1955 University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour of the West Country

Feb28

In the 1950s the University of Bristol Dramatic Society had a tradition of undertaking summer tours of West Country villages, performing one of two plays in schools, church rooms, and village, town and Women’s Institute halls. I don’t know when this tradition started, nor when it ended, but I do know that such a tour took place both in 1955 and 1956. My parents became engaged while they were on the 1955 tour, when my mother was 21 and my father about to turn 24.

1955 UBDS Players Tour programme

I know little about these tours, but during my riffling through family papers and photographs I have been able to piece together a small account of the 1955 tour. I’ll try in the coming weeks to do something similar with the 1956 one, for which I have less information. But right now the focus is on 1955.

The two plays that were performed were As You Like It by William Shakespeare, and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. The first performance of the tour was on Friday 8 July 1955, at Wells Town Hall in Somerset, and the final performance was possibly at the Town Hall, Dulverton, also in Somerset, on Thursday 4 August 1955. In between the tour travelled mainly through Somerset, but also ventured into Devon and Dorset. On Friday 29 July my parents got engaged, while they were at the Somerset village of Hardington Mandeville.

Luckily a typewritten itinerary for the tour survives, annotated by my father, as well as my mother’s diary for 1955. There is a very slight discrepancy between the two for places and dates, but I would be inclined to follow the itinerary as I think the diary entries might represent the preliminary dates given to the cast and crew, before being refined into what was presented in the typewritten itinerary. Certainly my father didn’t amend any of the dates or places on it.

The 34 photos that survive are very small black and white prints, but they can tell a lot about the life on the tour. Two lorries were packed up by the side of the Victoria Rooms in Bristol: it seems the whole production was carried in these two vehicles. The students roughed it, sleeping in the halls after the performances, or if the weather was clement, sleeping out under the stars. Each day the production had to be unpacked from the lorries, the stage, backdrop, sound and lighting, and seating for the audience set up, the costumes and make-up and wigs put on often in makeshift dressing rooms (again, sometimes outdoor ones), and the performance given. Then everything was taken down, packed up and ready for the next stop on the schedule. Sometimes there were two performances in a day, a matinee and an evening performance, in different places. Sundays were a day off.

My father’s annotations of the itinerary mark three open-air performances, and that there was no audience for the evening performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Women’s Institute hall in Beer, Devon, on Monday 1 August!

The photos as found were in a muddled pile, with no negatives to help with ordering them, and no annotations on the backs. I have put them in some sort of order here, but as many of the places shown are unknown to me, I almost certainly haven’t placed them in the right order.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Packing the lorry outside the Victoria Rooms, Bristol, ?8 July 1955. Photo 2264.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Packing the lorry outside the Victoria Rooms, Bristol, ?8 July 1955. Peggy Riddel at left. Photo 2265.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Travelling in the lorries. Photo 2266.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. A stop in a town. Squinting at the original with a jeweller’s loupe I can see the pub/hotel is The Old White Hart or less likely The Old White Hare, and that the street opposite the pub/hotel is South Street. Photo 2267.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. I assume the students are buying some food from this gentleman. Photo 2268.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. ?Roger Montague having a snooze in the back of one of the lorries. Photo 2269.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. A stop for candy floss and lollies. Photo 2270.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Shenanigans. This camp site with its distinctive wall was used again during the 1956 tour. Photo 2271.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. On the swings. Photo 2272.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. One of the camp sites. Photo 2273.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Two nymphs and onlookers. Photo 2274.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. I think this lady is Prudence Knowers. Photo 2275.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Night time relaxing – after a performance? ?Roger Montague standing at right. Photo 2276.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Camping in a village hall. Photo 2277.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. I think this must be in one of the Town Halls that the tour visited. ?Peggy Riddel. Photo 2278.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Camp beds in one of the halls. Roger Montague and Peggy Riddel at the pole. Photo 2279.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Constructing the stage. Photo 2280.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Hanging the backdrop with a cuppa. Photo 2281.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. A painted backdrop for As You Like It. Photo 2282.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Getting ready for a performance of As You Like It. Photo 2283.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Backstage at an outdoor performance of As You Like It. Roger Montague seated at front right. Photo 2284.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. An outdoor performance of As You Like It, at a school. Roger Montague at right. Photo 2285.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Drumming up publicity in Somerton, by the Butter Cross, for that evening’s performance of The Importance of Being Earnest: Eric Stevens, (Rev. Canon Chasuble), pushing Pat Whitehouse (Miss Prism) in a chair. Photo 2286.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. A poster for the performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Memorial Hall, Merriott on Tuesday 19 July 1955 at 7.30 pm. Photo 2287.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Getting ready outdoors for a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. John M Cann standing in foreground, Roger Montague second right. Photo 2288.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Waiting for the performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. Eric Stevens in costume as Rev. Canon Chasuble. Photo 2289.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague), Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), Lady Bracknell (Margaret Stallard), Lane (the butler – Wallace Weaving), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann). Photo 2290.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann), Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague). Photo 2291.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann). Photo 2292.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague), Cecily Cardew (Peggy Riddel). Photo 2293.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: L-R: Miss Prism (Pat Whitehouse), Cecily Cardew (Peggy Riddel), Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann), Rev. Canon Chasuble (Eric Stevens). Photo 2294.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann), Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), Cecily Cardew (Peggy Riddel). Photo 2295.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Lady Bracknell (Margaret Stallard), Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann), Rev. Canon Chasuble (Eric Stevens), Miss Prism (Pat Whitehouse), Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague), Cecily Cardew (Peggy Riddel). Photo 2296.

