A closeup of the illuminated letter P in the 1407AD Latin Bible on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. It was hand written in Belgium, by Gerard Brils, for reading aloud in a monastery.

Growing tired of all this technology? Well, BBC 4 have a solution for you in the programme: Illuminations The Private Lives of Medieval Kings What a King Should Know.

Janina is now course director for the Undergraduate Certificate in History of Art at the University of Oxford, and contributes to a number of courses, including a forthcoming seminar series on decoding symbols in art (Trinity 2012). She continues to publish her research, most recently in international art history journal Gesta.

This has been a wonderful little gem for those interested in Illuminated Manuscripts, book binding and the power of books in Medieval times. Presented with the right balance of enthusiasm and knowledge by Dr Janina Ramirez , it has been a pleasure to watch and coincides with the British Library exhibition: Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination.

If you’ve missed it go here.

I’ve just read about the death of Ronald Searle. Brilliant cartoonist.

Ronald William Fordham Searle CBE, RDI (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011) was a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian’s School. He was also the co-author (with Geoffrey Willans) of the Molesworth series.

For more go here.

Jonathan Ive (2009)

Ive began working for Apple in 1992 and it’s fair to say that his influence as a designer has been immense and the products he has been responsible for set new standards in industrial design.

To quote Dieter Rams on Apple in an interview with The Telegraph: I have always regarded Apple products – and the kind words Jony Ive has said about me and my work – as a compliment. Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. 

I’m glad to see a designer awarded in this way. Whatever you may think of the ‘honours system’.

For more on Jonathan Ive go here.

Museum of Liverpool

I carefully planned my time and recently put a day aside for Christmas shopping. This was to be an expedition to Liverpool city centre to finally begin to tick off presents for people on my list. No I’m not being organized, not at all, more like planned chaos and panic. All late and not very many good ideas.

I set off with thoughts along the lines of ‘why do we do this to each other every year’ and ‘this is madness, I’ve no idea what to get so-and-so’ and I’m really too busy for all this… You get the idea. At least it’s not Christmas Eve and buying what’s left at the local all night garage. Not quite.

On the drive in to Liverpool it was mutually decided that we (my wife was with me) couldn’t face the city centre after all and so we headed for the Albert Dock instead with the idea we could combine shopping with a visit to the Tate to see the Alice in Wonderland exhibition currently showing.

Walking through the Dock after parking up and putting the dread of paying the parking fee later to the back of my mind we looked across at the Museum of Liverpool. Now, we both wanted to visit the new museum, but we simply hadn’t had the time. (Being self-employed can make time management difficult). But we thought, now or never, and headed over to the sparkling ultramodern structure.

The museum was designed by the Danish practice 3XN and the exhibition areas by the Los Angeles-based exhibition and theme park designers BRC Imagination Arts. (Not much local talent there then).

Rowan Moore of the Observer had this to say back in July:
How can this have happened? How could so many positive words – “regeneration”, “vision”, “culture” – plus so much public and private funding, plus so much scrutiny by bodies such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, have led to what now stands on Liverpool‘s waterfront? How could so many noble titles – Unesco world heritage site, capital of culture, the “Three Graces” – have been bestowed on what is, to use a sophisticated critical term, a godawful mess?

If you want to read the complete review go here.

I’ve lived in Liverpool all my life and the ‘Three Graces’ are simply beautiful, but I don’t find the new Museum of Liverpool a ‘godawful mess’ (possibly the black structures nearby maybe).

I realize that the finished design is not exactly as 3XN would have wanted it but looking at their website they are certainly proud of the end result. There is no intention to compete with the ‘Three Graces’ and the structure remains firmly in it’s own space and it’s own century.

The museum was a pleasure to explore and the light and views from the huge windows at either end of the building very much bring the outside in and almost become part of the exhibits themselves.

A view from the Museum of Liverpool

The interior is a little dumbed down but not excessively so and there is a great flexibility built into much of the interior space.

Outside the light sparkles off the materials used and although the landscaping remains unfinished the potential remains for an impressive visitor experience.

Fitting well into it’s allotted space the Museum of Liverpool tells a positive, uplifting story of Liverpool despite the city’s varied fortunes over the years.

Wall painting

I for one enjoyed the my visit and driving back I realized that I still had my Christmas shopping to do… Oh well, there’s always the all-night garage.

Last night at around 10.00pm I was browsing the net and decided to check on our own site: www.taylorsimons.com, and was shocked to see a Fatal Error message where our site should be.

Unsure of what the message meant, I tried to log on to our WordPress-based site and found I was unable to. Unsure of what to do next I fired off an email to our hosting company MacAce hoping they would respond with some guidance by the next morning. To my surprise and delight MacAce, or should I say Fran, responded within 15 minutes, having sorted out the problem which tuned out to be an issue with a recent upgrade of a plugin.

So thank you Fran and MacAce for your support.

Genius…

Women in love film poster

R.I.P.

1972 Munich Games Poster Max Bill

Twenty nine artists are commissioned to produce posters for the Olympic Games, Max Bill among them, but this is not the London 2012 Games, this happened back in 1972 for the Munich Games.

It was a success and made over 2 million Deutschmarks. Let us hope the twelve artists commissioned for the London posters can do as well.

2011 London Games Sarah Morris Big Ben poster

It would have interested me to see what leading designers in the UK could have produced if they had been given the chance but maybe something put the organisers off that particular idea.

London 2012 logo

For more on the 1972 poster designs you can go here.

…and then on my way home in a supermarket car park… this…

Forgive the poor quality but it was dark and this was my camera phone. I can tell I’m home again, not too many people juggling with fire in Ambleside.