January is one long holiday...

Well, it is for most Aussies, anyway! Groups stop meeting, schools are on the long summer break and a lot of people go to the beach. Fibrecircle doesn't exactly stop but we only met once this month.

OK, first some housekeeping from last year - Nola brought along her finished Birthstones sketchbooks. I think she's the only one of us to put something in her book for each month. The November birthstone was Topaz:

She discovered the "devant de corsage", originally a triangular decorative panel inserted into the front bodice of a woman's dress, pointing down towards the stomach (hence its other name, "stomacher"). In the 18th century, this developed into a triangular brooch or group of brooches, which became especially popular in Edwardian times. She also found that Faberge loved to work with topaz.

The December birthstone was Turquoise. Some years ago, Nola made a textile work based on the beautiful turquoise tiles on the mosque at Isfahan, the area from which most European turquoise came. She traced the history of turquoise in the west, first as religious jewellery and, after the Reformation, in secular jewellery. Of course it also features in pre-Columbian societies in South America.

Helen brought along her new journal for our 2015 theme, Trees.

She had already begun putting things in her journal. She has decided to use the letter of the month to help her choose which tree to focus on, and it must be a tree she knows nothing about. The tree for January was the Judas Tree, cercio siliquastrum.

It's name comes from the legend this this tree was the one from which Judas Iscariot hanged himself, after betraying Jesus, although this story is also attached to the elder tree.






It's an unfortunate legend for such a pretty tree!



It doesn't sound as if it would be very happy living in Australia, as it doesn't like very wet weather or very hot weather.

We'll have more tree pages to show you in the coming year. If you want to share our tree journey and create journal pages every month too, we'd love to hear about it!

October birthstones

Yes, I know, we're in December! It's been rather busy around here so our October birthstones didn't get shared until  the end of November, and I'm only just now catching up on blog updating. Did you know there's this big thing called Christmas coming up? Seems to happen every year....

OK. birthstones. The birthstones for October are opal and tourmaline.  Both Cindy and Nola chose to focus on opal.

Cindy created a double page with a fold out, with lots of interesting facts about opals, including a photo of an opal ring worn by Elvis! She experimented with using metallic foils on glue to create opalescent colour on her page.

Nola became interested in the geology of opals. She discovered that there are many fossils made out of opal, as the liquid silica from which they form gets into hollows where organic material used to be.

The most amazing fossil she found is the Addyman Plesiosaur. This is an opalised skeleton of an ancient animal, which was found at Andamooka in 1968 and is currently on display at the Museum of South Australia in Adelaide .

Lots of opalised fossils of plants and animals have been found in Australia, including remains of a large ancestor of the modern platypus called Sterepodon.

We'll show you the rest of our birthstones next year.

For at least the first half of 2015, our chosen theme is Trees.

September birthstones

With all our comings and goings, not many of us had time to consider birthstones in September.

Cindy had a great time creating a double page spread in her sketchbook, because sapphire is her birthstone.

She was fascinated to learn about different kinds of sapphires - male, female (speckled with white), water (a light colour) and cat (very dark).

 

Nola also created a double page on sapphires.

She became interested in medieval amuletic brooches, of which there are many examples using sapphires, especially with religious motifs. These brooches had a dual function; utilitarian for holding clothing closed, and symbolic. In the medieval lapidaries (works on the significance of gems), sapphires were valued for curing envy, detecting fraud and witchcraft, curing snakebite, protecting from assassination and poisoning, curing many illnesses and reducing lust and impure thoughts.

 

So now you know... a sapphire is pretty much essential.

August birthstones

Over halfway through the year and we're still going on our birthstones theme. In August, we had a choice between peridot and sardonyx.

Cindy decided to work with peridot.

She was particularly interested in the mythology relating to the stone. She ragged the background colour to make it look like stone.

Maz also became fascinated with peridot, first with its history. Peridot was mined in Roman times on an island in the Red Sea called Topazos (modern Zabargad), and again in more modern times. It's believed that peridot was originally called topaz, from this island. The origin on the name peridot is unknown; perhaps it comes from a Latin word for a kind of opal; perhaps from an Arabic word meaning gem.

