Like a water world with tiny golden islands on an ultramarine sea.
I have a few paperweights but this is my favourite. I look into it and am enchanted by how they managed to embed gold leaf into it. They must have gathered the blue glass and rippled on the black layer, then put gold leaf on and blown into the glass to make it split up or maybe just let loose gold leaf fall onto it? Then gathered (added a layer) of clear glass on top.
I’m only guessing about the technique but however it was done, it’s beautiful.
She stands in front of her cottage. Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch. Notorious and buried in the local churchyard at 90° to the other burials. The painting is based on a peasant woman painting by Theodore Gericault.
This was one of my murals in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. The pub burnt down at the weekend. I am bereft. I am trying to pass on my memories to keep a feeling of what it was. I painted these on the walls. Emulsion on lining paper directly onto the wall. I’ve had a few comments that they could have been taken down. I don’t think people understand what a mural is.
But if you wear a mask and social distance, you could go into local shops. You could spend money at places that are hitting brick walls when it comes to trading and selling. Local shops bring trade into towns and cities. Money spent there is shared round the local community and can be reinvested. You can spend online but that money just goes to massive industries and into the back pockets of billionaires.
Think first, buy local if you can or buy from independent makers. X
Frosty leaves shiver in the breeze, Silver highlights Make them bright, Ice crystals like sugar Sweeten their pallor. A bad poem to go with this drawing of frosty leaves for the prompt.
Hubby is ill. Coughing and tired with this cold. He came downstairs for tea and then went to stand up and fainted! He’s OK but he’s hurt his knee by landing on an oil heater. He wouldn’t let me call an ambulance and he’s gone back upstairs with a walking stick. He’s like a tired old wizard, not happy, but not in the mood for TLC. Don’t know what to do. I’ll take him a drink and a sandwich in a bit. All I can do is help if I can.
As I get older I realise I can’t go back in time. Entropy, the movement of things from order to disorder. Things break down. Chaos increases. Things burn down. Look at the dinosaurs, they dissappeared. The Burslem Leopard Hotel is now extinct. My time there is lost.
In 2006 to 2007 I painted a series of twelve murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Recently the pub has been closed down after the previous owner left.
I was asked by the owners Neil Crisp and Neil Cox to do a series of Murals based on the history of Burslem. I painted the Burslem riot scene whose characters included local residents and pub staff, a murder scene of a woman said to have been killed there, a pottery worker at the end or start of her shift. I also painted ‘the Leopardess’ one of the original owners, a picture of Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch, pottery owner Josiah Wedgwood, and three of his friends discussing the building of the Trent and Mersey canal. Also Arthur Berry, famous artist and my tutor at college. Walter a pub regular who had drunk there since his youth. A Clarice Cliff design called Umbrellas, and a painting of the Burslem Angel that stands in top of the old town Hall. I also designed and painted a design for a coat of arms for the hotel.
I always wanted some decent photos of the murals but only have a few pictures. The lighting was not very good in the Arnold Bennett suite. They at least are some memories I have.
The pub was renowned for being haunted and regular ghost tours of the empty hotel rooms attracted a lot of attention. It was even featured in ‘Britains most haunted’ a TV show.
It was a couple of years ago that it closed. Covid didn’t help. I was sad to see it shut but it sounded like they had someone interested in getting it going again.
Over the last few days a report came out that it had been broken into and someone had been arrested ror growing cannabis in there.
Now? Who knows. Apparently three people have been arrested for setting fire to it? Whatever happens its so sad. I guess it will be unrecoverable, destroyed. Part of my life has gone with it.
I saw this on WordPress Reader and had to share. The council claim its only a minimal cut (of around £600,00!). Its important that our industrial heritage is saved, otherwise Stoke on Trent would lose its raison d’etre.
Mallaband-Brown 