I don’t recall why I didn’t contribute to Tara’s Gallery last week, apart that is from being too busy, but we’re back this week for the theme of Autumn.
So first here are two taken last year in our garden …
… and one I took yesterday of a tree in the street close to my house …
… on what was a glorious clear Autumn morning.
Time for another sale at our local auction house. This time round it is a huge sale with over 1000 lots. And as usual it is a curious mix of some “wow!” stuff and the exceedingly strange.
Let’s start with the star of the show, Lot 600:
An important Chinese gilt bronze figure of Amitayus, the Buddha of Infinite Life, Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, seated in shawl and dhoti with engraved floral borders, wearing elaborate diadem and other jewellery, retaining numerous inset coral, turquoise and lapiz cabochons, the exposed flesh retaining brown lacquer colouring, the eyebrows and hair coloured black, on double lotus petal base, 35.5cm high.
Note: this figure belongs to a select group made in the Imperial foundry, one of which was cast on the orders of the Kangxi emperor for his devoutly Buddhist grandmother’s birthday in 1686 and is illustrated in Cultural Relics of Tibetan Buddhism Collected in the Qing Palace, Hong Kong, 1992, pls 1-2. It is likely that the other examples were made for the many Tibetan Buddhist temples in Beijing.
Should you desire this magnificent piece you’ll need to arrange a mortgage before you even consider bidding.
So after that it has to be all down hill into the oddities …
A set of Guinness buttons on original card.
How do you sew buttons on Guinness?
3 silver-gilt jewels of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, early 20th century, in cases, each for Lodge 181 (Prince Victor Lodge, Isle of Wight), together with the order’s certificate for … and an old photograph of a tailor’s shop; also a German Iron Cross, Second World War 1939-45 War Medal and the 1939-45 Defence Medal, and the George V and Queen Mary medal by Elect Cocoa.
An original cartoon by Willie Rushton and a 1930s map of Berlin.
Does anyone else find this slightly surreal?
An interesting collection of 20 buttonhooks and other implements, some silver, mainly circa. 1900.
An extensive collection of old horse decorations mounted on leather, a collection of graded buckles mounted on leather, a carved furniture decoration, a fire trivet, a letter stamp, etc.
An old milk churn inscribed: ‘S. Jackman, Buckingham’, a Bakelite record player by Columbia, an old coat hanger in the form of a doll, a similar doll, a brush with a doll handle, a bed pan … an old trunk, purple glass vase, etc.
A large well presented light brown sawfish rostrum, 130cm.
A large early Victorian neo-gothic burr walnut chiming mantel clock, by Daniel Desbois, the signed painted arched dial with strike/silent indicator below the chapter ring, with gilt hands, quarter chiming on eight bells and hour striking and with pull-cord repeat, the back plate signed … the case with outset cluster columns with obelisk finials flanking the arched cresting, 24″ high.
They make it sound a mess, but from the photo (right) it’s actually rather nice in it’s way. You’d need an enormous mantelpiece to put it on though.
A pull-along papier mache French Bulldog with nodding head, glass eyes, opening mouth and barking when chain pulled, fitted with coir and red fabric collar, early 20th century.
A probably tribal or theatrical musket.
A pair of William IV neo rococo ormolu candlesticks, each with a heron by a foliate scroll stem on rocaille base, complete with nozzles.
Yes, they are a complete mess!
A wax profile of Catherine the Great, said to be by G Dupre after Wyon, under glass in Georgian ebonised frame.
A broken stained glass roundel, probably 16th century, of St John the Baptist.
The skull and horns of a bison mounted on a shield and stand.
Seventeen terracotta, wood and pottery garden pots, and contents, and a linen box of rope sisal construction.
Two unusual mirrors incorporating the grille from a Rover 75 motor car, and another, a tennis racquet mirror, also a ship’s wheel nutcracker, water flask, wooden tool box with tools and a leather document case.
Four fire extinguishers.
A large quantity of artist’s equipment: pads, paints, an easel, also decorative lamps, birds under glass domes, resin bird figures …
A pair of occasional reproduction tables, each with a galleried centre section and two hinged ends, on moulded tapering legs.
But what are they at the times they aren’t reproduction tables?
As with so much of it, you just have to ask “Why?”.
Piton
So here we are at week 51 of my experiment in documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. It’s been a busy week, not helped by the fact that I was knocked out last weekend and the beginning of the week by my annual ‘flu jab.
