(Click on photos to enlarge)
We bought this painted slate engraving on holiday one summer, down in Tintagel. It evokes the memory of an unexpected overnight stay there (we had been heading slowly homewords from elsewhere in Cornwall). It was so lovely there, and the weather was beautiful, and so we stopped, and explored the castle on its headland, commanding the sea, with its legends of Arthur and Merlin. The Celtic design is based on interlaced carpet pages from the Book of Kells, which I saw when I was on an Archaeology Field Trip in Ireland. It is displayed in all its amazing glory inTrinity College, Dublin. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells It truly is the most incredible piece of Insular art and links us back 1200 years or more and has links with St Columba - some scholars even submit it may have been Columba himself who crafted it.
These two needlework pictures came from a stall in Carmarthen Market. Some of you may recognize this as Thomas Hardy's cottage, so as you may imagine, this has special meaning for me and I am very fond of it.
This is Shakespeare's birthplace, and again beautifully embroidered. There is a third embroidery which I have in a drawer somewhere, and which needs to be framed. It's so long since I've seen it I can't remember the picture, so I had better go look!I treasure anything which has been hand-embroidered or hand-made. Hours and hours of work went into creating these beautiful pictures.
