas the recycling bin is almost full of the rejects) -

 This lovely print surfaced -

as did lots of "old work" - from the Art Foundation and then the MA course -

 and abandoned works like this double-sided excursion into drawing+stitching -

 Sonnets, stitched in syllables, then turned into rubbings - then abandoned -

 Experiments from the National Gallery's Friday lunchtime "talk and draw" sessions -

 Leftover painted papers that could so quickly be folded into concertina or "secret" books (large marks usually look good on small pages) -

Work from a short, intense course about stitching and monoprinting - I made various little books based on maps of Islington -

 Leftover fabrics from the course -

 ,,, they went into the big drawer of my own printed fabrics (ah the travel lines - screen printed at Camberwell!), can't get rid of those -

Serendipitous melted plastic found in a stack of papers -

 "What was I thinking" dept - concert and theatre tickets from 1989/90 glued onto thin japanese paper ....

The most important is the pink one, a community play in which my son, aged 10, had a part - "Full House" at The Old Bingo Hall, now Rowans bowling alley -

From 1994 or so, some marbling with inks, cut into the shape of an envelope (I'll use it soon) -

"Projects for 2006" is the title of this little "secret" book -

They included: learn how to use my serger; sew a shirt for Thomas; make "japanese" quilt for Thomas (done!!) and Fissures for CQ (done!); regular computer backups; organise photos. In the middle, more - decide whether to continue learning Chinese; fix up flat (bathroom); "leave fulltime work?" and "keep up & not be boring" - hah, aren't we all constantly working on that one!

Yet again this little booklet shows the magical powers of writing things down. Sometimes, writing down an anxiety helps to get it out of your mind; often, writing down a wish (however impossible it seems) makes it more real, or possible, as you start to consider how it might be achieved - and quite often, it is.

The next thing I found in that folder was a big, empty envelope with faint writing -

A message from Tony that I'm very grateful for, did he but know. 

It's a big help with the "redistributing my creative resources" project. 

Another help would be to take a few moments to write down what might be looked for, when looking forward.

A turnup for the books

While sorting out the books to go on (in?) the new bookshelves, I came across interesting things (but did not stop to read them at length!). That came later...

1. Catalogue of summer courses at City Lit. I signed up for a two-day sketchbook course, and a geology course over four sessions. 

2. "About Looking" by John Berger, opened at random, yielded this, at the very end of a section:

There is never a single approach to something remembered. The remembered is not like a terminus at the end of the line. Numerous approaches or stimuli converge upon it and lead to it. 

It goes on - as it's in an essay called "Uses of Photography" (1978):

Words, comparisons, signs need to create a context for a printed photograph in a comparable way; that is to say, they mst mark and leave open diverse approaches. A radial system has to be constructed around the photograph so that it mau be seen in terms which are simultaneously personal, olitical, economic, dramatic, everyday and historic.

3. And then there's the A4 notebook bought in Hungary and used as a workbook for The Artist's Way. When I started working through that book, I was not a happy bunny about "my creativity" and the time spent being creative and especially about the life factors that were keeping me from producing creative output.

 It starts with affirmations, then there's a summary, in five-year periods, of "my creative life". The date is 1998, and in the past five years I'd been focusing on textiles, attending many courses at City Lit, especially with Julia Caprara, and was exhibiting with Cloth&Stitch. Plus was doing some illustration courses.

The section that starts "where does my time go" eventually discovers: "Didn't answer the question - andswered "how do I use my time". ... Much goes in sitting & thinking - much. Or lying in bed & thinking. Or in the bath. I like thinking. I also like doing. It's getting from one to the other that's the problem."

Another exercise was to list the "things I enjoy doing" -

Not much has changed! I've given up "struggling with piano", though it was fun while it lasted (and a piano plus teach-yourself books would be my desert island luxury).

The "three obvious rotten habits" [what are yours...] and "three subtle foes" were interesting, and I think that writing them down and thinking about them has made a difference. Of course an important part of The Artist's Way is the "morning pages" - which I continued doing for years, having at first found the exercise "trivial, repetitive, boring" - and that was all about writing down but with a different emphasis: once it was written down, it was no longer buzzing round in your head. So at first you can offload all the negative stuff, then later you start to focus on the positive stuff. Eventually "on the page" was where I discussed my latest wild ideas with myself ... strange how the ideas that led to finished work were never those that I'd written about!

The letters to oneself, from oneself aged 80 and 8, are so interesting. I can't bear to go on reading them, they are so true to what's changed over the past two decades...

"10 items I would like to own" [what are your 10?] - I now do own a "comfortable vegetable peeler" but am still looking for the "fabulous all-purpose shoes" and probably never will find the "magic carpet (with time machine as optional extra)" ... alas ...

A section on money. The week of writing down everything you spent was so, so useful to me. And what I wrote about family attitudes about money is revealing: "In my family, money caused worry". Those were tough times, and many families are going through the same worry now. Some of us are so lucky to be able to avoid that ... by good luck.

"As a kid..." ... what did you miss, lack, could have used help with, dream of, want? (separate answers to each of these, please!)

The workbook stops with this page - a summary of the nice things about the past week -

I'll have to keep my eyes open for "small victories" ... perhaps one such would be doing those things not done during the day about which you say to yourself, "it doesn't matter". Turning thoughts into action, however inconsequential it might seem.

Half of this workbook is empty. I know I worked right through The Artist's Way ... but I no longer have that book, so can't check what the exercises in the last chapter were. Maybe some got left out? I remember being very uncomfortable with the "spirituality" ones, but didn't shirk that chapter.

It seems entirely appropriate to revisit the Artists-Way experience, and I've shared only the bits that don't make me cringe or yawn. (There is much more....) Thanks for reading - and if you decide to write those letters to your younger or older self, keep them safe and re-read them in 10 or 20 years.

Another wintery morning

Frost on the skylight, and the pearly dawn breaking. Now it's turned into blue skies and raking sunlight.

As a child in winter-whitened Quebec and even in the balmy Lower Fraser Valley, BC, and again as an adult in Halifax, NS, living in a house without heating in the bedrooms, I often encountered ice crystals on the inside of the windowpane. Often? Not really all that often, not getting-dressed-under-the-bedclothes often - but often enough ... hurrah for central heating!