Reading Proserpina some more "Botany is not so much the description of plants as their biography", intrigued by Ruskin's personal mythology of plants. And further, "I have drawn the faded beside the full branch and know not which is more beautiful." To capture something, in anything like a truthful representation, has to involve all its cycles of change - birth, flowering, dying. There is something very eastern about this view.
Also, for us, a comment from James Dearden about Ruskin's Glenfinlas portrait - in the top left corner there is a small flower growing on rocks, which neither Ruskin nor Millais could identify. Ruskin picked it and sent it to his friend, Lady Trevelyan for identification. The flower is still with the letter, but where is the letter we wonder?
Spoke some more with Howard Hull - very interested in the associations he drew for us around the language of plants. How little seems to be known about the important private language of plants exchanged between Rose La Touche and Ruskin. Yet existing in a context where the 'language of plants' was not an unusual way to communicate secret meanings between people - the fascinating Tussie Mussie (?) - the posy of flowers commonly put together with the specific aim of communicating a symbolic meaning. How quickly we seem to have lost this tradition, this comfort in the naming and symbolic meanings of flowers.
The Acanthus leaf - so very fundamental to Ruskin's understanding of gothic architecture in the Stones of Venice. The Wild Strawberry (and the drawing), the Bilberry (Whortleberry), Milkwort (which he first most fondly encountered on the foothills of the Alps at Jura), Violet, the Thistle and its more tormented mythology for Ruskin - the agony of mother earth (worth exploring and very Celtic and Beuysian), the Foxglove which in a single stem contains both nascent buds, full flower, seed and decay - birth old age and death all co-existing. The red Poppy and it's tortured escape into translucent finest bloom, Moss, wild Daffodils and his associations with his alpine journeys. Ruskin's book of pressed flowers and notes on them from his Alpine journeys at Lancaster. The idea of uniformity and its association with manufacturing and the death of personal creativity - as Howard said "imperfection is a sign of life."
But of ferns and foxgloves, really so prevalent here now, there is really little. Linton, the previous owner of Brantwood, wrote a book on Ferns. Sally showed us brambles - "three when young, five when adult". She thought Ruskin did or would have liked Teasel, Goat's Beard, Herb Bennet, Bog Myrtle, Milk Thistle, the Orange Lily. The Orchard, interestingly, is positioned as part of a flower garden - the orchard is there for the flowers, not the fruit, in a Ruskinian way. We enjoyed the Thistles, Royal fern, Monkshood, and the Hart's Tongue.
We took a walk in the fern garden, rising up to the Cragg through endless ferns and foxgloves, where upon the top the grass was softly seeding and blowing in a gentle breeze. Some moments of pure peace felt up there, listening to this breeze as it passed through the grass. The boggy areas were a wonder, the scent of bog myrtle crushed between the fingers puts one in mind of some churches - francincense amd myrrh. And the humble Billberry, which Ruskin decribed in such rapture. Some wonderful thistles - with their increasingly architectural qualities of leaf.
Descending, we called in on Lawson park, an artists residency place spun off from the old Grizedale forest sculpture park. A workman was scratching his head in bewilderment at some sheets of heavy plywood. "I'm building a garden shed for them, this wood is apparently left over from some art installation or other" he said. "It'll not be exterior grade ply then" we ventured. "That's right, so it'll just fall apart in a few weeks" he said. "I've told them that, but they want me to build it anyway." That, we thought, just about sums up the profound wastefulness (spiritually and physically) of contemporary art. But this experience was trumped when we went on to see an installation by Graham Fagen, which, as far as we could see, consisted of some trees planted in a field, some of which were dead. You'd never know it was art of course, but we had been given a nice catalogue about it, so we knew it was art. However, we spent ten bemused minutes before we found Fagen's trees thinking that the pig pen before it was in fact his art piece... maybe it was? Vacousness triumphs.
Slowly, some things are coming into increasing focus, mainly around this world of plants. But it's overwhelming here in its richness of impressions and possibilities. One feels it's all in the very small things, the very small observations, but these are infinite in number. Every foxglove flower is different and there are millions of them. The naming of plants is forever tied up with their meanings to us as human beings - Ruskin took great liberties with naming, we're thinking we should all perhaps name our plants to reflect our own direct and personal responses to them. Something about the seven lamps of architecture, seven flowers, seven screens. The seven lamps of - Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience.
