Inspiration: All That Jazz

So when I named my All That Jazz bracelet, I plucked the name out of the ether.  It's a glittery bracelet, full of silver lined beads in sumptuous rich colours.  It reminds me of Quality Street wrappers when they used to be foil, the colours so rich and indulgent.  There is just something glittery and alluring about it, it's hedonistic and glitzy.

Looking up the roots of the phrase has been interesting.  It was originally the name of a song from the musical Chicago before being the name of a film made in 1979.  In Chicago, it's the opening number which shows Velma Kelly dancing on stage and it is clear the production is missing her sister.  Velma found her sister with her husband and killed them both.  The other main character Roxie Hart shoots her lover at the beginning of the show as he attempts to break off their affair.

The play is set in the Jazz Age which was a time of carefree hedonism and exuberance but it also overlapped with Prohibition Era.  Chicago in the 20s was run by infamous gangs who controlled alcohol supply and the underground scene of the speakeasies was the home of vaudeville and scantily clad ladies who you could pay to dance with you.  The Capone gang looked after the south and 'Bugs' Moran's gang ran the north.  The officials of the time were particularly corrupt in Chicago.

The 20s saw women having increasing freedom.  Fashion was suddenly much more revealing and designed for new dances.  The flapper was born, with revealing clothes and I love the way the fringeing of many of the dresses moves as they dance (I am a huge Strictly fan!).  They drank and smoked and were much freer with men than previous generations.  They had spirit, but they also courted trouble.

In the musical, one of the themes is the pursuit of celebrity.  The two main characters are celebrity criminals but their fame is fleeting.  They were in pursuit of more.

While part of me loves the idea of the freedom and creative growth of the 20s another part of me sees an awful lot of shadows.  I think the dancing, music, clothes and freedom would have been great fun but you link that to gang culture and a society that largely wasn't ready for woman's liberation and there was also the potential for great suffering and misery.  

The misery of extreme hedonism is also explored in the film All That Jazz, which is semi-autobiographical of the director Bob Fosse who directed and choreographed Chicago in 1975.  The main character, Joe Gideon, is a chain smoker, workaholic and womanizer who uses stimulants every morning.  He develops heart issues but refuses to change his ways and despite surgery, eventually dies.

When I think of All That Jazz, it's that rich over the top creativity, the women in their beautiful dresses and the incredible art deco movement of the time.  It is an inspiring time and looking back, the excess and darkness is just as fascinating as the beauty.  

I made a 20s board on pinterest!

Photoshoot: All That Jazz!

I really love rich purples and this bracelet reminds me of the crinkly foil of Quality Street chocolates and the rich purple foil of Dairy Milk (before it became wrapped in plastic).  It's so beautifully rich and metallic.  It glitters and sparkles from all those lovely silver lined beads.  It has enough Pizzazz to attract any Magpie to steal it away!

So it seemed fitting that it would attract a Magpie to come say "Hi!"  This little Magpie came all the way from Scotland where it was made by Samieston Ceramics.  I adore Magpies.  It's easy to think they are black and white but look closely and they have spectacular multi-coloured plumage.  They seem to have a sense of humour the way they look at the world, and just a little bit of sass.

The Magpie wanted to show off some treasure and some of it's glittery stash sits on the left.  Pearls from GJ Beads.  The Swarovski crystal come from all over as there isn't really a specialist in the UK, different shops have different bits.  For the really unusual things though, I tend to go to Dreamtime Creations.  The postage is prohibitive though from the US so I tend to wait and buy things in one go.  Swarovski changes it's range frequently, so if you see something unusual, buy it will you can...

The short strings of purple bicones are part of Swarovski's Spark range and they are really sparkly.  While some are still available, it's stock suppliers have remaining rather than the original full range now.  I have also included some bicones in Indigo, Rose and other colours.  There are a few rivoli's which are so sparkly because they have foil backs.  The largest stone is a Solaris with eight sides and bands of frosting.

On the right are the sorts of sumptuous fabrics that a human Magpie would appreciate.  On the bottom is a tunic, not quite a dress, by Joe Browns in a beautiful dark blue almost purple velvet.  Above it is a purple velvet tunic which was a bargain from Crazy Clearance I think.  The pink scarf was a Tesco buy and is white with bright pink butterflies.  The scarf on top, at the back, has more of a story.

We had been to Canada, flying back in to Bristol Airport.  We have a lovely little Airbnb we like to stay at to get over jet lag, or break our journey when we leave Cornwall.  It was a hot day as we left there and we were still a little lagged and low on supplies.  We were on the M5 when we realised we were going to have to stop and we were not near a service station so we pulled off at Wellington and headed for the centre.  We stopped at some traffic lights and there was this amazing shop, so after we parked, I of course had to go and have a look...

The shop was Chandni Chowk and was full of beautiful things.  They are a fair trade and ethical company with a range of textiles produced in India.  The scarf I brought was hand printed using traditional block printing methods.  The designs are so lovely.  Their website has details on the techniques used as well as the range of designs for sale.  They also have a whole bunch of other things too and as a bonus it was lovely and cool in there...

At the back is a nice pink glass from Tesco with Vimto in it.  Vimto is one of my favourite drinks but I don't let myself buy a bottle too often!

Inspiration: Summer Solstice

So at the weekend it was the Summer Solstice and I watched the clouds and morning rain live on English Heritage facebook page as they streamed footage of Stonehenge live around the world.  About 100,000 people watched the sunset and about 50,000 watched the sunrise.  The sunset was glorious, even though you couldn't see the sun set as the clouds were amazing.

We think of the Solstice as being a day, or even a couple of days but the truth is, it's a moment and this year it was on the 20th June at 21:43 (GMT).  The earth orbits the sun, but it also has a tilt which means that when it is one side of the sun, one hemisphere gets more light and when the earth is the other side, the other hemisphere gets more light.  This is why Australia has summer when the UK has winter.  

The Solstices are the points of the Earth's journey round the sun where the tilt is at it's maximum in relation to the sun.  So at the summer solstice in Australia, the Southern Hemisphere is tilted away and so has shorter days and experiences winter, while the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun and has longer days and experiences Summer.  There are some diagrams here on pinterest.

As we head from Spring Equinox, which is the point in the Earth's orbit where the seasons are equal in both hemispheres because the tilt is at right angles to path of light from the sun, to Summer Solstice, the sun climbs higher in the sky every day and the length of the day increases also.

At the North Pole, Summer Solstice means that it faces the sun constantly so the sun does not set while the South Pole is plunged in to darkness.  The Equator has a latitude of 0 degrees while the North Pole is at 90 degrees.  Where I live in Cornwall is around 50 degrees.  On the 20th June 2020, the sun set at 21.35 and then rose again at 5:10, giving us 7 hours 35 minutes of night.  In Aberdeen, which is further North at 57 degrees, the sun set at 22.08 and then rose at 4:12, giving 6 hours and four minutes of night.  At the North Pole, the sun does not set during the Summer Solstice, in fact it will not set until the Autumn Equinox when it finally sinks below the horizon.

