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A Chinese insect and spider plate

Oct29

A recently repeated episode of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip (series 20, episode 25, first broadcast on 7 February 2020) featured a glazed Chinese dish, featuring insects such as bees, dragonflies, spiders, beetles and crickets/grasshoppers, as well as a large central wasp spider. It was bought by Natasha Raskin Sharp from an antiques shop in Newark-on-Trent for £50 (haggled down from the ticket price of £69). It caught my eye too: if I’d seen it in an antiques shop, I’d definitely have bought it.

I couldn’t tell from the views shown if it was a transfer decoration that had then been hand-coloured, or if it was entirely hand-painted.

Natasha thought it was likely to date from the 1960s. It had a stamp on the back with Chinese characters.

Glazed Chinese dish / plate with hand-coloured insects and spiders, featured on the Antiques Road Trip.

 

The dish generated a lot of interest at the auction at Willingham Auctions, of Willingham, Cambridgeshire, and sold for £190.

A quick bit of google-fu and I found the dish had sold as Lot 1236 at the Antique and Good Quality Modern and Collectables auction held on 19 October 2019, and that the auction house had described the dish as ‘Entomology interest – Unusual Chinese glazed earthenware plate of canted square form, the hand-finished decoration comprising a large, central female wasp spider in its web surrounded by a variety of other insects, including a locust, hornet, beetles and other arachnids, the base with orange seal mark.’

I’d love to know a bit more about this dish, especially its age and who made it. I wonder if it is older than Natasha thought? The auction house made no mention of its presumed date. It feels late nineteenth century to me, but I know diddly squat about Chinese ceramics. Does anyone out there have any knowledge of this intriguing dish? If so, I’d love to hear.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 23

Sep29

Part 23 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1972 blue lace agate ring by Peter Guy Watson. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Jupiter. Photographed in ultraviolet by the Hubble Space telescope, and rotated by me so it better matches the ring. Playing god, me? From the fabulous NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) series.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & licence: Judy Schmidt.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, spider eyes, Pluto and its moon Charon, the rings of Saturn, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, some lichen, the stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt, the Quality Street lady, a herb knife, a sea anemone, an Iron Age miniature votive shield, the Mayan Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, a screw propeller from SS ‘Great Britain’, a pair of clackers, a morel, a dalek, and a chessboard.

Salisbury Cathedral peregrines 2019

May3

The peregrines (Falco peregrinus) at Salisbury Cathedral are nesting again (yay – last year for the first time since 2014 there were no eggs laid, booo).

Peregrine on the nest box, 3 May 2019. Still from the Cathedral’s live webcam feed.

The Cathedral has two webcams set up this year – they can both be found here (the sound appears to be on for the first one, a noisy hissing, so reaching for the mute might be useful).  The peregrines also have a YouTube channel, which confusingly wasn’t updated in 2018 – the videos are here instead.

Last year was an eventful one in that there were plenty of adult peregrines on the site, but no eggs were laid. Fingers crossed for this year: I gather an egg was laid on 8 April but can’t find out if any more were laid (clutches are usually between 3 and 4 eggs, I gather). I’ll just have to wait until the incubating bird moves off the nest.

UPDATE 5 May 2019: I’ve just found this video on Youtube (on the Cathedral’s main channel rather than the dedicated peregrines’ one), which tells that four eggs have been laid (8, 10, 12 and 15 April), and as incubation is 29-32 days, they are expected to hatch in the middle of May.

UPDATE 29 May 2019: It looks from the webcams like there are four babies in the nest. Yay!

Four fluffy peregrine chicks on the nest, 29 May 2019.

Different view of the parent peregrine with some of the chicks visible. 29 May 2019.

Found a Salisbury Cathedral video on Youtube which tells they were born, one a day, on 15-18 May.

UPDATE 11 June 2019: The four chicks (three females and one male) were ringed.

UPDATE 14 June 2019:  I have seen one chick by the nest on the webcam, and we have had several days of very cold, wet weather. I do hope the other three have survived, and have merely wandered off camera.

UPDATE 18 July 2019: Two young ornithologists from the Cathedral School present an update on Youtube. The four chicks (Sky, Petunia, Pansy, and Perry) have all fledged successfully. Sally, last year’s female, has left Salisbury, flying east along the A303 corridor to Wincanton, and last recorded in Trowbridge:

Hannu Ikonen reindeer moss jewellery

May3

Every now and then I come across a jewellery designer who is pretty much ‘invisible’ online (I don’t have a fabulous library of books on jewellery, sadly, so google is my source). This was the case with Finnish designer Liisa Vitali (about whom I was at least able to cobble together a post of sorts), and is in fact much more so the case with her compatriot Hannu Ikonen. I have no doubt this is due in part to the majority of sources being in Finnish, but information about him is nigh-on absent online. I have come across the same small paragraph about him, endlessly repeated on different websites selling his pieces, but with no biographical details or detailed information about his jewellery designs.

