Take the Road Less Travelled: Cats & Romans

Montenegro

26^th July 2015

Warning...  This post has nothing to do with textiles.  But I had such a fun day in Kotor!!

While the lads set off on a very hot day to climb the heights of Kotor’s fortified perimeter, I slunk off to shadier streets of the old town to find the Cat Museum.  I don’t know what I was expecting but it turned out to be a quirky and surprising collection of cat related memorabilia with a soft-hearted (cat loving) owner and staff.  One should put cat/dog prejudices aside and enjoy this curious collection for what it is – a satisfying glimpse of history through a body of work we might never have otherwise seen or even considered. To me, this is what makes us human (& humane).  

View from above Kotor

Across from the Cat Museum and located off a delightfully quiet square, is the Lapidary Museum.  Of course to me, lapidary means rocks & gems, in which I have little interest, but I was intrigued by the little church and went in anyway.  What a great decision.  

The building turned out to be the church of St Mikhail; a very historic 13^th c Gothic shell built over a 7^th c Benedictine Monastery and more.  Following an earthquake in 1979, its underground treasures were “released” from under its floors and now the Museum is loaded with frescoes, stone carvings and relics dating back to early-history and Roman times.  

I know this because the most engaging lady at the front desk took the time and trouble to point out items of significance and interest.  How nice is that?

Narrow streets, too narrow for most vehicles...

By the way, in Roman times until 1918, Kotor was known as Cattaro ; )  Miaow!

Magic Fingers

Burano: Island of Lace Makers

14^th July 2015

Step 1: Take a Vaporetto to the Venetian Lagoon
Islands of Murano & Burano

Step 2. Don't forget to stop off in Murano to see
some real Glass magic too!.

Step 3: The Burano Lace Museum is located in the Piazza
  near the Catholic Church

Skilled craftsmanship. Murano
Glass Table Decorations

Travelling to the islands is such a lovely diversion from bustling Venice.  First, there’s the vaporetto ride across the muddy lagoon bypassing intriguing islands little visited.  

Next, it seems compulsory to undertake a diversionary circuit of Murano with its historic yet bespoke glassmaking furnaces and sparkling showrooms that collide on narrow streets with fellow day tripping visitors. Be amazed by the skilled craftsmanship and versatility of glass.  Little wonder palaces were adorned with it.

Finally, we arrived on Burano to be greeted by the sunshine of colour radiating from Murano’s terraced houses, spreading cheer over cobbled streets and narrow canals. 

Burano’s heyday for needle lace spanned the 16^th to 18^th century, crafts women having been introduced to the skill via links to Cyprus.  In 1872, a school to teach and revive the skill was opened but as with many handmade crafts, its production is time-consuming and therefore costly.  Much of the lace available in those rather too-plentiful souvenir stalls has been made by machine and not on the Island.  It is possible though, to nose about and purchase the real thing - La Perla, Merletti d’Arte Martina & Creazioni Monica have been suggested in my reading material.  What a wonderful way to support a traditional craft and what a treasure to own!

Embroidery & Lace

A well stocked Museum

The Burano Museum and School of Lacemaking is a delightful (and cool) repository of all things lace.  The Museum showcases local talents and a rich legacy that skilled Burano women have created.  It offers examples of the many varieties and uses for lace, explaining that women often specialized in a single stitch.  Apparently, there are seven specific stitches, so I am sure competition was fierce…  Burano’s reputation was so established as a centre for the finest quality lace that Leonardo da Vinci was drawn here in 1481 to purchase a cloth suitable for Milan Cathedral’s main altar. 

How to wear your Lace & Silk with Style

A Rainbow on Every Corner

Venice, Italy

4-17^th July 2015

Bird's Eye View from the Campanile di San Marco

Riding the Grand Canal in a Vaporetto

Beguiling Venice!  It’s so easy to be overwhelmed in Venice, especially in July – the heat intensified by huge crowds, many in holiday mode.  It’s a frenetic pace, and an island repository of visually stunning beauty housing amazing art & history in every corner, not to mention wondrous structures, old and new.  So, I quite forgot my textile challenge and, as nothing especially reminded me until we stepped off the vaporetto on Burano, I felt quite chastened.

Of course, when I say few textiles, I’m not counting rows of Italian designer boutiques, mansions crammed with all things evocative of wealth and power, religious vestments or art festivals aplenty.  It’s just that it fits in, a hand and glove story if you will, becoming part of Venice’s bold statement about itself, and you don’t want to unravel the strands.

Luxurious Velvet & Textiles on Ceremonial Gondola_Naval Museum

Only the Best Furnishings_Querini Stampalia Museum & Gallery

Mansions are full of great tapestries, lush curtains, upholstery and bedding, complimented by the sheen of silk wallpapers.  Soaring cathedrals and modest basilicas alike are adorned with humble cloth transformed into resplendent precious pieces, heavy in embroidered gold and silver threads. Have I mentioned glass?  Famous Murano is just across the lagoon and its Glass Museum (Museo del Vetro) positively drips with crystalline decadence.  I think I’ve found the modern-day home of Odysseus’s Sirens!