The parts of the planet that get more sun warm up and those that get less, cool down.  It takes time for things to heat up though.  At the Summer Solstice, most of summer is ahead of us (in theory, it isn't always like that in the UK).  The land reaches its warmest shortly after the Solstice in mid July, but the sea takes longer reaching it's warmest in late August.  This is why the coldest part of winter is after the Winter Solstice and January is often the coldest month.  It's known as lag.

So for now, the effect of the decreasing day length will not be very noticeable.  The greatest changes in day lengths occur around the Equinoxes and the smallest changes in day length around the Solstices.  On Saturday, the sun set at 21.35 and it won't set at 21.34 until the 1st of July.  On the Equinox this year the sun will set at 19:18 while the following day it will set ay 19.15.

I began my most recent bracelet with the Stonehenge sunset in the background and it seemed very fitting to name it after the Summer Solstice.  It has a softness to it the light often has early on Summer days.  The sun's path gradually climbs higher and higher across the bracelet.  It has to be said though, the sun does not take a zig zag path...  I really love this bracelet and I know I am going to wear it loads this summer, because the best is yet to come!

Bead Basics: Seed Bead Colours

The range of seed beads is truly staggering.  Miyuki produce well over 1000 different size 11 delica beads for instance.  I am going to run through some of the different types of finish.

Opaque - these are solid colour beads with a gloss surface.  They do not get affected by the colour of the beads around them so much so give definite colour in a piece and clear edges.

Matte Opaque - these are solid colour beads with a matte surface.  They feel a little softer than standard opaques and give a very different texture.  They also have very definite colour and don't pick up colour from other beads.  The finish is actually a frosting and they are sometimes called frosted.

Semi-Frosted - these are less frosted than the fully matte beads

Metallic - these have a metallic finish and come in a range of colours.  They have highly reflective surfaces and as a result they can pick up on colours around them slightly.  They add sparkle.  The metallic finish and reflectiveness result in slightly less solid colour than opaques.

Matte Metallic - Instead of a gloss reflective surface, these metallic beads are matte, giving them a softer look.  These are a particular favourite of mine.  They have a little natural colour variation throughout the bead which is beautiful.

Plated and Metal - you can also get delicas made from metal rather than glass.  Some are made from base metal and then plated while others are solid precious metal.  The price varies!  Solid gold beads  are not cheap...  I have used silver in some pieces where I have really wanted that look and feel and been prepared to pay for it for that piece.  

Galvanized - a metallic coating is added to the beads, similar to metallic beads.

Transparent - see through glass that gives a different light quality to a piece.  Colours are more likely to be influenced by surrounding colours and are not as strong.

Transparent Matte / Frosted - the glass is still see through but has a frosted finish.  They are less likely to pick up on colours next to them as they are not reflective but the colours have a soft look.

Silver Lined - Mirror like shiny beads, the silver sits in the hole and the glass is coloured.  The colour is strong.

Colour Lined - Instead of being lined with silver, the bead is lined with another colour and this gives the bead a different look.  For instance magenta lined blue will have hints of blue and magenta and the colour of the blue will be shifted because of the magenta.  They can act as useful beads to bridge two different colours.  Sometimes they are transparent glass with a colour lining and these obviously have a weaker colour because not all of the bead is coloured.  Also worth noting are white lined beads as I think these look particularly lovely in greens and blues.

Pearl Lined - These are lined beads which have a more muted and subtle lining colour.  The pearl is light enough to still be reflective but has some colour variation.

Silk Lined - Another variation!  I think this is where the silk satin finish is used as a lining instead of on the outside of a bead.

Fancy Lined - These are new and I have not had a good look at them yet....

AB - this is a particular lustre finish added to beads that gives the surface a rainbow effect, although the precise colours of the effect depend on the bead underneath.  The colour is less solid as a result and so a green AB bead may have hints of blue or purple and the beads will not all be exactly the same colour.  These beads are beautiful and attractive but they tend to pick up on the colours around them.  A piece of beadwork made entirely of beads like this is less like likely to have clear distinctions between colours but will be pretty and glittery.  Colour variation will be more subtle.

Gold lustre - a gold sheen over the surface of a bead, it adds an extra colour dimension.  I have some violet gold lustre and these are beautiful beads.  

Iris - is another lustre finish that is multi coloured rather than single coloured but not as multi coloured as AB.  These beads will be affected by the beads surrounding them in regards to what colour they look.

Ceylon - this is a finish that gives a soft pearly quality and is only found in lighter pastel colours.  They give a solid colour finish.

Silk Satin - This is a soft finish that reminds me of the mineral Selenite.  Selenite is fibrous and both frosted and shiny.  I think the glass is etched with fine lines.

Luminous - A range of colours designed to be particularly bright.

Duracoat - This is a particular type of opaque coating that is more hard wearing.  They don't look very different from other opaque beads.

Dyed - not all colours can be produced with every technique and some colours are achieved by dying the beads.  

Different finishes and types of bead can be combined so that you have silver lined semi frosted beads - these would be coloured glass beads with a silver lining to make them reflective but the glass has been partly frosted to give a matte type finish.  Matte metallic iris would be matte metallic beads with an iris coating which would give them more variation in colour across the bead.

The types of bead you choose are just as important as the colour to the overall end effect of a piece.  It can be useful to pour some beads on to a mat to look at colour and colour strength as when you look at them in a tube the colour can appear stronger as you are looking through multiple beads.  I think that mixing finishes can be as good as having all one finish.  If you mix up finishes then the light will interact with the different beads in a piece in different ways.

In That Blue Bracelet, I used whatever sea like colours I had.  Ten different ones.  They all react differently to the light and I like this because the sea changes colour based on how it reacts to the light.  It has galvanized, matte, silver lined, iris, opaque, frosted and metallic and as a result, all the layers behave differently.  If Monochrome Magic is the middle ground of mixing finishes, That Blue is the extreme.

In my Monochrome Magic bracelet I used two very shiny beads that pick up and reflect any light there is.  These were galvanized un metal (DB453) and transparent silver grey (DB114) and they do not sit next to each other so when the light hits it, zig zag lines stand out in dark and light grey.  The chalk white is opaque (DB200) so it is reflective but not as reflective as the other two, so it picks up some light and then the light part of the design, chalk white with light grey either side really stands out.  The remaining two colours are both matte, black (DB310) and matte metallic silver (DB321), which means that these two colours really swallow the light.  I always think matte black looks blacker and darker and the matte colours make the shiny colours stand out more.

Light combined uses matte transparent coloured beads edge in opaque white.  I like the way if feels like the coloured beads are full of light and framed by the opaque beads.  It's an affect I intend to use further.

Sticking to one finish has great effects too.  I made my rainbow using matte transparent beads and they give the bracelet a soft but light effect; hold it up to the light and it shines through.  All That Jazz uses silver lined beads, with one galvanized thrown in though you would have to look hard to see it.  The result is a beautiful shiny piece that looks like a multi coloured piece of silver foil with tiny scales.  Mysterious Mauve is full of matte metallic which gently blend in to each other and it has such a soft fluid quality I adore.

By Fires Light uses a mix of opaques and matte opaques.  You would not notice until you shone a light directly on it and then the dark red and yellow just catch the light differently.  It gives the piece a subtle depth.  There is no chance of the colours blending in to each other, because of the opaques, but the mix of matte and non-matte separates them even further.

