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May 8th, 2021 
 As reported in the The Colac Herald on Friday July 17, 1903 Pg. 8 under Art Appreciation as a reprint from the Westminster Gazette
ART APPRECIATION IN THE COMMONS.
The appreciation of art as well as of history which is entertained by the average member of the House of Commons was effectively gauged by the titter which greeted the suggestion that some thing specially derogatory to the statue of Mr Bright had been done by its being “shoved into a corner” near the bust of the Lord Protector Oliver. Mr Bruce Joy would scarcely claim to be a Bernini, and that great Italian sculptor, if he could revisit the glimpses of the moon, would assuredly be impressed by the vicissitudes of his portrait bust of two successive rulers of this country, Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. Concerning the former, a singular story used to be told, to the effect that Van Dyck, having drawn the Stuart King in profile, three quarters and full face, sent the result to Rome for Bernini to make a therefrom.
Complaint being subsequently heard that the sculptor was unduly long over the work, he replied that he had engaged himself on it several times. but something in the features always shocked him as indicating that the person represented was destined to a violent end. This portent was renewed when the bust at last arrived in England, as, while the King and his courtiers were examining it in the Royal garden, a hawk flew over their heads with a wounded partridge in its claws, some of the blood from which fell upon the bust’s neck, whence it was not removed; and when it was ultimately placed in the Palace of White hall, the edifice was destroyed by fire. Happily, the Bernini bust of Cromwell—one of the finest portrait busts the nation possesses—has been preserved; and no gibe can lessen either the beauty of the work or the significance of its being permanently placed within the palace of Westminster. Westminster Gazette
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May 8th, 2021 
The Kalmar War
From The Historian’s History of the World (In 25 Volumes) by Henry Smith William L.L.D. – Vol. XVI.(Scandinavia) Pg. 308-310
The northern part of the Scandinavian peninsula, as already noticed, had been peopled from the remotest times by nomadic tribes called Finns or Cwenas by the Norwegians and Lapps by the Swedes, from which their territory derived the name of Lapland. These aboriginal inhabitants retained their primitive manners, language, and religion, unaffected by the progress of Christianity in the North. No definite boundary separated the adjacent kingdoms of Sweden and Norway from the dreary wilderness occupied by their less civilised neighbours who subsisted by hunting and fishing. The progress of conquest had gradually pressed them nearer to the borders of the arctic circle, but still even under the Union of Kalmar their territorial limits remained undefined. Continue reading The Kalmar War
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May 8th, 2021 
From Wikipedia:
Stoke Park – the original house
Stoke park was the first English country house to display a Palladian plan: a central house with balancing pavilions linked by colonnades or screen walls. Palladio was the 16th-century Italian architect on whose work the design was based. The Paladian style became a standard type of country house construction in 18th century England under Lord Burlington. However, 80 years earlier Stoke Park in Northamptonshire was the first example, believed to have been constructed by Inigo Jones. The house ca.1700 is pictured in Colen Campbell’s (sic) Vitruvius Britannicus (meaning British Architect).
Charles I granted the park and Manor House to Sir Francis Crane, director and founder of the Mortlake Tapestry Works established on the estate of John Dee, the mathematician, at Mortlake, in 1619, later the site of the Queen’s Head pub. Crane was made Secretary to Charles I when he was Prince of Wales and was knighted in 1617. With grants of land, money and high prices charged for tapestries, Crane became very wealthy. He was granted ca.400 acres of Stoke Bruerne in 1629.
Crane brought the design of the house from Italy and had assistance from Inigo Jones to build it.
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August 9th, 2020 
Traditional British Christmas Pudding Recipe by Pen Vogler from the Charles Dickens Museum
Ingredients
- 85 grams all purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- 170 grams Beef Suet
- 140 grams brown sugar
- tsp. mixed spice, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, &c
- 170 grams bread crumbs
- 170 grams raisins
- 170 grams currants
- 55 grams cut mixed peel
- Gram to Cup conversion tables.
Method
Mix together well, add 1 medium grated apple, mix again, beat three eggs plus 140ml brandy, add to dry mixture, stir together well.
Grease pudding basin with butter, cut a small piece of grease proof paper to cover bottom, pack in pudding, cover with parchment another round of grease proof paper, cover with large squares grease proof paper and tin foil, tie up tightly with string and make string handle to prevent water from invading pudding.  Set on saucer in large covered pan, water half way up pudding basin and boil for 3 ½ hours.
To learn more about Mrs. Vogler and her cooking adventures, click here.
Click here to purchase a copy of Christmas with Dickens by Pen Vogler.
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August 9th, 2020 
Country House Christmas Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 cup Christian Bros Brandy
- ½ cup Myer’s Dark Rum
- ½ cup Jim Beam Whiskey
- 1 cup currants
- 1 cup sultana raisins
- 1 cup pitted prunes finely chopped
- Â 1 med. apple peeled and grated
- ½ cup chopped dried apricots
- ½ cup candied orange peel finely chopped
- 1 ¼ cup all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (freshly baked bread is best)
- 1 cup Crisco vegetable shortening(freeze and grate)
- ½ cup dark brown sugar
- ¼ cup black strap molasses
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- grated zest of 1 lemon
- grated zest of 1 orange plus juice
- 3 large eggs
Method
- Soak all fruit in Brandy for a week.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine brandied fruit with remaining ingredients, add cup of dark rum.
