ornament – overlooked and revisited
I have just received a copy of Diana Newall and Christina Unwin’s marvelous book The Chronology of Pattern [Link] – just published in the UK by Bloomsbury/A & C Black. We still radically separate ornament from style and meaning, treating it as superfluous and superficial, yet it is the primary experience we have of much [...]
spectral stone
The Coquet Valley in Northumberland is fascinating me. [Link] Around Lordenshaws, across from the market town of Rothbury, are many carved rock surfaces, typically associated with farming communities from the fourth to and millennia BCE, maybe earlier and maybe later. Birky Hill I met Stan Beckensall, school teacher in Rothbury, rock art enthusiast, some thirty [...]
IDEO, design, the everyday
This is the first in a series of commentaries on a class running at Stanford, Winter Quarter 2010 – “Transformative Design” ENGR 231 – [Link] I made a visit to IDEO last week, the design consultancy with its head office in downtown Palo Alto, by Stanford. I’m teaching a class next term with one of [...]
Routin Lin
Northumberland UK drag – pan | shift – zoom in | control- zoom out Beneath the hill fort; around from the rock carvings. (Please be patient with a long load time – I think it is worth it)
Flodden Field
In the tracks of northern antiquaries, summer 2007 September 9 1513: in the low rolling hills of north Northumberland an invading Scottish army was defeated in the bloodiest ever encounter between England and Scotland. James IV, King of the Scots, nine of his Earls, fourteen Lords of Parliament, five Highland Chiefs and 10,000 men at [...]
Bamburgh UK
Site of the court of the Kingdom of Northumbria – at its height in the seventh and eighth centuries.
gravestone, Bamburgh, Joyous Garde
Northumberland UK In the graveyard of Saint Aidan’s church – built in the 13th century. Founded c635.