China has, eventually, begun to appear on my shelves, although it's somewhat different from what I started searching for more than a month ago. It didn't take too long to discover that I have an innate expensive taste in porcelain, the imari patterns I was most attracted to were art nouveau Derby pieces, beautiful but impractical for use. Fortunately, very similar designs were produced by Royal Albert a little later, and these are relatively inexpensive.
Any notion I had of buying a matching service soon went out the window, but the company produced many similar patterns featuring a predominantly blue rim decoration, with the other imari colours and gilding, that almost match. At first glance you see the similarities, but as you look closer the variations become more apparent, and yet the whole still stays together. The great thing is that there's room for it to evolve, whereas a perfectly matched service could only ever change by being broken, or completely replaced.
China aside I've been picking up silver plated items, a set of spoons here, a tea strainer there, which again don't perfectly match but they're of the same age as the china - 1910 to 1930 - and are as similar as they're different. I've also half concocted a character for an owner, someone who inherited pieces, or replaced items as pieces were broke. That may sound a bit mad, but I've done this with my photographic collecting - building up an outfit for a period photographer - and it adds another dimension.
This has preoccupied me for weeks, though it's taken my mind off cigarettes, and I've managed to write a few things, I just haven't finished any of them :) 'Midnight Angels' has come back, I suppose I'm too involved with the characters to leave them alone too long - especially Pat - the Edwardian stories are rolling slowly along, I've had another modern setting idea and I've been thinking about something with a not quite unsympathetic tg character, whose actions hurt everyone around her, not through malice but her best intentions.
It's all on the backburner for the next week as I'm off to Swansea with a couple of cameras and a dozen rolls of film :)
Comments
Sounds like...
... you've found a way to enjoy doing the dishes. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
It's fraught I tellsya
Washing ninety year old bone china is only slightly less nerve wracking than disassembling camera shutters :)
Sadly, I don't have any space left
to collect any more clutter without getting rid of something. I appear to have a natural reluctance to that. If my house was to be suddenly covered in tons of dust or soil, a la Pompeii, archaeologists would have great fun puzzling over the clutter for years. Books, computers, telescopes, bike bits, enough clothes to start a shop, and these funny plastic bullet shaped things!
Angharad
Angharad
There's always room for more
I'm a bit of a hoarder too, but I've reformed over the last few years. I used to hold onto clothes, and had a couple of closets full. They went the year before last, when I threw away everything I wouldn't wear again, or that didn't have a sentimental association. Books will always be a problem as I can never bring myself to part with a book I love; the major perk of my job is free books, and these tend to pile up unread. Fortunately the local charity shops collect every few months, so I can make a bit of room. CD's and LP's I can never part with, but they're easy enough to keep in - alphabetical - order, and although I've around a thousand they don't take up too much room.
My camera collection is a bugbear. I used to have most of it on display in my living room, which was a bit like living in a museum. I haven't got rid of anything, but shelved out the cupboard under the stairs to take about three quarters of it. Now only one corner of the room is devoted to photographica, with room to display about a hundred cameras - I switch them around every couple of months - with some old projectors and darkroom gear on permanent display (and there's still room for a Belshazzar epidiascope, if I can ever find a complete example.
Epidiascope
I've not heard about an epidiascope in years. We had one at school, but I've no idea what make it was. The only time I can remember it being used was in a French lesson where we each had to give a short talk (in French of course) about one of our hobbies. One of the pupils used the epidiascope to show part of his stamp collection.
I can't for the life of me remember what I spoke about; but, given my lack of ability in speaking French, I'm sure nobody understood it anyway :)
Epidiascope?
For everyone as curious as I look at this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_projector
Oh so that's what that is!
hugs!
grover
epidiascope
I have one of those. I didn't mention cameras etc in my clutter. It includes an epidiascope.
Angharad
Angharad
I'll just...
... bemusedly shake my head while smiling widely. Yer totally mad, ya knows that right? But hey, nuthin' wrong with that. I can't help smiling even if I have absolutely no idea what a... whosie what projector thingie is.. I can almost picture one though... see mad.
Kristina
I prefer...
...to think of it as cultivating eccentricities - I have about twenty now. :)
Crown Derby
Strangely, despite my love of Derbyshire, Crown Derby is not my favourite thing. I'm a practical chap and find it far too fussy for my taste. I much prefer the products of a pottery 10 miles north of the city. Denby is more my cup of tea ... and the plates sure hold a lot of gravy :)
We've got a silver tea service somewhere. It's hidden away in a box and never been used. It's probably EPNS but perhaps I should look. It might go towards the retirement fund lol
I had a home-made epidiascope as a child. I wonder what happened to it? I expect, like a lot of my stuff, it got wrecked by my much younger siblings after I left home. I had a big collection of cigarette cards (also disappeared ;) ) and I used it to project them onto a white wall.
Hope you're keeping up with the no-smoking effort and finding it easier. Looking forward to the resurrection of 'Midnight Angels' too.
Geoff
The perfect name
I've seen quite a few epidiascopes for sale, but I've set my heart on the Aldiss Belshazzar because it has a perfect name for what it does. You could not see a company today applying a name like that to a digital projector, a. because a lot of people wouldn't know the reference, and b. they'd be afraid of alienating those who did. I live in hope of finding one intact enough to restore to working order, but I fear after sixty years that hope's in vain (though I've thought a few times before and the item's turned up somewhere).
Although I find modern Derby imari too ornate, and too heavily gilded, I like the turn of the century patterns - the intricacy of the patterns, and the variations on a limited pallet / oriental style fascinate me.. again it's a 'similar but different' thing. I have a cupboard full of Denby Chevron pieces I've picked up over the last ten years from charity shops, and latterly eBay - like the narrator in 'At Last' I have a small fetish for Sixties / Seventies moderne... there wasn't a lot of it around in our grimy little mining village at the time, so we always felt a bit left out. Unlike the narrator however I don't mince about in tartan hotpants in a seventies grotto... honest :)