(Chewy) Snapshots III

St Bartholomew (the great), one of the oldest churches in London (1123)

In Smithfield. See next picture for a detailed (gruesome) explanation of the laconic 'put to death'.

No comment. 

16th Century portrait bust of 49th Grand Master of the Order of Malta Jean de la Valette (1495?-1568),

Museum of the Order of St John (Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, founded in 1099). Valette led Malta to victory during the Great Siege of 1565. He is honoured in the name of the island's capital, Valetta (only capital city to be named after a person, if I'm not mistaken).

Maltese cross, symbol of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller (or Knights of Malta

because they moved there in 1530)

A WWI soldier posted this ration biscuit back home to his wife as a prank (he wanted to show her how hard those were). He wrote on the back of it that he tried to hit one of them biscuits on the sharp corner of a brick wall, in order to break it into pieces, but ended up bruising his hand.

Who said Britons didn't have any sense of humour?

Distant presence

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."


Epicurus, philosopher (circa 341-270 BCE)

Pulling faces and other nonsense

All the above pictures have been taken in Temple Church, London.

Today, I had lunch and conversed (mainly about the weather) with this particular daffodil,

on Russell Square. 

Snapshots II

Battersea Power House (appears on the cover of the 1977 Pink Floyd album "Animals") 

 Peace Pagoda, Battersea Park, London

Putney footbridge

In Wandsworth Park

Amazingly up to date!

"People caught by suddenly pouring skies:
What ingenuous hats they improvise!"


Nakagawa Otsuyu (1675-1739)

At a single glance

For those who don't know the immense talent of Stephen Wiltshire yet. This man, because of his spectacular visual memory (I refrained myself from using the expression 'eidetic' because I include the five senses' experience into this word) is called an 'autistic savant'. Why not simply calling him a genius, without any reference to what people will immediately think of as a handicap? This man reminds me of Da Vinci at times. Go get a look if you're on London, it is stunning. Tomorrow, I'll go again to the gallery he opened in the Royal Opera Arcades, I haven't been there in a while.

Snapshots

 Victoria and Albert Museum, plaster casts court (casts of the Trajan column in Rome).

V&A, lidded vase (enamel), unsigned, Nagoya, Japan (1880-90) - the technique of producing mirror-black enamel ground was developed through collaborative research between Namikawa Yasuyuki and the German chemist Gottfried Wagener

V&A, vase, mark of Hayashi Kodenji (1880-85) - the use of fine silver wires combined with large expanses of dark blue-black enamel ground is typical of Hayashi Kodenji's work

V&A, vase (covered with a transparent red enamel (akasuke), believed to have been invented around 1880 by Ota Jinnoei and Honda Yosaburo, signed 'Nagoya Hayashi Ko[denji]' (1880-90)

The three vases above are on display for the 'Japanese Enamels: the Seven Treasures' in the Toshiba Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

V&A, 'China - China bust 19' (1999), Ah Xian (born 1960) - Porcelain, painted in underglaze cobalt blue with landscape design

V&A, somewhere.

Detail of embroidered shawl (picture 1) and cape (picture 2) made from the silk of more than one million female golden orb-weaver spiders collected in the highlands of Madagascar (Golden Spider Silk display, room 17a, V&A Museum)

The Lady Chapel, Westminster Cathedral

Westminster Cathedral, somewhere

Une bonne partie de la littérature japonaise tient dans cette unique phrase...

"Mais, croyez-moi : une fois pris dans les rets de longs cheveux noirs, de quels troubles ne serez-vous la proie !"


Natsume Soseki, Kokoro (Le pauvre cœur des hommes)

passing thoughts

kites like rainbow dragonflies
hover furlongs above the
smell of the sand


lovers in the setting sun
halting to kiss
one shadow on the shore

seagulls reeling all
afternoon in the warm air
cold sobered them up

I owe this sunset everything.