I’m obliged to Ceredigion Museum’s archive for this image of farmers at Blaenpennal gathered to bring harvest home. I include it not only as an excellent old photograph, of which the museum has many, but to demonstrate the ubiquity of the all wooden hay rake. And that only because I bought one this week, all complete, a common type but fresh from the barn in super condition. It came with a rather lovely Hay Fork but as the other half pointed out no good selling them on eBay because you could never wrap them.
Planned books:
Current books:
Recent books:
|
I won’t dwell on it but info about the Flog It! team’s visit to the Cardigan area can be found at Wales Antiques here. If I go I’ll bring back some photos…
After some late nights I have re-launched my Wales Antiques web pages; somewhat predictably it’s powered by the mighty WordPress using the incomparable Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. Cutting across my earliest conditioning and ignoring my camera’s manual, today I photographed the sun. Conditions were favourable; a light breeze, some cloud but a bright sky with a south facing aspect. During a 30 minute tea break my boss is man-handling a rare Carl Zeiss Jena prism lens into position on the outside workbench. Originally intending to photograph the lump for eBay and doubtless a very good price, the opportunity to mess about with the light from our nearest star was too good to miss. While he manouvered the beast into position I set up an adhoc viewing surface (the back of a short wave radio manual) and set about capturing the clouds scudding across the face of the sun. With no way of accurately focussing the image and with me working hand held it is of neccessity a rough a ready pair of images I brought home. Somehow, and I don’t know quite how, we felt like twin Galileos, rather awed by the simple fact of looking at the Sun. What next; running with scissors? 
I spent the best part of this damp morning at Carmarthen Showground Antiques and Flea market distributing the 2010 Wales Antiques Guide. A side benefit of this is getting in early before the civilians, and having a good look around the stalls and meeting the mostly laconic and downbeat stall holders. The goods on offer were piled high and of a pretty good standard; with more cash I would have come home with a lot more that I did. So here’s the star lot; one pair of arts and crafts candlesticks, oak, carved, 16 inches high and probably late 19th or early 20th century. I’m unable to identify the maker but I suspect a Welsh connection. I guess they could possibly be made for ecclesiastical use though I’d have expected something a little more ‘gothic revival’. |
|
|
Copyright © 2012 my Ceredigion and my Cardigan Bay - All Rights Reserved
|
||