University of Bristol Dramatic Society Players’ Tour 1955. Performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. L-R: Lady Bracknell (Margaret Stallard), John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing (John M Cann), Hon. Gwendoline Fairfax (Lesley Coleman), Rev. Canon Chasuble (Eric Stevens), Miss Prism (Pat Whitehouse), Cecily Cardew (Peggy Riddel), Algernon Moncrieff (Roger Montague). Photo 2297.

A lovely story I remember being told was that my parents were so deliriously in love that they kissed during a scene in The Importance of Being Earnest when they weren’t supposed to.

A member of the tour was Wallace Weaving (‘Wally’). He married Anne Lennard, my mother’s good friend at university, on 6 July 1957, just a couple of weeks before my parents married. The Weavings had three children, including Hugo Weaving, who went on to become a rather more famous actor than his father …

We took many of our family holidays in the West Country, and my parents often commented on the large Wellingtonia that grew by the old road by the village of Norton-sub-Hamdon, (now the south side of the A303, just near the turning for Crewkerne), remembering it from their time on the tour. In later years they moved to West Dorset, and I would pass this tree every time I drove to see them. For me, it will always be the tree that marked their falling in love.

A stock photograph in my parents’ photo collection of St Audries School in Somerset. The tour visited here on Thursday 14 July 1955 for an open-air evening performance of As You Like It. I wonder if the cast camped out here? It’s a very romantic setting … Photo 2356.

There are also photos from the 1956 tour, though I think only my mother took part in this (just after she’d graduated) as my father graduated in 1955 and was working by then, and I can’t see him in any of the photos. I don’t have a programme for the 1956 tour, but I do have an itinerary. I will try to put together a piece on what I know of it.

I pulled together a list of everyone I know from the programme that was involved in the 1955 tour: there may be others missing.

Players (some backstage positions as well):

John Barrett: AYLI; 1955 Tour Committee electrician
Carolyn Blackmore: AYLI
Roger Bull: AYLI
Edith Burke: AYLI; assistant producer AYLI; 1955 Tour Committee property mistress
John M Cann: AYLI; IBE; 1955 Tour Committee assistant director
Lesley Coleman: IBE; dance arranger AYLI
Michael Gibson: AYLI; stage manager IBE; 1955 Tour Committee stage director
Jean Goffe: AYLI
Diana Greenhalgh: AYLI
Brian Ives: AYLI; stage manager AYLI; assistant producer IBE
Jill Marshall: AYLI; 1955 Tour Committee catering officer
Roger Montague: AYLI; IBE
Mary Nowell: AYLI
Peggy Riddel: IBE
Margaret Stallard: IBE
Eric Stevens: AYLI (x2 parts); IBE; settings and production AYLI
Ian Turner: AYLI (x2 parts)
Peter Wagstaff: AYLI; IBE
Wallace Weaving: AYLI; IBE; 1955 Tour Committee assistant business manager
Pat Whitehouse: IBE; 1955 Tour Committee property mistress

