a fragment of the starry vault of heaven
I got a note from one of my arty suppliers tonight that Michael Harding — manufacturer of excellent handmade oil colors — is offering a genuine Afghan lapis lazuli oil paint. He’s not the only one — I knicked the photo from this article on genuine lapis watercolor — but there sure isn’t a lot of it out there.
You know all those illuminated manuscripts and Renaissance frescoes with the intense blue skies and amazingly blue saints’ robes? Lapis. Very dear stuff. Kings used to inventory pots of lapis paint in their treasuries and dole it out to painters after they were commissioned.
The common pigment ultramarine is a synthetic version invented in the early Nineteenth C — a much clearer and more powerful color, but lacking a certain sparkly je ne sais quoi.
Or so I’m told. I’ve never worked with the real thing.
I once splashed out $80 for a tube of Winsor and Newton’s genuine rose madder and got a tube of paint the color of bleeding gums and the consistency of snot. That learned me.
I see rose madder is down to a measley £8.80 now. And this here lapis stuff is suggested retail £71.57, but available for a modest £57 a tube.
February 10, 2016 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 8
prepothteruth
So, this guy died today. Joe Alaskey. He voiced Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Sylvester.
If you’re thinking he looks too young for that and who the heck is he anyway, you’re quite right — he’s one of the voice actors who took over after Mel Blanc died in ’89. Alaskey himself was a comparatively young 63.
So. Non-story really. Condolences to his family.
Sorry I’ve been avoiding politics lately. I have a good excuse: I’ve been avoiding politics lately.
It’s gotten to the point I’m considering shaving my head and joining a hard-ass religious cult of some kind. Preferably one with a savage deity and a martial arts component.
Anyone want to start one…?
February 4, 2016 — 10:51 pm
Comments: 15
Only his hairdresser knows for sure…
Heh. I’d forgotten this pitcher. I did it years ago. There’s a story that goes with the wolverine.
Trump’s remarks about Muslim immigration are making them go howling batshit boo-boo over here. Worse than the US. If you haven’t checked out the UK papers today, do so. Then read the comments section.
We’re headed for civil war, folks. I’m telling you.
Meanwhile, we’re going to a concert tomorrow night. Might be back late. Might not. Band’s even older than we are and we all need our forty winks.
December 9, 2015 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 9
crooked.
Behold, the Crooked Forest in Poland, where every tree is bent 90° at the base, facing due North. It’s believed to have been bent by the hand of man in the Thirties, possibly to aid boat or furniture building. Which doesn’t explain the due North thing. Photo by Kilian Schönberger.
It’s worth following the link and clicking around some of the other pitchers. I know, I know…it’s all very artsy-fartsy, but there’s some very cool things to look at.
Link via iamfelix, who was pointing me to this picture set she saw at the Hostages. Thanks, felix. I was fresh out of blog juice this evening. Good weekend, everyone!
November 20, 2015 — 11:08 pm
Comments: 9
Speak to me, Puff!
Wow. I hope this is just an art fail, because it looks for all the world like a dishful of decapitated cat’s head with ornamental greenery growing out his ears. If I’m reading the credits right, it’s from the Sforza Book of Hours, circa 1490.
I’m leafing through old Books of Hours because I got it in my thick head I’d like to have a Tudor housewife’s costume. You know, like the first lady of Badger House.
She would probably have been the wife of a prosperous peasant farmer, possibly the overseer of a rich man’s farm. Sheep, probably. Like this lady. Or this lady (in the background, slopping the hogs).
So, a kirtle, an apron and a wimple ought to do it.
Now, all I got to do is learn how to sew.
Damn. I knew there was a flaw in my plan. I can’t sew for shit.
November 9, 2015 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 20
Huh.
I was looking for a picture of a Medieval embroidered glove tonight (don’t judge me!) and I ran across the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London.
Well, of course there’s a Worshipful Company of Glovers of London.
They have a very fun antique glove collection to browse. Surprised to see, though, they only go back to the Seventeenth Century.
If you liked that, you’d probably also like the museum attached to Dents, Her Maj’s glove maker.
Never did find what I was looking for, though.
Have a good weekend, y’all. Don’t get blowed up!