Copper Tree is based around two colours of olive bead, one matte and the other AB.  The AB has given the beads a pinkish overtone but by placing the beads next to copper beads, it's shifts the AB finish to looking coppery.  Where the light hits the shiny beads, there is almost a tiny bit of gold which ties in the yellow gold.  In some lights and at some angles the colours merge, at others the copper and olive AB shine in unity while in other conditions every colour is distinct and harmonious.

A piece I am working on at the moment is called Colour Shift.  It contains pink, purple, green and blue in beautiful jewel like tones so you think the colours would really stand out as individuals.  The beads however include two iris finishes, a lustre and a glazed silver lined.  The result is that the colours largely merge into a multi coloured reflective beauty.  The pattern is discernible but subtle as the beads are the star of this one.

It can take a lot of experience to know in advance how the colours and finishes and effects will all work together.  I don't think it matters.  Experiment and enjoy.  See what happy accidents occur.  Pick colours you love and be prepared to do a few rows and see if you like how it looks.

Photoshoot: Copper Tree!

I love copper.  It's such a great colour and add in that beautiful metallic quality.  It's such a warm and rich colour.  I often pair it with green and this time I decided to pair it with olive green because I had some beautiful Olive AB delicas.  The lustre on these picked up the copper tones beautifully.

I originally wanted to call it olive tree, because olive trees are amazing!  I love their gnarly beauty.  They are not generally known for their copper tones though, so Copper Tree it became.

One the left me have a generic glass ramekin dish with copper leaf in it that I think came from the Range.  It's beautiful stuff.  I brought one of those plain wooden decoupage boxes and painted it black before patchily adding the copper leaf over the top and then varnishing.  It came out looking lovely and I know the friend I made it for still has it.

It is however pesky stuff.  Don't breathe at it or it will all fly away.  Don't let it near damp surfaces and I really would not recommend using a fan around it.  In fact, maybe just don't move!

The two candles are olive and thyme from Yankee Candles.  The holders are cheap glass ones I think I got from Tesco.  The card is also from Tesco, because being badass is a daily goal!

My husband loves a good bargain and he found this in a charity shop locally.  It's so pretty and I have never seen anything quite like it.  It reminds me of the stone, serpentine, but it's pottery.  It has no markings and I can not say anything else about it.  Except it's lovely.

The purse is made from cork and I got it from a tourist shop somewhere around the bottom of the toboggan run in Funchal on the island of Madeira.  I like the idea of cork trees finding a new reason for being kept around so that they do not get ripped up...

The snake is Voldermort's snake from Harry Potter taken from the lego minifigure set.  He is called Nagini.  

Beading Basics: Seed Beads

Seed Beads is a generic term used for small beads, although it can also apply specifically to doughnut shaped beads also known as rocailles.  A number of other shapes are available but for beadweaving, the delica, which is a small tube, is other most commonly used shape.

Rocaille - doughnut shaped bead

Delica - tube shaped bead

Hex - tube shaped bead with a hexagonal profile, or six flat surfaces

Bugle - longer tube bead

Triangle - have three rectangular faces and two triangular faces with the hole passing through the triangular faces.  May have sharp or rounded corners.

Drops - water drop shaped with the hole through the thin pointed end

Magatama - are difficult to describe.  It's like one side of the bead has been pulled out.  Sometimes described as comma shaped.

Dagger - flattish long beads which are narrower at the top, they slowly widen then narrow quickly to a point.  The hole is through the top, but goes through so that the beads lie flat with the dagger shape on show.

Charlotte - rocaille shaped beads with one cut facet to give extra sparkle.  They are very, very small.  One of my friends describes beading with them as like beading dust.

In recent years, a huge number of other bead shapes have been developed but these would not generally be used in the sort of peyote projects I am currently doing.  They would be used in bead stringing projects as well as bead weaving projects where the shapes can fit together like a mosaic or be used as the basis for further embellishment with seed beads (or both).  Some of them have multiple holes.  They deserve a post of their own and are not generally included as seed beads as most of them are larger.

Crystal glass beads, such as Swarovski or Czech glass also come in a vast number of shapes and sizes.  These sorts of beads are known as faceted because they have multiple cut smooth sides.  They add sparkle.  Some of them are tiny enough to be considered as seed beads but they generally are considered separately.

Seed beads are classed by size so that the larger the number, the smaller the bead.  I think the original size was down to manufacturers who would have their size 0 bead and they would get 6 size 6 beads on the same length of thread as their size 0.  Generally size 11's are a nice size to work with, small, but not too small.  Size 8's and 6's are also widely available and look great, just giving a chunkier look and a thicker piece of beading.  Size 15's are also widely available and smaller than size 11's, you will need a finer needle to work with them.  Charlotte beads are smaller than size 15's.

The sizing convention is generally applied to rocailles, delicas and triangles but less so to other bead shapes.  Many of the other shapes are described with metric dimensions.  A lot of the new shapes are standard to that shape, so a peanut bead will always be a particular shape and size and are generally described with metric dimensions.  Swarovski beads are also given in metric sizes but suppliers who specialise in these will often include line drawings of the shapes on their websites because there are just so many different shapes.  Many bead shops will stock some colours of the most common shapes and sizes, such as bicones (two cones joined at the circular end and then cut to give facets for sparkle) and rivoli's (coin shaped, flattish but rises to a point on each of the faces of the coin, often foil backed to increase sparkle, they have no hole and are beaded around for fancy designs).

There are three main manufacturers of precision seed beads, all based in Japan.  Czech seed beads are also available as are cheaper, lower quality beads.  Matsuno are the cheapest of the three and their seed beads are a little more irregular in size.  This is fine for peyote and bead loom work where you do not mind a little irregularity, as it can add character.

I am less familiar with Toho as they are not stocked by my local bead shop.

I generally use Miyuki beads.  Delica is a trademark design of Miyuki and the precision and uniformity of these little tubes is great.  They give a wonderful evenness to peyote designs.  That said they effectively look like little rectangles in peyote designs where as rocailles have a more elliptical profile which I also enjoy and use.

For flat beadwork, I would not generally mix makes and I would stick to one size.  Changing the size of beads is one way to introduce dimension to beadwork.  The different brands have slightly different sizing and the shapes may vary slightly and while this may not be obvious when looking at tubes of beads, it is often noticeable on flay uniform beadwork.

The beads come in a huge range of colours and finish is a huge part of the colour effect.  The finish can increase the size of beads very slightly.

So generally I use Miyuki size 11 beads in either seed bead / rocaille or delicas but my patterns will work with any type of seed bead.  In fact That Blue Bracelet was a deliberate combination of Miyuki and Matsuno to give an uneven finish.

Photoshoot: Light Combined

I had thought of basing this on the primary and secondary colours of the wheel but instead I ended up using a primary and a secondary and the tertiary that lies between them.  Roughly speaking...

One issue I have with some colours, is not that that I do not have anything in that colour but that the things I have are too big or unsuitable.  Teal for instance is a colour I love and one I needed for this photoshoot.  I have a bunch of teal in my house, concentrated in our bedroom.  Duvet set, sheets, pillows, curtain and even one of those printed fabric hangings.  That's why the item in the top right is a pillow case. 

