#1360 theoldmortuary ponders

On Oct 23, 2025Oct 24, 2025 By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photographyLeave a comment

Patination on a copper cauldron from HMS Coronation.

Quirky specialist museums are a bit of a guilty pleasure. It is not always the artifacts that interest me but the obsession and dedication of the human curators, collectors and conservators that gather, protect and display random objects with a common theme.

Often specialist museums are run by volunteers who are doing their absolute best with a small budget and limited professional input.

In a fancy pants museum a cauldron, made in about 1660 and retrieved, by divers from the wreck of HMS Coronation would be on a plinth in a glass case. I would look at it in wonder at the beautiful abstract patterns created by nearly 400 years of wear and tear many of those years 5 metres under the sea just off Penlee Point. Not too far from home.

But in the Devonport Dockyard Museum the cauldron calmly rests on the floor with almost no signage or fanfare. Enabling me to cause absolutely no harm and take these gorgeous, to me, abstract photos of patination created entirely by coppersmiths who lived 400 years ago and the sea.

I was so thrilled by the abstraction I completely forgot to take a photograph of the whole object!

I am going to have to go back…

#1225 theoldmortuary ponders.

On Mar 14, 2025 By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Hybrid Printmaking1 Comment

Some days are just so full of lovely conversations that it takes a while to sort them and file them appropriately in my memory bank while extracting the nuggets of gold to be used immediately.

One such nugget, is that my evolving photographic technique is called Hybrid Printmaking. Using printmaking knowlege combined with digital techniques ,my analogue skills just happen to be medical imaging, to create unique artworks.

Following on from that conversation was an explanation, see below, which I possibly cannot recreate as succinctly as it was explained to me.

“When an analogue skill becomes redundant it can become an enlightenment in the digital world”

Wow!

Less wow was my choice of clothes yesterday. Back buttoned dungarees on a day when I knew I would be using public toilets for a large part of the day.

What was I thinking??

#1220 theoldmortuary ponders.

On Mar 3, 2025 By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walks1 Comment

Dog walks have been giddy experiences this weekend.

https://devonport200.uk/dazzle/

Four nights of magnificent illuminations and projections and the dogs given access to buildings they would not normally enter.

Quite what they made of it we will never know. But a festival of projected light makes the average last dog pee of the night a lot more illuminating than usual, with paths, walls and steps rather more vivid than usual.

I think a celebrated and projected history of Devonport may have passed them by but they sniffed their way through every location with dogged diligence.

Which allows me to ponder on what they really get from sniffing other dogs pee.

Foxes are supposed to be able to read the pee messages left by several generations. I assume dogs are similar. Wouldn’t it be cool to pick up family and local history by just sniffing,

#1192 theoldmortuary ponders.

On Feb 5, 2025Feb 5, 2025 By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photographyLeave a comment

I’ve finally cracked a small achievement in my creative wishlist for the winter. A bandstand in winter can be a forlorn thing. Useful only to shelter people and dogs from the rain. But bandstands in themselves are quite heart-warming things. Memories are made in and around bandstands. Music is the obvious #1. But they are so much more. A meeting point for friends and lovers. A hang-out for teenagers grappling with hormones and impending adulthood. Parents with buggies trying to form useful, supportive friendships with strangers ; who just happened to conceive a child at a similar time. Somewhere to think about friends and family in other realms.

Essential to me, in this image, is the ever present rain and the complete banishment of greige. Even though that was my reality.

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#936 theoldmortuary ponders.

On Jun 2, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering1 Comment

I love a complicated image, first thing in the morning. Coffee and a complicated image, which is what this was, is even better.

On reflection, I fear I may have been a bit harsh with May. All my moaning on, about rain and dull days. I blame my genes. I was reading about the wettest and dryest cities in England yesterday. If you were to draw a triangle with each corner being a top 3 driest city. Cambridge, London, Chelmsford. All in the East of England. 75% of my gene pool comes from that geographical area, making me wet-intolerant. The other 25% comes from Wales and Norway. If I was a plant nobody would set my roots in the 3rd wettest city in England , Plymouth, and expect me to thrive. But that is exactly what I have done to myself. So if I am a little droopy in the long, wet, autumn/winter/spring months I have only myself to blame.

On a positive note the roses of Plymouth are just fabulous this year. Our local municipal park has an informal memorial rose garden and after a few days of proper good weather the fragrance and colours are vivid in the late afternoon. I am hoping for a similar transition myself.

I may even do a whole blog about roses, particularly those with their roots in cremated remains.

I am not usually a fan of formal rose gardens but the randomness and slightly scruffy haphazardness of this particular one intrigues me enough to go back.

Somewhere in a cupboard I have a cremated cat called Jasper,I wonder if he fancies going in a pot with rose roots , he might make a wonderful show.

P.s My parents cremated remains are buried in a dry old spot in the East of England, their choice.

Not for them the gaudy,giddiness of a mish-mash of blowsy multicoloured roses. They have a quiet country churchyard and were dug up by moles. I think I prefer gaudy giddiness as a memorial.

#929 theoldmortuary

On May 27, 2024May 27, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity1 Comment

All that glistens will lead us through the second to last live blog of the Spring exhibition. Although it may not be obvious in my photos, all these works have a little bit of twinkle about them.

Today is the last day of the exhibition at The Market Hall, Devonport. An exhibition worth driving the extra mile for. Free parking, great architecture, and a cafe to natter in.

The visitors so far, have loved our new choice of venue and for many it is their first time at a Drawn to the Valley event.

