Monday 20 July 2015

A guest post from Flat Eric

Hi there, Bloggers from F. E. I have been working at the keyboard called Oliver in Michael’s study today, Michael says Oliver is William Burroughs grandfather, but he was eating his lunch in the altogether - no fur!


Michael went out early this morning to paint the house for the clockworks he said something about knowing too much about a building to be able to draw it and being too tired to engage with the internet. (Harbour Clock house. 1817. Design by Benjamen Wyatt and George Louch, altered by John Rennie. Ashlar with slate roof. Two storeys, with segmental 3 bay arcades to ground floor wings, plat band, cornice and parapet, with stacks to end left and end right. Central projecting tower with 2 storey arched opening, the band acting as imposts. Triglyph frieze and cornice to hipped roof with square clock turret with dentil cornice and open arcaded and balustraded belfry with weather vane. Three metal casements to each wing and central Diocletian window on 1st floor, tripartite glazing bar sashes on ground floor. Central panelled door and sidelights in round-headed surround. Boarded 2 storey doors in end elevations. Rear elevation identical to front, but without central Diocletian window. Interior: fine, simple interiors with trussed rafter roofs. Originally fitted with brass solar meridian line, stolen mid 1970's. Stone domed clock room in central tower. The changing upper floor levels indicate that Wyatt's original design was for single storey wings - Rennie added the upper floors.) accreditation Newman and Busson.
Flat's tip of the day, click on the picture to make it bigger, then click on the bigger picture to make it even bigger, then move the picture up and down with the little wheel on your mouse, while looking at the guitar strings.

Anyway this blogging lark is too much like hard work so I am relaxing by playing a bit of music on the guitar.

3 comments:

  1. Hi F.E.

    To be close, and perhaps touch, then draw the stone that was chiselled by the mason a century ago to form an architecturally appealing structure brings out the love of art some of us develop through our life. The lichen between the stone blocks that sometimes grows in the mortar, or the light that catches the ageing of that masons craft is perceived by the artist as a colour from a distance, creating a uniqueness to the painting that can never be replicated by photography. Slowly you develop the passion for all life forms, be it rock that has been formed countless millennia before, only for man to shape for his needs, the vegetation that incalculable pollinations over the same time has developed to attract the attention of the artist who develops a style that can then be appreciated by others as they look on in wonder at what you alone captured and painted, all because you have seen and admired the beauty in a building that has passed them by.
    The Harbour Clock House has many a treasured memory for countless Ramsgate folk over time, looking up to catch the tide, hurrying by, realising we are late for tea after playing on the sands just that little bit too long. But then to stand back centuries later and see the familiar structure being captured on canvas, is quite an emotion remembering home.

    Ta much Ted.
    (By the way, I don’t seem to be able to get any sound on your guitar solo:)
    Alan Turtle,
    down hear in the remote Dorset countryside.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alan nice to meet you, I guess there are two sides to drawing a building where the proportions have been thought out very carefully by an architect who has studied classical style and proportions, the other side being that it becomes a bit intimidating to the artist and seems to keep going wrong.

    Very small differences in the drawing look much more significant, would say it is much more difficult to draw that Canterbury Cathedral, for instance.

    The original purpose of the clock and clockhouse, was as a navigational aid, giving navigators a better chance of accurately determining longitude, so for many people it was a matter of life or death.

    The guitar fretboard contains an optical illusion, which is revealed when it moves up and down, there is no sound.

    ReplyDelete
  3. F E you are far wiser than your appearance and the ability to user Oliver and to play the Guitar is way beyond the norm. I must get you to ask Michael to take the silencer off of the Guitar for us FE music fans.

    Alan I am sure Michael as F E 's agent will booking him into a music festival near you soon.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.