11 men, 9 women = 20 actors / actors and backstage

Non-acting involvement, might not all have been on the tour:

Sylvia Alexander: music composer AYLI
Helen Floyd: 1955 Tour Committee wardrobe mistress
Prudence Knowers: production, costume and setting design IBE
Jay Parry: 1955 Tour Committee director
John Pople: 1955 Tour Committee business manager
Anne Simon: costume design AYLI
Barbara Somerville: costume design AYLI

2 men, 5 women = 7 non-actors

If all those listed went on the tour, 13 men and 14 women = 27 total. There might have been yet more people on the tour that aren’t mentioned in the programme.

If any readers have any memories or knowledge of the tour, or recognise any of the people or places in the photographs, I’d be delighted to hear.

A Chinese insect and spider plate

Oct29

A recently repeated episode of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip (series 20, episode 25, first broadcast on 7 February 2020) featured a glazed Chinese dish, featuring insects such as bees, dragonflies, spiders, beetles and crickets/grasshoppers, as well as a large central wasp spider. It was bought by Natasha Raskin Sharp from an antiques shop in Newark-on-Trent for £50 (haggled down from the ticket price of £69). It caught my eye too: if I’d seen it in an antiques shop, I’d definitely have bought it.

I couldn’t tell from the views shown if it was a transfer decoration that had then been hand-coloured, or if it was entirely hand-painted.

Natasha thought it was likely to date from the 1960s. It had a stamp on the back with Chinese characters.

Glazed Chinese dish / plate with hand-coloured insects and spiders, featured on the Antiques Road Trip.

The dish generated a lot of interest at the auction at Willingham Auctions, of Willingham, Cambridgeshire, and sold for £190.

A quick bit of google-fu and I found the dish had sold as Lot 1236 at the Antique and Good Quality Modern and Collectables auction held on 19 October 2019, and that the auction house had described the dish as ‘Entomology interest – Unusual Chinese glazed earthenware plate of canted square form, the hand-finished decoration comprising a large, central female wasp spider in its web surrounded by a variety of other insects, including a locust, hornet, beetles and other arachnids, the base with orange seal mark.’

I’d love to know a bit more about this dish, especially its age and who made it. I wonder if it is older than Natasha thought? The auction house made no mention of its presumed date. It feels late nineteenth century to me, but I know diddly squat about Chinese ceramics. Does anyone out there have any knowledge of this intriguing dish? If so, I’d love to hear.

Rings that remind me of things 24

Feb7

Part 24 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1960s trapped carnelian orb ring by Elis Kauppi for Kupittaan Kulta. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Joe 90’s BIG RAT machine, from the 1960’s Gerry and Sylvia Anderson tv show, illustration by Andrew Skilleter. Click on photo for details to buy a print.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, spider eyes, Pluto and its moon Charon, the rings of Saturn, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, some lichen, the stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt, the Quality Street lady, a herb knife, a sea anemone, an Iron Age miniature votive shield, the Mayan Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, a screw propeller from SS ‘Great Britain’, a pair of clackers, a morel, a dalek, a chessboard, and Jupiter.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 23

Sep29

Part 23 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1972 blue lace agate ring by Peter Guy Watson. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Jupiter. Photographed in ultraviolet by the Hubble Space telescope, and rotated by me so it better matches the ring. Playing god, me? From the fabulous NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) series.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & licence: Judy Schmidt.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 22

Jun27

Part 22 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1960s Finnish chequerboard band in sterling silver. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click photo for details.

Thing:

A chessboard. I was going to put up a photo of the Bridget Riley artwork, Movement in Squares, 1961, tempera on hardboard, but the Wikimedia Commons licence was fair use only, so this will have to do!

Diamonds International Awards

May14

I recently bought four sterling silver pendants by Eric Norris Smith (1949—2019), about whom I knew nothing. In the course of researching Eric’s life and work, I found out that while a student at Glasgow School of Art, he had been awarded ‘the De Beers Diamond International Award’, and was one of its youngest-ever recipients.

