#748 theoldmortuary ponders

Italian meringue, Tavistock

This top image is contrary. Yesterday bad weather and serendipity took us to Tavistock market. A place of colour and bustle, but also these beautiful white meringues.

I had found a Belle Epoque mirror on a second-hand site for a very small amount of money. An early morning drive to Tavistock would give us the chance to collect it and walk the dogs on Dartmoor.

The weather had other ideas, and by the time we hit the moors on our way to Tavistock we were in the worst sort of rainstorm. The dogs still needed walking but as luck would have it Tavistock has an ancient covered market.

Somewhere we could browse and people watch, and the dogs could stretch their legs and enjoy the mixed smells of market life. I am a sucker for the market vibe. I love the juxtaposition of colours, smells and people. Throw Christmas into the mix and things could not get more fancy.

Tavistock is a market town that is traditional in every sense. Country people come into the town to stock up stuff that sustains them in their rural, and often isolated homes out in the wildness of the moor. Tavistock is a town where people wear country clothing because they need to, not because it is a fashion trend. Deerstalkers, the iconic hat of Sherlock Holmes are worn as a matter of course. This is the land of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Tavistock market is the location of Butchers Hall, the roof is one of my favourite complicated photos.

As we are drawing towards the end of 2023, I thought I would just thtow in some other market pictures of the past year.

Only the middle one was taken at Tavistock y.esterday. The top one was in Bangkok and the last one was Hong Kong. All featuring food but I also have hats and slippers to share.

Hats in Tavistock.

And slippers in Venice.

For the serendipitous and fascinating love of markets.

#747 theoldmortuary ponders

What is something others do that sparks your admiration?

I spend my entire life in admiration for the skills of others. Even skills that  I would never wish to have. This picture is a case in point. How do people become App designers and what skills does it require. My life is enriched massively by Apps and yet I know nothing about that career choice.

App design could not be further from my skillset and yet with the use of Apps on my phone I have managed to create a ponder out of this one picture. Just by googling and exploring my google picture file more fully than I usually do.

We came upon this ornate back gate, in Venice on one of our meanderings. I wasn’t sure how to weave it into a blog or if I would ever use it. But it enchants me so I googled the name over the gate and a blog emerged. This blog is all delicious serendipity.

In a gorgeous twist of serendipity Claude Monet had been here before us, in 1908.

The front entrance of Ramo De Ca Dario

Like me Claude was a little reluctant to visit Venice.

Monet’s Venice https://artsandculture.google.com/story/TQUhwOmSAhkOLA

I don’t know what Claude’s reluctance was, mine was caused by a particularly smelly visit many years ago. The visit had shattered my illusions but I am so glad I returned and just like Claude I am already planning another visit. Which takes me back to App appreciation. My phone can tell me exactly where and when I took this photo.

It can also show me all the photos that I took nearby.

This just blows me away, I can be incredibly lazy. My phone tells me there is an App update. I usually diligently do a download and think no more about it but App uploads are not just about better functionality. Sometimes really useful new features appear. The little black dots mark out the photos I took on one particular day and the route of my 20,000 steps. This is such a useful tool for planning future visits. So much more to see…

Until the next time.

#735 theoldmortuary ponders

Yesterday’s blog, https://theoldmortuary.design/2023/11/28/734-theoldmortuary-ponders/ , was all about an exhibition squeezed into our journey to a railway station that was absolutely the sort of thing we love to visit.

Todays blog subject is almost the complete opposite. Easy Jet decided at fairly late notice to cancel our flight home, giving us additional time in Venice until an alternative flight with a different carrier. Next door but one to our hotel there was an exhibition that would probably never be on a ‘must-visit’ list.

©Fondazione Prada

A replication of a 19th Century Venetian Portrait exhibition last curated together in 1920. Proximity to our hotel was key as we had agreed to meet some fellow abandoned travellers to share a water taxi when we discovered we were all on the same alternative flight. So we walked around Fondazione Prada the central bigger building in the picture above and visited Ca’ Pesaro the smaller white palazzo.

We could easily have filled our time in the Modern Art galleries but the deeply pigmented colours of the walls of the portrait exhibition lured us in.

Who wouldn’t be lured in?

What a revelation. The vibrant wall colours absolutely focussed the mind on the gloriousness of traditional portraiture. The anonymity, to us, of the subjects somehow made the whole exhibition easier to view. We even noticed an anomaly.

Real credit to the curators for making unknown portraits interesting. Just one room differed in layout from the 1920 exhibition. Maurizio Pelegrin, an installation artist born in Venice created a space with a very different feel. Like a squirt of lemon on a rich and unctuous meal. Just perfect.

#730 theoldmortuary ponders.

We have certainly done some steps in Italy and there are many blogs to follow when the ponder is upon me.

Pigment store in Venice

When we were in Rome we pondered ancient civilisations and contemporary art. A quest that was largely successful with some fabulous surprises thrown in. Our last Art gallery before a train trip to Venice had a prophetic slogan on a T-Shirt.

As luck would have it we were off to the Biennale, but not the Fine Art one with National Pavilions. The Architecture Biennale offered cool spaces in beautiful buildings many of them being restored. No t-shirts with instructions were available which rather allowed us to do as we wished

Which of course was to flâneur a lot.