Finally we enjoyed a small deluge and got quite gloriously wet.
Also, for us, a comment from James Dearden about Ruskin's Glenfinlas portrait - in the top left corner there is a small flower growing on rocks, which neither Ruskin nor Millais could identify. Ruskin picked it and sent it to his friend, Lady Trevelyan for identification. The flower is still with the letter, but where is the letter we wonder?
Spoke some more with Howard Hull - very interested in the associations he drew for us around the language of plants. How little seems to be known about the important private language of plants exchanged between Rose La Touche and Ruskin. Yet existing in a context where the 'language of plants' was not an unusual way to communicate secret meanings between people - the fascinating Tussie Mussie (?) - the posy of flowers commonly put together with the specific aim of communicating a symbolic meaning. How quickly we seem to have lost this tradition, this comfort in the naming and symbolic meanings of flowers.
The Acanthus leaf - so very fundamental to Ruskin's understanding of gothic architecture in the Stones of Venice. The Wild Strawberry (and the drawing), the Bilberry (Whortleberry), Milkwort (which he first most fondly encountered on the foothills of the Alps at Jura), Violet, the Thistle and its more tormented mythology for Ruskin - the agony of mother earth (worth exploring and very Celtic and Beuysian), the Foxglove which in a single stem contains both nascent buds, full flower, seed and decay - birth old age and death all co-existing. The red Poppy and it's tortured escape into translucent finest bloom, Moss, wild Daffodils and his associations with his alpine journeys. Ruskin's book of pressed flowers and notes on them from his Alpine journeys at Lancaster. The idea of uniformity and its association with manufacturing and the death of personal creativity - as Howard said "imperfection is a sign of life."
But of ferns and foxgloves, really so prevalent here now, there is really little. Linton, the previous owner of Brantwood, wrote a book on Ferns. Sally showed us brambles - "three when young, five when adult". She thought Ruskin did or would have liked Teasel, Goat's Beard, Herb Bennet, Bog Myrtle, Milk Thistle, the Orange Lily. The Orchard, interestingly, is positioned as part of a flower garden - the orchard is there for the flowers, not the fruit, in a Ruskinian way. We enjoyed the Thistles, Royal fern, Monkshood, and the Hart's Tongue.
We took a walk in the fern garden, rising up to the Cragg through endless ferns and foxgloves, where upon the top the grass was softly seeding and blowing in a gentle breeze. Some moments of pure peace felt up there, listening to this breeze as it passed through the grass. The boggy areas were a wonder, the scent of bog myrtle crushed between the fingers puts one in mind of some churches - francincense amd myrrh. And the humble Billberry, which Ruskin decribed in such rapture. Some wonderful thistles - with their increasingly architectural qualities of leaf.
Descending, we called in on Lawson park, an artists residency place spun off from the old Grizedale forest sculpture park. A workman was scratching his head in bewilderment at some sheets of heavy plywood. "I'm building a garden shed for them, this wood is apparently left over from some art installation or other" he said. "It'll not be exterior grade ply then" we ventured. "That's right, so it'll just fall apart in a few weeks" he said. "I've told them that, but they want me to build it anyway." That, we thought, just about sums up the profound wastefulness (spiritually and physically) of contemporary art. But this experience was trumped when we went on to see an installation by Graham Fagen, which, as far as we could see, consisted of some trees planted in a field, some of which were dead. You'd never know it was art of course, but we had been given a nice catalogue about it, so we knew it was art. However, we spent ten bemused minutes before we found Fagen's trees thinking that the pig pen before it was in fact his art piece... maybe it was? Vacousness triumphs.
Slowly, some things are coming into increasing focus, mainly around this world of plants. But it's overwhelming here in its richness of impressions and possibilities. One feels it's all in the very small things, the very small observations, but these are infinite in number. Every foxglove flower is different and there are millions of them. The naming of plants is forever tied up with their meanings to us as human beings - Ruskin took great liberties with naming, we're thinking we should all perhaps name our plants to reflect our own direct and personal responses to them. Something about the seven lamps of architecture, seven flowers, seven screens. The seven lamps of - Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience.
Finally we enjoyed a small deluge and got quite gloriously wet.
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