Turning to google books, all I could find was a publication from 1982, titled Welcome to Finland / Soyez Les Bienvenus en Finlande / Willkommen in Finland by Anders Nyborg and published by the University of Michigan. And even then, I was only able to see a snippet: as the texts in the three languages were side by side I was able to glean that Ikonen was then considered a rising star, and had worked in wood and precious metals for ten years (ie since the early 1970s), and that he was self-taught. I have googled vainly to try to find out more about him, even simple things like his date and place of birth, where he worked and so on, but with no joy. I do not know if he is still alive. I do hope so. I am guessing that perhaps he is/was a sculptor if he worked in wood as well as metals, and this would explain the fabulously sculptural qualities of his ‘reindeer moss’ series of jewellery.

Sterling silver reindeer moss bracelet by Hannu Ikonen, with a 1977 hallmark. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photos for details.

I recently acquired my first piece of Hannu Ikonen’s jewellery in the reindeer moss series. This series is usually found in bronze, with sterling silver pieces coming up for sale more rarely. Ikonen designed for Valo-Koru, a Finnish jewellery firm that operated in Turku from 1969 onwards.

Reindeer moss is a misnomer, as it is a lichen of the genus Cladonia (cup lichen) rather than a moss. The lichens in this genus are the main food of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, known as caribou in North America).

Cladonia fimbriata. Photo by Mareike Hummert on Wikimedia Commons.

Cladonia fimbriata. Photo by James Lindsey on Wikimedia Commons.

In making the reindeer moss series, Hannu Ikonen joined an illustrious group of Finnish designers inspired by nature and the natural beauty around them. Search on Google images for ‘Hannu Ikonen reindeer moss’ to see the glorious range of his designs.

Sunday stroll: RSPB Arne

Oct9

On Sunday we headed out to the Arne peninsula on the south-western side of Poole Harbour, to visit the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) reserve there. We saw a group of spoonbills, recent arrivals to the UK which are now breeding here. It’s a lovely reserve, with areas of deciduous woodland, heathland and marshland, so attracts lots of different kinds of birds.

Looking through the Scots Pines (Pinus sylvestris) to Poole Harbour. There’s a group of spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia) in there, not that you can make them out!

The best my crappy camera could manage of the spoonbills. I counted about 48 individuals.

Either a Common darter  (Sympetrum striolatum) or a Ruddy darter (Sympetrum sanguineum) dragonfly. He let me put the camera almost on top of him!

If I was clever I would stitch these next two photos together … but I’m not. Various islands in Poole Harbour, including Long Island, Round Island, Green Island and Brownsea Island.

The sandy cliffs by the beach at Shipstal Point. The archaeologist in me wanted to cut them back to a vertical section ….

RSPB website

Rings that remind me of things: Part 20

Sep19

Part 20 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1969 Erik Granit modernist ring in sterling silver. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Morel (Morchella ulmaria). Photo by Walt Sturgeon (Mycowalt) at Mushroom Observer, via Wikimedia Commons.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, spider eyes, Pluto and its moon Charon, the rings of Saturn, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, some lichen, the stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt, the Quality Street lady, a herb knife, a sea anemone, an Iron Age miniature votive shield, the Mayan Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, a screw propeller from SS ‘Great Britain’, and a pair of clackers.

Man O’War Cove and Durdle Door, Dorset

Jul6

Last Saturday (30 June) we rather rashly decided to visit the Dorset coast – along with most of the rest of the UK, it seemed. The weather has been scorching and so we decided we wanted to see Man O’War Cove and Durdle Door, neither of which places we’d visited before.

Man O’War Cove is part of a larger bay called St Oswald’s Bay, and is marked at its western end by a headland of almost vertically-bedded rock. On the other side of this headland is the famous rock arch, Durdle Door, and another bay. The cliffs behind the bays are steep. Click on all photos to enlarge/embiggen/bigify.

The view of Man O’War Cove as you approach from the car park. Durdle Door is on the other side of the headland, off to the right of the photo.

Man O’ War Cove is the nearer of the two bays: all together this is St Oswald’s Bay. The rocks in the sea are Man O’War Rocks, and the promontory separating the two coves is Man O’War Head. Looking to the east.