It's a lovely set of bedding from Dunelm Mill.  Luxurious.  The underside is cotton but the top is velvety, or velour?  I am not sure of the difference.  It was actually my husband that spotted it and it was an instant love for both of us because of the colour.

On top is a piece of patchwork I made by hand, because I am not really sure about sewing machines...  yet...  My Mum liked to do machine quilting and she was part of a local group that would put on these days she would take me to.  There would be five or six groups so you could do different things.  Generally there would be something that did not require great sewing skills.  One time I learnt Kuminho and another time I learnt how to make thee little quilted blocks from a circle and a square.  Pretty sure it was Japanese.  Afterwards I made two of these mats.

My husband and I have grown in confidence the more we have travelled.  The first time we went to Canada to stay with friends we booked all our flights with one provider and travelled all the way to Heathrow for the privilege of direct flights.  Last time we went, we flew from Bristol, which is much closer and the parking is a lot cheaper.  We have found that if we are willing to do a little transfer on the continent, it may delay us a couple of hours but reduces the price considerably.  

It's been a good thing.  We like food.  Our transfers have allowed us to buy chocolates in Brussels, sausages in Germany and stroopwaffels in Amsterdam.  We had frankfurters for breakfast in Frankfurt and Kroketten in Amsterdam.  Kroketten are delicious potato filled croquettes which also had some tasty meat and cheese inside.  In Amsterdamm we also brought a set of fridge magnets, two of which are in this photo, centre back.

On the left is a glass vase that was my Nana's.  I don't know anything about it, except it has attractive swirls of colour and I really don't ever want to have to give it a good clean inside...

The dish in front of it is from Malta where they have a long history of glassmaking stretching back to the Phoenicians.  We visited the Craft Village at Ta'Qali and had a pleasant time wandering around.  I don't know the name of the glass shop we visited but we enjoyed it.  They had a seconds area and we picked up a couple of things in there too...  I am sure they will feature in a photoshoot!  This dish, I think must have come from that shop, but I am not really sure, it is a few years back.  We may have brought it in Valetta otherwise.

I added some silver foil lined beads in various colours from my bead stash for some extra sparkle and colour.  I think these all came from a friend who was reducing the size of her bead stash before moving.  She always says buying beads and making things with them are two different hobbies....

Art of Fire

All week I have meant to write about the use of fire in art and connect to all those really cool fire art installations out there.  There is some inspiring stuff!  So many amazing festivals use fire art, from the smallest productions to the largest.  I have collected a bunch of pictures on pinterest.

Our local Rogue Theatre Company puts on productions in Tehidy Woods which begin with a walk through the woods where you meet performers in little mini installations.  They often use fire in some form. particularly in the winter productions that take you through the woods in the dark.

The most famous arts festival involving fire has to be Burning Man.  It is a festival that I find very inspiring and it would be great to go some day, although spending time in the desert feels a little challenging!  A city is built each year called Black Rock City in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada on the playa which is a delicate environment.  The festival has ten principles and one of these is to leave no trace.  They take this very seriously.  No rubbish.  

Two of the other principles are radical self expression and participation.  Art installations are constructed across the Playa and people are encouraged to volunteer to assist in the larger projects but also to create art themselves and take part.  The culture of the festival has become one of the most amazing creativity.  Every detail, the costumes, the bikes that people ride around, mutant vehicles, all contribute to the expression...  The aim of Burning Man is to literally, set people on fire and then send them home to set others on fire.

Fire is such a key part of Burning Man that they have a whole section of their website devoted to it.

Any time spent browsing Burning Man pictures is inspiring.

There are a number of festivals inspired by Burning Man around the world.  Burning Seed in Matong State Forest of Australia, the Telluride Fire Festival in Colorado, AfrikaBurn in South Africa, Midburn in the Negev desert of Israel, Nowhere in the Monegros desert of Spain, Burning Nest in South Wales...  In fact there are so many now that Wikipedia has a page just for Burning Man inspired festivals.

The truth is, fire is awesome and beautiful all by itself.  You create an amazing installation and then set it on fire, it's going to be an amazing thing to watch.  There are a bunch of metaphors in the burning of things that touch people deeply.  Add in the science of pyrotechnics and there is amazing potential.  I don't know where the line is between art that uses fire, pyrotechnics and fire performers...

Jiang Zhi for instance takes flowers and douses them in alcohol before setting them alight and photographing them.  The images are beautiful and often ethereal as the alcohol burns blue, mostly.  Fire can be considered as destructive, but in reality, it's a chemical reaction and nothing is lost, fire is transformative and this is what Jiang Zhi does, he captures transformation.  

The Box Project was created Tanapol Kaewpring and he places different elements in a glass box in various environments.  The resulting photographs are beautiful pictures.  In Fire a Box, the glass sits on a beach, flat wet sand suggests the tide going out and it's a calm day, waves gently ebbing on the sand rather than crashing.  The light is low suggesting dawn or dusk.  And then there is a glass box containing fire.  His understanding of his work is also fascinating and he is quoted on this Instagram post.  He talks about change, growth and destruction and how humanity control them, about how we might need to let go a little, think outside the box and break free...

Bernard Aubertin was an artist and member of the ZERO Movement, which was artist group described as a "zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning".  He began to add fire to his works and became known for setting fire to paintings and books and other objects, as well as red monochrome pieces and works involving matches.

Fire is often used to create an effect that is perhaps secondary.  Le Cercle by Sylvain Meyer is an optical illusion created at a party and photographed. It's a giant oval that appears as a circle and as a result, it makes it look like a smaller man is stood in the air above another man.  It's looks spiritual and meditative which is at odds with the story of it's creation.  It's theatre made possible by darkness and fire.

I think that some of the best fire illusions are the ones that do not use fire at all but still manage to convey something fire like.  Origami Lava was an installation that shows lava pouring out of a derelict building in a smoky atmosphere.  No fire was involved though, instead over 10,000 pieces of origami were joined together.  Dark Silence in Suburbia was an installation depicting flaming tires with billowing smoke constructed using extreme modelling skills.

Daniel Wurtzel uses fog under a fan to create tornadoes.  With the right lighting, these swirling vortexes look like flames and have been used to great affect in theatrical productions, where actors are able to stand in them.  He does however take this idea beyond illusion and back to reality because he also creates fire tornadoes.

It's not hard to create fire.  Just light a match.  But fire needs us to be in control of what we do in order to create art with it.  The flickering of the flames is beautiful in it's own right.  My Dad would sometimes have a bonfire in the back garden and I would love to stand with him and watch the flames.  There is an interesting tension with fire between letting it do what it wants as a partner in creation, and using science to understand it.  Pyrotechnics must be a fascinating branch of science, so close to art...  The boundaries are blurred.  Maybe because fire creates.

Beading Basics: Needle and Thread

Seed beads refers to any small beads and because of the size of the hole, special thread and beading needles are used.  Beading needles are much slimmer than those used for sewing and the hole is more of a slit than an eye so that the needles fits through.  You can buy selection packs of needles which are pretty cheap and this enables you to try different size beading needles out.  If you find that your needle won't fit through a particular bead as it is too small or you have a lot of thread going through a bead, you can switch to a smaller size.

