Favourite Views

Back in Australia, I can't resist posting one of my favourite views, described here. Click the heading for more, and this photo for a larger view

Fine Cell Work at the Leathersellers' Hall

Click the heading for more photos of the event.

Fine Cell Work, the charity that teaches needlework to prison inmates and sells their cushions, quits and other work, held a sale a the Leathersellers' Hall on 19th November that was very well attended. The guests were welcomed by the Master, Charles Barrow, and the past Master, Michael Binyon, gave a fine speech about the value of the charity to prisoners' self-respect. The prisoners do the work when they are locked in their cells, and the work gives them a skill and their earnings give them hope and independence.

“Fine Cell Work gives these men dignity in work and through this, dignity in life. When a man gains self-respect he may start addressing his offending behaviour” Officer, HMP Wandsworth

There is a new video about Fine Cell's work on their website

Lat year the event was held at the Drapers' Hall

Favourite Places

The view of the City from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park. Click to enlarge. Click the heading for more photos

Anish Kapoor's Exhibition

Anish Kapoor's Exhibition at the Royal Academy has been rightly feted. Click the heading for some more photos

Ruskin on Pugin's Roman Catholic Conversion

Augustus Pugin converted to Roman Catholicism in 1850, perhaps somewhat unwisely describing the experience thus:

'Oh! Then, what delight! What joy unspeakable! .... the stoups are filled to the brim; the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained with sculpted shafts, the relics of saints repose beneath, the Body of Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax and chrismatory are there, and thurible and cross......

Perhaps he deserved it, but John Ruskin responded with some fine invective:

'But of all these fatuities, the basest is being lured into the Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests' petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible.'

Shortly afterwards Pugin went mad and was confined to Bedlam, and died the following year.