shaping up
signs of the times is shaping up - the makers' signatures have been arriving fairly regularly, i now have more than half of them - i've been posting them for the project members to see here
tomorrow is the next project meeting and i hope that most of the rest will be returned then - i'm really pleased that the response and return rate has been good so far - i hope it means that project members like the idea - i wanted it to be a joining-in thing rather than an extra task
i am also very pleased with the way the signatures are turning out, happy that each has it's own character
meanwhile i've been working on the archive material, deciding what to include and how - i seem to be focussing on the 18th century levant trade aspects - i think it is the links with the old silk and spice routes, contact with islamic and asian cultures which appeals to me - i feel that i ought to justify my choices but realise that i don't HAVE to .... there doesn't have to be a guiding concept to what i am doing ........ it's just about what inspires me .....
this project has been a way of making history more personally meaningful, finding bits of history i can identify with - for me it helps me to understand more about how the politics and major events influenced and affected the lives of people, and also about how events can have repercussions a long way away ...... for example how a dainty 18th century afternoon tea is connected to opium and warfare (now as well as in the past)
i can spend hours online "researching" odd little topics, straying off down all sorts of side routes - how did people manage when they had to rely on access to written material which had to be physically found and consulted?
on the practical front i think i have worked out how i will assemble the signatures and archive finds - this has given me a clearer idea of how many "pages" i will need to make (less than i had originally intended thank goodness!) - it has also meant that i am able to print some pieces digitally, enabling more detail and precision in some cases
these are the "pages" i've done so far (these photos got moved - there is a link to all the pages i stitched in later posts tagged ToT2) - mostly signatures, i could do with some more Radcliffe signatures - the map is alexandria or scanderoon (not the egyptian one), one of the ports used for shipping goods from aleppo - it's from a series of 16th century maps by Piri Reis, an Ottoman admiral and cartographer - the tiny details on them are wonderful
now i need to work out the binding for my "book" - i might make a collage of some of the archive material for the cover
tomorrow is the next project meeting and i hope that most of the rest will be returned then - i'm really pleased that the response and return rate has been good so far - i hope it means that project members like the idea - i wanted it to be a joining-in thing rather than an extra task
i am also very pleased with the way the signatures are turning out, happy that each has it's own character
meanwhile i've been working on the archive material, deciding what to include and how - i seem to be focussing on the 18th century levant trade aspects - i think it is the links with the old silk and spice routes, contact with islamic and asian cultures which appeals to me - i feel that i ought to justify my choices but realise that i don't HAVE to .... there doesn't have to be a guiding concept to what i am doing ........ it's just about what inspires me .....
this project has been a way of making history more personally meaningful, finding bits of history i can identify with - for me it helps me to understand more about how the politics and major events influenced and affected the lives of people, and also about how events can have repercussions a long way away ...... for example how a dainty 18th century afternoon tea is connected to opium and warfare (now as well as in the past)
i can spend hours online "researching" odd little topics, straying off down all sorts of side routes - how did people manage when they had to rely on access to written material which had to be physically found and consulted?
on the practical front i think i have worked out how i will assemble the signatures and archive finds - this has given me a clearer idea of how many "pages" i will need to make (less than i had originally intended thank goodness!) - it has also meant that i am able to print some pieces digitally, enabling more detail and precision in some cases
these are the "pages" i've done so far (these photos got moved - there is a link to all the pages i stitched in later posts tagged ToT2) - mostly signatures, i could do with some more Radcliffe signatures - the map is alexandria or scanderoon (not the egyptian one), one of the ports used for shipping goods from aleppo - it's from a series of 16th century maps by Piri Reis, an Ottoman admiral and cartographer - the tiny details on them are wonderful
now i need to work out the binding for my "book" - i might make a collage of some of the archive material for the cover
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