The Last of the Maharajahs
Nope. Not another Andy Edwards post. This is by the lady who sculpted the Fine Lady’s horse — Denise Dutton — and she’s done some nice civic sculpture herself.
The subject is interesting. It’s Duleep (or Dalip) Singh (1838–1893), the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire. He came to the throne when he was five (or seven; the internets differ), after his father and brothers were killed during the first Anglo-Sikh War. He wasn’t there long before the British annexed the Punjab and sent him to live in England.
He Anglicized. He met Queen Victoria (who sounded smitten with him — bit of a horndog, our Vicky). He converted to Christianity. He was given an allowance and a series of castles to live in and took to typical English gentleman stuff, like hunting and horses and spending way more money than he could afford.
Toward the end of his life, he started to stew about his lost throne, reconverted to Sikhism and threw in his lot with some shady Irish and Russkies hoping for revolution, but it didn’t come to anything. Not for Duleep, anyway.
A short summary of an interesting life. Worth poking around Google or one of them library thingummies.
Good weekend, all!
January 6, 2017 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 5
Yes, yes, YES!!!
Perhaps you thought it odd that I didn’t identify the sculptor of the Fine Lady in yesterday’s post. Perhaps you didn’t.
Sometimes, it’s like I don’t even know you.
Well, anyhoo, the truth is, I had some difficulty working it out. Banbury’s page on the Lady identifies the modeler of the horse as Denise Dutton, a well-known horse-sculptin’ lady, and the designer of the monument as Artcycle. That link is the only reference to Artcycle I found on quick inspection, and it’s a phonebook type listing. Has them down as Monumental Masons.
But if you reverse image search a picture of the Lady, you find Cornovii Edwards, which is described on its website with this bit of cheerful gibberish:
Cornovii Edwards is a family name of the most ancient provenance in the world of revered artists and masters of the bronze casting tradition. It is our privilege to serve and protect time honoured skills and continue the endeavour to guard our prosperity, the most valuable riches of that being our people’s craft, identity and our links to one another.
The Cornovii were an ancient Celtic tribe. Near as I can figure it, Cornovii Edwards is actually Andrew (‘Andy’) Edwards, and there’s not a lot of biographical information for him online. Which is weird, because he’s filled some impressive commissions.
Like, the recently unveiled sculpture of the Beatles in Liverpool. And this sculpture of Frederick Douglass for the University of Maryland that was presented to Obama. Verrrry high level stuff for a young guy.
In the comment thread on the previous post, Fletcher posted a link to this article on the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the Fine Lady, which includes a neato YouTube on the Making Of, including still images of Andy modeling.
Browse the Cornovii Edwards website for more examples of the excellent house style.
The thing in the picture? That’s a little confusing, too. It’s the Staffordshire Saxon (another neato Making Of video here), a nine foot tall monument made to commemorate the finding of the Staffordshire Hoard.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: that thing is a leeetle bigger than nine feet. It’s a P’shop. They’re raising money to make a version of the statue over 100 feet high, to be erected on the spot where the hoard was buried. They’re calling it the Anglo of the North (play on Angel of the North, that fugly old thing).
ONE HUNDRED FOOT BRONZE ANGLO SAXON WARRIOR, YA’LL!!!
Why have I never heard of this before? And why is this guy so hard to follow online? Dude needs better PR.
January 5, 2017 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 10
Lookit this fine lady
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
There were three Banbury crosses, all destroyed by the Puritans. So I’ve read. Banburians put up another one in Victorian times, in honour of Princess Victoria (the old lady’s first child).
But this Fine Lady, believe it or not, is a modern commission. 2008. And she’s a very fine bit of civic sculpture, at that. It’s bronze, but I don’t know by what process makes it look whitish instead of the usual brown/green.
Yes, she has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. If you go poking around Google, you can find closeups of several details. It’s full of pagan-y, hippie symbolism:
Spring Flowers: The Fine Lady wears a crown of thirteen (the ancient months of the year) spring flowers, alternating daffodils and wild roses. Hidden among the flowers you can spot two butterflies and a moth.
The bells on her feet are interpreted as both musical bells and by seven bluebells, (representing the days of the week) on her toes and she drops petals from her raised left hand.
The raised left arm not only balances the raised right leg of the horse, it represents the creative side of the brain while the right arm holds the reins showing motor control.
The frog represents metamorphosis, the cycle of nature and community.
The other symbol to look for is the Sun, which has been a symbol of Banbury since the sixteenth century.
But the whole thing is so beautifully modeled, I do not care. I bitch lots about ugly public sculpture; it’s nice to see something so well done.
January 4, 2017 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 14
So this is a thing, apparently
I found this while looking for something else. There ought to be a word for finding something when you’re looking for something else online, but I can’t think of a good one.
Zeus tattoos. The style is called gray and black, I gather. There’s a lot of it out there. When it’s good, it’s at least interesting. When it’s bad, it’s pretty awful. Have a browse.
This particular example is by an artist called Chico Morbene. I can’t get over the subject had a little gray fuzzy cloud tattoo’d on his right nipple. Dude, the composition would have been just fine without that. Ow.
I tried to work out what led to such a surge of interest in Zeus allofasudden among muscle guys. Turns out, I was way overthinking it. It means “Greek god” and there are plenty of Mercuries and Herculeses.
Though (surely in a case of hilariously mistaken identity) several of them are recognizably Michelangelo’s Moses, horns and all.
Guys, guys — I don’t think Moses is the dude you want all over your naked body.
December 5, 2016 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 19
Pen porn
The 1670 Inks collection celebrates the life and adventures of J. Herbin, a famous French sailor.
On his travels, J. Herbin gathered formulas for inks and sealing waxes. The inks in this collection pay homage to this history.
