Category Archives: inspiration + history
Italian paper dolls…
I couldn’t resist this Italian paper doll book with regional costumes from all over Italy. Sofia and Ernesto are the names of the two paper dolls that come with it. I admit I haven’t come across paper dolls since playing with a 1960s set owned by one of my relatives a very long time ago in childhood. I think it was American and being from the sixties, the paper clothes it in were very groovy.
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
‘alla fontana’ ~ to the fountain…
The woman in the foreground carries two conche, the copper vessels traditionally used in Abruzzo to collect water from the village fountain for the household. Perhaps she was teaching the young girl to carry it back on her head (depicted by the women in the background). The village women used to do so to transport all manner of heavy things with evidence of this including iron bedheads and, on occasion in very steep areas, even coffins.
The artwork pictured here was painted in Civita d’Antino in Abruzzo by Danish painter, Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917) who first travelled to the mountain town of Civita d’Antino in June 1883. Zahrtmann came to consider it his second home as he was fascinated by “the life there, the strong Italian sun, the brightness of colours, and the exoticness of Catholic Church rites”.
He spent every summer from 1890 to 1911 in Civita d’Antino where he stayed with the Cerroni family, and was named an honorary citizen of the town in 1902. In Civita d’Antino, a memorial plaque to Zahrtmann is set into the wall of the Cerroni house near the town gate.
Filed under inspiration + history, italy, old photographs + art
Flight of the angel… il Volo dell’Angelo
Il Volo dell’Angelo… {the flight of the angel} – something a little different to do in Italy – ‘flying’ between the villages of Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano in the Dolomites of Lucania, Basilicata.
Apparently, you start 1020m above the ground with the flight covering 1415m and reaching speeds of up to 120 km/h. Not sure if I’m game!
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
Late afternoon walks…
a beautiful end to a Sunday, walking along Obi Obi Creek, Maleny…
Filed under inspiration + history, old photographs + art
The Dome…
Jeffrey Smart, 1921 – 2013.
Filed under inspiration + history, italy, old photographs + art
freshly, baked bread…
“…whenever the loaf is put on the table, few foods will produce such joy and delight in others as when freshly baked bread appears, the aroma of fresh memories rising with every slice, and all things – poetry and miracles, friends and family, food and love – for a short time are as they ought be: one.”
Richard Flanagan, from The Food of Love.
Filed under inspiration + history, kitchen stories
a beautiful place to sit and read, or lie and daydream…
Painted by Estella Canziani (1887-1964) who wrote {as well as drew and painted the illustrations for} one of my favourite books on the Abruzzo about her 1913 travels – Through the Apennines & Lands of Abruzzi.
She painted this picture {oil on paper} from inside her house in London at 3 Palace Green in 1922. The white bird in the painting one of the many birds she rescued and cared for.
Filed under books + writing, inspiration + history, old photographs + art
Maremma sheepdogs and penguins…
The Maremma Sheepdog is indigenous to central Italy, particularly Abruzzo and the Maremma area in Tuscany and Lazio, and has been used for centuries by Italian shepherds to guard sheep from wolves.
Recently I discovered a project in Australia where Maremma Sheepdogs are protecting a penguin colony almost decimated by foxes, and under their protection the penguins are increasing in numbers. {The dogs also guard free-range chickens.} A little mezza italiana/ australiana perhaps.
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
little free libraries…
Love this concept of the ‘Little Free Library’ – “take a book, leave a book” structures built with recycled materials and popping up beside footpaths, coffee shops, houses and parks around the world….
http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/
Filed under books + writing, inspiration + history
The beauty of walking in Italy…
…a fleeting glimpse down a narrow, side alley often reveals the unexpected and the beautiful. 
{Taken in Orvieto, Umbria.}
Filed under inspiration + history, italy, old photographs + art
Lightly, lightly….
Life Behind by Maki Horanai
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly—it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling.”
Aldous Huxley
From ‘Island’, 1962
Related articles: Watching Over
Filed under books + writing, inspiration + history, old photographs + art
Neve in Roccacaramanico…
I grew up with stories of villages in the Abruzzo being snowed in, sometimes the snow so high people couldn’t open the doors and had to climb out their windows. Hearing this in the heat of a subtropical summer in Australia, I could only try to imagine….
{Neve in Roccacaramanico. Photographer: Andrea Basciano.}
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
Italia at night…
….taken from the International Space Station above the Mediterranean Sea on 18 August 2012.
{The lights of Rome and Naples are clearly visible on the coast near the centre.}
{Courtesy Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium, Australia.}
Filed under inspiration + history, italy, old photographs + art
Cherry wood and Estella…
Piedmontese peasant wood-pipe carved from cherry wood that writer, artist and folklorist, Estella Canziani presented to The Folklore Society of London in 1911. She donated it along with other items from her travels in northern Italy when she wrote and illustrated her first book, Costumes, Traditions and Songs of Savoy (before she ventured to the Abruzzo in 1913 to pen Through the Apennines and Lands of Abruzzi).
I saw a similar pipe sitting on a stall table at the antique market in Arezzo and am still regetting not having bought it…
Filed under inspiration + history, italy, old photographs + art
Zoë Boccabella 