Cornflower

Jessie Marion King

Waist buckle designed by Jessie M. King for Liberty, 1906; silver and enamel.

    Just a quick pointer for anyone who, like Liz - see the comments on Thursday's post, hadn't come across the work of Jessie M. King before and would like to see more. There is a short video here and a couple of sites showing something of her range here and here, while this one gives more on her life.

    If you're interested in the wider subject, I can recommend Hand, Heart and Soul: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland by Elizabeth Cumming, though perhaps try the library first as it's out of print and copies are expensive.

Liverleaf

    One last Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh flower for the week,



 and one last 'Glaswegian version': this is Anemone Hepatica by Mary Newbery Sturrock (daughter of Jessie Newbery, one of The Glasgow Girls - along with Jessie M. King, whose work we had yesterday - and friend of Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose fritillaries appeared on Wednesday).

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough

    Malus hupehensis at the RBGE.

    Apple blossom by Jessie M. King.

Snake-in-the-grass

    Snake's head fritillaries at the RBGE,

and by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Flora's flowers

    Did you greet the dawn this morning? Wash your face in the dew?



    I was outside well before 6.00, taking in the freshness of the day, but there was no dew to be seen.



    We've had few April showers to bring on the May flowers, and the weather is still cold, but here is some of what's in bloom - no cherry blossom yet, or clematis, wisteria leaf buds are still tightly furled, and tulips all very green, but I did see a single stem of lily-of-the-valley just awaiting its moment.

    I'm re-reading Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden just now (I wrote about it here and here) and in it she refers to Botticelli's Primavera and to Flora's Feast - a movable one - "for the flowers that cover her robe and wreathe her head and neck keep their own calendar; they bloom in accordance with nature's laws, not man's." On the subject of the painting itself, she lists its various interpretations, and then goes on, "But it can also speak to us quite simply - of that moment in spring when the transparent veil of green which lies so lightly over the countryside is punctured with the brilliance of flowers for the first time ... of beginnings, awakenings."

    A good May morning to you.

Portrait of a cornflower

    The cornflower tile from the panel Flora's Retinue (a.k.a. Flora's Train) by Walter Crane, made c. 1900. You can see the other tiles here.

    Around the same time, William de Morgan was also putting cornflowers on tiles, but I much prefer Crane's, and then a few years later C.F.A Voysey - whose work I love - used the cornflower in a textile design (pity about the crow).

Textile trail

    This Liberty Tana Lawn design, Midnight Floral Eve*, caught my eye when used to make humble potholders over at the Purl Bee a couple of months ago. I can't seem to find it on Liberty's own site, but what they do list is what inspired it. Click here and scroll right down to the bottom and you'll see it mentioned in the Botanical Garden collection. It comes from a large botanical painting, The Herbarium Specimen, by Rachel Pedder-Smith which "brought together art and science, depicting one specimen to represent each flowering plant family painted in the order of a contemporary DNA-based classification system". You can see details of Rachel's exquisite work here (and buy postcards!).

*It also comes in an equally pretty more summery version.

Mice at work

    Since we're talking about sewing, here are one or two of the beautiful illustrations from Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, a favourite of mine,

and if you've never seen the excellent animated version, the first part - with links to subsequent parts - is here, and let the story be a lesson to us not to entrust the shopping to a cat!

    Above: cornflowers on the mayor's wedding waistcoat, but "no more twist".

Sewing off

    The Seamstress, Stanley Reed, 1941.

    Anyone watching The Great British Sewing Bee? (I love Patrick's suit.)

Peploe

    Go, if you can, to the S.J. Peploe exhibition, on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (the former Dean Gallery) until the 23rd. of June. This is the second in their Scottish Colourist series - we had F.C.B. Cadell last year - and it gives a clear impression of the artist's range, preoccupations and changing style.

    Vexingly, of my fourteen favourite works, very few are available to buy in humble postcard form, and it's also disappointing how inaccurate the colours can be when reproduced, even on the gallery's own site, but for what it's worth my highlights were:

The Coffee Pot, c.1905

Pink roses in blue and white vase, black background, c.1906

Mrs. Peploe, c.1907

The White Dress, c.1908 - I can't find this online, but it's wonderfully vivid and ethereal at the same time.

Spring, Comrie, c.1902 (the real thing is truly springlike and fresh).

Barra, c.1903

Tulips - The Blue Jug, c.1919 (above)

Boy reading, early 1920s

Willy Peploe, c.1930

Tulips and fruit, c.1919 (below)

Green Sea, Iona, c.1920

Morar, 1923

White Lilies, mid-1920s

Still Life with Plaster Cast, c.1931

    The video which accompanies the exhibition and places the artist in context includes footage of Guy Peploe, the painter's grandson, himself an art dealer and author of a book on his grandfather's work, and art historian Elizabeth Cumming on Peploe's interest in exploring the intellectual possibilities of the still life.

Tour

    A whirlwind tour around a few sites today ...

- Melt: chocolate cake with mascarpone and white chocolate topping at Bloomsbury Cooks.

- Chill: slowing down over at Live Simply, Simply Live.

- Shine: shoe design at The Women's Room.

- Grow: the new greenhouse in Monty's garden (I covet it).

- Decorate: a floral centrepiece for San Francisco's de Young Museum Bouquets to Art 2013.

- Flourish: Easter ideas from Laetitia Maklouf.

- Keep in touch: Danielle's literary postcards.

If you're going to be bright ... the circus is not enough!

Meet Kaffe Fassett on Creativebug from Creativebug on Vimeo.

    My thanks to Nancy for the link to this video which marks the exhibition Kaffe Fassett: A Life in Colour, opening today at London's Fashion and Textile Museum.

    If you'd like to learn from the master himself, he and Brandon Mably are leading a Snowball Quilt Workshop on the 4th. of May, and if you haven't already seen it, Kaffe's highly illustrated autobiography Kaffe Fassett: Dreaming in Colour is worth a look.

Winnie the Pooh meets the Bayeux Tapestry

    I found this E.H. Shepard picture on Twitter, but it seems to have come from here. (I doubt I'd get away with sneaking Pooh & co. into our tapestry ...)

Home front

Laura Knight, Ruby Loftus screwing a breech ring, 1942

Grace Golden, An Emergency Food Office, 1941

Evelyn Dunbar, A 1944 Pastoral: Land Girls pruning at East Malling

    Over on Cornflower Books today there's a brief post to introduce the novel Warpaint by Alicia Foster, which is out soon. As you'll see there, it concerns a group of female war artists in the 1940s, and it's inspired by the lives of real artists of the period from whose war work I've chosen these pictures.

Patchworks

    This picture seemed an appropriate one with which to follow Tracy's lovely post - it's The Patchwork Quilt by Lance Calkin (note the sleeping dog).

    If you were around in the very early days of this blog, you may have seen this post* on The Patchworks of Lucy Boston.

*(I've still not done anything with those shirts!)