Archives for February 2015

Got Wood? Italian art in the middle ages… it’s not all painting.

February 28, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

One of the least explicable aspects of Italian art culture that I have come across here is the way that painting and sculpture seem to be the only media that get any real respect.

While admittedly great* and astonishing** painters and sculptors were apparently tripping all over each other*** in Italy between 1050-1700 AD**** at the same time, vastly more difficult works of art were being made in staggering profusion, and then just stuck on the backs of chairs, or left in a corner somewhere. Most of these don’t get a mention in the guidebooks, or so much as a note on the wall in the museums where you’ll find them.

[Italy is making me incoherent: that paragraph was ridiculous before I cut out all the parentheses and made them footnotes.]

I’m talking about intarsia, marquetry, call it what you will. Pictures in wood. Like in this choir stall, from the Museo Civico, Siena:

Just a small sample. In this chapel in the Museo Civico, every stall has unique inlay and carving.

And these are everywhere. Unremarked in the side benches in the cathedral at Pisa, or unnoticed in the profusion of other, in my view less impressive, artworks in just about every old building I’ve been in here in Italy.

Sure, when it’s done in stone, on the floor, it gets some attention. Roman mosaics get some credit. Medieval mosaics get more, especially if Niccola or his son Giovanni Pisano had a hand in it, like this fabulous treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents on the floor in the Duomo of Siena (a building so fabulous that I will not even try to describe it. You wouldn’t believe me).

From the Massacre of the Innocents, Siena Duomo floor.

Or this unicorn on the floor:

(You can see better pictures on the wikipedia page here, but I took this for my younger daughter, because we are making up a series of stories about a unicorn called Olivia, and a fox called Lucy. I digress.) Take a look at the shades of colour that give the figures depth. That’s all done with iddy-biddy-liddle stones of different shades, like building a picture pixel by pixel.

And the unnamed artisans working on the marquetry were doing this in a much, much more difficult medium, because wood is way more sensitive to moisture, but has to be glued down with a water-based glue.

I’ve done stuff like this, so I know. Well, that’s like identifying with William effing Shakespeare because you once wrote a skit for a school play. Trust me, this is craftsmanship, and artistry, of the very highest order. I am in awe.

But you get my point, I hope, which is that the art and culture of Italy in the 1300s (from which Fiore came: aha! A sword-related point at last!) was of a depth of skill and craftsmanship and sophistication so profound that work that in any other context would be hailed as world-class masterpieces (like for example Grinling Gibbons’ choir stalls in St. Paul’s, London; which again must be seen to be believed) are here left completely unremarked, while yet another rather tedious Madonna and Child gets all the attention.

Just in case you think I don’t appreciate the paintings, I will be writing a bit on the Allegories of Good and Bad Government (and what a timely piece that will be, what with the ghastly shitty TTIP nonsense, and so forth), and maybe something on the books of the period too. Because these extraordinary people were not content with turning art, architecture, sculpture and music on its head; they were also doing it with literature. And, I would say, with swordsmanship.

Watch this space….

*and I mean great, as in Great Wall of China, or Alexander the Great, colossi of the art world striding across the cultural landscape like Ents, Balrogs or even dare I say Giants?

**and I mean that literally too: “to fill with sudden and overpowering surprise or wonder” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/astonish.

***I’ll leave you to wonder whether I mean that literally, figuratively, or even allegorically.

****I don’t give a fig for most Italian art after about 1700. That overrated clothes-horse Louis XIV, and the sexually inadequate Napoleon and the rest of the goddamn French (modern French chaps, lovely people, but what the hell were they up to between 1650 and 1900?) ruined everything.

What do Penguins and Camels have in common?