 Like Cindy, she was also interested in the gem's supposed mystical properties...

... but she also became interested in the famous Hapsburg peridot parure, dating from around 1825. (A parure is a collection of matching items of jewellery, in this case a crown or tiara, earrings, brooch and choker necklace.)

It's made from diamonds and peridots and Maz found images of Princess Isabella, great granddaughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, wearing the whole shebang.

It's believed that the first owner was Archduchess Henriette of Austria, who was her grandmother. It was auctioned off in the 1930s and subsequently worn by Joan Rivers to the Golden Globe awards in 2004.

Nola chose sardonyx as her August birthstone, because "it sounds like the birthstone of the perpetually sarcastic". She was interested in its formation, as chalcedony deposits on the surface of amygdala, holes left in lava when gas is trapped inside the molten rock. Because of this build up of layers, sardonyx was often carved into cameos to create areas of colour contrast. It was used in ancient societies like Egypt and Minoan Crete and in Greece and Rome.

The most detailed cameo she found is known as the Great Cameo of France, although its origins are Roman. It was carved in 23AD to demonstrate the right of the emperor Tiberius to rule Rome. It shows his Julio-Claudian ancestors and his designated heir.

It's believed to have come to France via the Byzantine Empire, before 1279, when it first appears in the records of the royal family. It's held in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Nola also did some pages on Ruby in her journal, even though we had made artworks on the theme. She wanted to record the book she made and the way she made it.

September's birthstone is sapphire. That should be interesting!

More Ruby and other works

Carol and Yvonne were both working on their Ruby challenge works in August.

Yvonne was making some of her signature tapestry weaving.

Can't wait to see where she goes with this!
Carol decided to make a ruby slipper, fit for Cinderella to wear. Here's what she did so far...

Amazing! You should see more of this later too.

Maz was working on some knitting. She finished the jacket she was making with the Noro yarn...

... and had cast on again with more of the same yarn.

Isn't it pretty?

Cindy has been hard at work too. This piece was made as a gelliplate print and then stitched.

Beautiful!

Her second work is made from woven strips of prefelt, hand stitched.

She used scraps of the same woven prefelt, machine couched and backed, to make some additional elements, which haven't been stitched on yet. I'm sure you'll see it when it's all done!

Challenge: Ruby

What's life without a challenge or two? We've been working on Birthstones in our journals all year, but sometimes it's hard to see how to bring that into the things we make. Maz challenged us last month to make something on the theme of Ruby, for our August 11 meeting. Of course, we've already made Ruby postcards this year, for the ATASDA 40th birthday postcard swap, as you've just seen.

To spur us on, she brought along her Ruby work-in-progress to the last meeting.

I can't wait to see where she's taking this!

There should be more Ruby challenge works in a few weeks' time.

Birthstones June

We did a little catching up on the birthstones project this month. Maz has been working on her March aquamarine.

 She began with a rhyme about the birthstone's properties...

...and then some physical properties, and its symbolism.  Then she began to play with the colour, in patterns that appealed to her.

 

Meanwhile, Helen was working in emerald. She was also interested in colour and pattern.

 

 

Nola has been working on agate. She began as usual with the cultural aspects. There were lots of little objets d'art made from agate.

 

Then she became interested in seals, as agate was often used to make them in the ancient world.

 She decided to design her own seal, to make it more directly relevant to her art work.

 



What sort of seal would you design for yourself?





Birthstones - May

The birthstone for May is emerald.

 Nola became intrigued by the history of emeralds.

The earliest known emerald (beryl) mine is at Wadi Sikait (Jabal Sukayt) in Egypt, near the Red Sea until the end of the Roman Empire. This whole area, including Wadi Gamal nearby, was a huge mining complex in Roman times.








The Romans loved emeralds. No well-dressed young woman of means was without her emerald jewellery and this area was the only source. Pliny described Lollia Paulina, the partner of the emperor Caligula, as "covered with emeralds and pearls interlaced and shining over her head, hair, ears, neck and fingers, the sum total amounting to the value of 40,000,000 sesterces" To put that into context, a soldier was being paid 33,000 sesterces a year.


