Visit to London

Yesterday, I went to London with Rosie Price to visit the Renaissance drawings exhibition at the British Museum.  Took over 2 hours to go round. The exhibition was not very crowded and i noticed that the people who came in with us were still around us at the end. In other words, the viewers were all enthiusiasts for drawing. What can I say about? If you are a drawing fiend, you have to go. It is difficult to pick one to be 'my favorite', so I won't. I bought a copy of the book which has all the drawings in it. Nominally because Michael asked me to but I need to go through  it again today to fix them in my mind.

I had expected the show to be in the upstairs print room but they had put it in the old Reading Room. It was well annotated and the captions were very informative. If the drawing had been used as a basis for a subsequent painting, a small print of the painting was  shown. There were also two or three albums of drawings which had been intended as a resource.

Afterwards, we had tomato soup in the atrium and decided against going to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. I certainly did not want to lose the 'flavour' of the drawings by overlaying my mind with the Summer Exhibition. Rosie needed to buy a lilac-coloured artificial flower to go with her mother-of-the-bridegroom outfit so I was introduced to the delights of Berwick Street. I love haberdashers and these were wonderful. Ribbon, buttons, buckles, hair pieces.  We also took in some silk shops as I wanted to buy some printed crepe-de-chine. We found some fabric which would have been suitable but I baulked at paying £89 a meter. We then went to a wonderful shop off Edgware Road which had printed crepe-de-chine in a big way. Only this time I looked at the price first - at £113 a metre, I abandoned the idea. The shop is fabulous, stacked high up the walls. Wonderful laces, feathered cloaks(!!), exotic prints. We retired to a coffee shop called Bake and Cake which was an odd mixture of baklava and high-class French patesserie. Tea and baklava were in order. I realised on the train coming home at 5 o'clock, that, in all this shopping, neither of us had bought anything in the way of flowers or fabric! I bought some baklava to take home to Michael and that was it.

Perhaps because it was Friday evening, the train was packed. It was standing room only until Kingham.

I have decided to take the felt covers off the recent book and re-use the inside. On Thursday I had an exchange of emails with the person responsible for receiving the Convergence yardage exhibits. So I need to strengthen the top with bondaweb and organza, as for 'Reflections', and make a casement. I also decided I would need to hand-stitch the lower edge. Apparently the lower edge hangs free and the fabric will be visible from both sides.

 That is today's job along with finding some packing materials. It does not need to be in the States until July 1st but I would like to get it ready.