February 24, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

I get a lot of my best ideas while brushing my teeth. This morning, as I watched the water swirl down the drain, I suddenly thought about how much expensively-heated water gets wasted every day from shower stalls around the world. And then I thought about penguins and camels. Because they both have an arrangement of blood vessels in their lower legs that act as a heat exchange mechanism. So, in the case of the penguin, warm blood going to the feet is cooled by cold blood coming up from the feet, meaning that they lose much less heat out of their feet than we would. In camels, the same principle works in reverse: relatively cool blood from the body is heated by hot blood from the feet (ever walked barefoot in the desert in summer? Pretty damn hot), which helps them maintain a comfortable body temperature.
So, why not install heat exchangers in the waste pipes? Water from the bathroom and kitchen drains could go through a heat-exchanger, warming up the water that is going to the boiler to be heated. That should save quite a bit of energy. Yay! Global warming solved.
Or not.
Sure, on the surface, my idea might have merit. There may even be a billion dollar company in it. But here are some of the hurdles to cross.
1) would it actually work? In theory, yes. Of course. But would it actually save enough energy to be cost efficient? In other words:
2) is it a solution to a problem, or a solution looking for one? Do houses actually lose that much heat through their drains? There may be all sorts of reasons why they don’t.
3) has it already been done? I would bet a million dollars if I had them that something like this is already being done in large scale industrial contexts, like power stations.
4) can my penguin-foot units be retro-fitted to existing houses, or could it only be done on new-builds, which tend to be much more energy efficient anyway?
5) I’m sure the engineering costs of developing this would be considerable, because the unit would have to be quite cheap to produce. It’s a basic rule of life that simple, reliable solutions are harder to develop than complicated ones. Because they have to be just right in every detail. Would sales justify the costs?
6) Then having done my feasibility studies, and gotten the prototypes developed, we then have to actually sell the damn things. To whom? Home owners, home builders, environmentally conscious people? (Better not be building the units out of high impact materials; let’s double the budget for development…)
So here’s my point: ideas are ten-a-penny. I like my penguin-foot bathroom drain heat exchanger. But I’m not willing to mortgage my house, and work 12 hour days for three years, to develop it. I don’t like it enough.
Because at the end of the day, ideas are cheap. It’s execution that matters.

[Update: somebody beat me to it anyway: you can actually buy a drain water heat exchanger! https://ecodrain.ca/en/ Thanks to Jeremy B. for letting me know.]
Which brings me on to my thought for the day. Give away all your best ideas. If you want to make my idea real, go ahead, it’s yours.
I first came across this concept, of giving away all your best ideas, in a book which is in a box at home. I’ll dig out the reference when I get back. But in the meantime, I suggest let ideas come as they may, and put 100% of all efforts into execution.
Speaking of which; I’m technically on holiday. But, the layouts for my book Swordfighting are right now on my iPad waiting for me to check them for errors… so I’d better follow my own advice and get on with that! Because any damn fool can get the idea for a book. But to write a book, that’s harder. And getting it finished, edited, laid out, and published, is harder still.

Oh Finland, how art thou?

February 10, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

Thanks to my latest posts, about Lucca and Florence, my Finnish friends are now thinking “right, we’ve seen the last of the English git. He ain’t never coming back”. But hold, not so fast. I have moved countries many times in my life (England ’73-78; Argentina ’78-80; England ’80; Botswana ’81-86; Peru ’86-92; Scotland ’92-94; Finland ’95-6; Scotland ’97-2001; Finland 2001-present) which has left me with no real sense of home being a place. Home is people, and, to a lesser extent, some elements of culture. So the idea, and even the process, of moving to another country doesn’t faze me at all. But it has also made me think that it would be nice for my kids to see something of the world, but to always know where home is.

[If you are interested in what my family was doing in Africa and South America while I was growing up, go read my Dad's new memoir, More Sherlock Holmes than James Herriot. I haven't read it yet (it only just came out) but I know it does include baby cheetahs, angry rhinos, and me and my sister playing with a rabid dog.]

When I moved to Finland in 2001, everybody asked “Why Finland?” They still do. It’s probably the question I am asked most often. Even while teaching seminars, in foreign lands, I sometimes get asked it in class. It’s that odd a choice, apparently.

Nobody, not one person, has asked “why Italy?” They ask “how did you manage it”. (See here for the answer.) Because Italy is a normal choice. The advantages are obvious. Gorgeous architecture? Check. Great wine? Check. Great food? Check. Fabulous bloody everything? Check. And it’s all it’s cracked up to be.

