Base Line

Yesterday, Beth Hatton gave a very interesting talk to the Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild of NSW about her exhibition Base Line at the Fairfield Museum and Gallery which will open on Feb 1, 2011. The exhibits explore the surveying, settlement, degradation and revival of the grassland of Weereerwa or Lake George.

Beth has learned much about the ebb and flow of this body of water, its mapping and exploitation. She expresses her perceptions in sculpural forms made of native grasses that she sews into tools and vessels.

The exhibition will run until March 13 at the corner of Horsley Drive and Oxford Street, Smithfield. Open Tues - Sat, 10am - 4pm, Sun 1 - 4pm.

James Cook Journals

His journals and those of Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson are recorded on the South Seas web site. They have been arranged side by side so that we can read each man's record of the same day.

True Size of Africa

An article in the New Economist, Nov 2010 explains some of the difficulties with drawing a sphere on a flat piece of paper when trying to compare the size of countries. There are not only distortions caused by the translation of three to two dimensions, but also emotional responses to the bigness/greatness of the countries involved.

Flat earth

I have been struggling to wrestle my globe onto a piece of paper. By Googling "flat world map" I found that many other, much more capable minds than mine have tackled the problem of translating three dimensions into two.

The version that most appealed is Fullers Projection perhaps because of the clever animation. But there are many more including butterfly shaped maps, to unrealistic rectangular maps which have been slightly modified in many ways. It all points to the unreliability of maps!

So here is another site to teach you how to make a flat map out of a round world.

Mapping the Landscape

Over the last quarter century Pippin Drysdale has been refining her forms, her materials and her colour palette to create a unique body of work that is a response to various landscapes. Read more in a article by Ted Snell at HandEye

Japanese maps

Robin has discovered a wonderful on-line collection of maps of Japan.

The Japanese Historical Map Collection contains about 2,300 early maps of Japan and the World. The collection was acquired by the University of California from the Mitsui family in 1949 and is housed on the Berkeley campus in the East Asian Library.

http://www.davidrumsey.com/japan/

Embroiderers Guild's maps

On Sunday October 17 we visited the Embroiderers Guild of NSW in Concord.


They have two framed, embroidered maps that were worked within seven years of each other. The older, worked in 1798 is of the counties of England and Wales. It is worked in silk and wool on very closely woven (?) linen cloth. The ink that was used to draw the map and write the names of the counties and their principal towns seems to have contained some kind of bleach.



We thought that the writing was printed until we looked at it with a strong magnifying glass and found that it was finely embroidered in black silk. The counties are outlined in coarser woollen yarn in larger, clumsier stitches. Perhaps it was a joint effort of governess and pupil.















The second map is worked on a more open weave linen cloth. It is a map of Europe with the capital cities noted (although sometimes not positioned accurately.) The countries are outlined with several rows of coloured, cross worked silks. The countries names sometimes have a larger first letter with colour added to the black silk. These are generally 2 over 2 cross stitches but the smaller wording is worked in one over one.


Some of the names of the countries were a surprise: like Candia for Cyprus.