You may find that you want to buy packs of individual needles as you progress.  Size 10 needles are a good size for threading and will fit through size 11 beads comfortably.  These are the largest needle used for beading.  General sizes go to 13 with the needles becoming much finer as the size increases.  Size 15 needles are the finest and can fit through size 15 beads.  They do however bend and break much more easily than size 10 needles and can be much harder to thread.  Another type of needle is known as a sharp and these are shorter needles which makes them less bendy and they come in similar sizes but are generally less commonly used.

I keep packs of size 10 needles for general use and size 15's for any desperately tiny beads, but I use the 15's only when I have too.  I also have size 12 sharps and these are my preferred needle.  Most people begin with the normal length beading needles and never switch to sharps.  It's very much a personal choice.  Sometimes in more complicated beadweaving projects the greater length and flexibility of normal length beading needles is really useful.

Once a needle becomes bent it is a good idea to stop using it as it will put more pressure on your hand as you have to grip it tighter to stop it rotating.  I find sharps break less but beading needles do break as they are pretty delicate.  Sometimes needles lose the back of the eye too and this is more likely with the finest needles, so don't tug too hard at the thread by the needle and expect your needle to survive.

Because beading needles have a slit rather than an eye, beading thread is flat, unlike sewing thread which is circular.  It is much easier to thread flat thread through a flat eye.  When I first started beading, the generally used beading thread was called Nymo.  Nymo was not conditioned so it was more vulnerable to wear from beads and sharp edges.  Before use we would condition the thread using beeswax or a little blue pot of thread heaven, which was less sticky.  Things have moved on a lot since then!

Next came KO which is preconditioned thread and lovely to use.  A lot of professional beaders still prefer to use this type of thread because they feel it gives greater fluidity and flexibility to their pieces.  

Wire was always available but obviously it just doesn't have the flexibility for bead weaving.  I have seen some great bead crochet projects with it and wire work is it's own whole area of beading.  There are some braided wires with a plastic coating on the market though that are really great for necklaces.  I have a reel of Beadlon wire for this purpose.

At some point, somebody realised that that fishing line would be great for beading.  Fireline in particular has really taken off and is now strongly promoted as beading thread rather than fishing line.  It has some of the qualities of wire and some of thread.  It is not to everyone's taste but I personally love it and to date, all of my patterns have been made using it.  It is more expensive though, than thread.

It comes in several different strengths which relate to it's thickness with 4lb being the thinnest and 6lb and 8lb being progressively stronger and thicker.  I am currently using 6lb and this is fine for the sorts of bracelets I am using with no issues fitting thread through size 11 beads.  4lb would be fine to use too.  It does kink a little like wire though!  Also, it is not flat but in order to thread it, you can flatten the end with a pair of pliers or nails.  If you have posh fingernails, don't do this!  Fireline is tough stuff.  I once met a beader who used to do it between her teeth and she damaged her teeth.  Fireline will blunt scissors so because of this, I use cheap nail scissors to cut it though you can buy tougher things to cut it that will withstand it.

Fireline comes in two colours, crystal which is white and smoke which is a very dark grey.  Given the translucent nature of some beads the colour really does make a difference.  Smoke can make projects look duller.  For the sort of bead projects I am completing, the only visible thread is at the end of rows and will not be obvious at all when the bracelet is being worn .  For this reason I tend to use Crystal more.  I would however switch to smoke if I was making something very dark.

There are other threading materials used for a whole range of purposes, often decorative.  Satin cord and leather thong are often used for threading larger beads on to.  C-Lon is also used for beading, mostly for threading but has a huge number of other uses.  It's an industrial strength nylon thread originally used in upholstery.  It comes in a lot of colours and looks pretty but I wouldn't use it for bead weaving as it is too thick.

It's also important to note how you will join and knot threads.  With nymo and KO you would note threads but I always used to place a drop of glue on the knot to hold it.  G-S Hypo Cement was always my favourite.  It's a jewellers glue and is a little flexible, which is great for beadweaving where the pieces are generally fluid.  It also comes in small tubes with a delicate nozzle allowing precise application of small amounts on to knots.

Fireline can be knotted without the use of glue as it is stiffer and holds better than thread.  Many people use a zapper though as this melts the fireline joining two pieces together and removing the tails.  I have not invested in one however and although many beaders I know have moved over to using them.  I think part of me likes knotting and weaving tails in.

If you use wire, you will need crimps to hold beads in place but there are a huge number of findings and options out there to investigate.

Metal findings will rub through thread and fireline over time, so if possible, always have beads in contact with the metal, rather than thread.  The issue is one of movement, so some findings that don't allow the thread to move are much better.  For instance, thread guardians are little loops you can pass a thread around to hold it and the clasp fits into the loop so that the clasp rubs on the loop rather than on thread.

Paper and Ink

I grew up with paper and ink.

I know we all do in this day and age, but, my Dad was a printer and my Grandfather before him and my Great Grandfather before both of them.  Although I didn't follow in his footsteps, I did work for a printers for a few years in their paper warehouse.

Ink in our blood.

My Dad printed the old way.  Trays of metal type that he would set my hand in metal frames.  My Dad reads back to front and upside down as a matter of course.  The forms would be placed in his two old Heidelberg presses.  My Dad had very long arms and he always seemed to be all over it like a gibbon!  The whirling of arms with suction cups.  The moving of the form on to the paper.  

The machines sang and we danced.  

My Dad is long since retired and we didn't have video capturing phones back then.  I wish we had video of those presses at work because they were magic but in this day of youtube other people do.  Unfortunately they seem to like putting music over the presses working....  Except this one....  My Dad would take the paper and it would just do what he wanted instantly.  A big stack would be perfectly lined up in seconds.

Magic in our fingers.

He had a guillotine, which obviously we were not allowed to near.  Guards would spring in to place as a huge shiny silver blade effortlessly slid in to a stack of paper.  He would put all the offcuts in to sacks to be sent off for recycling as the paper industry has always done this.  I would rifle through for interesting colour paper and take it home for projects.  I made the paper express the things I imagined and it willingly helped my dreams take shape.

The potential for transformation.

I had to opportunity to visit a paper factory growing up in the Lake District with my Dad and it was amazing to see the size of those reels.  Working in the warehouse later on, I saw them stacked in towers far above my head.  We would have to count them and would squeeze between them like some strange tree trunks in a peculiar forest.

Imagination taking flight.

People all over the world take blank pieces of paper and make it other.  Origami and calligraphy.  People bind the sheets in to books and collect them together in to libraries.  I love seeing pictures of libraries from around the world, holding the knowledge and dreams of a species.   Old books have a special smell and feel.  You walk in to an old book shop and the sense of potential is all around, what path will I choose to walk today?

Doorways to a million million worlds.

It's computerised these days, designs downloaded to giant photocopiers that don't have that paper and hot ink smell.  There are people everywhere that keep the paper and ink love alive though.  Small businesses, craftspeople, artisans.  But designers still design from a special place, even if they use computers.  Every typeface ever used has been designed...

My soul is paper.

I have collected some images on pinterest...

Lego

I wrote about lego a little on the rainbow photoshoot post, how I loved playing with it as a kid and adored Olafur Eliasson's Cubic Structural Evolution Project using a tonne of white lego and the imagination of the public.

