Friday 1 April 2011

A Glass Act

The current SCS photo challenge is glass. I have another photo I want to take - the last time I visited my aunt she gave me a little Coddington lens which had belonged to my grandmother; apparently gardeners used to use them to inspect their plants for little bugs. But the weather this week hasn't been cooperative - we've gone from sunshine to windy, colder days with more grey sky. Great drying weather for clothes, not so great when you want consistent bright light.
These are the photos I did use.

Antique Venetian glass beads - with a little historical interest as they were given to my grandmother by Lady Gregory. My aunt gave me these about twenty-five years ago, and although I don't wear a lot of chunky jewellery, I wear these a lot. The little perfume bottle has been around forever, I have no idea of its origin.

Modern Venetian glass - the little sweets, each one with the artist's name engraved on it, and my sweet little flying pig all the way from NJ to celebrate National Pig Day, and the message that while pigs may not really fly, we can achieve some of our ambitions and dreams.

This glass bowl came from the widow of a teaching colleague of my dad's. She used to have two, a pale blue one and this one, but she'd given the blue one away before she moved into a nursing home, I think. When my mum and were clearing her room out after she died I got a few things, and this is one of them. But in several sessions of trying over a couple of years, I have still to get a good photo that show the detailed engraving in the actual fish and the markings of weeds and bubbles on the bowl, and doesn't have too many background reflections in the silver. This is the not-very-good best of many, many attempts.







1 comment:

Lorraine said...

You have such a diverse collection of glass samples. Some of these things make such a common element so uncommonly beautiful. Though it surely is a bear to photograph, the bowl must be awesome in real life. What a treasure.