Medieval Shreswbury

So many medieval buildings, so little time to take pictures....

Because the properties are painted in black and white, the pattern is so easy to see. The leaded glass was intricate too. 

St Mary's Church had so many gems.  The ironwork on the door was wonderful and in places it glowed orange with rust.

B spotted this gem, it was on the outside of the church over the main entrance door.  If you can't read it, click and it will be bigger. 

The floor tiles in St Mary's are Victorian copies of Medieval tiles, my photos aren't fantastic but the patterns are.  here

Medieval patterns from tiles and stuff

There were medieval tiles amongst the ruins of Haughmond Abbey, I love these floor tiles, imagine how many feet have walked over these.

These are from Wenlock Priory 

Whilst these are Victorian copies of medieval tiles from St Mary's Church in Shrewsbury. 

There are more pics of tiles here

Misericords

What is a Misericord?  In Medieval times monks spent many hours standing praying.  These shelf-like seats were for leaning on when they got super tired.  Strangely the designs were on the underside of the seat so were rarely seen.  The carvings had deep meanings but the craftsmen showed amazing sense of humour.  The armrests had equally fantastic carvings, unfortunately the ones here at Ludlow Parish Church were very worn. 

There are more pics of misericords from Ludlow here 

The joy of finding a quilt exhibition whilst on holiday

It was by a mysterious coincidence that we strolled past the Minerva Arts Centre when they had a quilt exhibition.  Or not.  It was a wonderful surprise to find Jackie Smith's work on display. 

Dramatically modified sweetcorn was incredibly textured.  Close up below.

The work entitled 'soft stone armour' was the one I wanted to bring home with me.  It looked very subtle but once you got close it had amazing textures and colour. 

This small area of 'summer' shows the delightful quirkiness of Jackie's work. 

Sheena J Norquay is another name I recognised.   I was hopping from one piece to another in excitement when I saw these.  The one on the right is from a hanging called '25'

This and the one below are from 'silver circles' and are great examples of how to turn simple mark making into a lovely hanging

'Uplifted' was another great use of simply painted fabric.  This shows just a tiny glimpse of the quilt.

There are more photos on flickr including photos of the quilts to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the European Quilt Assoc

I finished something else

The latest swap on cps was to make three pins inspired by Paisley.  This one was the first one I made.

These were number two and three. All three are now on their way to their new owners and I am on my way to finish something else :)

Woven pendants

The challenge was to make woven pendants approx 2 inches high for a swap on Cloth Paper Studio   I started with 1mm copper wire, wrapped around a domino. 

These will be winging their way across the Atlantic tomorrow ready to be swapped out.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

This is the beautiful Yorkshire Countryside, home to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and close to where I grew up and where Claire lives now. 

The path to the entrance is made of steel with the names of those who contributed to the building of the exhbition space, sorry about my feet getting into the picture :)

This is the first sight of the David Nash exhibition, carved and burnt wooden columns. 

The exhibtion is spread over two indoor galleries with more outside. These are carved and burnt.

These are bronze castings of carved sculptures, rusty and very interesting, click to zoom in for a closer view.

Carved and burnt wooden sculpture

Click to zoom in for a closer look

This was my favorite.

There are many sculptures to see, spaced over many acres, but we only looked at the David Nash as we had children with us, but I did see a Henry Moore in the distance