But Finland? The last decade or so has seen a major improvement in Finland’s international perception; people think “good schools” or “clean environment” or something like that. But apart from the wretched bloody snow, and the way the entire population seems to be shifted towards the silent end of the gregariousness spectrum, here are some much-under-appreciated elements.

1) The Tax Office. Yes, really. Customer service in Finland as a whole sucks. But the Tax Office staff, unless you are obviously trying to defraud the people of Finland, are extraordinarily helpful, and will go out of their way to make the quite transparent tax system even clearer. And unless you are making serious great gobs of cash, the healthcare, daycare, public order, public transport, and other taxpayer-funded benefits, far outweigh the somewhat higher taxes than you might pay somewhere else.

2) Fairness and transparency. The system seems to be pretty fair all round. Sure, it’s hard to get really rich (but that’s true anywhere); but it is very easy to start a business (and there’s plenty of government help to do so), and you have to be making way more money than I ever have before you start paying seriously high taxes. Sure, there’s some corruption, but it tends to only exist at the higher levels of finance (where it exists everywhere); knowing how to deniably offer a bribe is no part of the basic education here.

3) Kids walk to school at age 7. On their own. No problem. That is really true, and totally unlike any other country I know, other than possibly Sweden or Norway.

I could add to this list decent plumbing, properly insulated houses, free daycare, no traffic, decent cycle paths and pedestrian routes (my elder daughter and I tried walking from Lucca to Torre, about 10k. We ended up walking along a dyke for much of the journey, and not quite making it (much to her fury) as there was literally nowhere for people to walk or cycle except on the road with the Italian drivers. It was just too dangerous.). Really, people, Finland is lovely.

I miss mountains. I miss really proper old buildings and castles and such. But I can travel to see those, and even live among them for a while as I am now doing. But I have no plans to give up transparency, stability, and my kids walking to school, in an education system that seems to work.

So relax, peeps. I am not seriously planning on relocating. Yet….

3 guidelines for tourists. And the highlights of Florence

February 3, 2015 By Guy Windsor 1 Comment

While living in Lucca, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to see something of the rest of Tuscany, and indeed Italy. Most recently, I went to Florence to catch up with Heidi Zimmerman, she of the sumptuous Meyer longsword plate reproductions, as she passed through with Chris Vanslambrouck (who was touring Italy teaching Meyer). I took the train up on Tuesday morning, and met up with Heidi, Chris, and their charming hosts Rodolfo Tanara, Eleanori Rebecchi, and Lorenzo Lotti, outside the Uffizi (where else?). We visited the Uffizi, had lunch, chilled out some, and ended up at Eleanora’s home polishing off a bottle of red; I got back to my hotel about midnight, and met them all again the next morning for a trip to the Stibbert museum, followed by our own bodyweight in sushi, a visit to Rodolfo, Eleanora and Lorenzo’s workshop (where they make swords, knives, and leather goods), and then the train home.

This all-too-brief trip (I was away from home for 36 hours exactly) reminded me of the technique of being a tourist, which I have distilled down to three simple guidelines for your benefit and amusement.

1) Do one thing each day; let serendipity do the rest. For example, on this trip I had two days. I went to the Uffizi on the first day, and the Stibbert on the second (I go on about the Stibbert at length, further down this post) . That’s the top two items on my Florence bucket list (in reverse order, but that had everything to do with museum opening times and Chris’ schedule). I also, and by accident, made three new friends, ate a glorious Bistecca Fiorentina, saw the inside of a truly astonishing church (thanks for suggesting it, Lorenzo!), and soaked in the renaissance. I didn’t see Michelangelo’s David, but it will still be there when I get back. Be warned though: I was in New York in June 2001, and had a choice between going up the World Trade Centre tower, or going and getting a new sword bag. “I’ll do the tourist thing next time I’m here”, I thought. Bugger.

2) Rest. There is absolutely no virtue attached to having once glanced at some cultural treasure. If it has no effect on you, it’s doing you no good. But wetting your pants in glee because you just saw the actual painting, the real one, of the father of the Duke of Urbino to whom Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria was dedicated, changes you.

