Spent a weekend at my friend A’s recently, and as we all craved an autumnal walk, out we went for a 2hr walk in Thorndon Country Park in Essex, a county to the east of London. What a privilege to be able to be in nature, taking in the beautiful colours of autumn, with the bestest of friends. It doesn’t take much to make me happy - and bringing hot tea in a flask is just icing on the cake.
I luckily got well enough for a long standing weekend away last weekend (only to relapse this week), to see some of our favourite people. A sunny walk in the fields/woods/along the river, past a Roman Villa, a chilly BBQ cook in the dark and a serious drop in temperature, plus a cat or three. Good times 💛
New season, new look, new way of blogging. Here’s the thing, I’ve become bored with my photography; to me it feels less considered and merely functional now - a by-product of keeping a blog for a long time. So in order to keep my funny eye, or my eye funny, I need to approach this space differently. Less words for sure, not so much “I did this, then I saw that, and then I went here” anymore, but perhaps letting the pictures speak more for themselves. Let’s see what happens.
Ahhh, the Teylers Museum. What a treat it was. Pieter Teyler van der Hulst was a wealthy silk and cloth merchant (and later banker) in the 1700’s, who died childless and so stipulated in his will that his private collection of fossils, medals, drawings and coins and part of his fortune should be the put into a foundation, promoting the arts and sciences. Most of his own collection was sold off to fund the building of the museum, which might not have been what he had in mind, but I’m sure he’d be very impressed with what the museum became.
We certainly were; in fact about 10 minutes in I said “I’m totally blissing out”, which if you know me isn’t the way I speak, but it described what I was feeling. Awe. In the fossils room there are no electrical lights, so you get to experience what the museum would’ve been like to walk around in back when it opened. It also made it incredibly atmospheric and beautiful.
Some of the fossils, very simply presented. All the neutrals were rather nice on the eye too.
I’m looking forward to coming back here, as it was a bit overwhelming. I will spend more time in this room for sure. It’s that old thing of taking pictures taking you away from the moment. I will never learn.
I thought this was a fossil of a snake, but it’s actually a plant.
Can’t remember now what this is, but isn’t it stunning? I’d love one of these. I think I’m realising that in my alternate life I’d like my own room full of fossils.
D was enjoying it just as much as I was. At one point one of the museum guards walked up right next to us, picking something up that lit up red. I realised that he was wearing one of those magic light thumbs, and then he pretended to throw it on the floor. “That’s strange” he said. How often does a museum guard do a bit of magic for you?! Not often, let me tell you. Especially not if you’re in your late 40’s.
Next was a room of scientific instruments, many of them very cool.
The Oval Room was the first part of the museum what was built behind Teyler’s house. The mezzanine (not accessible to the public) is a library of Teyler’s books, and the ground floor is full of more scientific instruments and a large central display of crystals. Napoleon came to visit back in the day, as did Einstein (obviously not at the same time).
I need to look more carefully at these displays next time too.
The upper gallery again.
No posts from the Netherlands are complete without a windmill (or two), right?
I’m looking forward to showing Oomoo these, he’s gonna love it (I think anyway, I mean, he’s a teenager now, so maybe he won’t).
Don’t know what this was,
but there were two of them, and this one had a watch in it, which if you stood right in front of, you could hear ticking.
There were also a couple of rooms of paintings,
and this one was my favourite, by Jacobus van Looy from 1893.
Luck would have it that D had walked off down a corridor at one point, and found the original living quarters of Teyler. I had forgotten all about the map to the museum, and was thinking that we were done, so we could easily have missed this part.
Isn’t
it
great?
Love all the patterns and colours. No white walls in sight.
Oh, wait. Here’s some. 🤭
The colours and all the architectural details have recently been painstakingly restored, and even though it’s over 250 years old, the colour combos feel very contemporary, in a maximalist way.
The wallpaper deserves a close up, toch? Next up, the VERMEER exhibition at the Rijks. Holy crap it was good (and busy). I took pictures of all the paintings for you, but let me know if you want to see all 27 of them as it would take a while to put that post together, and if you’re like “Meh, Vermeer Verschmeer”, I’ll happily post less.
Are you all well and enjoying summer (or winter southern hemisphere peeps)? I hope so. It came here very quickly in the end, like someone somewhere remembered what time of year it was, and quickly flicked the summer switch. Phew.