Brunel and the Industrial Revolution

Big Red Propeller (1843), Isambad Kingdom Brunel

Hel's comment on how you can't understand the Industrial Revolution without understanding Brunel got me thinking about what Morris must have thought of Brunel.  To Morris, Brunel must have been an anathema, an agent of the Revolution (and not the right one) relentlessly driving forward the mechanization and industrialization of England.  Brunel's red propeller reminded me of this painting of artist David Mabb (from a previous post) which captures the irony of Morris's antipathy toward the very forces of industrialization that not only allowed his designs to be mass produced but also greatly expanded the upper class able to afford his luxury goods.

Big Red Propeller (2001), David Mabb

The SS Great Britain, gears all still working, moving, turning....

"bridge to engine room"....check out that awesome speaking tube!

ship's "galley" -- a perfect work triangle

first class family cabin with fake well-behaved children

first class dining room

steerage

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, A Man As Great As His Name

In 2002, a BBC public survey in Great Britain published a list of the 100 Greatest Britons of all time.  Second on the list, after Winston Churchill, was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a civil engineer and contemporary of William Morris.  Brunel beat out Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, Lady Diana, indeed even Charles Darwin.  (Irritatingly, William Morris did not make the top 100, a travesty I can't fully grasp.)

I had never heard of him!  But here is his bridge, The Clifton Suspension Bridge, still in active use in Bristol.  When it was built (started in 1831, eventually finished in 1864) it had the longest span of any bridge in the world, spanning over 700 ft (210 m) across the river Avon.

Brunel also designed and built the first commercial steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Western, which was also the first ship to hold the Blue Riband (which I wrote about a few days ago in this post).  This wooden ship had a paddle wheel but Brunel was convinced that a propeller-driven ship would be more efficient and, for an encore, designed a ground-breaking six-bladed propeller for the 322-foot Great Britain which is now preserved as a ship musuem in Bristol's famous floating harbor.  "Great Britain is considered the first modern ship, being built of metal rather than wood, powered by an engine rather than wind or oars, and driven by propeller rather than paddle wheel. She was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean."

Here are some pictures from the incredibly awesome SS Great Britain ship/museum I visited yesterday.   I was only sorry I didn't have little kids with me to share the experience.

The ship is "moored" in an antique dry dock blocked off from river by the original caisson (pic below).  To prevent corrosion of the iron hull, the conservators came upon the unique solution of sealing the boat off at the water line with a transparent barrier that has a few inches of water floating on its surface.  This allows them to keep the humidity at a non-corrosive 20% while providing a spectacular setting from which to experience the ship, both above and below waterline.  You can see how cool it is walking "underwater" around the ship's hull, with the sunlight rippling through the water overhead.

Right third of the original and leaky caisson, that blocks off the water from the river, along with ship's anchor.

The six-bladed propeller and "balanced" rudder, famous engineering innovations.

Looking toward the bow from the back of deck --- many skylights let sunlight into the ship's interior.  In my next post, I'll put up some interior pictures.

Kawai Kanjiro, Japan's William Morris

"Any work of art belongs to everyone, because it is whatever each person sees in it.  It is the same with people. We are all one. I am you. The you that only I can see."

 tiger plate

Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966) was a potter, artist, calligrapher, sculptor, writer and philosopher.  He was one of the founders of the Japanese Mingei ("folk art") movement in the early half of the twentieth century which was responsible for revitalizing and keeping alive many traditional arts in the face of the "great tide of industrialization" that was sweeping Japan.  Kanjiro valued simplicity and beauty in everyday articles of use (sounding familiar yet?), collecting the works of poor craftspeople from all over Asia.  With his compatriots he sought to "counteract the desire for cheap, mass-produced products" by reviving traditional arts.  His output was so tremendous, including over 10,000 glaze experiments carried out while still a student in college, that it was said that a supernatural force was guiding him.

His home and pottery studio have been preserved as the Kawai Kanjiro Museum in Kyoto.

how beautiful is this pussywillow garland....it is hung from the kettle hanging over the brazier in the center of the room.

A highly unusual mix of eastern and western style furniture characterized his home....

The gal on first floor above is sitting in front of the brazier -- very much an "open plan" design with sliding panels providing privacy as needed.  Note block and tackle hanging from ceiling in center of house!

the small kiln

This is the first time I've ever seen an Asian "stair" cabinet used as actual functional stairs!  I love how the string of balls serves as a banister.  You can also see how the wall is framed up to the cabinet from the hallway side in bottom pic.

The modest looking face to street.  The curving bamboo structure along the front is a quite common feature of traditional homes in Kyoto and is called inu yarai --- according to what I could discover, it serves multiple purposes including: 1) protecting the earthen or wooden wall from becoming dirty from rain splashing up from the road; 2) stopping dogs from peeing on the wall (Inu means dog); 3) keeping people from loitering in front and leaning against the wall (in days when streets were more crowded), and 4) making it difficult for burglars to climb the wall (I'm sure any self-respecting ninja or parkour-ian would find this last thought amusing.)

