First floor findings
Today Jessie and myself went to Leeds city library and explored the three floors that offered us a rich source of information. The first floor was a good starting point as we found some books about the local area, especially the small towns and villages in the Yorkshire Dales. There was nothing that grabbed us as the information we found was about the local economy, and historical events that didn't really tie in with our photo shoot.
Folklore
We found a small section on folklore, however it was very limited and the only book we found useful was the book below.
Salt of the earth
Origins and meanings of country sayings
Published by the National Trust
We found some interesting facts and proverbs in this small book which would make some great headings / titles to help illustrate the book. I looked out for a nature theme because we intend to photography the shoot in the grounds of Bolton Abbey. Plus the clothing brand Native Haze is quite bohemien.
Proverbs
Salt of the earth
Hail to the frost
Ash before oak
I intend to look further into proverbs especially along the theme of water and woodlands
Second floor
After discussing ideas about folklore and proverbs that run along the theme of nature, we wondered up to the art history book section on the second floor. I have a love for the Pre Raphaelites, especially the painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais. I love the colours, the nature theme and the poetic meaning behind the painting as it is based on Ophelia's death in Hamlet in Act IV.
After using this painting as reference to what kind of look and feel we want to aim for we look further in various other Pre Raphaelite paintings.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was initially a secret society, formed in 1848 in London and designed as a rejection of the art academy process. Rejecting the academic painting approach and what it stood for, these group of men ( William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner) instead chose to approach art in the styles of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe. A time that was Pre-Raphael.
What that meant is their art, at first, had a ”minute description of detail, a luminous palette of bright colors that recalls the tempera paint used by medieval artists, and subject matter of a noble, religious, or moralizing nature”. Their intent was to make art approachable to the common man, through themes and stories that recognizable to anyone, and not through subtext that was unapproachable by most.
They rejected hackery, any idea that showed ”anything lax or scamped in the process of painting … and hence … any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind.” They initially focused on the familial stories of the bible, but soon turned to landscapes, heading out into the world with canvas and paints. This seems obvious now, but before them, an artist would sketch a landscape, take it back to the studio, and then recreate the colors from memory. What the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood did was to capture the colors as they saw them at the time that they saw them. The result? Paintings had more detail than ever before.
Third Floor
We left the second floor and proceeded to the third where the local archives were held, along with local poetry books which a lady kindly found for us. We found a few poetry books based on the Yorkshire Dales which was great because we could use them contextualise them into the body copy of the look book as thats where our shoot is based.
Poetry findings
Jessie and myself looked through the poetry books and we found an interesting selections of works.
Limestone Landscape and other dales poems
Terence M Cluderay
I jotted down the end of this poem because we have been working on this project the latter months of the year and hopefully the shoot will happen end of Nove / start of Dec.
The Dales Year
by Catherine Daniels
October
After
summers merriness is silence
peace dominates, lavenders fragrance
slowing to softness for winter
November
Month
of ash grey, with steel skies
wisps of cirrus clouds stranded
no destiny
warmth drained from life
Dec
End
but now a new world
pearl snow drifts against cinnamon trees
soon the end of this year
Lead Dust
by M Barratt
Prussian blue
embedded like a fossil
in the skim
laid down between cell and sunlight
lead dust
seeping like blood
Larches
by Irene Stacey
Larch tree
Princess of the woods
In your spring green foliage
A green unseen elsewhere
Your ballerina stance
Fingertip branches
Featherlight in the sun
Lace laid on lace
You catch my eyes and heart
Perfectly formed delicate cores
Decorate your boughts
Which light and graceful sweep
The dark and brooding pikes
Your cousins, near neighbours
Night Musings
The Minstel of the dales
The haunted glen
by Goves Scarr
William Edward
London 1847
The haunted glen
A ballad
The summer time is passed and gone,
The autumn wind blows chill,
The dead leaves rustle in the blast,
or float in each trembling hill
The flowers are dying, the trees are bare
And waters sullen roar
Oh! Pass'd away in your vernal pride
Ye lovely banks of Yore!
By the side of that crimson flood
Oh! There he laid, all cold and dead
His corse was drenched with blood
I cannot rest - I cannot weep
I cannot taste his dreamless sleep
As she strayed by the river dark
Her eye was wild, her hair it streamed
And her arms were bare and stark
But well a day, one fated morn
A bugle blast did sound
Amongst the hills, and through the woods and forest dales
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