The Shard

Shard is Open

Christopher Corr painted this picture to celebrate the opening of the Shard, London’s newest, tallest building. For the past few years we’ve watched it grow from viewpoints all around the city. The inexorable rise of this arrogant and aggressive spike was impossible to ignore. Now it’s here it has quickly become another iconic landmark on the London skyline. A spire with a view – click to ascend and there’s a great view of it from the river here.

Frames of reference

Flicker Pictures

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We’ve been selling these ‘lenticular’ cards at The Rowley Gallery for a while now. They’ve been very popular. Seen from one angle the eye is open, look again and it’s closed. Lenticular printing is a process of combining two or more images on the surface of a corrugated plastic lens. (I don’t think lenticular has anything to do with Lent in particular.) Continue reading “Flicker Pictures”

Frames of reference

Fate, Hope & Charity

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Looking across Brunswick Square to the Foundling Museum, a memorial to the Foundling Hospital which was founded in 1741 by Thomas Coram to provide hospitality for London’s deserted children. Its patrons included Handel, Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough. The museum’s current exhibition is Fate, Hope & Charity, a display of tokens left with abandoned babies. Continue reading “Fate, Hope & Charity”

Frames of reference

A Book By Its Cover

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There is something about books of a certain period that I find special. This book cover is for a novel from my grandmother’s youth though not owned by her. I bought it in a junk shop some twenty years ago. It is from that time when a book was special. All books. Before paperbacks. I have a collection of books that belonged to my grandmother. Often given to her by her father, inscribed on the flyleaf with a message and expressions of affection. Dated from the 1890s. These books were made to be cherished. Read and re-read and kept for a life time. Passed on from generation to generation. Therefore the covers are an expression of the reverence held for these containers of our imaginings. The paper though yellows and becomes brittle. Spines crack, pages loosen. And there is the smell. Old paper and dust. It sets off memories of secondhand bookshops and the marvelous experience of browsing. Writing this I am nostalgic for Hay-on-Wye and the strange pleasure of more books than it is possible to understand gathered in one small town. So. One old book, a trigger for thoughts streaming off to all points of the compass.

Andrew Walton / The Rowley Gallery

Editor’s note: Mention of inscriptions and expressions of affection reminds me of a blog devoted to Book Dedications.

Frames of reference

The Posh Painting Shed

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Most of my working life has been combining making paintings and prints and teaching, some of the time in Art Colleges, but mostly as a schoolteacher. A while back I read David Wiseman’s lovely post, Garden Studio. When I finished full time teaching last summer, I decided to have a posh shed built, which would enable me to work at the end of my garden in suburban London. Continue reading “The Posh Painting Shed”

Frames of reference