For Julian is an antiquary, that is a person who studies the past through looking at historical artefacts. And it is his lifetime’s collection of the stuff (and still counting), that I am delighted to have been invited to see today.
It was on the way to have lunch with a friend last week in Summertown that I first encounter the name Elizabeth Jennings. I’d decided to take the scenic route north out of the city along the Oxford Canal. Starting at Hythe Bridge, over Isis Lock, under Walton Well, Aristotle Lane and Frenchay Road Bridges, and then just at the point at which I need to peel off to reach my destination there it is; Elizabeth Jennings Way Bridge, the painted words on the arches of its underbelly part of a fun folk-artsy mural portraying the story of the neighbourhood.
‘The Silent Traveller in Oxford’ by Chiang Yee is inscribed in a flowing red script along the spine of a cream linen bound volume, with its Chinese calligraphic equivalent written vertically from top to bottom on the front cover. Open its pages and there are exquisite watercolours, deliciously comic cartoons and beautifully written poems and travelogues describing Yee’s perambulations around the city in the early 1940’s. A snip, I thought, at £14. When I return home, I discover that Yee was something of a celebrity.
I’d arranged to meet Richard Lawrence at his studios in Hurst Street, a short cycle ride east from Oxford’s Magdalen Bridge. There’s a yard at the front, so disconcertingly full…
Painted during three intensive periods over a period of 25 years, to those who live in the city they are instantly familiar snapshots, illustrated vignettes that cleverly capture that sense of surprise that many of us feel at the sight of a soaring medieval spire over a modern rooftop, or a field of meadow flowers glimpsed through the railings of a bus busy high street.
I have long been enchanted by Cecily Peele’s “MAP OF OXFORD’S HISTORY; WITH SOME OF HER WORTHIES”, (above) published in the 1930’s. A cursory glance at this funny, colourful pictorial…
Opposite Meadow Walk on St Aldates, there is a shop where tourists like to buy souvenirs after their visit to Christ Church. It’s appropriately called ‘Alice’s Shop’ as this pretty…
It is Thursday morning so I head to the open-air market on Gloucester Green. At the heart of today’s city this is a square of flats and shops sandwiched between…
I was delighted to receive a small package from a reader of this blog. It was a copy of a book first published in 1764. They thought I’d be interested…
I am, apparently, an abecedarian, a lover of alphabets. I discovered this when visiting the Alphabets Alive! exhibition at Oxford University’s Weston Library – a must if like me you…