Lego in it's early basic structure is such a simple building block that the possibilities are endless.  The company began making wooden toys in 1932 and when they first started making plastic ones it was at a time when plastic was not well received.   Time moved on and in 1960 they devoted to plastic following a warehouse fire.  The range grew from the basic pieces and colours to include a whole range of pieces that enabled the most complicated things to be produced, including mechanical models.

The most impressive example of using lego to create a working model was the time Lego decided to create a working Bugatti Chiron.  The car is beautiful.  It does not have a smooth surface for a fancy paintjob, instead the lego creates a fascinating structure full of different patterns.  It did drive too!

Of course, if people can make a car then they can make amazing models.  There are Legoland theme parks in quite a few countries now and each of them have lots of amazing lego models.  Lego employs builders to design and make these structures.  They include recreations of landmarks, landscapes and figures from films.  Dan McCormack has made models of his favourite Pokémon characters that are great!  Patrick Biggs makes incredible figures that are just beyond...

Of course there are some builders who take it way beyond...  Nathan Sawaya makes sculptures that go beyond and they are incredible.  My favourite are those that focus on the human figure in a way that really expresses an emotion or state.  A yellow man ripping open his body so yellow bricks spill out.  A grey downtrodden man trying to hold up a giant pencil (Pencil Pusher).  A grey man in a grey suit with a red person trying to escape from inside them. A red man trying to hold his head together as a crack travels downwards.  They are not his only artworks but they really touch something in me emotionally.

Nathan Sawaya took it a step further though when he teamed up with Dean West to produce In Pieces.  Dean is a photographer and the exhibition is centred around some beautiful photographic images.  As you look closer, you realise that one or two elements of the picture are actually created from lego.  In some of the pictures I had to really look to spot the element...

There are a lot of photographers who work with lego and some of my favourites use minifigures. Joe Shymanski is a photographer with more conventional subjects for his day job but he started taking photographs of minifigures as a hobby.  Many of his pictures include storm troopers and I really love these.  Two stormtroopers making angels amongst hundred and thousands (or sprinkles if you don't live in the UK).  Stormtroopers offering free hugs.  A stormtrooper giving flowers to their loved one who has taken her helmet off.  These are some of my favourite...  (Joe has a website but it seemed to be down so I have not included a link)

Others photograph minifigures too. Samsofy has a bunch of posts on Bored Panda and they contain great photography of minifigure adventures. I think the post of rock stars is my favourite!  This couple photograph two minifigures that they created to represent them in various locations as they travel the world.  They have a lovely Instagram page that documents their lives with lego.  I love the way it documents their family too as you look back...  Their photos started off as the two of them, then there was a baby, who is no longer a baby.  It's really lovely.

Actually that was something I did one Christmas for some of my family members.  You can buy the different pieces of minifigures individually to make your own and then equip them with all sorts of objects.  One of my favourites was a model of my niece's boyfriend but there was a biohazard container, which if he drank it, turned him into a zombie...  There were zombie parts to switch out to turn him in to a zombie minifigure and a blue healing canister he could use to turn back into a human.  I even got him a little newspaper with zombie headlines.

Lego also produce minifigure sets which are great to collect.  I collected the most recent Harry Potter set and I have the figures sat in an old print type case on my landing wall.  I also have some Dr Who minifigures which are not lego but are very cool.  People make great displays using minifigures.

People also use lego to create mosaics.  Some of them are very graphical, for instance recreations of Mondrian paintings look amazing in lego.  Others are pixelated versions of art classics.  Of course pixelated characters like those from Minecraft really suit lego mosaics...  Some of the most astounding are creations of album covers like Nirvana's Nevermind and the Beatles Abbey Road (although these are digitally created).

Looking like mosaics, the street art of Jan Vormann is an unexpected delight.  He travels the world fixing crumbling masonry with an infill of brightly coloured lego bricks as part of a project called Dispatchwork.

James May created a Lego House for his series Toy Stories and the programme is still available on youtube.  It's a great programme with plenty of humour.  The house looked incredible but you would not want to live in it and the furniture didn't work so well.  Unfortunately the house was taken down as it could not be transported.

There is furniture inspired by lego though...  and storage boxes, lunch boxes, jewellery, cushions and a lot more...

There is a nostalgia to lego, a geeky nerdy charm.  It has become iconic.  

Combined Colour

There are lots of different colour wheels that have been developed to help us understand colour theory.  I studied Physics a little way back when, so I was aware of two colour wheels, but there are more!  A lot of the other wheels look at the relationships of colours so that we can pair colours together better.

The two wheels I was most aware of are more about mixing colour, one for mixing paint and the other for mixing light.  If you mix lots of colours of paint together you get an icky dark colour that isn't exactly black but is sort of headed that way.  Light is different, the more you mix together, the lighter it gets and the closer to white it becomes.

The wheel for mixing light is called the Light Wheel and it is part of the additive system where colours are added.  Primary colours are those that can not be made by mixing and they differ between wheels.  The light wheel uses three and these are green, blue and red.

We don't often get to play with the light wheel but in Olafur Eliasson's, Your Uncertain Shadow, which I saw last year at the Tate Modern, you can experience it first hand.  Several lights of different colours are setup at one end of the room and as you walk in front of them, your shadow is cast on the wall beyond.  Where there is no shadow all the colours combine to give white light.  Where all the shadows from each light overlap, no light reaches so your shadow is black.  The shadows inbetween are coloured and the colour is based on which lights combine at that point.

There are several different wheels that have been developed for mixing paint (and colours in general that are not light), but perhaps the most commonly known is the Pigment Wheel which has three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.  The Process Wheel uses yellow, cyan and magenta because mixing these colours gives brighter hues.  These wheels are based on the subtractive system, because the more colours you mix together, the more light is absorbed and so taken away.  

I wanted to do something with colours combining because Zig Zag 7 was created by a happy accident where the pattern was accidentally copied and offset.  This meant the lines overlapped and if treated as coloured paths there would be points where the colours combined.  I loved the idea of it being about light, so I decided to use white where no paths of colour were.  

So I used the three primary colours and started colouring. Where two primaries overlapped I coloured in that part as one of the secondary colours, orange green and violet (although I used purple).  My colouring was large scale and rough as I just wanted to gain a perspective and was using it for planning, but here it is...

I realise now that I used the pigment wheel.  It also quickly became obvious that to use the three primaries in a way that would give a complete pattern would make a much wider bracelet than I would want to wear.  I decided to narrow it down and combine two colours.

This time instead of using primaries to create the secondary colours inbetween, I decided to use one secondary and one primary to give a tertiary colour.  I decided to use blue and green to make blue - green or teal.  I really love teal.  I initially used quite a dark blue but as my green was a lime, it looked unbalanced, so I very quickly switched to a sky blue.  I love how it's looking and promise to post pictures soon!

This pattern would work great with combining any two colours to give a third and you could use any of the colour wheels, including some of the ones I have not mentioned here.  I may have initially thought my colours were related to light combining but as I look at the colour wheels, it's obvious that light is not what inspires my knowledge of colour.  I guess I learnt more about colour by mixing paint rather than light because mixing cyan and green light would not result in teal, I am not sure what it would give exactly but it would probably be lighter...

I have more to learn about colour theory that's for sure!

