Category: historic houses

‘Hardwick Hall – more glass than wall’

stitchesoftime2 Comments

We have had a very, very lovely day today – not only going to Hardwick Hall for the day but because my lovely daughter Ellie works there had a brilliant ‘behind the scenes’ experience which was amazing.

Here is the Hall in the lovely sunlight – as a contemporary of Bess’s wrote when it was built – ‘more glass than wall’.

Hardwick - hall front

Hardwick - garden

Here are some pictures of what the public gets to see.

The beautiful velvet heraldic embroidery created by Bess of Hardwick herself,  the blue silk bed hangings, the Great Hall with its bed canopy.

Hardwick - Bess velvet 1

Hardwick - Bess velvet 2

Hardwick - Blue silk bed

Hardwick - great hall

But we also got to go up on the roof! This is the top of the hall and the view from one of the small banqueting rooms that are in the towers.

Hardwick - Roof

Hardwick - Roof view

The best bit for me was going into the textile store rooms in the attic.Here are all the boxes with little pictures of the contents.

Hardwick - Textile store boxes

And here is Ellie opening one of the boxes for us.This contained a beautiful velvet hanging of flowers.

Hardwick - Ellie box

Hardwick - Flower velvet 1

Hardwick - Flower velvet 2

Another box had some more of the most wonderful of Bess’s heraldic pieces, here I am close up to this piece – no glass at all, heaven!!

Hardwick - Box velvet 1

Hardwick - Box velvet 2jpg

Hardwick - Box velvet 3

I feel very, very priviliged to have been able to do this – thank you Ellie!

And we were able to see the Gideon tapestries that have been away for conservation that she has been helping rehang – go and visit her blog for more details of this. The pictures below show the before and after effects of the cleaning.

Hardwick - Gideon 2

Hardwick - Gideon 1

A brilliant day – I loved it!

Take care all of you and thanks for visiting.

I am off to Florence on Sunday with my Mum so there may be some pictures of medieval art and churches when I get back – you never know!

The level of detail

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We have just got back from another lovely weekend away at Harewood House. The weather was fantastic (I am a bit pink!) so we had a great time.

Wandering round in the early morning taking pictures of the living history camps I was impressed, once again, by the level of detail that people will go to to make their displays look special and personal.

Here is a tent from the Rosa Mundi group, look at the beautiful painting on the table legs and chest.

Harewood Rosamundi table

Harewood Rosamundi table 2

Harewood Rosamundi tent detail

And here the cooking area of the Buckingham Retinue – the meat is being prepared in the picture below.

Harewood Buckingham

Harewood Buckingham meat

And here is a beautifully painted and decorated tent and armour display from Knights in Battle, complete with reproduction pottery.

Harewood tent KIB

Harewood tent inner KIB

Harewood armour KIB

But first prize must go to this group from Italy who brought a replica miniature monastery complete with herb garden!

Harewood church

Harewood church 2

Harewood church 3

There were also some crafts being demonstrated.

Basketweaving and loom weaving.

Harewood basket weaving

Harewood loom weaving

And this person spent the whole weekend making bricks!

Harewood brick making

We were also lucky enough to find some new shoes for Ellen, we have been searching for a while but medieval shoes are expensive and in limited supply of sizes so we were very lucky to get these in her size for only £45.

Harewood Ellie's new shoes

I know a lot of people come to this blog for information about costume and my lovely friend Jackie was there this weekend trading, her company is called Cloak’d and Dagger’d and she makes all sorts of medieval clothes so do visit her web site.

Harewood Jackie

Harewood Jackie 2

Well I hope you have had a good Bank Holiday weekend, see you soon and thanks for visiting.

Art Deco in Spain

stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone

Hope that you are all well and happy.

Seems longer than week ago that I was in Spain with those lovely blue skis 🙂

My Mum had surprise day trip planned for me, I thought that it was going to be  a new museum of religious art or a fab church but it turned out to be this amazing art deco house in a little town called Novelda, about an hour away from where she lives in the mountains. She discovered it in a DK book that my brother and sister-in-law bought her and first went to visit it last October.

Spain has a lot of Art Deco and Modernist art and I have seen many very lovely things, mainly fabulous doors and ironwork but this was really special.

If you didn’t know it was there you would not really notice the house, the facade is lovely but it is tucked away in a little street in the centre of the town and from the front it looks to be quite a small property but it stretches back a long way and like many Spanish houses it has a Moorish influenced courtyard garden inside the house.

The wonderful thing about the house is that most of the rooms are furnished with original Art Deco furniture and it looks so lived in.

The house is called Casa Modernista and was built between 1900 and 1903 – the DK travel web site  has info on location and times info . It is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in the area.

Spain Casa Modernista

Spain Casa Modernista 2

Spain Casa Modernista 3

Spain Casa Modernista 4

Spain Casa Modernista 5

Spain Casa Modernista 6

Spain Casa Modernista 7

Spain Casa Modernista 8

After lunch (tapas at a lovely little cafe round the corner) we had a little wander around the town and the market and then set off to find a church, St Mary Magdelene’s Sanctury and castle that we could see from the town and that Mum went to on her last trip there. After a few false starts and lots of communing with the locals we found it and it was really beautiful.

As far as we could work out it was built in the early 1900s and reminded me very much of Gaudi’s Sagrada Famila that I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago in Barcelona – on a much smaller scale. A very interesting church and look at those wonderful blue skies! These pictures were taken on the 4th of January!

Spain- Novelda Church 1

Spain- Novelda Church 2

Spain- Novelda Church 3

Spain- Novelda Church 4

So back to reality this week, a busy week at work but I had knitting group and a lovely relaxing weekend crafting and cooking so it was not all bad 😉

I have been working hard at creating new stock to take the craft centre, have some new heart ornaments made from recycled charity shop finds that I am just finishing off so will post them next weekend.

I have finished my hat – in beautiful James Brett variegated wool, this was an adaptation of a pattern that I had as a freebie booklet from a knitting mag. I changed the stocking stitch with Fair Isle main part for moss stitch with a stocking stitch crown when I realised how hard it was going it be to do the decreases for the crown shaping in moss stitch.

New hat Jan 2

New hat Jan 1

I am very pleased that it turned out so well and that I now have the confidence to play around with patterns like this. It is very warm and lovely and I just cast on for another one in the purple version of this wool.

This will be followed by matching scarves and possibly wristwarmers in both colourways , at some point in between everything else I want to do. I have still not managed to win the lottery so unfortunately crafting is still subsidiary to my day job – is just lucky I really enjoy what I do!

Exciting job related news – my next trip to China has been confirmed. I will be leaving for Beijing at the end of Feb for two weeks of teaching followed by a few days of exploring the city.I am so lucky, life is wonderful at the moment and I am so enjoying myself.

Like most of the rest of the UK it has been snowing overnight – not as much as I expected but here is the view from my window this morning.Hopefully it will last until the weekend when I can go for a walk on the snowy moors!

Snowy Marsden Jan

Hope that you have a good week ahead and thanks for visiting.