News

Occasional and random bits of news..

JUNE 2020

This time next year, The Irish Journals of Elizabeth Smith (1840 to 1850) will be re-published by Lilliput Press. Six hundred and thirty illustrations based on her descriptions will of course be edited but it says something for her powers of observation that there was so much to draw on.

French economist Thomas Piketty tells us that history must be understood and the sad truth is that 1840s Ireland with all its inequalities fell that much more easily to famine. Looking around us today we can only see that these divisions remain, and that Elizabeth Smith’s observations were far ahead of her time. She references and makes associations between significant population growth, unusual weather patterns, lack of education, religious animosity, dysfunctional government, corruption, crime, vanity, ambition, greed and, of course, agricultural malpractice. Land reform was particularly contentious.

It’s not as dry as it sounds. There are lessons for us, and following the Covid-19 nightmare even more so. Will we ever understand?

DECEMBER 2019

The fashion / fabric industry takes 35% of the world’s fresh water.

It’s time to revive ‘Louise Verity On Location’ (see here for a bit of history).

Let’s rethink your wardrobe and furnishings and recut, repair and renew! I can be the new travelling ‘On Location Fashion and Fabric Housekeeper’ and together we can do our bit to stand up to the throwaway culture with style!

Weekly bookings preferred. £40/hr. Travel expenses TBD depending on location.

00 +44 (0)7767 497704

NOVEMBER 2019

I’m looking forward to the production next year of the second edition of The Irish Journals of Elizabeth Smith 1840 – 1850.

Janet K. TeBrake (History Ireland) writes:

‘A major strength of Elizabeth Smith’s journal is what it reveals about the Great Famine. She kept a meticulous record of all aspects of the calamitous period, beginning in 1845 with the first sightings of the potato blight in the area and ending in 1850 when she optimistically noted that the Famine was subsiding. She shows us real human beings experiencing and responding to the Famine in a way that charts, tables, and figures, important in their own right, never can. Naturally, Smith’s own experiences of and responses to the Famine are most fully developed. Always faithful to the principle of improvement, she viewed the tragedy, at least initially, as a catalyst for change and a better future: ‘This visitation of providence will thus be the means of prosperity to our nation by bringing forward the help so much wanted without which we must have grovelled on for ages through turmoil and poverty and misery, and with which we may hope all of us of this generation to see plenty and comfort in the dear land’ [18 October 1846].

Despite her belief in its providential nature, however, Smith could not and did not stand idly by while the Famine raged. Her deep commitment to duty as the mistress of Baltiboys, as well as her compassion for all in distress, motivated her to labour tirelessly for those in need. It was during the terrible months of the Famine that she most clearly articulated what duty meant to her. ‘I have made up my mind that the distress of the poor demands a large sacrifice on the part of the richer, and it must be our business to prepare for this and to give up luxuries to meet this. “To feed the hungry” is a duty that cannot be shirked’ [29 November 1846].’

JUNE 2017

Over the years my husband, Karsten, has turned his gifted hands to many things. Latterly the old wooden fences around our house in the French Pyrenees have caught his eye. Exposed to the elements and failing in their original purpose this resource may have ended up as firewood, or just been left to rot. But these native hardwood boards and posts have weathered in such a way that with a little love, attention and a craftsman’s eye – they have been conjured into new configurations to create chairs, benches and tables that glow with renewed life. And then I love to dress them up with soft, colourful cushions and throws. I think we work together quite well …?

If anyone is interested in commissioning a piece just get contact me – give us a challenge!

MARCH 2017

I spent some of my childhood in Devon, and have returned when opportunity allows. These trips have led to regular visits to Buckfact Abbey where the east window of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel couldn’t fail other to catch my eye and imagination.

My latter sojourn in Tetbury led me to St Michaels’s, a former Baptist chapel built in 1872 and retaining some the puritanical lines one might expect. I asked Father Obi if I might, in my own time, recreate the essential part of the Buckfast design that could hang behind the alter. He said, simply, “Yes.”

Over a period of four months I hand stitched off-cuts from my shop to recreate a mosaic patchwork of the central figure onto a four metre square black back cloth. It was hung on the 22^nd February.