I wanted to learn a bit more about these Awards, and a quick bit of google-fu told me that they were known more properly as the Diamonds-International Awards, and that they were first awarded in 1954.

This fab video on Youtube about the 1969 Diamonds-International Awards

says that there were six award-winning designers from the UK that year, but frustratingly doesn’t name them, so it seems quite a few were given out each year. But try as I could, there doesn’t seem to be an overall list of winners of the award anywhere. I’ve read that the Awards first started in 1954, and that Andrew Grima won 13 of the awards, more than any other designer.

A bit more poking about and here’s another Youtube video, this one of the 1967 Diamonds-International Awards

and another of the same 1967 awards, with more jewels but no sound:

Yet more googling and someone is selling the 1967 Diamonds-International exhibition brochure on eBay. From the photos I can see that the exhibition toured around the world, travelling from New York to London to Milan and finally to Frankfurt. And paydirt! The eBay listing showed a page giving the winners (who seem to be a mixture of designers and manufacturers): 25 in total. It also illustrates 18 of the pieces in the exhibition (with two designers, David H Clifton and Ute Crecelius having two pieces featured – I’m not sure if they got two awards or just one) and tells who the designers were of these – if you want to know all 25 designers, you need to buy the brochure …

Yet more poking about in the internet and I learned that Eric Norris won his award in 1970, and was one of 30 winners that year. Sadly no films or even photos of what his award-winning design was, but I’ll keep looking.

In the meantime, here are the details of the 1967 Diamonds-International Awards and its accompanying Exhibition:

The Exhibition was at New York (the Institute of International Education, 809 United Nations Plaza, 27-29 September 1967), followed by London (Goldsmiths’ Hall, Foster Lane, 10-12 October), then at Milan (Jolly Hotel President, Largo Augusto 10, 20-21 October), and finally at Frankfurt (Hessicher Hof Hotel, Freidrich-Ebert-Anlag 40, 9-10 November).

The listed winners were:

Neil Carrick Aird, Lenzie, Scotland (designed by Mr Aird, manufactured by Laings Ltd)
Glenda Arentzen, New York, NY, USA (designed and manufactured by Miss Arentzen)
Asprey & Co Ltd, London, England (designed and manufactured by Robert Stewart Johnston)
Jocelyn Burton, London, England (designed by Miss Burton, manufactured by Bernard Kidd)
FJ Campion Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia (designed by Susan Perry and August Scherlish, manufactured by Prouds Pty Ltd)
David H Clifton, Balsall Common, England (designed by Mr Clifton, manufactured by Andrew Grima Ltd) 2 pieces featured – a ring and a brooch
Ute Crecelius, Lüdenscheid, West Germany (designed by Miss Crecelius, manufactured by Dieter Pieper Goldschmiede) 2 pieces featured – a brooch and a hair comb
Benetti Diego, Bolzano, Italy (designed and manufactured by Mr Diego)
Henry Dunay, New York, NY, USA (designed by Mr Dunay, manufactured by Henry Dunay, Inc)
Eton Jewellery Co Ltd, London, England (designed by Robert Thomas, manufactured by Eton Jewellery Co Ltd)
Graham John Fuller, Worthing, England
Rudolph T Gloor, Manila, Philippines
Manfred Gruhlke, Berlin, West Germany
Ingo Haas, Balingen, West Germany
Josef Hoerner, Schwäbisch Gmünd, West Germany
Dorothy Hogg, Troon, Scotland
John E Holtzclaw, Alva, OK, USA (designed and manufactured by Mr Holtzclaw)
Matti Hyvärinen, Turku, Finland (designed by Mr Hyvärinen, manufactured by Sirokoru)
Augustin Julia-Plana, Bern, Switzerland (designed by Mr Julia-Plana, manufactured by Simon Schlegel)
Jürgen Maehse, Berlin, West Germany (designed and manufactured by Maehse)
Mem Guld & Silver A/B, Lidköping, Sweden (designed by Theresia Hvorslev, manufactured by Mem Guld & Silver A/B)
Hans-Leo Peters, Düsseldorf-Oberkassel, West Germany (designed and manufactured by Mr Peters)
Yuko Shindo, Tokyo, Japan
Steele & Dolphin Ltd, Birmingham, England
Terence John Waldron, Henley-in-Arden, England

That’s 9 winners from the UK, 6 from West Germany, 3 from the USA, and one each from Australia, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Sweden and Switzerland. I’m surprised how few were from Scandinavian/Nordic countries (just two!) as during this period they were at the forefront of modernist jewellery design. Maybe they didn’t use diamonds too much.

