Will the 'culture warriors' start woezering about the National Trust (you know, that evil 'woke' institution the National Trust) doing this? Bat on a non-slip roof: National Trust adapts manor for nocturnal residents: Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk gives tiles a special coating to stop bats slipping off as part of £6m roofing project: The trust on ( Read more... )

This is an absolutely spiffy set of china plates: Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, The Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932 - 34.: A bold, feminist statement
In the Famous Women Dinner Service, women are invited to sit at the head of the table, so to speak. Their lives, achievements and accomplishments become the focal point of the conversation.

A ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Do You Dream of Terra-Two, which sort of answered some of the Huh? thoughts I'd had in the early stages, but I wasn't sure it was bringing a lot new to the mix.
Megan Whalen Turner, Return of the Thief (was anyone else getting slight I, Claudius vibes from the narrator in the early parts?) - very good, though perhaps I should ( Read more... )

According to a review in today's Guardian, this exhibition, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters at the National Portrait Gallery is a bit of a disappointment: [T]he heroic women behind the frilly-shirted bro-fest: [T]hat this exhibition seems to make a less forceful case for them as a creative force is perhaps a question of venue: the National Portrait Gallery ( Read more... )

The panel I went to this afternoon, the Vonda McIntyre Memorial, alerted me to an artform that she worked in that I had not known of -
Beaded Crochet Sea Creatures - exquisite and scientifically accurate.
And I was very much reminded of Mrs Delany and her botanically accurate flower collages.
While McIntyre was not quite as old as Delany when she ( Read more... )

I’m really shocked by how many people say they’ve never been to bed with someone who looked them in the eye, particularly at the point of orgasm.
And I can think of all sorts of reasons for that, and this statement seems to me to have embedded in it a rather trad missionary position subtext of what is sex; and it reminds me of something that I saw ( Read more... )

I was vaguely thinking, wow, it's more or less a tradition now that partner and I go to an exhibition in this dead time between Christmas and New Year, and looking back see that in fact it's not so at all, it's only been a couple of times in the last few years.
But, anyway, we went to the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A, and havered a bit ( Read more... )

Emma Watson announced that her next film was a live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, the most heartwarming Disney tale ever to be based around Stockholm syndrome.

While I am still *BOGGLE* at the whole phenomenon of making live-action versions of cartoon movies, perhaps I should be relieved - rather than AAAAARGH! - that they are not ( Read more... )

I didn't realise it was a mystery, but this sad story of Constance Wilde, retrospective diagnosis, and medical malpractice looks like a classic case of 'anything wrong with a woman must be down to something in her reproductive organs'.
Crowdfunding saved Timbuktu’s manuscripts: [T]he woman behind T160K is relaunching it with a bigger team and ( Read more... )

However, it was probably better walking around looking at things weather than if it had been very warm. So we wandered around downtown looking at buildings and street furniture (Cubist lamp-post!) and the inside bits of passages (Art Deco cinema!) and I took quite a number of photos - will see how these look when I have uploaded them.

Quite a ( Read more... )