Autumn Cottage Diarist

Lenten Talks from the BBC

A thought provoking Lenten Talk - first of a series from the BBC - this one by Will Self, a speaker whom I usually find a tad too sardonic...but this is interesting. He speaks - inter alias - about The mind, the desert, the desert of the mind, The Great War, churches, theistic and secular societies, Damian Hirst, the Credit Crunch, diamonds, ritual, beauty and ugliness. Not bad for 15 minutes!

If you can find the time to listen to this (I think you might find it worthwhile to do so) - do you have any  thoughts of your own on his opinions?

Addendum: my good friend over at the Bay Side (who has a blog post today which is also WELL worth reading) has just sent me this link to a printed version of the Will Self talk...for those of you who prefer to read rather than to listen - and for future ref (the BBC link only stays live for about a week). Thanks, D!

We Are Superior to Dogz!

Just a brief look in tonight, to show you Pip's latest session of posing...on top of the bookcase in my sitting room, where he has taken to presenting himself 'in the style of a famous painting'...or in his case, an Elizabeth Bradley embroidery, which hangs, framed, on the wall behind him.

Clearly there is no doubt in his mind as to Who Is the Handsomest of All? :-) - Now to find the matching embroidery kit of the Victorian tabby cat, which comes in the same collection.

What's to get Excited About?

Look what I found in the garden yesterday...stripping off turf for a new flower bed in an area of the garden where I've made other domestic finds in the past, up came this piece of terracotta pot, about four inches (10 cm) wide, with a very distinct rim around the inside - which is also glazed. I suspect it may have been a pot for storing flour or bread. (there's a modern one at the bottom of the post).

To many observers, it may well be a piece of old junk - but to me - even though it may be barely 100-150 years old, it conjures up the detail of the daily lives of those who have lived here at Autumn Cottage over the centuries. Of the housewife who would have saved over a long period of time to buy an item such as this. If it did not come as - perhaps - a wedding gift, then she would no doubt have gone into Newbury market by horse drawn carrier one Thursday back in the middle of the 19th century, looking forward to buying a new piece of pottery for her kitchen.

It would have been a special day out, into town for Market Day from these outlying villages, so there would probably have been much browisng and chatting around the market stalls before she decided on which pot to buy - from amongst many others, this one, the fancy one with the pattern pressed in all around the outside just below the rim was chosen. And then to get it home again in one piece, before it took pride of place in her kitchen. In times of hardship, perhaps that bread crock was not filled as often as it should be?...and who was the unlucky soul who finally knocked the pot over, smashing it on the terracotta tiled floor below (we still have some of the old floor tiles here) and getting a clip around the ear for their pains - before being told to take it out and toss it on the dump behind the hedge...which is where I found it, a century later.

Oh, no - its not just an old pot sherd  to me. It's a passport to the romance of history. Have you ever found something telling a story of the past in your own house or garden?

An undecorated modern version, about 24" (60 cm) high

The Little Things in Life...

In the cold and dark days of winter, I've been playing with miniatures again. The items above are the 'finds' I made last time I visited the Antiques Arcade in Hungerford.

The scene in the little glass case is made of cork - I think it will look very grand in a gentleman's study in one of my bigger houses...and the three little hand-painted pots will join a number of others in the Portuguese House. The glass case is roughly three inches wide, (7.5 cms - that's a UK 50 pence piece in the foreground for comparison) - so you can see that they are not 1/12th scale - the standard scale for most modern miniature houses. But I like to follow the Victorian tradition of collecting items of many different scales and using the houses as repositories for collections of miniatures which have not necessarily been made for 'doll's houses' per se. I think it gives them character - though I know many 'purists' would disagree with me.

Do any other readers have stories of miniatures in their own collections? Which are your favourites? And do any of you have any thoughts on precisely *what is* the appeal of miniaturised items? Because they certainly fascinate me!