Silk fronds simply caught in a fringed weave structure. The poetry of this piece lies in it’s rhythmn of expanding tonal ombre, and it’s reminiscence to the highly stylised motifs. Japan’s ornamental tradition is filled with geometric motifs that take their inspiration from the natural world. I am thinking in particular of the water motif in the visual language of Japanese wood block design. To describe in words one would be better scattering them into a ukeyo-e poem ((浮世絵 which literally means “pictures of the floating world”) otherwise referenced in Haiku; and some words…

curve, arc rains, growing

in the motion of the sea

captured, tapered, again

Images show Masakazu Kobayashi’s ‘Hills of Kyoto’ 1996. Silk

I found them to be memorable pieces from a career spanning 40 years. My favorite is a monumental hanging with weaving and embroidery called Tapestry of the thousand longest rivers of the world. The piece deals with issues of quantification, irregularity, and the classification and imposition of order on things that defy or elude imposition. Elements such as the length and size of world rivers; and whether the figures for these are measurable during drought, high water or mid level tides.

Details of Tapestry of the thousand longest rivers of the world 1976-82

It is a protection and an exposure at once. It is a controller of the senses and an elevator.

Lace is an enigma, of which I was pleasantly reminded whilst walking through the streets of London. Hackney House has an expose of cultural treats, in the heart of East London; neatly hidden behind this delicate lace fence by Dutch Design House Demakersvan.

c.1966

Hans Jurgen-Holzer’s screen printed cotton for Heals Fabrics.

The ready-to-assemble couture is perhaps a forerunner to Miyake’s APOC collection and beyond, but with rustic, raw cheek!

Starting with bamboo master Morigami Jin’s work. Morigami is represented, along with 30 fellow Japanese bamboo artists, by Tai Gallery in Santa Fe.

59th Street Bridge! Feelin’ Groovy!

Inhabitat  has a great run-down of the ‘green’ successes of this year’s show.

Lewis, himself a master of tales, captures something of the essence of what makes The Wind in the Willows such a loved text since its first publication in 1908 . An illustrator’s dream, it has been visualised by many over the years. Scholar Annie Gauger spent over 10 years researching the text and illustrations, including Oxford’s Bodleian library collection, to compile this wonderful annotated edition.

Curiously the question of anthropomorphising the main four characters, or of leaving them to their ‘natural’ animal attire, has had various treatments over the years. Kenneth Graham seems to have pictured them in their natural state, though the more recent the illustrations the more complex the ‘humanisation’ seems to be. Gauger’s edition is a must read for all who love the classic tale and it’s characters, delving into the text in such detail with personal, historical, and illustrative anecdotes. Having spent many a day rambling around Oxford’s canal and river banks it is delightful to think that Graham too was thinking of these places when writing the letters to his son ‘the Mouse’. Letters, which were to form the text of this great children’s classic with which I never tire. The illustrations below are by  self taught American illustrator Paul Bransom; the first to fully illustrate the text. They were reproduced using chromolithography in the 1913 edition, published by Scribners.

One of the most quoted books of all time it is full of delicious character moments such as these:

“All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

…“There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.”

…`Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad, never offering to move. `The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here to-day–in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped–always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!’

…’What are you always nagging at Toad for?’ inquired the Badger, rather peevishly. ‘What’s the matter with his English? It’s the same what I use myself, and if it’s good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for you!’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said the Rat humbly. ‘Only I think it ought to be “teach ‘em,” not “learn ‘em.”‘

‘But we don’t want to teach ‘em,’ replied the Badger. ‘We want tolearn ’em— learn ‘em, learn ‘em! And what’s more, we’re going to doit, too!’