Yesterday John and I visited the mushroom exhibition at Somerset house. In 1547, Edward Seymour, Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset started building a palace for himself on the banks of the Thames. In 1552 he was executed and the palace, that by that time was almost completed, reverted to the crown. Since then it's had a long and varied history which you can read about Here The exhibitions full title is Mushrooms;The art, design and future of fungi. It brought together the work of over 40 artists, designers and musicians and was extremely well curated and very interesting.
There was a wall with beautiful paintings of fungi, all of which had been made by Beatrix Potter. I love the illustrations she did for her children's books and these showed the same detail.
I remembered to take a photo of the information for the next picture.
There was a wall of thematic stamps from around the world. This proved impossible to get a good photo of so I gave up. All the pages seemed to belong to the same collection as the writing was the same. It was a large collection of fungi themed stamps.
I really liked the next few fungi and I again remembered to take a photo of the information.
When I first saw these I thought they were preserved fungi. It was fascinating to find out how they were created. I'm sorry about the reflection but there was a video installation just to the side of the display and it created shadows
Many of the pictures and artefacts were behind glass and I couldn't get really good pictures. It was a small but very well done exhibition that looked at fungi in different ways, as a food, a hallucinogenic, religious use and also in design. The final room looked at the use of fungi in design and manufacture of clothes, shoes and furniture. The next time I eat a mushroom I'll be looking at it in a whole new light.
In addition to the exhibition the house itself was beautiful. The floor pattern was giving me ideas for quilt blocks.
Not a lot of sewing got done yesterday and I haven't touched a needle so far today but that is about to change. As soon as I hit the publish button I will be picking up my stitching and starting work on the border of the millennium sampler. Earlier in the week I sorted out the pattern for the spitfire so I'm already to go and get that finished this month. It will require quite a lot of concentration and tonight I need something a little easier, hence the border. At least there aren't any fractional stitches to contend with. You can see where I've already started this side .
Tomorrow is a work day but I'm hoping to have time to get my machine out by late afternoon. Unfortunately it's so easy to get behind with my various projects.
I'm linking this post with Kathy from Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching I'll enjoy catching up with what everyone's been doing with my morning tea.
Take care,
Lyndsey
Love the pictures from the mushroom exhibition, it seems it was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteYour cross stitching is great, the Apollo 11 is fantastic
Hope you had found some time for relax and make some Slow Sunday Stitching.
As for me I was crocheting. Have a great week.
Oh, how much tun is that! Love the floors and the ceiling. We generally have to drive to the east coast to see that sort of thing since the more modern buildings in the west don’t have them. Still love your slow-stitching piece.
ReplyDeleteOh. My. Goodness! I love all the mushrooms! I've got a desire to embroider a mushroom scene, but I'm afraid my stitching won't do justice to mushroom details! We get a huge variety at the camp, and they're so charming and varied! What a fun display -- smart move getting photos of the descriptions, too! ;)
ReplyDeleteHope you had some fun stitching time with your sampler this week!
ReplyDelete