Pots
After the class finished today I went to a concert by the San Francisco Early Music Society held in a Congregational Church in Berkeley, the Nuclear Free City. Before the concert began, we went to a music shop and had dinner. The tables were full of exotic types; bearded, intense and bohemian, a casting director’s idea of people out to dinner at a Berkeley music store. I have never been for a meal in a music shop before, but I can recommend it. The facilities were unusual. If you needed them, you went to the bookshop next door and were greeted with understanding by a gentle bearded man.
It was a programme of Spanish and Portugese polyphonic music from the sixteenth and seventeeth century. As I listened, I remembered the etymological relationship between music and mosaic – both gifts from the muses.
I received a gift today – a wonderful image of pottery sherds stored on a roof in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. Bob Field, one of the nicest people in the entire mosaic community, spotted them and kindly thought of me. Here is his picture, followed by a mosaic I made from fragments of twelfth century pots, kindly lent by York Museum Trust.
Sherds at the Archaeological Museum Istanbul, by Bob Field.
Photograph: Shannon Tofts. ‘Five Sisters’ York St Mary’s
This is a great photo of this work. It’s wonderfully integrated into the site. I see the mosaic as full-blooded gothic, the paintings are a conduit of the light through the ‘unstained’ glass onto the mosaic. I don’t what to say apart from the work is successfully ‘churchey’! Nice.