Cats in Art

Posted on 28/07/2017 by carolinemmurray

If you were to be foolish enough to Google ‘Cats in art’ (and I really don’t recommend it) you would get ‘about 37,600,000 results’ – probably more by the time you read this: and a great many would look something like the image below (courtesy of Animal Advocates Alliance). Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Literature, Museums and Galleries, Venice | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Joseph Was An Old Man

Posted on 23/07/2017 by carolinemmurray

… and a very old man was he, according to the Cherry-Tree Carol, at any rate. William Henry Husk points out, in his note on the carol in Songs of the Nativity, that the description of Joseph as old has no foundation in the New Testament, but only in the various apocryphal narratives of Jesus’s youth, such as the ‘Gospel of the Birth of Mary’: ‘a man named Joseph, of the house and family of David, and a person very far advanced in years’. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Curious Herbal

Posted on 16/07/2017 by carolinemmurray

In Modena recently, we were having a nice mooch round the Biblioteca Estense in the Palazzo dei Musei, which also houses the Galleria Estense, the Lapidario Romano, the Musei Civici di Modena, and several other collections. (A tasting session for Lambrusco was also in full swing, but at 10 o’clock in the morning we decided it would not be prudent to buy tickets.) Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bibliography, Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, History, London, Natural history, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Hortus Academicus

Posted on 10/07/2017 by carolinemmurray

The botanic garden in Leiden is always associated with its hugely distinguished first director, Carolus Clusius, and sure enough, his bust is the first thing you see at the entrance. I wasn’t aware, however, until our recent visit, that other plant collectors and taxonomists also had a close relationship with the garden and the city. Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Botany, Gardens, History, Natural history, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Object of the Month: June 2017

Posted on 28/06/2017 by carolinemmurray

It may be stretching a point to call a small fragment of a painting an ‘object’ – the more so as the small fragment depicts two apparently living animals who may or may not have actually been alive when they were painted. But I was so struck by these particular images that I thought they deserved a bit of further investigation: so here are the Golden Age Guinea Pigs! Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Museums and Galleries, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Plant of the Month: June 2017

Posted on 21/06/2017 by carolinemmurray

There is no doubt that, for a very long period, the pineapple was THE evidence, across Europe, of your wealth, your taste, and your ability to choose a head gardener for your estates who could manage a stove-house. This exotic fruit from the tropical jungle was allegedly encountered by Christopher Columbus on the island of Guadeloupe, which he visited during his second voyage, between 4 and 10 November 1493 (though I haven’t yet found a contemporary account which confirms this?). Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Botany, Exploration, Gardens, Museums and Galleries, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Idiots

Posted on 08/06/2017 by carolinemmurray

To add to the gaiety of the nation in these trying times, I have for some time now been tweeting (@Prof_hedgehog) a #WordOfTheDay drawn from Thomas Wright’s Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer in Use, or Are Not Used in the Same Sense; and Words Which Are Now Used Only in Provincial Dialects, first published in two volumes in 1857. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Bibliography, Biography, History, Literature, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bark

Posted on 05/06/2017 by carolinemmurray

It may seem a little weird, when summer seems at last to be arriving, to be considering bark. On the other hand, in my wanderings on the Italian peninsula recently, I found myself photographing as much bark as I did leaves and flowers; and I took advantage of my period of restricted mobility  to do virtuous thinks like putting all my bark pictures into one folder. Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Gardens, Natural history | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Plant of the Month: May 2017

Posted on 31/05/2017 by carolinemmurray

When an unfortunate juxtaposition of my slippery sandal and the glass-like surface of a marble step in Venice had fairly uncomfortable consequences a couple of weeks ago, my second conscious thought (the first having been ‘I hope this wasn’t caught on CCTV’) was ‘Oh dear [a slight paraphrase], what about Chelsea?’ But I managed to hobble round last Wednesday, thanks mostly to the help of my devoted wingman, who sheltered my left side from assaults by elbow and the thrice-accursed backpack. Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Exploration, Gardens, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Thunbergiana

Posted on 16/05/2017 by carolinemmurray

I was picking stems of my Deutzia to bring indoors (an activity which presents a rather more domesticated and delightful image of the châtelaine of Château Hedgehog than the reality), when it occurred to me that although I have been enjoying the beautiful (though sadly unperfumed) spring blossom of this shrub for more than twenty years, I had no idea who Mr (Herr, Signor, Monsieur) Deutz was (though it was a safe bet that the eponym was a man). Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Exploration, Gardens, History, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments