Pagan Goddess Wood Carvings

Pagan Goddess Wood Carvings
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Plas Newydd is encrusted with exquisite black wood carvings, depicting an eclectic mix of what appear to be goddess figures, winged angels, and Celtic symbols.

The figure on the right appears possibly pregnant, while the one on the left presses her breasts into her chest.

I would like to find out more about the carvings. It seems like whole books could be written to decode them.

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New Place

Plas Newydd
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

During our first weekend in Oswestry, Sarah and I went to visit Plas Newydd ("New Place"), the home of the "ladies of Llangollen." I had always wanted to visit this cottage, where Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby had fallen in love and retired together in the late 1700s.

I had read a book on the ladies about ten years ago, and their story is like a fairy tale to me. Rather than being ostracized, they became the focus of curiosity and envy throughout the region.

The cottage is like a bejewelled black and white ginger bread house.

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Pink Room/Blue Room

Key to the Pink Room
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Here are the keys to the pink room, where Sarah stayed at The Old Rectory, complete with some Welsh dragon pyrography.

I stayed in the blue room, but I lost my keys somewhere in the snow.

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The Tree

The Tree
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

These crooked black oak trees animate the landscape.

On a clear day, you can see for miles.

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The Lane

The Lane
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

I took this picture riding on the way to The Old Rectory with Sarah. It is so dark at night that the rear view mirror is completely black.

I thought I saw a fox run by, but it was just an orange cat with a particularly fluffy tail.

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Snowscape

Snowscape
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

On February 24th I arrived in Oswestry, a market town on the border of Wales. The landscape here is beautiful, blanketed in fog and slightly menacing.

This is the view from the place I was staying, called The Old Rectory in Sellatyn.

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Endangered Printing Process

Bavarian Stone in Kansas
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Did you know that Bavarian litho stones are extinct? The quarries are depleted. That means that the ones that are out there in the world are the last ones left. Each time a print is made, the stone is sanded down for reuse, so even those won't be around forever. And what's worse is that as a lot of print shops around the world are closing down, the stones are being thrown away.

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Pulling the Last Proof

Last One
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

While at the University of Kansas, I worked with Michael Krueger and his students to make a lithograph print.

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Notion Nanny goes to Kansas!

Kansas Sidewalk
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

In December I traveled to Lawrence, Kansas to visit the printmaking department at the University of Kansas.

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William de Morgan Pot

William de Morgan Pot
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

What do you suppose William de Morgan meant by this question, emblazoned on a beautiful lustreware pot:

All this of pot and potter, tell me who is the potter, pray who the pot?

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Beer Can Oil Lamps

Beercan Oil Lamps
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Here is a craft to revive in case of emergency.

These were on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The label reads: Sudan - oil lamp from a Heineken can, bought in YEI market, 1984.

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Black:White Magic

Black:White Magic
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Pitt Rivers Museum is very dark, so dark that you must use a flashlight to see the displays.

Many of the labels are handwritten. This one says, "Magic Cord__ black and white tapes about 6 ft. long. Knotted together at intervals (23 knots in all). Each knot is stuck with a black and a white pin. This was found in a mattress at 43 Strada Meszool, Valetta, Malta. It was inserted through a hole at the foot and pushed through stuffing to the centre. Believed to be the work of a dismissed servant. 1907."

Below, "Cloth heart stuck with pins and hair and nail pairings found in Greybeard jug 10-11 ft. below street level in bed of old mill stream course, under corner of Tufton St. at Gt. College St., Westminster in damp soil. 1904"

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Handmade Nikes

Moose Hide Nikes
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

This was probably the best thing I saw at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. It is a museum of anthropology connected to a natural history museum, curiously organized into sections like string and rope, or objects incorporating body parts.

Someone stitched these out of hand-tanned moose hide. The swoosh is beaded.

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Spinning Straw into Gold

Spinning Straw into Gold
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

This is a straw craft dollar sign I made using techniques I learned from Dorothy Horsfall.

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Threadymade

Threadymade
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Artist Sonja Todd visited me at Studio Voltaire and made this Sewlaroid kit, with all the threads I would need to stitch a tiny Notion Nanny.

Check out her wensite at www.threadymade.co.uk!

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Grocer's Shop

Grocer's Shop
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

I spotted this doll's grocery store at Pollack's Toy Musuem in London, an off-the-beaten track treasure trove.

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Suffragette Banners

Suffragette Banners
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

Suffragettes used their needle skills to create some of the first political protest placards.

This images depicts a National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies procession on 13 June, 1908. It is a gelatin silver chloride print by Mrs. Albert Broom.

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Dare to be Free

Dare to be Free
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.

In London, I saw several elaborately hand embroidered Suffragette banners at the Woman's Library in London.

This one was designed in 1911 by "Miss Burton" for the Women's Freedom League.

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