Each bottle contains 50ml of finest quality Herbin ink in colours only available in this collection, and include tiny flecks of gold; whilst these give another dimension to the ink and to your writing, we recommend that you don’t leave this ink unused in a pen for a prolonged period of time. The gold flakes do make it an ink that deserves extra care.
When writing with Stormy Grey ink, you’ll notice that the ink will go down a deep grey colour and dry to a slightly lighter grey with an intense gold sheen. The gold sheen tends to linger at the centre of your writing, taking on a grey shadow effect.
The Ocean Blue and Rouge Hematite inks seem to give a more consistent sheen of gold all through your writing, adding a little sparkle to what’s usually more conservative colours.
New colour for 2016, Caroube de Chypre is a deep golden brown colour, with a green sheen when laid down very heavily, and a warm gold sparkle.
£14.59 a bottle, if you please.
I’m sure I must have mentioned Cult Pens before. Their monthly newsletter is chock full of pen porn.
I don’t go in for super expensive fountain pens. I have a nasty habit of performing life-altering surgery on my pens (generally by grinding the balls off (!)). This doesn’t always work out so good, so I can’t afford to experiment on the best. But they have really good cheap pens, too. And all kinds of unusual things.
Like Herbin, the guys who make the hoity-toity ink above also do handmade, all glass dipping pens. Nib, barrel, the lot.
Here it is plain, spiral and marbleized. They sure are purty, but. I dunno. Does this sound like it would work to you?
You sharpen them with sandpaper.
November 30, 2016 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 13
Oh, somebody left me a shrew today
I’m hoping it wasn’t Uncle B.
Cat and mouse from the 14th Century chapel in St. Mary Magdalene Church, Newark, Nottinghamshire. Pinched from FaceBook. I feel like a villain not giving credit more explicitly, but I try to keep People FaceBook and Weasel FaceBook separate.
Yeah, Weasel has more friends than I do. Thanks for asking.
Anyhoo, I inherited an old computer from work today. They were going to throw it away, so I thought I could put it up in my leetle art room.
Anybody remember how to speak XP?
November 15, 2016 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 17
How have I never seen this?
Holy shit, look at this thing! It’s a tiny part of this necklace which was found in a grave in Tolstaya Mogila, Ukraine and is thought to date from about 400 BC. (Here’s a big, color view of that detail).
It’s Scythian. I mean, I’ve heard of the Scythians, but I won’t say I knew anything about them. I had no idea they were exquisite goldsmiths. Wikipedia says they were a group of Iranians, the very first horse warriors. So, proto-Mongols. Famous warriors.
But I can’t get over the workmanship on this, particularly given the date. Banging around the web looking for more information, much has been said about how this particular piece had influence from classical Greek art. And it clearly does. But the stuff that isn’t classically inspired is still lovely and technically sophisticated. See Google Images search.
And still most of the articles are about how martial they were. Boo.
November 7, 2016 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 11
insert thread pun
Eh. I stayed late at work to meet a client who never turned up. I don’t have much to show for myself today.
This guy recreates old master fragments using round frames and a single spool of thread. The text says he usually does computer art and I’m sure he devised a program to work out how to cross over from what angles to get the dark spots just right make the picture. Still cool.
Speaking in my capacity as somebody who went to art school and later dropped out, we need a word for works that are extremely cool but ultimately pointless and emotionally sterile. I don’t have a suggestion, I’m just pointing out the need.
Yes, yes…I am reduced to trawling Bored Panda tonight. Now I’m’a go to Skyrim and shoot more arrows into my horse.
November 3, 2016 — 9:10 pm
Comments: 8
Happy Halloween, peeps!
In Issue 63 of Creepy (1974), Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson collaborated on a nasty little story called ‘Jenifer’. If you search the name, you’ll find plenty of comic book fans calling this the best horror comic EVAH.
I realize that’s a pretty low bar in literary terms, but this ugly work of fiction has a certain…something, I hope you agree.
I found lots of reproductions online, but none very good. They were too big or too small or scanned from a later recolored version, making the text illegible. So I’ve taken the best copy I could find (looked like it was scanned from an original copy), cleaned it up and optimized it a bit. This size works best on my monitor; I hope it looks and reads okay on your screen.
My Halloween gift to you — Jenifer
Have a good weekend, y’all. Our clocks change this weekend, so my Halloween gift to me is — an extra hour’s sleep. Ahhhhh.
October 28, 2016 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 9
Happy b-day, B-man
It’s Bernie Wrightson’s birthday. If you don’t know the name, you’ll have seen his stuff. Like, comics. I mean, horror comics. That’s everybody, right?
He did lots and lots of horror comics, lots of Batman, the first ten issues of Swamp Thing, Creepshow. You’d know him. His body of work is so gigantic (and, often, done at such a crazy fast pace) that it’s easy to find some real clunkers in his oeuvre. But when he’s on form, he’s brilliant.
In ’83, as an unpaid labor of love, he did a series of illustrations for Shelley’s Frankenstein (I say Shelley’s because he skipped over Karloff and all of that and went to the book for inspiration) for which he is rightly much acclaimed. The image at the top is from the series and this link will take you to a Google Images search. Do check it out; these drawings blew me away when I were a young illustrator.
Wrightson’s not terribly old (yes, I’m at the point where 68 strikes me as the bloom of youth), but he’s been fighting cancer for the past few years and he’s just canceled the rest of his 2016 appearances on account of a health relapse, so prayers or vibes or whatever are in order.
I find it entirely fitting that his birthday overlaps Inktober (and Halloween). I had every intention of doing Inktober this year, but then I remembered — oh, yeah! I’m lazy!
October 27, 2016 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 5