Durdle Door, with the high ground of the Isle of Portland (not actually an island) in the background to the left, and Weymouth in the background to the right.

Durdle Door. Some lads were climbing up the right hand part of the arch and jumping off into the sea – you can make them out if you enlarge the photo.

We climbed up a footpath back to the car park, and were rewarded with this fabulous view of the headland: Man O’War Cove on the left and Durdle Door on the right.

All the time we were there was a constant stream of green t-shirt clad walkers was coming from the west. They were all taking part in the Macmillan Cancer Support Jurassic Coast Mighty Hike, a 22-mile walk along the coast to raise sponsorship funds for this fantastic charity.

Green-clad charity walkers for the Mighty Hike organised by Macmillan Cancer Care. The walkers were doing a 22-mile walk in the scorching heat – much respect!

If you are interested in the geology of the area, this illustrated article is a good place to start.

Sunday stroll: West Dorset

May7

Yesterday the weather was so glorious that we headed out first thing for an adventure. We wanted to do a walk along a river, and as the rivers round our way are mainly lacking in public rights of way, we headed to one of our favourite parts of the world, West Dorset. Click on all photos to embiggen/bigify.

Our first port of call was Pilsdon Pen, a hillfort-topped hill very near where my parents used to live. It used to be thought the highest point in Dorset, until a re-survey showed that the neighbouring Lewesdon Hill was a mighty two metres higher.

Lewesdon Hill from Pilsdon Pen.

On a really clear day the views are spectacular, but the heat haze made the visibility not so great. Lots of lovely chubby lambs on the hill.

Chubby lamb on Pilsdon Pen.

Then we drove on to Whitchurch Canonicorum, and did a short walk along the banks of the River Char, which flows down to the sea at the aptly named Charmouth.

River Char to the right of the photo. It’s narrow and quite deeply incised.

The walk was pretty, but a bit disappointing nature-wise: we only saw five species of butterfly (orange tip, peacock, small white, speckled wood and brimstone), and very few birds, though we did have a brief encounter with a heron. The wild flowers were also rather limited: mainly dandelions, lady’s smock (also known as cuckoo flower), greater stitchwort, bluebells, wild garlic and field buttercups.

Loads of lady’s smock in the damper areas.

Beautiful wild garlic.

Bluebells and greater stitchwort growing in the shade of a hedgerow.

Afterwards we went to the village pub, the Five Bells, but as they didn’t have any alcohol-free lager (I know, we’re both on the wagon and needs must when you fancy a cold one!) we went on to the Shave Cross Inn in Marshwood Vale. We’ve been here many times and it’s a lovely pub, but sadly too popular yesterday as we couldn’t get a table to eat. And no alcohol-free beer either, so we contented ourselves with big glasses of fizzy water with ice and a slice of lemon and pretended they were g&ts, sitting in the sunny garden. There’s a lovely old Victorian postbox built in to the side of the pub.

Victorian postbox built in to the side of the Shave Cross Inn. The VR stands for Victoria Regina (Queen Victoria).

Then on to the pretty market town of Bridport, which unsurprisingly was Sunday-shut. We snaffled a supermarket sandwich as a pub lunch anywhere wasn’t going to happen (too busy on this Bank Holiday weekend and too late). We took the coast road eastwards out of Bridport, and stopped at the National Trust-owned Cogden Beach at the western end of Chesil Beach. There were quite a few anglers fishing from the shingle, and a few hardy swimmers. The water was pretty calm and I was tempted, until I went for a paddle. Not warm! One very excitable young woman was swimming and shouting to her friends on the beach ‘I love the sea!’ so happily that it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s grown a mermaid tail by now.

She loves that sea!

I tried to take an arty-farty photo of the shingle (pea to grape sized here, where at the eastern end of Chesil they are sweet potato sized), but when I looked at it on screen just now it looked like I could have taken the shot of a dumpy bag of gravel at my local Travis Perkins. Not one for Instagram!

Hmm. Cogden Beach or Travis Perkins?

Then back in the car and we decided that rather than take the A35, the quick road back to Dorchester, we’d bimble along the road that runs vaguely parallel and to the south of it. I cycled this road back in 1987 (a Sunday cycle) when I was working on the archaeological excavations ahead of the construction of the Dorchester bypass and had bought myself a bicycle so I could see some more of the countryside. It was quite nostalgic visiting again – we drove through Long Bredy, Littlebredy and passed the gateway of a new country house that I remember seeing a tv progamme about many moons ago: Bellamont House, built in the Neo Georgian / Neo Gothic Revival style. We admired their golden duck gates and the longhorn cattle within.