Photoshoot: Rainbow Bracelet

The rainbow bracelet was designed as a simple introduction to peyote stitch pattern and can be found free in this blog post. It was intended to show support for our keyworkers during this time of lockdown and difficulty around the world. It's easy to focus on the NHS, but they were not alone in their efforts.


My husband works at our local hospital and I have included a badge he wears on his uniform. These were distributed as part of the Rainbow Badges Initiative which aims to promote inclusion with a focus on LGBT+ community. The programme was begun by the Evelina London Children's Hospital and has been adopted by many hospitals across the country.


The set of elephants was purchased at the Japanese Garden in St Mawgan. We went a couple of years back on a really hot day and it was such a cool and peaceful treat to wander around. I adored the shop and this set of elephants was one thing we brought. It was a dull day when I took this photo and they are not catching the light as normal. They are made from recycled aluminium and then enamelled by a fair trade company called Namaste in India. They are sold individually but I wanted a herd, because elephants belong together, well, the lady elephants and young do. They live together on a shelf, traveling together.


The little glass dish was I think from Ikea and is full of skittles whose slogan is taste the rainbow. It's a cheat but we don't have many rainbow coloured things. I also love sugar way too much. Skittles did a limited edition a while back where they made white skittles in white packs for pride. I would have brought some but there was no way! I am allergic to orange and I pick out all the orange sweets and give them to other people. If I can not tell which ones are orange, that gets a little tricky!

The lack of rainbow items is why I made a rainbow out of lego. Lego is great and I really enjoy playing with it. I have a basic classic set and a bunch of minifigures. Growing up we had a whole tub of lego and my Mum kept it for any children that visit to play with. It's amazing what you can create with basic blocks and a bit of time. Olafur Eliasson created a magnificent city for the In Real Life exhibition at the Tate Modern I went to. You could then go and work on the city and change it. There was a huge queue to do this and people were not getting bored and leaving very quickly! We watched from above... It was amazing what people were doing! It would have been great to see how it actually changed over time.

 

The three little dishes were brought in the old town of Lisbon. We had been to the Castle (Castelo de Sao Jorge) and walked back down the hill through Alfama, popping in a few shops with a visit to Lisbon Cathedral and the Miradouro de Santa Luzia. We have a dish and a bowl as well and I hope to expand our set of these lovely pieces as I adore their bright colours. None of the bowls are the same size but with this style, I think they look great, all mis-matched. They are just so cheerful. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the shop. I have tried looking on street view but we were wondering a little aimlessly.


The card was brought for me by my husband and I love it very much. I think he got it from Tesco but looking online for Rainbow Sheep card, it looks like it can be brought on Amazon and from Hallmark. It's such a great image. I really like sheep, they are pretty cool, and wool is a great material to work with. They do have an image of following the crowd though but this image makes the point that you can be a glorious individual while still being part of a group. Being true to yourself is so important, but it does not mean you have to stand alone.

Such great themes from these things for the rainbow!

Beacon

Fire has been hugely important throughout history in a whole variety of ways beyond it's use within the home. Fire was used for long distance communications and warning. The earliest lighthouses used open fires to warn ships of the presence of land. Open fires were replaced with braziers and then lamps and now many are electric. Certainly in the UK where Trinity House maintains all active lighthouses, many are now unmanned and automated. Each lighthouse has it's own signal pattern so that those at sea can identify which lighthouse they are seeing. The characteristics of the lights allow those at sea to identify their position and the height of the light above Mean High Water and the maximum distance it is visible at are also given.


Nearby Godrevy is now an LED light mounted on nearby rocks, flashing white/red every ten seconds but the iconic white tower is maintained as a daymarker. Bishop's Rock, situated 28 miles from Land's End and the western most part of the Scilly Isles flashes twice every 15 seconds. From Land's End you can see Longships, which flashes twice in white and red every ten seconds, and Wolf Rock, flashes every 15 seconds. Very close to Lands End, Pendeen Watch flashes four times every 15 seconds and Tater Du flashes three times every 15 seconds. These patterns have been handed down over time and originally the lighthouse keepers would have had to work very hard to maintain them throughout the night.


Beacons were also used on land to send signals over distances. The Brecon Beacons were used to warn the Welsh of English raiders and the Scottish also had beacons for the same reason. In England they were used to warn of Spanish raids. In Finland they were used to warn of Viking raids. The Great Wall of China is a fortification but also used beacons.


In Cornwall there are a few places associated with beacons. Up the hill from Camborne is a village called Beacon. The village of St Agnes by a large hill, known as St Agnes Beacon. Bodmin and Sancreed similarly have Beacon hills and others are known to have been used as beacons, although they do not carry that name. Devon has more information available and this includes a map of the beacon network across Devon and so many of the places include the name beacon. The only excavated beacon in the UK is at Culmstock and it's a little hut which would have had a pole beacon up through the roof.


In celebration of the millennium, beacon fires were lit across the UK on sites traditionally used. The Queen lit the first beacon on a barge in the River Thames. New Years 2000 was not a great Christmas in my family! A bug swept through us all and we didn't get to celebrate together and we all had it at some point over the holidays. By New Years I was well enough to go out but not to party. I went to Ampthill Park to watch the beacon being lit. It's twenty years ago and I don't remember too much about it. I am not sure if the beacon was lit at a certain time or in response to seeing other beacons in the network being lit. I remember that we could see other beacons. The locations chosen were historically used as beacons, the lines of sight already proven.

Beacons have been lit a few times since the millennium. Notably for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and in 2018, to celebrate 100 years since the end of World War 1. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated with beacons in other countries too, including Tonga, New Zealand and Australia.


The word beacon now not only applies to the fires themselves used as signals and places where there were beacons, but also to warning devices such as lights and flares as well as to radio signals used to help fix the position of things. I think that the not only is the idea of fire and warning central to our underlying legacy with regards to beacons, but the fact that they were part of a network. Position is vitally important. Originally a beacon would have been understood as a warning fire in a particular place that was especially visible as an integral part of a network. Our use of the word beacon has evolved to cover each of those aspects.

Some pictures here!

Danger and Disaster

When I was seven, I was sent to a new school, one with many traditions.  I was the youngest girl at the school and that meant that at school's bonfire night party I was to light the bonfire with the headgirl.  Bonfire night was a big deal when I was growing up.  Our local village would have one and everyone would go.  People didn't do fireworks at home so much and if they did, they were pretty awful and very short lived compared to the public displays.  I still remember eating sausages from the barbeque, seeing friends, sparklers...  How it felt to know people throughout the crowd and be all toasty in my scarf, gloves and hat.  I think fireworks night has lost something now it is spread over days, even weeks and it is less about communities coming together.

There was always a little danger to it.  When you held that sparkler, you didn't want the sparks to fly at you and you couldn't touch anything with the hot end.  Once they went out they had to be safely disposed of in a bucket of water or sand until they cooled.  Firework safety ads were all over and people did get badly injured.  One member of my family spent months in hospital following an accident with a marine flare, which while not actually a firework, definitely made the point of safety in our family.

That beautiful danger is one of the things I always loved.  Fire is entrancing...  I grew up in a very cold house with an open fire and in winter, if I was not sat by the fire in the evening, I was in bed reading with a hot water bottle.  I would sit by the fire, watching the flames.  The dog would love to be in front of it too, but she did not like it when the fire spat.  I don't have a real fire in my house, we have one of those electric feature ones where you can change the colour of the fake flames at the touch of a button.  It's not the same.

