Post 357 It's all about symbols

The view from my window tonight is interesting. 

The heart in lights on the building on the left, as well as being partially blocked to my view by the building in front of it, now has a number of other lights missing. The tall building in the middle has random lights on, and to the right the moon is descending. Unfortunately I can't capture the moon as the crescent it is to the naked eye. It is an interesting piece of abstract art. 

Heartbreak by Moonlight?

I spent most of the morning turning the presentations from our World Embroidery Study Group meeting earlier this month into notes I could print for a member of the group who can't access email reports. It takes time to create a version that captures enough of the content without too much unaffordable colour printing. I think I've succeeded. I was hoping to finish and print it before I left for Pilates, so I could take it with me to post, but didn't quite finish. I now hope to mail it tomorrow.

After Pilates (which exercised a few unaccustomed areas and left me with a couple of aches) I called at the Guild to return the books I had borrowed on both Icelandic and Bulgarian embroideries and also to borrow Sheila Paine's book on Embroidered Textiles. Christine Bishop had recommended its section on Bulgarian Embroidery.    

As it turned out, the couple of pages on Bulgarian embroidery, in the first section of the book Guide to Identification, were less interesting than the later sections of the book which unpacked a lot of the beliefs and practices that underpin symbols and motifs used in embroidery across the world.         

The second chapter, The Decorative Power of Cult, looks at the influence of symbols of very ancient worship - across many, many cultures and the varieties of ways they manifest.                                                                                                                        

I was particularly interested in the last chapter, The Magical Source of Protection, again, manifesting differently in multiple cultures.

One example is that bovine horns were widely regarded as protective (possibly,  Paine reports because of their seemingly magical property of shedding and renewal)

An early example of a horned animal used as a votive or amulet is the gold plaque of a bovine dating from 4500 BC, found in the tombs of Varna in Bulgaria. The holes in this plaque would indicate that it was stitched onto fabric. Paine p152

She outlines evidence of its use in India and Asia, then goes on to say (p154 ) At its westernmost point in the embroideries of Hungary and Bulgaria the horn remains as a small hooked motif worked on the edge of patterns, usually in black thread.

There is this fine example in Vala Georgieva's work.

The book is going to prove interesting to a number of our studies in the World Embroidery Group.

From the Guild I went to Tony and Mark's excellent shop in the Unley Shopping Centre and bought quite a lot of fruit and veg as well as milk. I was very curious about these flowers in their florist section. I should have asked about them, but by now I was tired and wanted to get home.

I spent a while finishing off a summary of my researches into Bulgarian embroidery before getting down to the lettering on my Owl Service.

I did rather better than I thought I might. I've found using three strands of silk and couching it down works best. I now intend to unpick the first few words and redo them in this manner. Then I can block it and add the gimp when it arrives.

I'm hugely relieved. I began to think I would not be able to manage the text.

I know now that it will work. It's a bit mad and obscure, but a powerful image for those interested in Alan Garner's work, or Welsh legend.