Eric Norris Smith, jeweller

May12

I recently bought four pendants with a maker’s mark I didn’t know: ens, three with a 1977 Edinburgh hallmark and one with a 1978 one. I really like the pendants – the three modernist ones reminded me a bit of the work one of my favourite jewellers, Jack Spencer – and I wanted to know a bit more about their maker. I found out that ‘ens’ was the maker’s mark of Eric Norris Smith.

Pendants by Eric Norris Smith, dated 1977 and 1978. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for details. (NOW ALL SOLD).

My first bout of googling told me that Eric was an award-winning Scottish jeweller – both designing and manufacturing – and was most well-known for his diamond jewellery, and he created pieces for the Queen and Princess Anne. It also brought the sad news that Eric had died, just couple of months previously, on 3 April 2019, aged 69. He had been retired for less than a year.

Pendant by Eric Norris Smith, with a 1977 Edinburgh hallmark. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Eric was born on 1 June 1949, in Ralston, Paisley, Scotland. He studied at Glasgow School of Art, specialising in jewellery, and in 1970 while he was still a student there he won a prestigious De Beers Diamonds-International Award, one of 30 given out worldwide that year, and in the process becoming one of the youngest-ever winners. I’ve written a separate blog post about these awards, complete with some fascinating late ’60s videos, which I’ll be posting soon. After graduating, Eric was clearly marked as a rising star as he was offered a place at the Royal College of Art, but turned it down to gain practical experience in the workshop of Hamilton & Inches in Edinburgh.

Pendant by Eric Norris Smith, with a 1977 Edinburgh hallmark. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

In 1973 Eric decided to work for himself, establishing his first workshop in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire. Eric began his career ‘producing very modern Scottish silver pieces’, in his words. This workshop soon proved too small and he moved to larger premises in nearby Bothwell. From here Eric designed and manufactured diamond jewellery, which he sold to over 120 retail outlets across the UK, as well as continuing to make less expensive sterling silver jewellery such as my pendants. The third move came in 1979 when he set up his eponymous company, Eric N. Smith Ltd, and moved to yet-larger premises in Newton Mearns, Glasgow. Eric’s company soon gained a reputation for high-end diamond jewellery and bespoke pieces, especially engagement rings, and he started specialising in selling luxury jewellery brands as well as his own diamond pieces. In 2005 he launched the ‘Morse’ line of jewellery with messages spelled out in Morse code, made up of diamonds of course. Ex-President Bill Clinton was a customer. However, I am here for the silver jewellery!

Scottish saltire and Celtic trinity knot pendant by Eric Norris Smith, hallmarked in Edinburgh in 1978. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Pendant by Eric Norris Smith, with a 1977 Edinburgh hallmark. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

As well as winning a Diamonds-International Award, Eric was twice named UK Designer of the Year at the UK Jewellery Awards. Another notable achievement of Eric’s was that he was responsible for the reintroduction of the Glasgow hallmark in 2013, exactly 50 years after it was last struck in 1963. Between 1963 and 2013 all Scottish hallmarking was undertaken in Edinburgh.

Eric’s obituary was featured in The Times of 29 April 2019. It is behind a paywall and a subscription is required to read the whole piece.

Salisbury Cathedral peregrines 2019

May3

The peregrines (Falco peregrinus) at Salisbury Cathedral are nesting again (yay – last year for the first time since 2014 there were no eggs laid, booo).

Peregrine on the nest box, 3 May 2019. Still from the Cathedral’s live webcam feed.

The Cathedral has two webcams set up this year – they can both be found here (the sound appears to be on for the first one, a noisy hissing, so reaching for the mute might be useful). The peregrines also have a YouTube channel, which confusingly wasn’t updated in 2018 – the videos are here instead.