Fire was more of a fact of life growing up.  More people used fire to heat their homes in some way and I remember seeing chimney fires or thatch roof fires.  The worst though was when the barn down the road caught fire.  I remember my parents left and my sister and I were supposed to be asleep but we were awake and knew something was up.  We were looking out the windows at a sky that had turned red in memory.  The most horrid thing about the fire though, the thing that always stayed with me was that they had two collie dogs who slept in the barn and they tried to get them out, but one of the dogs ran back in.  I was very young and I knew those dogs.

I know we live in a time of terrorism now, but growing up it was an issue too.  The troubles were at their height and you could not go anywhere in London without seeing posters about reporting suspicious items and not leaving your things untended.  In school holidays one of us would accompany my Dad in the van when he would deliver things each Friday in London.  My sister was with my Dad the day a hotel got bombed and she still remembers the missing walls and computer paper flying in long streamers when they had to drive by.

We grew up with an ear on the news every Friday, which is how I know that the Kings Cross Fire took place on a Friday, in 1988.  My Dad was late home that day, London all snarled up with traffic.  I think the events of our childhood that fill us with horror stay with us in a really powerful way.  I had been in that ticket office, ridden the wooden escalators of the underground.  Kings Cross is a rabbit warren of tunnels as several lines connect here.  Hundreds were trapped underground and hid in cupboards and toilets or fled along the tracks.  This article on the London Fire Brigade Website is very good and includes footage from the night of the fire and of the aftermath.  

A match had been thrown and gone under the wooden escalator where there was an accumulation of paint and grease with the grease full of fibrous material like fibre from clothes, litter, tickets etc.  Simulations showed the fire burnt horizontally to begin with, contained by the sides of the escalator, until the fire flashed over shooting a jet of flame up in to the ticket office.  The mechanism of the fire had never been observed before and was named the trench effect, where conditions are perfect to shoot a jet of fire up an incline.  In the ticket office, concrete cracked, tiles were stripped from the walls and plastic dripped from the ceiling as temperatures reached 600 degrees Centigrade.

The fire changed things with wooden escalators being phased out and smoking being banned on the underground.  Procedure for British Transport and their communication with the Fire Service was also considerably improved.  It's always good when disasters result in improvements to prevent reoccurrence.  It's good when we don't forget those lessons and become complacent.

Of the 31 people that died, two stand out.  The first was Station Officer Colin Townsley who has helping people evacuate when the flashover occurred.  He entered the station without breathing apparatus, against his training.  His space at Soho Fire Station remains empty in memory.  The second person was Body 115 which was not identified until 2004 as belonging to Alexander Fallon of Falkirk.  After losing his wife to cancer, he had drifted into homelessness and had very occasional contact with his family.

Unfortunately, complacency with regards to fire safety still occurs.  More recently, the decision to use cladding and insulation in a combination that would not be safe in the event of a fire resulted in tragedy at Grenfell.  It has been difficult to read the reports of buck passing and penny pinching.  Due to the cladding used, fire was able to spread between the cladding and the building as the insulation burnt upwards.  This was the first fire of it's type and as a result, it spread quicker than expected and residents were not given advice to evacuate independently before this became impossible.  The fire service worked to evacuate residents with their specialist equipment before this became impossible.  72 people died.

There are still many high rise buildings in the UK with cladding and there have other fires, such as the Cube in Bolton.  Even before Grenfell there had been a fire of this type in the Lacrosse Tower in Melbourne.  Australian fire services gave different advice however and no one died.  They have also been more proactive in dealing with the issue of cladding on buildings.  There have also been cladding fires on high rise buildings in Dubai.

The Towering Inferno was a film made in 1974 and remains a classic.  There is something so terrifying about the idea of being stuck in a high rise building, with limited ways to escape with the possibility that short cuts in construction may have made the building unsafe in the event of a fire.

The Piper Alpha disaster was worse with 167 deaths resulting from a fire on an oil platform.  No evacuation was ordered as the control room was destroyed in the first explosion.  Oil was being pumped to Piper Alpha from two other platforms and they continued to do so even though they could see the platform was on fire.  Procedural and design changes were made following the disaster.

The fire service in this country is slowly changing as there are fewer fires in general.  Many fire stations are now not manned full time.  Many staff operate on reserve or volunteer basis.  It's a difficult situation as any large fire requires trained personnel and equipment.  The Lizard is a pretty isolated area and there fire personnel also act as first responders and support the ambulance service, which is increasingly stretched.

The fire service initially began as independent insurance organisations.  People would pay premiums for fire cover and the fire appliances of those companies would only fight fires in buildings they had been paid to protect.  Fires would often be left to burn until an appliance belonging to the correct company arrived.  The first of these organisations was formed in 1667 following the Great Fire of London in 1666 where two square miles burnt and temperatures reached 1700 degrees Centigrade. 

The first municipal fire organisation was formed in Edinburgh in 1824 and from then, other cities slowly established their own organisations.  In Liverpool, the fire and police services were combined and the firefighters were known as fire bobbies.  This is of particular interest to me because my great great grandfather, Arthur James Barker was a fireman.  In 1870 he was a fireman living in Bethnal Green, London but the 1881 census shows he was a fireman foreman living in West Derby and working in Liverpool.  By 1891 though, the family was back in Walthamstow, London, with Arthur continuing his career as a fireman.

In reading about early fire fighting, it is clear it was difficult and dangerous.  Technology was in it's infancy so bringing water to fires was difficult with limited power and distance.  Buildings were often demolished to act as fire breaks.  Construction was not as it is now so buildings frequently became unsafe.  Fire fighters had the power to conscript passers-by as a workforce to help and this was dangerous for them as well.

The contribution of the fire service during the Blitz is also important.  In the first 22 nights of air raids, 10,000 fires were fought.  28,000 additional firefighters were recruited but with able bodied men fighting at the front, those considered too young or old to fight and women joined.  Women were recruited as watchers and drivers.  Cities across Europe burned during the Second World War.  Coventry suffered horrendously and the remains of the cathedral are still a memorial.  In Dresden, the Frauenkirche was also bombed and remained as a memorial for 50 years before being restored following the reunification of Germany.

More recently, Notre Dame in Paris burnt due to faulty wiring.

In general, we are much safer from fire now but it still seems that when things go wrong, fire has the potential to be disasterous.  So often though, it's our complacency or financial considerations that make situations worse.  How many people take the batteries out of a fire alarm because they often burn toast?  Fire is scary...  I did Fire Warden training in a previous job and this involved having to put out a fire with an extinguisher.  It's one thing to do this with a small controlled fire, but the thought of doing it in a real emergency is something else.

I have huge appreciation for all those who continue to protect us from fire.  It's not a job I could do.  I think it's important we don't forget.  It's not pleasant thinking about the awful things that have happened previously.  We should never be too comfortable with fire, we should always remember what it's capable of and plan accordingly to keep people safe.  It's always important that we learn and improve, particularly as the world around us continues to evolve and change.

If ever you need a reminder just how bad fires can be, I collected some images on pinterest.