 

Another take on a self-guided tour of traditional fabrics of Venice can be found on this VeneziaSi site.  Yet another site (link) has a brief summary of textile history that I really wish I had read when planning my trip.  This way I might have at least discovered Cà Mocenigo and the Museum of Textiles and Costume.  Grrrr!

Punting the Inner Canals in a Gondola

A Brush with Fame

I was fortunate to see a travelling exhibition of Spanish Surrealist, Salvador Dali’s works in Dubrovnik.  It was quite refreshing to be allowed to take photos; thankfully someone’s realized the marketing potential of blogs and social media!

Speaking of marketing, Dali’s eccentric behaviour was another golden arrow in his quiver of talents.  In brief, Salvador Dali’s (1904-1989) life story makes for interesting reading.  He was a consummate showman and a great technical artist with a vivid imagination.  One famous quote that resonates for me when viewing his work is simply put: “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” 

 

Dali’s best known work is perhaps, “Persistence of Memory”, those melting clocks that at once captivate then frighten.  We though, were lucky enough to see the fabulous Mae West lips, translating sexy into functional and, at the exhibition, a range of his captivating prints.  Some were for sale!  My quick talking however failed to make an impression on my “man with the wallet”.  I obviously need to learn more from Dali.

You might enjoy this fabulous site WikiArt.

Captivated by the Dali Exhibition

Combing Croatia

July 2015

Croatia was also a too-brief interlude, and although we made stops in a number of places, the most textile-likely were Pula and Dubrovnik.   If you can take your eyes of stunning historic buildings, beautiful blue water and "I want to live here" island communities, that is!!

In Dubrovnik we had four lucky finds:

• the Rupe Ethnographic Museum. The museum was challenging to find but it did take us into the less touristy areas of old Dubrovnik.  Who would have thought the old town to be so steep in places!

• well stocked craft stores (especially the Korkula Art & Craft Store brimming with locally made products including some lovely embroideries),

• more than one craftswoman stitching in the street (in costume & selling her hand-made wares), and

• an open air market near the Cathedral (in the shade of its west wall) featuring textiles, crafts and jewellery. 

I later discovered that Croatia also has a significant lace-making community (bobbin lace from Lepoglavia; aloe lace from Hvar; needle lace from Pag) and a once highly productive silk manufacturing area in Konvale dating back to the 15th c.  Production of rick rack braid is also mentioned but I never managed to find any.

A couple of interesting sites to check out for more detail (than I managed to cover in this post) are textile blogs and reliable pinterest communities for information and eye candy. I am also drawn to a fabulous book on historic costume - with a very hefty price-tag...  (These links have since broken or are out of date!)

Still, Mothers Day is coming up.  I wonder if I could swing it?

Glory Days

Moving on from Santorini, our next stop was Crete - the main object of course, being Knossos.  A limited schedule dictated firstly a visit to the wonderful & enlightening Archaeological Museum in Heraklion; and I’m very pleased we did.  The museum exhibits are the “icing” on the cake of Knossos and thus prepared, we were better able to envisage the city as it might have once been in the Minoan (2600-1450 BCE) glory days, when we finally made it to this historic and most magic of sites.

Delightful wall paintings and sensitive artwork on pottery, statues, religious and funerary objects gives insight into the Minoan love of elaborate textiles.  Men and women wear carefully fitted garments, some for rather athletic pursuits (bull leaping) and clearly prefer bright colours.  We understand that craftsmen and women were highly skilled in the art of spinning, weaving, dyeing and sewing/millinery, which was not accomplished in isolation.  The Minoans also had a reputation for being experienced sailors and traders – quite obviously with an eye for acquiring tasteful style; in design as well as expertise. 

We managed to visit a couple of other towns, mostly awash with tourist tat (made cheaply in China), with little success in uncovering locally produced modern textiles.  Time sadly was against us to be more thorough.  I did read later (on the ferry out, no less) of the inspiring Penelope Ghandi Mission on Crete.  It has been established to revive the fine art of weaving.  Local craftswomen make traditional and unique Cretan weavings & embroideries.  I’ll just have to go back then…some day!

(Whilst searching for some informative links on the topic of Minoan textiles, I came across these: an interesting blog (textileranger) and a short article (unl) that helps in understanding Minoan life & times.  By now, you’ve probably realised that curiosity forms my cornerstone rather than a solid learning base.  Anyhow, I doubt that I’d live long enough to study textiles in sufficient depth to parallel the extent of our excursions, so skimpy my notes will remain…  )

Ever so Briefly, Santorini

Santorini, Greece: 7 May 2015 

To begin at the beginning of the season, we made a short detour via ferry to Santorini, allowing ourselves only a few days to enjoy the delights of this scenic island.

