Hic Sunt Leones
This page title comes from those old maps where they weren't quite sure of the geography, but whatever it was, it was an interesting place
Here I've put some things and ideas that aren't mainstream glass engraving, or calligraphy, or etching, but which I have encountered as a sort of "sideways" request (The word sideways comes to mind from dipping into Alan Barker's book "The Art of Looking Sideways").
Some years ago when I had small children, we had the problem of sitting everybody down at the dining-table. We were fed up with the ordinary rectangular table (you can't use the corners anyway and kids bump their head on them). An oval table seemed more appropriate, but this shape curves too steeply, and you waste a lot of table. My husband saw an article in Scientific American in the late 60's by Piet Hein- a true polymath. He had come up with a shape intermediate between a rectangle and an ellipse and has christened it "superellipse" All sorts of people asked about the dining table, and how they could make one, and we were always (and still are) asked for the formula
So, if you need to know how to mark one out here's how
I have a studio in the south-west of France where I draw in the countryside around. One of my early pieces of metal sculpture is installed there, and I've recently noticed the way in which the early morning sun catches the birdcage and casts shadows on the stone walls. Intrigued by this ever-varying pattern (the colour of the sunlight, the fact that, sometimes the shadows are diffused by the mists). I have recorded some of these on the birdcage page.
Page last updated 1 October 2007