On Wednesday I went to London for the day to meet my friend Vicki and go to the Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ Wow. The pieces on show were wonderful, bright shiny gold, crusty old icons, unbelievably intricate carved ivory and bone panels, boxes and chalices and bowls and and ... my mind is bursting with ideas, I scribbled and drew in my notebook and quite possibly annoyed one or two people as I was in their way.It was very busy at the RA, spurs on elbows might have come in handy, you had to be standing right in front of the object to read the descriptive card, and some of the objects were so delightful we all wanted to stand there for a while to drool. But it was all good natured and I think I managed to catch a look at everything.
I bought the book of the show which was the second most expensive book I have ever bought in my life - even though I got the paper back version. It is worth every penny. Each piece from the exhibition is expertly photographed, the smaller items are shown in great detail so that you can see the things that you couldn't in real life. It is a hefty tome - 500 pages - but the paper quality is excellent and in addition to the photographs there is a good description of each piece with just enough history not to overwhelm (me) with information.
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