ALL HEALTH TO THEE, OLD APPLE TREE !
Seasonal festivities in the heart of the countryside – debilitating alcohol, revelry and firearms – what could go wrong ! You may well have noticed that our new and most esteemed colleague Mr Mark Hill posted about ‘wassail’ in the run up to Christmas (link here to his instagram clip for those who wish to […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY TWELVE – LEAPING LORDS !
A sensitive moment now, as we embark on the treatise for Day Twelve of our festive odyssey, not because it’s the last such entry (notwithstanding the upcoming Day Thirteen ‘wassailing’ blog), but because one of our most illustrious of ‘discoveries’ has been somewhat undermined by advances in technology ! For several years, I’ve been […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY ELEVEN – DANCING GIRLS !
Day Eleven – Dancing Girls – and absolutely no compunction about reproducing one of our previously used artefacts to illustrate today’s gift, as there really could not be anything more appropriate Rene Lalique – famed producer of glass art during the early part of the 20th century. Having taken up an apprenticeship as a […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – TEN – PIPERS PIPING
Bearing in mind that this is the third time we have run through the Twelve Days of Christmas, tying up each gift with an antique, relic or objet d’art, it’s probably high time that we addressed the tenth day and the requisite pipers piping with at least some degree of accuracy ! Previously, we’ve […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY NINE – DRUMMERS DRUMMING
A modicum of post-festive controversy with today’s offering, as the original ‘gift’ in our source book – Mirth Without Mischief – has by and large been supplanted in recent years . Nine Ladies Dancing now seems to be very much in vogue for the day in question but, of course, we are remaining loyal to […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY EIGHT – MAIDS-A-MILKING
There are, of course, a dozen different objects of desire listed in the concurrent verses of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and yet now, although we are only at day eight, we find the finest of them all. Cows. Specifically, to be fair – pearlware creamers – marvellous figurines of milkmaids about their business […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY SEVEN – SWANS
I made mention yesterday of the manner in which ‘source-books’ were employed by porcelain and glass decorators in the 18th century, in that they would use such collections as libraries from which they could take original images for reproduction on their contemporary works. My hunt for swans has thrown up an excellent example of […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY SIX – GEESE
Geese, in spite of being far and away the finest centrepiece imaginable for the Christmas dining experience, are neither particularly evocative of courtly emotion nor especially photogenic to the casual observer. As a result they seem to have been largely overlooked by the compilers of early ‘image libraries’ comprising of collected prints and etchings; these […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY FIVE – GOLD RINGS
After all the allusory references, subtleties and dubiety of our first four days, the fifth – in spite of what some may have us believe – is entirely straightforward: the ‘five gold rings’ in question refer to nothing more or less than five rings, made of gold. Such absolute unambiguity may be traced to […]
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY FOUR – CALLING BIRDS
An opportunity to set right one of the most common misconceptions about the ‘Twelve Days Of Christmas’ song today, as today – and almost without exception – the subject matter is deemed to be ‘four calling birds’. There have been a number of variants over the years – canary birds, coloured birds, curly birds, even […]