View over the Caldera (looking south towards Oia)

Textiles don't survive time well, especially not after catastrophic eruptions.  So at best in Fira's museums, we discovered a few more robust examples of how Thira locals (mostly the wealthy ones who could leave something for posterity) lived out their daily lives.   

We know the Ancient Greeks wove extraordinarily well; legend has it that Penelope, wife of Odysseus, wove a shroud of fine linen for her father-in-law, Laertes.  And we know that they had used linen for quality clothing since 2800BC. 

Luckily we have some extraordinary examples of pottery and murals that allow us to reflect on these skills. (Although I seem to have gotten carried away with marine rather than textile references!) 

This deserves a closer look to see that amazing detail. 
I'm wondering too, if this was our hero, Hercules...

Voyages of Discovery

Exploring New Territory: 2015

Discovering new talents too!

This was a year of discoveries in more ways than “textile”.  We had a mini crisis with the Windjammer blog being “duplicated” and links redirecting folk to all sorts of nasty places (It’s fixed now by the way and both our computers professionally double checked for nasty viruses – all clean & clear!) and a mental breakdown when the camera memory card corrupted. 

Thankfully I managed to recover all but 10 of my precious photos - from a couple of thousand – about 8 weeks of travel to places we would probably never return.  (I’ll qualify that by saying - not because we don’t wish to, it’s just that living on the other side of the world makes it challenging in many ways to visit Europe regularly.)  The whole exhausting recovery process took months; figuring how to manage it and finally cataloguing files when retrieved.  Needless to say, I’ve been avoiding touching any photo files lately in case they vanish in a puff of smoke! 

So here I find myself in April already with NO entries in Textile Tourist yet.  So rather than take more time to include detailed research of textile offerings from each of the countries we visited, I’ll simply post up a few of the photos of interesting items we found along the way.  Somehow, I’d also neglected my homework in preparation for this tour and managed to miss quite a few textile museums, galleries or shops of interest.  I did find a link to the European Textile Network but the dots between our tour & those places did not always meet up.  Always wise in hindsight!

Sometimes the locals simply would not
share their textile secrets

Just so we are on the same table, I see Textile Arts encompassing patchwork & quilting, weaving, dyeing, tapestry, needlepoint, embroidery, textile design, spinning, knitted fibres, folk costumes and traditional motifs.  I know I’ve missed a few categories but it’s a start.  This list gives me a reference point to search for specific samples on my travels.  In some places we visit for instance, the best I might do is visit an ethnology museum.  A couple of excellent text references (to start with) are John Gillow’s “World Textiles” (an exhaustive techniques list) and “500 Years of Textiles” by Jennifer Harris. 

Even surfing the net yields surprising results - the Book Depository lists fascinating reference materials at a wide range of prices and Pinterest offers amazing catalogues of textiles visually.  I also find it interesting to talk to docents (trained guides) about their country specific textile collections at museums.

But I’ll leave the finer detail & last word to the experts. 

On The Move

Back at last, but still busy updating our travel notes.  Not too busy to take a few photos however, especially as we zoomed back through Grafton with jacarandas still a sight to behold!

Enjoy this colourful snap.  Enough to make you want to rat through the fabric collection and start another quilt in these luscious limes & purples!

And down near our local boat ramp, I came across this little fellow - also out for a stroll but I think he had lunch, not posing for photos, in mind!

Time for a Change

Our crazy, dare I say Melbourne, weather today has driven me indoors and as always, I can't help but glue myself to the computer and do a bit of tinkering.  As one should.  Every now and then. 

I've been thinking about updating my blog header (or banner) for Textile Tourist for ages.  So, it's finally done with a whole new look.  A little more dramatic and, so I've just noticed, mostly colourful photos from our Asian adventures.  I've also followed Clover Lane's instructions again because it's Blogger, Picasa and EASY all rolled into one. 

Other than doing a bit of stitching, I can't think of a better way to pass a rainy day! 

(Just as an aside, we'll be on the move again shortly so I hope to report back on some more interesting textile finds. Of course, that will be absolutely no trouble...)

Venetian Glass Chandeliers & Painted Ceilings...life in Venice is Grand

A Bit of Reminiscing Never Hurts

Port Stephens is such a lovely area and we have many great memories of lazy summers camping there with the kids.  We moved from beach to beach depending on where the wind was blowing or what activity we had set ourselves for the day. Life was good!  

I was reminded of our wonderful summer holidays while looking at these amazing photos, kindly sent to us from the good folks at Aqua Mantra, Nelson Bay.  It speaks volumes.  There really is no place like home!