Malcolm Fraser in Berwick

Yesterday; wandering back from a visit to Holy Trinity in Berwick with my friend David we came across an interesting new office development. A photographic exhibition was being shown inside so this gave us the chance to make a visit. It turned out that the building was more interesting than the photographs and we were glad to look around. This building-which has quality written all over  it, is the work of the Malcolm Fraser practice which has produced some fine work in Edinburgh; the Scottish Poetry Centre being perhaps the best known. So there are now two worthwhile recent buildings in Northumberland: this office development and the new observatory at Kielder. Both feature wood in their construction or cladding. Newcastle has nothing recent to offer of similar quality. The new City Library appears to be a monument to banality and have even less going for it than the dreadful housing  on the Quayside. I do not think Newcastle has had a building of real quality since MEA House by Ryder and Yates.

Unfortunately the Berwick building, which has offices to rent by the month, was almost totally unoccupied: another sign of the times. You can access the  Berwick Workspace from the alley beside the Berwick Advertiser building and also from Walkergate.   

Calligraphy by Li Yuan-Chia

Wei wu wei; act without acting is a Daoist aphorism here written by the Chinese artist Li Yuan-Chia. I never saw him practicing his calligraphy but I do know that he did not use the traditional ink stick and stone. He used instead a large bottle of indian ink as purchased from Thurnam's in Carlisle. Paper for practice was provided by old newspapers which were then used to light his stove.

Whether this frugality would be classed as a Daoist characteristic I do not know. One presumes that would be the case; showing off doesn't fit with the image of  self sufficiency and frugality such as Li exemplified.

And frugal he certainly was: a visitor, calling by arrangement on a winter evening might find the house in darkness. But he answered the door pointing out that one did not need light to think by. Li did not usually go far from home but sometimes went out on his scooter-with a kind of home-made apron fixed around his legs to protect himself from the breeze.  

Visit the LYC Foundation 

The naming of children

  C J Sansom's  Shardlake novels convey a distinct impression of the disturbed and disturbing atmosphere during the reign of Henry the Horrible when conscience was literally a matter of life and death. In"Dissolution" there is a scene where the Tudor problem solver visits a family who have adapted to the new times by giving their children names such as Zealous, Perseverance and Duty.

I was strongly reminded of similar practices in other tyrannical situations. A Chinese parent  at the time of the so-called Cultural Revolution  would be placed in a difficult situation. Give a child a generation name and you were backward. Best just to call the child Hua (China) and be done with it. No criticism was then possible.No doubt there would be similar patriotic names in the Soviet Union. 

Recent reading

On Saturday morning in Blackwell's I was tempted by their 3 for 2 deal. But I couldn't find a third book. I have been wanting to read "Cabinet of Equals" since I first heard of it. My partner's interest in Lincoln has certainly rubbed off on me. My second choice was to have been "The Rest is Noise" which is Alex Ross's account of 20C music. But, what to do? I couldn't find a third choice. In the end I left it.

Imagine my delight on finding a copy of Ross's book in my local library later on the same day. It is an excellent read -I was tempted to say that it is journalism of the highest class but in a way that would be unfair. Yes, I have skipped the sections on music in America but I will read them. If they are half as good as the pages on  Schoenberg they will be very good indeed. There are plenty of amusing and  piquant anecdotes such as the passage in which Ross lists the occasions when Schoenberg and Stravinsky were known to have been present at the same event/meeting in Los Angeles and never met.

The problems of bookbinding

Peter Hunter-Blair has a story about the bible text known as the Codex Amiatinus that prodigy of the Northumbrian golden age which now resides in the Laurentian Library in Florence. He notes that one scholar who was allowed to consult the volume found that it was delivered by two men struggling under its weight because it is so massive. It weighs 56 kilos. This makes one wonder about the physical struggle which must have been part of the binding process-if not for the sewer at least for the  person who constructed the housing for the book. The Codex Amiatinus must have been one of the largest insular manuscripts ever made and it could not have been manipulated with the ease with which the Stoneyhurst Gospels could be handled.

Imagine also Abbot Ceolfrith  setting out from Wearmouth/Jarrow on his way to Italy with this monster on June  4, AD 716. It is now the oldest surviving copy of the Vulgate-the Latin Bible.Of the other two bibles made at the same time only fragments  remain.

 

Peter Hunter-Blair,"Northumbria in the Days of Bede".