Have you ever walked through spider silk?

Along a sidewalk?  In the woods?  In your garden shed?  It feels a bit sticky, is translucent.  Now imagine that thread is still sticky but is gold----it is from a Nephila madagascariensis, a female Golden Orb spider from Madagascar.  And imagine you had dozens of people collecting a million of these spiders from around the city and countryside over the course of four years.  And then another few dozen spider-techs "milking" the spider silk for a few hours before releasing her, the spider, back into the wild.  And then you took hundreds of individual silk strands and twisted them to make a single thread.  And then you wove those golden threads into a cultural tapestry 11 feet by 4 feet in dimension......

Wouldn't you then have something of singular and mystical beauty!?!

You can see this one of a kind shawl at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City-----and watch a video about its story here.

From the MNH website:  "This unique textile was created drawing on the legacy of a French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar in the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué worked to collect and weave spider silk but with limited success, and no surviving textile is now known to exist. Previously, the only known spider-silk textile of note was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and it was subsequently lost."

Which brings us to the second episode of my fabulous new TV show, America's Most Wanted: Arts and Craft Edition......in case you missed the first episode, click here.

Favorite Minerals of the South Australian Museum, Adelaide

Imagine my glee upon seeing this piece of the Mundrabilla Meteorite as the very first thing upon entering Adelaide's South Australian Museum!  You may remember it, and Mundrabilla, from this earlier post.  A fellow nerd pointed out later that I should have put a pencil down next to it for scale----it is about the size of a large coffee table, maybe just under two meters across.  It is an iron meteorite and this piece weighs about 2500kg.  It is one of the largest and most famous meteorites in the world.

While this is kind of like a librarian sorting books by color, it is so much more aesthetically pleasing than sorting by, say, lattice structure or chemical composition.  I'm sure this display has inspired many a budding geologist.

Amorphous silica in main stairwell.  Always beautiful.

Minerva at the Library of Congress

Elihu Vedder's marble mosaic of Minerva of Peace, her armor laid aside, standing guard before the Main Reading Room and holding in her hand a scroll that lists the various disciplines of learning, science, and art.

Ordered disorder, perfect imperfection....

I visited the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery in D.C. earlier this week.  Have you ever had the experience of coming across a work of art in a museum or gallery, maybe by somebody famous or maybe by someone you've never heard of, being incredibly moved by it, thinking how wonderful it would be to have it in your home, and then, in the next moment, thinking "heck, I could do that...I'll just do it myself and then I'll have it!"?  I had that experience with this piece by Linn Meyers called "at the time being".  It is a work painted directly on the museum walls---really, it is only squiggly lines....

But then you look closer....the lines are complicated, beautiful, a subtle blend of white and yellow.  You soon realize you are in the presence of something singular.  A museum essay describes this piece which is inspired by a Vincent Van Gogh painting in the museum's collection:

"Linn Meyers spent two weeks working steadily on this project.  She started by painting the walls a dark blue that evokes Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Then she laid out the circular shapes around intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that generate the overall composition, or what she calls, the matrix.  Thin lines followed, twisting and turning, connecting and disconnecting, looping around it and filling in the central blanks, resulting in a dazzling field of optical sensations."

"Meyer's circular forms are completely off-center.  Like lovers, they embrace and drift apart.  At once intense and loose, systematic and improvisational, controlled and impulsive, Meyer's drawing sucks us in, simultaneously inducing vertigo and offering solace."

mmmmm....you can see more of Meyer's work here.

Strangely, just to the right of this wall was another painting I had that "i-could-do-this" feeling:  Paul Klee's Arab Song (1932).  It is a painting in oil on rough burlap.  So muted, primitive, quirky and peaceful.....

Harriet Finck, fractals, and hidden gems...

In Harriet Finck's exhibit "Visual Midrash: Text as Form" the artist explores the written Hebrew word; sometimes the words are written directly on the paper but often they are buried deep within the paintings.  These works of paper tell, as per the artist's statement, stories of birth and death, angels and dreams, despair and redemption.  I don't see the words, even in the closest close-up below, but it is not a language with which I am familiar.  These paintings remind me of aboriginal paintings of the Dreamtime.  I would happily put one of these stunning pieces on a wall in my house (all click to enlarge). 

a triptych

a diptych

another painting

closer....

closer....

and closer....it's fascinating and equally beautiful at every scale....a fractal painting 

Above, detail of painting.....below, detail of carpet in art deco bar in South Beach.  In scientific terminology, an example of convergent evolution.

....and the hidden gem?  the local university art gallery.