Bellamont House, between Long Bredy and Littlebredy.

We decided to head home via the Cerne Abbas Giant: he always seems so pleased to see us.

The Cerne Abbas Giant.

Look closer.

Snow birds

Mar20

In the two recent periods of snowy weather (The Beast from the East, over 1, 2 and 3 March) and the Mini Beast from the East (from 18 March onwards – no more snow falling but it is still heavy on the ground), we’ve been putting even more food down for the wild birds. We’ve been rewarded by some great views of birds we rarely see in the garden – and three species that are new to us.

The first new species might not seem that exciting, as they are all around us in the village, nesting in rookeries in the tall beech trees, but we have never had rooks (Corvus frugilegus) actually come down into our garden before.

Rook (Corvus frugilegus). Photo by Rafał Komorowski (Wikimedia Commons).

Rook (Corvus frugilegus). Photo by Axel Mauruszat (Wikimedia Commons).

The second new bird was a very exciting sighting, and he’s been back several times: a male hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes). This is the biggest finch in the UK, and we’ve never seen one before, anywhere, so to see one in our garden was wonderful. And he’s bloody massive. I tried to get a photo of him next to a chaffinch, the finch it most resembles, but sadly failed to get a decent shot.

Male hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes). Photo by Mikils (Wikimedia Commons).

Male hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes).

Top to bottom: Starling, blackbird, hawfinch.

The third new bird is a male reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus). This little bird looks superficially like a male house sparrow, but has a distinctive black head, bright white collar and a black streak like a tie down its chest. Its body plumage is a little streaky in appearance, reminiscent of a siskin’s or a dunnock’s.

Male reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus). Photo by Andreas Trepte (Wikimedia Commons).

We’ve also had quite a few fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) and redwing (Turdus iliacus) visit during the snowy periods. We only see these winter visitors occasionally.

Turdus overload: top to bottom Fieldfare, Song thrush, Redwing, Blackbird.

Bird species seen in our garden during the snowy spells of March 2018:

Blackbird  (Turdus merula)

Song thrush  (Turdus philomelos)

Fieldfare  (Turdus pilaris)

Redwing  (Turdus iliacus)

Robin  (Erithacus rubecula)

Long-tailed tit  (Aegithalos caudatus)

Blue tit  (Cyanistes caeruleus)

Great tit  (Parus major)

Chaffinch  (Fringilla coelebs)

Goldfinch  (Carduelis carduelis)

Greenfinch  (Chloris chloris)

Hawfinch   (Coccothraustes coccothraustes)

Siskin  (Spinus spinus)

Reed bunting  (Emberiza schoeniclus)

Dunnock (Hedge sparrow)  (Prunella modularis)

House sparrow  (Passer domesticus)

Starling  (Sturnus vulgaris)

Pied wagtail  (Motacilla alba yarrellii)

Wood pigeon  (Columba palumbus)

Collared dove  (Streptopelia decaocto)

Jackdaw  (Coloeus monedula)

Rook  (Corvus frugilegus)

My first earthquake

Feb20

Well, my first earthquake that I’ve noticed. And I was very excited indeed. On Saturday 17 February at 2.31 in the afternoon there was a magnitude 4.4 earthquake with its epicentre c. 20 km NNE of Swansea in south Wales, so about 140 km from us. The tremors were felt across much of the UK. This is pretty small beer in the scale of things (my brother in New Zealand probably wouldn’t even call this an earthquake …), but it was the most powerful earthquake in the generally not-very-seismically-active UK for ten years. As it was relatively shallow (7.4 km) it was well felt throughout large parts of Wales and England. And I was very excited to feel it.

I was sitting at my desk in my study upstairs. The floorboards are old and a little loose, and I felt them wobble, as if a heavy lorry was passing by (except we live up a rough track too narrow for a lorry) or if someone was standing behind me jiggling up and down and making the floorboards wallow a little. I called down to Chap to ask if he had felt it, but he hadn’t – he was standing on the concrete floor, so maybe that made the difference – fewer points of contact on a harder, less flexible surface.

The response on the EMSC website ‘did you feel it?’ survey.

I added my observations to both the British Geological Survey (BGS) and United States Geological Survey (USGS)‘s ‘Did you feel it?’ questionnaires, as well as the EMSC website. The responses to these citizen science surveys help seismologists in their studies. Interestingly, the BGS has the magnitude at 4.6 and the USGS at 4.2. I’m going with with the EMSC and BBC’s reported 4.4.

I’ve probably experienced earthquakes before (I’ve lived and worked in several seismically active earthquake zones) but this is the first I’ve noticed.