November 6, 2015 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 10
Christmas is coming. Just sayin’
Here something awesome I found when I was looking for something else. It’s an object that was up for auction in Germany. I tried to find a follow up to see how much it went for, but all I found was other assassin-wannabes drooling over it.
Anyhoo, it’s a Bible from 1600 that’s been hollowed out and the pages replaced with a wooden cabinet. The clever little drawers are neatly labeled with the names of herbal poisons. Empty, presumably.
The bigger green glass bottle in the center is labeled “Statutum hominibus semel mori” — It is given to a man to die.
The print inside the lid is described as 1682. If so, it’s a late edition — that there is a page out of Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica from 1543. I know this because reasons.
It’s hard to know what the hell this is all about. I can’t imagine any self-respecting poisoner leaving such a tangible lump of incriminatory evidence, nor yet someone commissioning such a beautiful object only to keep it hidden. I’m going to guess it was a prop, probably out of some gentleman’s cabinet of curiosities.
Even so, you’d have to assume our forebears were a lot less superstitious about blasphemy than we think.
Oh, and speaking of death (she said cheerily), Dead Pool Round 79. Tomorrow six sharp WBT. Be here or we’ll put something in your beer!
October 29, 2015 — 11:08 pm
Comments: 4
plus ça change, huh?
I’ve been browsing editorial cartoons tonight (gosh, I’ve wasted an improbable chunk of my life staring at Google Images). Made me fink.
You have to go back a hundred years before the ideas and the artwork strike me as worthy. Like this one, from 1919 (who doesn’t revile “the mad notions of Europe”? Amirite?). Of course, these days you find these old gems mostly in course syllabi for How Our Ancestors Were, Like, Totally Retarded 101.
Editorial cartoons from about the mid-20th C onward are mostly lefty. And ugly. (One exception would be Michael Ramirez, who I think is a flipping editorial cartoon conservative mad genius).
And at some point they stopped trying to persuade the other side (me, IOW) and went straight for enrage. Ideas were replaced with ciphers. Like if they could hang a label on something (“red scare” or “McCarthyism”), they didn’t have to address the issue (whether the government ever was really and truly infested with commies and whether that’s done us any favors).
I don’t know. Maybe cartoons always made somebody mad. You’d have to ask a lefty whether Ramirez cartoons make him irrationally angry. But the modern stuff just seems awfully heavy on snark and ridicule. And they punch down (or at least sideways) more often than they punch up.
October 14, 2015 — 10:28 pm
Comments: 8
Funny feller
Ah. This is where I went today. I went to see a Richard Dadd exhibition.
Do you know him? I think the picture above is the only one of him; it’s the only one I’ve ever seen, anyway.
He was born in 1817, the son of a chemist. He showed early promise in art, so he was sent off for a proper art education. It stressed him out. When he was 26, he was walking in the park with his father and, without much warning, turned on the old man and murdered him. Cut his throat.
Dadd spent the rest of his life in the loony bin, first in Bedlam, then in Broadmoor. He never really got better. He had lots and lots of time to paint.
Now, I don’t hold with worshipping artists just because they’re crazy. There are plenty of nutcakes of very indifferent talent. But Dadd really was a very good artist. Highly technically accomplished, though the crazy shines through, even in his early work.
By far his most famous painting is The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, which is, like, two feet by two feet and so crammed full of beautifully rendered crazy that it is almost always exhibited next to some kind of huge blowup (today, it was next to a slide show of extreme closeups).
I had seen some of his oils before, but this was the first time I’d ever seen his watercolors. Holy shit, they were uniquely beautiful but, well…bugfuck crazy. Made of tiny, tiny, tiny flecks of very pale color. Not at all like pointillism, though. Can’t describe it. Can’t find an example online.
Didn’t buy the show catalogue because it wasn’t a show catalogue, it was just a book about Dadd. Will have to search harder.
September 29, 2015 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 13
That cat is so happy
From an illuminated manuscript of Jean Tinctor’s Invectives contre la secte de vauderie. “Vauderie” being an old French word for sorcery. This is Satan inviting his disciples to lick the cat’s butthole.
LOOK HOW HAPPY THAT CAT IS.
This is from a series of Medieval manuscripts showing cats licking their assholes. My old friend iamfelix sent me the link, which she said turned up in Iowahawk’s Twitter feed.
July 29, 2015 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 14