I am on a week's holiday course doing 'The Victorian Achievement' which is about the great Victorian manufacturing cities, Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford and Leeds with Saltaire and Port Sunlight thrown in!! The group has 11 students from all over the world, including Tasmania, Canada and USA. I was worried that I might not be fit enough but find that my sister, Dorothy, and I are definitely in the fittest 25%. We have an expert guide who walked us round Manchester yesterday. This is Memorial Hall built in 1862, based on a Venetian palazzo a la Ruskin's Stones of Venice. Apparently Italian Renaissance (Florentine) was thought suitable for banks while Gothic and Venteian were suitable for civic architecture!
Today we are going to the Science Museum and I hope to see some looms. We also have a conducted tour of the Town Hall laid on. This afternoon we are going out of twon to see a church.
In the morning, before the course started, we visited the Whitworth Art Gallery and saw another Africa Textile collection which was good because it means what I learned at Birmingham has been reinforced.
We visited the Manchester Art Gallery to view the Pre-Raphaelites (the guide is a expert on them) and some Leytons. If there is anything I like less than the Pre-Raphaelites, it's Leytons. Sentimental twaddle. Bah!! There is a family story about the first time we all went to Birmingham to see the Pre-Raphaelites and got to the door of the great exhibition room. At which point Michael and Ruth said OOHH and rushed inside while Anne and I said Yuck, turned away and found a nice exhibition of silver to view. Anyway they had two display cases of William de Morgan - whom I love and here's a tile to cheer you up.
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