You can see more about Nola's discoveries on her blog.

Journals

Meanwhile, Helen and Nola have been working on their Birthstones journals.

March offered us two choices, aquamarine or bloodstone. Helen chose to work with aquamarine.

Helen wrote in her journal, "Aqua is Latin for water, so aqua marina is sea water or sea-coloured. This colour became very popular in the 1940's and 1950's, and was known as Marina blue or Marina green after Princess Marina, the wife of the Duke of Kent, who was Greek. She was CIC of the WRNs and used to wear her uniform while wearing high heeled shoes!"

Helen was also interested in the chemical formation of aquamarine. "Be₂Al₃Si₆O₁₈  Beryl is made of beryllium, aluminium, silicon and oxygen; it's one of the rarest elements in the earth's crust. The extra element that makes beryl green is chromium - an even rarer element. Beryllium forms in areas far distant from chromium and only by accident, e.g. tectonic plates bumping into one another, would the two elements meet. If a drop of iron meets with beryllium, it becomes aquamarine."

"Cleopatra is reputed to have had aquamarine mines. The gems is named after the deep salt water so is lucky for sailors. To appease Poseidon, travellers wore aquamarines and even threw them into a stormy sea to appease the god."

Nola chose to investigate bloodstone.

She mostly focused on ancient uses of the stone, and the name, which clearly refers to the blood-like inclusions in the stone.

She quoted Pliny the Elder's Natural History, "it has been thus named from the circumstances that, if placed in a vessel of water and exposed to the full light of the sun, it changes to a reflected colour like that of blood... Out of the water too, it reflects the figure of the sun like a mirror and it discovers eclipses." (Pliny, Nat Hist, 37.60) Pliny is an interesting figure for historians, because although he was credulous about fantastical stories from the edges of the known world, he developed an historical methodology that credited sources of information and attempted to verify his facts as much as possible.

The birthstone for April is diamond. Both Helen and Nola found this a challenging topic - it was hard to find interesting things about diamonds that might work their way into a later creative work.

Helen started out with a brainstorming session - "Diamonds are forever", Neil Diamond", "Diamonds are a girl's best friend", "rough diamond", "Peter Diamond". "thy eyes are seen in d'monds bright"...

Then she added a poem,

"Scintillate, scintillate

Globule vivivic!

Fain would I fathom

Thy nature specific

Loftily poised

Above ether capacious

Closely resembling

A gem carbonaceous.

(Yes, it is indeed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!)



 Then she began playing with diamond shapes...

She added, " a diamond is graded according to four characteristics:

• Cut e.g. American ideal Cut
• Carat - 100 points to a carat
• Clarity - flawless is best, there are 13 grades, VSI very small inclusions, VVSI very very small inclusions and so on
• Colour - diamonds can be any colour, white to yellow, pink, red, green, even brown but they will usually have been irradiated

Where from? South Africa, Australia, Namibia, Botswana, South America, India, Russia

 

Nola began with a drawn image of a specific cut of diamond, into which she wrote the names of some famous diamonds and some characteristics of diamonds.

 

Then she wrote the stories of two famous diamonds.

 

The Koh-I-Noor or the "Mountain of Light", once the largest known diamond in the world, has a bloody history.

• It was allegedly the eye of a goddess idol of the Kakatiyas, a Hindu group who lived in South India 1083 - 1323
• it became the property of an unknown Afghan emperor who was then forced to give it to...
• Alauddin Khilji in 1294, of the Muslim Khilji Dynasty of Northern India. He was a Turkic Afghan (1296-1316) and the dynasty ruled a large area of central Asia. When that dynasty collapsed, it passed to...
• Tughlaq Dynasty, another Muslim Dynasty, which ruled over most of India (1321-1414), but then it was taken by the...
• Lodi Dynasty (1451-1526) who ruled Northern India and Pakistan. They in turn were defeated by
• Mughal Empire (1526-1857) led by abur, a Turko-Mongol invader from Uzbekistan. They were Muslims and spoke Persian and later Urdu. In 1726, they were invaded by...
• Afsharid Dynasty (1736-1796), a Persian dynasty who ruled most of the eastern Middle East from the Black Sea to Northern India. The conquering Nadir Shah allegedly exclaimed, "Koh-i-noor!" on seeing the stone. Nadir was assassinated in 1745 and...
• Ahmad Shah Durran, his general, took it. Then in 1830, he was deposed by...
• Rajit Singh of the Sikh Dynasty. Rajit Singh died in 1847 and..
• The British took the stone and the Punjab. The stone became part of the spoils of war in the subsequent treaty and came to Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877. After being worn as a jewel, it was set in the crown of Queen Elizabeth II and is displayed in the Tower of London.
• India wants it back.

