WORKING DRAWINGS

Sketches for a textile design inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian's botanical illustrations, mostly engravings, published in the eighteenth century. However much one admires Merian's engravings one has to, however, consider that some people may think of grubs, snails, caterpilars, flies, gila monsters and such like as unbeautiful. But some people may not.

GARDENING IN SANDY SOIL

Soil in Ysterplaat is sandy and it sukkels with absorbing water, almost as if it were oily. So one is happy when one reads (online, on one of those advice-giving sites about food gardening that endeavour to say nothing but positive things) that one of the great advantages of gardening in sandy soil is that it is liked by subterranean vegetables. My radishes appear to be circumstantial evidence.

A BOOK FROM ITALY

My friend Paolo de Anna sent me this beautiful book of which he is the author. It tells the story of bronze restoration work Bruno Bearzi (a family member of Paolo) undertook in Florence after the second world war. The book is in Italian but I have a dictionary and I plan to read it cover to cover whatever it takes. The Bearzi, Vignali and Gamberini families are bronze workers traceable to Renaissance times. They have been instrumental in spreading bronze working skills all over the world; Sarel Petrus learnt his craft in the Vignali Foundry in Pretoria North, South Africa.