The 360 degree, Dome projection room was buzzing during the Private View.

Sometimes a shaft of sunlight catches someones work and the twinkle becomes fascinating.

From the Industrial to the delicate.

And for some final twinkle.

#926 theoldmortuary ponders

On May 25, 2024May 25, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley1 Comment

Yesterday wasn’t all about orange art. There was a huge amount of talking about art and, for half an hour, nipple tassels.

The morning started with a wonky moment.

I had read on instagram that the panorama setting on a camera phone could be used in an up and down motion rather than from side to side. As I arrived at the exhibition venue the perfect subject,a clock tower, was adjacent to the car park.

Now I think I may need to read a little bit more about this technique.

I watched a run through of the 360 degree projection of our art work. It is genuinely thrilling to see a small piece of my art projected as an immersive experience. These next two photos are a bit rubbish but I was lost in the moment. I will get better ones today.

Stonehouse Fruits ( Fig and blackberry) projected on a massive, 12-foot by 12-foot, scale.

My Cold Water swimmer was even bigger. Caught at the exact moment the projection beam was between her knees.

Normally the dome is filled with bean bags for comfort, but this was only a run through so this is how we did it.

Another wonky moment, as laying flat on the foor in varifocal glasses with 360-degree film projection is less than ideal. Below is a tiny video. There is a soundtrack of birdsong and tinkling water.

https://videopress.com/v/oWeQR31h?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

That was a lot of excitement for one day.

#306 theoldmortuary ponders

On Aug 12, 2022Aug 12, 2022 By theoldmortuary.designIn historyLeave a comment

Sometimes I have a nugget of a blog in mind that doesn’t quite have enough substance. The story of Darwin and his Origin of Species came into this category. No disrespect to Darwin is meant but I wanted to express the flavour of his relationship with Plymouth. He was only 22 when he set sail from Plymouth for a two year exploration and survey of the coast of Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego. He was rich enough to pay the £30 a year cost of the voyage, was making a name for himself as a naturalist and had no responsibilities. The yellow boat in the picture above is moored roughly in the position of the Beagle at Barn Pool.

Darwin arrived in Plymouth in late October and eventually sailed in late December. He described his months in Plymouth as the worst time he had ever experienced. He was able to spend time with many great scientists and engineers of the time and also listen to sermons given by university friends, in many first hand accounts he expresses great pleasure in doing such things. But Plymouth, as the city is now known, had a vibrant night culture which Darwin made no effort to study. The city was too bawdy and licentious for a man who delighted in sermons. Devonport where his lodgings were was a place well used to having young men slightly bored waiting for a boat to sail. Devonport had bars and Theatres and many many ways a man with money could have found stimulation and good times. I suspect he was a prissy young man who would not have know a good time if it had jumped up behind him and said Boo!

The Beagle was eventually ready to sail in late December when the weather had become more favourable. One more thing was set to cause Darwin misery. It was just another thing for him to disapprove of, furthering his judgement of Plymouth as a giant den of iniquity.

On Christmas Day 1831, Darwin went to church, most probably Stoke Damerel, where the guest preacher was a friend from Cambridge University, William Strong Hore of Stonehouse. Hore was at that time Assistant Stipendiary Curate to Saltash; after ordination he became Curate at Stoke Damerel.

Whilst Darwin was at church, the Beagle’s crew got drunk and disorderly. The weather on the 26 December was ideal for sailing, but the crew were either hung over or in irons as a result of their behaviour the day before. At 11am On Monday 27 December 1831, in perfect weather, the Beagle did weigh anchor and set sail. On a friend’s yacht, Darwin caught the ship at 2pm beyond the Breakwater, and so began his epic voyage.*

Nearly 200 years on I can sense the look on his face and the set of his body language as he eventually set sail for South America. Most of us know a Darwin!

* Shaun Standfield 2008 Plymouth History Festival 2022

Leap Year

On Feb 29, 2020Apr 24, 2020 By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

What to do with the extra day in 2020.

Obviously after just one Barré lesson we are fizzing to leap around on Leap Day, but this young man does it so much better .

February always needs more red.

Leap Year attracts flimsiness and fun, see my efforts above, or read Guardian flimsiness.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/29/leap-year-day-how-you-could-and-should-celebrate-29-february

But it exists to keep us all ticking along nicely in time. Introduced by Julius Caesar over 2000 years ago.

Leap day recalibrates and corrects time keeping because every year is actually 365 days and 6 hours long (one complete earth orbit of the sun) so once every four years those extra 6 hours are gathered together to make an extra day.

29 pictures in red to fill your extra day.

Gipsy Hill Brewery at The Lord High Admiral , Plymouth

Dodging the spray, Niagara Falls, Canada

Quickie #17, or maybe not.

On Feb 12, 2020Feb 14, 2020 By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

Darwin Day . 12th of February. Charles Darwin, aged 22, spent 2 months in Devonport waiting for HMS Beagle, a survey vessel, to be ready to sail in 1831. He was travelling as a scientist although at the time he was training to be a vicar.
” It was the most miserable time of my life” he claimed .
Training to be a Vicar may have been the problem as Devonport, awas particularly skilled at entertaining young men with time on their hands, money in their pockets and testosterone drenching everything.
Perhaps he was ” keeping himself nice” for a family member. Somewhat ironically the Darwin’s were not averse to Consanguineous marriage.

He may have regretted finding Devonport dull, having set sail on 10 the December bad weather forced them to anchor at Barn Pool, just a mile or so west of Devonport, for a week with nothing more exciting to do than look at Devils Point.

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