Moral of the story - blood diamonds are not a new thing.

 

The Regent Diamond

Once upon a time in 1698, a slave in the Kollur diamond mine in India found a huge diamond (410 carat, 82g). He hid it in a wound on his leg and smuggled it out. Naughty man, but understandable.

But, an even more wicked English sea captain stole it and killed the slave. He sold it to an Indian merchant for a filthy sum. The merchant must have known it was well dodgy.

Three years after the original theft, it was sold to the English governor, Thomas Pitt. He had trouble flogging it off, though he took it to most of the royal houses of Europe. 

Eventually, the French Regent, Philippe II of Orleans, who was obviously doing very nicely out of being regent, bought it in 1717 for 135000 English pounds, roughly equal to 17 1/2 million in today's money.

Five years later, it was set in the king's coronation crown for Louis XV and again for Louis XVI in 1775.

Marie Antoinette wore it in her hat.

Then the locals tired of kings and cut off quite a few heads.

The jewel disappeared.

Napoleon relocated it (probably not to the advantage of the thief!) and it turned up on his sword.

When he died, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, his second wife, quietly took it home to Austria but her papa made her give it back.

It was mounted on the crown of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Napoleon III.

Then it came to Empress Eugenie, who liked to wear it.

Since 1887, it's been on display at the French Treasury.

No-one remembers the slave's name, or the sea captain or the merchant.

 

Moral of the story - huge diamonds can only ever belong to the rich.

 

Nola also came across the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text in the British Library, which is the world's earliest dated printed book. The title is a reference to the use of diamond as a cutter for jade.

Next month is Emerald!

 

 

 

 

Journals - Birthstones

Last year, we had a lot of fun (and some challenges) working to a theme in our journals. This year, some of us thought we'd like to continue, and Yvonne suggested we work on the theme of birthstones.

Birthstones are quite challenging as themes! First of all, there are so many lists, as stones have fallen in and out of fashion or become more or less precious. We decided embrace the variation and compile  a list for ourselves that reflected all the others, rather than limit ourselves to a single arbitrary list. Here's our list, laid out nicely in Nola's sketchbook:

We can approach the task in any way we choose, even work outside our sketchbooks, if we like. We can focus on any aspect of the birthstone that attracts us. The idea is to build up a resource of things that interest us, that we can use later in our work.

First, garnets.  Many of us were away in January, which is summer holiday season in Australia. Only Helen and Nola found time to work on the garden theme, though the others may come back to it later.

Helen initially focused on the stones themselves, raw and worked. The worked stones yield such interesting geometric shapes.

These planes really interested her so she began playing with lines to create geometrical shapes.

Nola was also interested in geometric shapes, but she was fascinated by the natural shape of the garnet, which forms a rhombic dodecahedron, a twelve-sided shape with each side a rhombus or specific proportions. This shape, like a bee's honeycomb fits together in three-dimensional space with no wasted pockets between them. 

This led her into the composition of the stones. She was very interested in the exotic names of different forms of garnet and what these names mean; pyrope meaning "fire-eyed" , grossular, not relating to grains but to gooseberries. The name garnet comes from Latin granatus, "seed" an d may relate to the pomum granatum or pomegranate.

Archaeology is a lifelong interest for Nola so she researched cultures where garnets were widely used. There are lots of Roman artefacts with garnets.

Stay tuned for February... amethyst!