Anyway, just for Sue, here’s this week totally non-foodie selection.
Another occasional round-up of recently-encountered quotes which have interested or amused me.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political ideas.
[Aldous Huxley]
He is a vegetarian; I don’t know whether from principle or from gourmandaise. One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.
[Karel Čapek on George Bernard Shaw in Letters from England]
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
[Saki]
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
[Peter Drucker]
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
[Novelist Chuck Palahniuk. Shades of X Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time]
Everyone should be responsible and if they do visit a wood just make sure they wash their boots, wash their dog, whatever’s been running around the leaves, wash their child, to make sure they don’t transfer to the next wood.
[Owen Patterson, UK Environment Secretary, talking about how people can help prevent the spread of the fungus which is killing ash trees; quoted in the Daily Telegraph]
History is nothing more than the sum of countless individual decisions, most of them now lost forever.
[Dominic Sandbrook]
More links to the interesting amusing or curious you may have missed …
Someone has finally realised that there is no way to totally shield children from pornography and that they’re going to find it anyway. So what?, I say. They have to learn these things sooner or later. And how much better to have it out in the open (Oooo, missus!) and that they learn about such things in the comforting environment of home. Oh, they don’t have homes. Hmmm …
Scientists reckon that after a lot of work they’re finally beginning to be able to decode the contents of dreams, without waking up the subject.
This one is definitely not for teatime, and maybe not for work! Pictures of the world’s most revolting cakes. Nah, there must be worse than these, surely!
More pictures, and of all sorts of things. But these are seen microscope photos and many are rather beautiful. See how many you can correctly guess.
So we’re always being told we should drink 8 glasses of water a day. Why? Well actually no-one really knows, or where the myth started. I’ll take my share in beer, thanks!
We’re always being told that fresh pee is sterile. So in another item Mind the Science Gap asks “Mommy, why do I need to wash my hands if I only pee?“. Interesting take on house-training boy children!
Waht to really stand out from Nature’s crowd? Be true blue!
They think it’s good, but from here it looks more like a disaster for book publishing. Penguin and Random House to merge (subject to regulatory approval).
Somewhere in London there’s an observation tower, masquerading as a memorial column, which has been closed to the public for 130 years. IanVisits would like to see the Duke of York Column, just off Pall Mall, reopened. I bet most Londoners don’t even know it exists!
And finally it’s party time down in Kent. Archaeologists have found the remains of what appears to be a 6th century Saxon nightclub (ie. a feasting hall) in Lyminge. It sounds seriously impressive.
Today has been declared Greenford Wasp Day.
Yep, as blogged a week ago, we still have loads of (mostly queen) wasps around. And I do mean loads.
Despite the cold weekend, on average over the past few days we have been evicting two or three a day from the house. They are mostly queens of Vespula vulgaris, the common wasp.
Today was no exception. Until, that is, Noreen made the mistake of going into the loft. From her description it sounds as if the airspace up there was a bit like the Battle of Britain! She caught and evicted around 20 wasps in the space of about 30 minutes. And even then left at least half a dozen in the loft. Every one I was shown was a queen.
Not only is the nest in our eaves, but the loft provides some superb hibernation real estate. There are cracks between the boards, tiles and rafters; there are cardboard boxes, there are cracks in the brickwork — just endless nooks and crannies.
I am just absolutely amazed that not only are the wasps still around, and hatching out, but that we have so many. The colony must have been breeding nothing but queens all summer!
Mind you, for every ten we put out probably at most one will see next Spring.
The ‘flu jab crap continues. Gradually feeling better but still very depressed and not doing much. Hmmph! We are not impressed.
But just to cheer everyone, including me, up a bit I thought we’d have another cartoon from the archives.
Week 50 of the experiment, and just ten weeks to go documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. This week we have … Oh God, it’s going to be a foodie week again!
Pickled Onions. I don’t eat pickled onions for months at a stretch, and then I decide I want them, which is what happened this week. Why I don’t eat them all the time I don’t know, ‘cos I always really enjoy them. Unless you’re going to the fiddler of doing your own (which I used to) then Garner’s are the best available by a long way.
Chillies. The chilli crop is nearing the end; there are just a handful left to ripen and the flowers have almost ceased. Even the prolific tiny red Explosive Ember are petering out. But earlier this week I picked a magnificent collection of about 10 each of the large yellow Scotch Bonnet Yellow Mushroom and Hot Lemon.