It’s what you bring to the experience that makes the difference; where this piece fits in its story, and yours. Time spent chilling out in a cafe with friends is every bit as valuable as time spent shuffling through yet another gallery of priceless artwork that is all running together in your head. Recognise how much you can actually absorb in a day and don’t overdo it.

L-R: Guy, Heidi, Chris, Eleanora, Lorenzo, Rodolfo, not overdoing it. (photo by Lorenzo)

3) Always look up, and down. Sometimes the best stuff is on the ceiling, or even the floor. Like this in one small room in the Uffizi; I couldn’t tell you what was on the walls in this room, but these utterly amazing images are on the ceiling!

Making gunpowder (I think):

Making cannon:

Designing fortifications:

Making armour:

and best of all: Making swords!

Roberto Gotti’s book Caino tells me they are by Ludovico Buti (1560 – 1603). They are so taken for granted here that I could not find the slightest thing about them written up for visitors in the room itself.

That’s it, in a nutshell: Do one thing, rest, and always look up.

Now, for you sword enthusiasts: the Stibbert Museum. Oh my. What an under-appreciated utterly magical gem of a museum. Of all the museums I know, the Wallace (in London) is usually my favourite, and this is very, very similar. But in terms of arms and armour, I’d say the Stibbert has the edge (and point, and both barrels!). This was the home of Frederick Stibbert (1836-1906), ambassador to Florence, and a keen collector of arms and armour, in the way of nineteenth century wealthy English lunatics. Which is to say that if my next book does a JK Rowling on me, this is what my house will look like.

Because it is just a house (a very large and amazingly well decorated and filled house); it’s as if the man has just popped out, and someone had left the door open. There are a few ropes keeping the unwashed masses back from the hand painted embossed leather wallpaper, but by and large, you could get your fingerprints all over the goods if you were so inclined. Which is why you can’t just buy a ticket and walk in, the way you can everywhere else. Every hour on the hour, between 10 and 1, a museum employee will walk you round in a group. Ours was very kind, and clearly pleased that the six of us (plus a coincidental group of three Spaniards) were so overwhelmed by her museum. She allowed us to spend as much of our allotted 60 minutes as we liked (which, as there wasn’t another group coming after us, stretched to about 90), in the main arms and armour rooms, and not footling it away on the porcelain. The place is pretty dusty, something you just don’t see in most modern museums, and it’s very dark; I think they can’t afford to light it properly. Which means that most of my photos didn’t come out at all. So can’t show you things like the cases of stirrups, or pommels, or cinquedeas, or guns, or knives; nor the fucking sarcophagus he had in his house. I kid you not, you could outfit a regiment in pretty much any period from 1350-1600, in either European or Asian style, just from the stuff on display.

This is where the famous hauberk with a verse of the Koran on every link is kept. Here is the best photo I could get of it, cropped to a bit of the sleeve:

Fortunately, I went on about this place at length to my Italian teacher, Stefano Manelli, who was passing Florence that weekend with his family, and they went in to see it. He was able to use 10 second exposure times to get images like this cavalcade of 14 mounted knights in armour of various periods, in what passed for Stibbert's fucking living room:

And a tiny fraction of the pistols:

And remember what I said about remember to look up? Here's a ceiling. Nothing special. Just a hallway in a chap's house:

And the smoking room. Because every house needs one, right?

He even has the funerary armour of Giovanni dei Medici, that’s Giovanni delle Bande Nere to you and me. Right there.

(This was my phone doing its best in low light). Stibbert could have worn it if he wanted to. Fortunately for us, he had his own suit of armour, in which he fought his chums. Yes, he was one of us!

Now, chaps, a call to arms. This museum is an utterly priceless treasure in our arms and armour world, one that gets none of the attention or funding that those silly paintings in the Ooofeeezy (like I was wetting my pants over only the day before), or that dopy stone bloke with a sling (who I’ll visit next time), seem to attract.

I put it to you all; what can we do to make the Stibbert the best-known, best funded, most appreciated museum in all Florence? Because it ought to be.

Archives for February 2015

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: