Travel Treasures

Barry and I often laugh at the sort of tourists we are.  When we travel, many of our favourite moments come from trawling through flea markets, junk stores and hardware stores.  We love a good hardware store!

Yes, we visit galleries and museums and walk for miles across cobbled streets, but we exclaim "oh happy day" when we pick up a flea market or hardware bargain. The only fun thing about unpacking when you get home is unwrapping all these little parcels and re-discovering them.

Here are some of the treasures we collected along the way...

Some beautiful old postcards and nibs found in Prague.

The most amazing gathering of documents pertaining to the will of an English woman, found in Brugge.

A couple more wooden type lower vowels and numbers from a fabulous shop in Paris - the name of which translates to "fell off the back of a truck".

A bundles of bibs and bobs - some slate pencils from Brugge, some bone folders from Prague and a tracing wheel from Prague. The bone folders were unexpectedly discovered in a hardware store.

One of my calligraphic friends once told me - buy old ruling pens whenever you find them. So I did!  I love that these five are all different and am looking forward to cleaning them and getting to work with them.  The beautiful one in the cylindrical case came from a flea market in Paris; the rest were all Prague finds.

A happy gathering...now all packed up and ready to head to the studio.

Arras, Paris and Prague

We are continuing our whirl through parts of Europe and having a fine time. We farewelled Brugge and headed back into the north of France, to the Somme area to follow my gr-grandfather's brother who died there in WW1 and also the place and battle where my gr-grandfather won his Military Medal.

We stayed in Arras, and found the grave amongst the many at Serre Rd Cemetery no. 2, Beaumont Hamel.

On to Paris and some images of our few days there. Some gorgeous artwork, one of the many cemetery cats we saw in Montmartre, and The River, of words at the Musee Quai Branly.

We are now in Prague and lucky for us the first snow appeared overnight! Snow always makes a city feel more special, for folk who live where it never snows. 

Snow dusting on a rusty sculpture outside our apartment.

I got a little bit besotted with the ice-drips. It rained last night before freezing...

Even the trees and berries had frozen ice drips...

And the snow-capped roofs of Prague...

For a girl from the sub-tropics it all feels very fairy-tale-ish!

Lots of lettering

Barry and I have moved onto Brugge in Belgium - the capital of European calligraphy - and I have been having a wonderful time!

It is such a delight to visit a city that honours and values lettering so much. Calligraphic renderings appear in so many business names and signs and house numbers.

It is a beautiful city for wandering in as well and we have walked miles each day on the cobbled streets, looking at the marvellous skylines and along the gorgeous canals. Here are some moments in Brugge...

First some lettering...

And then the skyline and canals...

Peace in Ypres

If you look back a post (go past Continuing on with a new book, to Peace in Ypres) you'll find the blog I just finished and posted...I started it before leaving home and mobile technology has defeated me and it appears to have been posted last Sunday...half and half really!

Continuing on with a new book

So brown and rust are well and truly part of my making right now; they feel very soothing and gentle to me and we are old friends.

This new book is taking shape or form a bit; progressing here, wandering over there; coming back to start again...

I love it when I have time to meander my way through the making - letting what happens just happen.

In no particular order of sequences, the book reveals itself in small parts to me.

Lots of options, plenty of potential; no real decisions yet.

Peace in Ypres...

Barry and I are fortunate to have been able to travel to Ieper in Belgium (in Flanders Fields...) to attend the opening of the exhibition "Pieces for Peace".

Barry and I both entered books, along with fellow artists Susan Bowers and Helen Malone.  A calligraphic friend Olive Bull in Tasmania, also entered a book and as far as we know that is the Australian contingent - altho we will be looking for more!

Here are Susan's, Barry's and my book together before we packed and posted them to travel across the world to the site of so much death and destruction in World War I. It is a beautiful thing to realise that the books in the exhibition are all contributions to peace; they are from across the globe and they are saying to us all - may there be peace and no more war.

Before we came away I printed more of my "Flanders Poppies" prints and wrote and made four more "Peace in your Pocket" books. This time I wrote peace in English, French, Flemish and German - the languages spoken around Flanders then and now.  Along with "peace is every step' I hope to share these gifts of peace with people we meet and those who have organised the exhibition and helped us out.

The opening was a gala event and we were made to feel very welcome. There are some wonderful pieces - both books and calligraphy - and the Aussie contingent looks right at home.

Here are Helen and Olive's books, and some fragments of some of my favourites ....

Juergen Vercaemst of Belgium

Torsten Kolle from Germany

Juergen Vercaemst from Belgium in a different book

Inge Vos from the Netherlands

A special exhibition and a special,opportunity to view it.  We have also been re-tracing the final day of my gr-grandfather in WWI and it has been special for that as well...

More on The Library of Lost Words -

I did promise that I would let you know as soon as I unwrapped a packet of lost words, so true to my word, here we are.

The top page is pretty badly affected, but the other eight in the bundle look beautifully worn.

What is left of the top page's word...

So having unwrapped a bundle I began to play with a rusty old tin.

Putting a tied bundle in...

And then the untied bundle with some fellow travellers alongside.

What's not to love about a bundle?