As I live and breathe ...

Carving - Hungerford

I was in Hungerford at the weekend when this marvellous piece caught my eye. I peered through the window of the antique dealer William Cook. From outside the shop I couldn’t quite discern what I was looking at, it looked like something dray that had been unearthed, bone perhaps … I went in and was greeted by William who more than happy to show the piece in more detail even though it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t in the market to buy, simply interested.

The piece, if I understood correctly, was carved from a single piece of wood by the artist William Kendall (though I haven’t located any other information about the artist, I wonder if I made a mistake with the name) and dates from the 19th century.

The detail and workmanship are truly outstanding, details on feathers are visible and the ground surrounding the fighting sparrows is strewn with seeds individually raised from the wooden starting block.

William was kind enough to send me this studio photograph of the piece, but even this professional photograph doesn’t really do the detail full justice. If you have any additional links, please let me know.

25 February 2010 • Art Antique Hungerford Carving

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This extravagance of colour was encountered at Kew Gardens Tropical Extravanganza, a real shock to the system after the subdued winter shades.

19 February 2010 • Colour Kew Kew Gardens Orchid Tropical Flower

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Penny, Money or Wishing Tree

I’ve recently been on holiday in Yorkshire (UK) and came across a ‘Penny Tree’ or ‘Money Tree’ for the first time. I heard about Penny Trees from my parents-in-law. Information is a bit sketchy, but my father-in-law thinks he first saw them in around 1980 (they’ve lived in Yorkshire far longer than that).

A Penny Tree seems to fill a similar role to that of a wishing well. Coins are embedded in a fallen tree or tree stump, both along the flanks and in the end. Once hammered in with a stone or whatever comes to hand, the coins are held very firmly by the tree and are pretty well immovable. Apparently the foresters/rangers say that such a tree becomes pretty well unusable for lumber as the coins interfere with processing tools so much.

The tree in the photograph is at Bolton Abbey, around here (certainly on this path running along parallel to the river, though I may have not recalled the exact location correctly). There is a second Penny Tree on the same path.

My in-laws said that there is another Penny Tree in Malham and a quick search came up with this link to Janet’s Foss. The description of the Malham tree suggests “add a coin and make a wish with Jennet the queen of the fairies…”

A bit more of a poke around on the Internet came up with an article on Wikipedia which links ‘Wishing Trees’ with other traditions such as ‘Wassailing’ and ‘Clootie Wells’. I’m also reminded of the traditions I saw in Japan earlier in the year, where ‘poor fortune’ predictions were tied to branches adjacent to temples to negate the forseen ill-fortune, and Shamanic practices of sacrifice and offering to trees and rivers.

This entry is also my first tinkering with a couple of applications for the iPhone; I used Darkslide to upload the photo to Flickr having first tweaked the colours and focus a little using Photo fx. I’m no expert photographer, maybe one day I’ll take some training in photography - in the meantime I’m indebted to Quoc-Huy for his app recommendations and inspiring photographs in Twitter.

18 August 2009 • Penny Tree Custom Folklore Trees Shamanism Yorkshire

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