The past has ideas

You can read more about Impington college here

This is an interesting study of Morris’s project as a whole from a website devoted to pedagogy.

Sebald visits a library on the south east coast built for the use of sailors, and it’s a comfortable, idiosyncratic affair. Impington college has its own library but for use of pupils and locals. It has community rooms and gardens for the use of locals. [According to my sister the community rooms are still community rooms] Before public libraries were common these made a huge difference to people’s lives.

Reading about the Bauhaus is immensely enjoyable – politics, culture, art, poetry, performance and philosophy and craft – all approached with equal seriousness – and sometimes uh fun. A little something on the bauhaus

Presently there is not much value placed on these things – they are period pieces and their ideas are curious but not actionable.

Roaming has merits

Crawl

Been out visiting churches – one in Impingdon and another in Chesterton (Cambridge).

The first had brilliant line work and repeated motifs of fruit and leaves decorating it. A large rendering of St. Christopher – popular amongst working people generally but I’d imagine quite appropriate to the people of the fens what with how unsafe the land was – St. Christopher being the saint of safe passage

The second I found less aesthetically interesting – characters were almost cartoons – like the whizzer & chips comic I read as a kid.t were filled with demons – a Doom painting. People pulling themselves out of graves. A good source for demons

Took some photos (instagram account for photographs) made some drawings – and then recreated them on the tablet.

Impingdon – in the company of my partner (Helen Cook) – had treasures. Impingdon village college – designed by Walter Gropius (first director of the Bauhaus) – beautiful building, enough to make me search it out online… I would very much like to have a proper look around. The Bauhaus is one of those moments in history I would love to visit – a crazy & fun sounding time – mixing arts n crafts with radical notions and modernist aesthetics… hm. Further on we followed some woodland off the guided busway – spotted a large variety of mushrooms, and a slime mould – ‘Wolf’s Blood’.

Chesterton has its charms – some bizarrely idiosyncratic approaches to architecture, some home made honey, a great butchers, and various gargoyles and sculptures on and around St. Andrews – dated 1400s and earlier.