Last year was an eventful one in that there were plenty of adult peregrines on the site, but no eggs were laid. Fingers crossed for this year: I gather an egg was laid on 8 April but can’t find out if any more were laid (clutches are usually between 3 and 4 eggs, I gather). I’ll just have to wait until the incubating bird moves off the nest.

UPDATE 5 May 2019: I’ve just found this video on Youtube (on the Cathedral’s main channel rather than the dedicated peregrines’ one), which tells that four eggs have been laid (8, 10, 12 and 15 April), and as incubation is 29-32 days, they are expected to hatch in the middle of May.

UPDATE 29 May 2019: It looks from the webcams like there are four babies in the nest. Yay!

Four fluffy peregrine chicks on the nest, 29 May 2019.

Different view of the parent peregrine with some of the chicks visible. 29 May 2019.

Found a Salisbury Cathedral video on Youtube which tells they were born, one a day, on 15-18 May.

UPDATE 11 June 2019: The four chicks (three females and one male) were ringed.

UPDATE 14 June 2019: I have seen one chick by the nest on the webcam, and we have had several days of very cold, wet weather. I do hope the other three have survived, and have merely wandered off camera.

UPDATE 18 July 2019: Two young ornithologists from the Cathedral School present an update on Youtube. The four chicks (Sky, Petunia, Pansy, and Perry) have all fledged successfully. Sally, last year’s female, has left Salisbury, flying east along the A303 corridor to Wincanton, and last recorded in Trowbridge:

Hannu Ikonen reindeer moss jewellery

May3

Every now and then I come across a jewellery designer who is pretty much ‘invisible’ online (I don’t have a fabulous library of books on jewellery, sadly, so google is my source). This was the case with Finnish designer Liisa Vitali (about whom I was at least able to cobble together a post of sorts), and is in fact much more so the case with her compatriot Hannu Ikonen. I have no doubt this is due in part to the majority of sources being in Finnish, but information about him is nigh-on absent online. I have come across the same small paragraph about him, endlessly repeated on different websites selling his pieces, but with no biographical details or detailed information about his jewellery designs.

Turning to google books, all I could find was a publication from 1982, titled Welcome to Finland / Soyez Les Bienvenus en Finlande / Willkommen in Finland by Anders Nyborg and published by the University of Michigan. And even then, I was only able to see a snippet: as the texts in the three languages were side by side I was able to glean that Ikonen was then considered a rising star, and had worked in wood and precious metals for ten years (ie since the early 1970s), and that he was self-taught. I have googled vainly to try to find out more about him, even simple things like his date and place of birth, where he worked and so on, but with no joy. I do not know if he is still alive. I do hope so. I am guessing that perhaps he is/was a sculptor if he worked in wood as well as metals, and this would explain the fabulously sculptural qualities of his ‘reindeer moss’ series of jewellery.

Sterling silver reindeer moss bracelet by Hannu Ikonen, with a 1977 hallmark. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photos for details.

I recently acquired my first piece of Hannu Ikonen’s jewellery in the reindeer moss series. This series is usually found in bronze, with sterling silver pieces coming up for sale more rarely. Ikonen designed for Valo-Koru, a Finnish jewellery firm that operated in Turku from 1969 onwards.

Reindeer moss is a misnomer, as it is a lichen of the genus Cladonia (cup lichen) rather than a moss. The lichens in this genus are the main food of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, known as caribou in North America).

Cladonia fimbriata. Photo by Mareike Hummert on Wikimedia Commons.

Cladonia fimbriata. Photo by James Lindsey on Wikimedia Commons.

In making the reindeer moss series, Hannu Ikonen joined an illustrious group of Finnish designers inspired by nature and the natural beauty around them. Search on Google images for ‘Hannu Ikonen reindeer moss’ to see the glorious range of his designs.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 21

Jan12

Part 21 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

Sterling silver wide band with bosses. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photo for details.

Thing:

A dalek. Made of straw bales. I mean, just look at it! Photo taken in 2013 by Oliver Mills, at geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons. The sculpture was at Park Farm near the A51 at Nantwich in Cheshire. The farm makes ice cream, and for 20 years has also been making giant straw sculptures and raising money for charities. Hurrah for them!