- Mold and steam for 3 ½ hours.
- Remove pudding, poke holes in top with fork, pour over Jim Beam Whiskey, cover tightly in parchment paper and foil, serve when ready. Will last up to six months in refrigeration.
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August 8th, 2020  Equestrian Portrait of Charles V by Titian – 1548 “The Leda, in the Colonna palace, by Correggio, is dead-coloured white and black, with ultramarine in the shadow ; and over that is scumbled, thinly and smooth, a warmer tint,—I believe caput mortuum. The lights are mellow ; the shadows blueish, but mellow. The picture is painted on panel, in a broad and large manner, but finished like enamel : the shadows harmonize, and are lost in the ground. Continue reading Sir Joshua Reynolds — Notes from Rome
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May 10th, 2021 
BOOKS CONDEMNED
TO BE BURNT.
By
JAMES ANSON FARRER,
LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW
1892
———-
WHEN did books first come to be burnt in England by the common hangman, and what was the last book to be so treated? This is the sort of question that occurs to a rational curiosity, but it is just this sort of question to which it is often most difficult to find an answer. Historians are generally too engrossed with the details of battles, all as drearily similar to one another as scenes of murder and rapine must of necessity be, to spare a glance for the far brighter and more instructive field of the mutations or of the progress of manners. The following work is an attempt to supply the deficiency on this particular subject. Continue reading Books Condemned to be Burnt
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August 8th, 2020  Sir Joshua Reynolds by Gilber Stuart0-1784 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS‘ WORKING COLOURS, WITH
THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY WERE ARRANGED
ON HIS PALLETTE.
“For painting the flesh, black, blue black, white, lake, carmine, orpiment, yellow ochre, ultramarine, and varnish.
“To lay the pallette:—first lay carmine and white in different degrees: second, lay orpiment and white, ditto: third lay blue black and white, ditto.
“The first sitting, make a mixture on the pallette for expedition, as near the sitter’s complexion as you can. Continue reading Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Memoranda on Painting — December 1755
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August 8th, 2020  Cannone nel castello di Haut-Koenigsbourg, photo by Gita Colmar Without any preliminary cleaning the bronze object to be treated is hung as cathode into the 2 per cent. caustic soda solution and a low amperage direct current is applied. The object is suspended with soft copper wires and is completely immersed into the solution. In case the object is very soft and fragile or completely mineralized, fine annealed copper wire is wrapped around the object, one to two turns per inch, and electrical connections are made with several turns of this wire. Where there is danger that object might not hold together upon the removal of the hard supporting shell, we have found it advisable to to pack the whole object in clean white sand, after making proper electrical connections, and then filling the containers with the caustic soda solution. Continue reading Method of Restoration for Ancient Bronzes and other Alloys
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August 6th, 2020  Como dome facade – Pliny the Elder – Photo by Wolfgang Sauber Work in Progress…
THE VARNISHES.
Every substance may be considered as a varnish, which, when applied to the surface of a solid body, gives it a permanent lustre. Drying oil, thickened by exposure to the sun’s heat or a fire, is a varnish and as such has often been employed. It is, however, probable that varnishes, composed of resins dissolved in oil, have been used in very ancient times.
But it is beyond all doubt, that when the arts flourished in Greece, the composition of varnish had long been known in India, Persia, and China. It is not then to be supposed that the Greeks were unacquainted with this art. Yet such would have been the case if we give credit to a paragraph in Pliny, who tells us that Apelles was indebted for his unequalled colouring to the employment of a liquid which he calls “Atramentum,” with which he covered his pictures when they finished, and with which substance no other painter was acquainted. Pliny observes, “that there is in the pictures of Apelles a certain effect, that cannot be equalled, and that tone was obtained by means of atramentum, which fluid he passed over his pictures when the painting was completely finished. Continue reading Artist Methods
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August 5th, 2020  Pencil sketch of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake by John Partridge (Queen Victoria’s favourite portrait painter), 1825 From the work of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake entitled Materials for a history of oil painting, (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846), we learn the following:
The effect of oil at certain temperatures, in penetrating “the minute pores of the amber” (as Hoffman elsewhere writes), is still more strikingly exemplified in an invention, or perhaps and old method revived, Christian Porschinen of Königsberg, at the close of the seventeenth century (June, 1691). He succeeded in rendering amber colourless, so as to employ it as substitute for magnifying glasses. Zedler ( Grosses vollständiges Univ. Lexicon, art. Bersteinerner Brenn-Spiegel) describes the process. The manufacturer placed the amber, already formed and polished for the intended use, in linseed oil exposed to a moderate fire, and suffered it to remain till it had entirely lost its yellow colour, and had become quite clear and transparent. Zedler states that lenses so prepared are more powerful than those made of glass in igniting gunpowder (welche viel schneller in Brennen and Pulver-anzunden sind als die glasernen).
The same process was afterwards adopted for clarifying amber beads, so as to render them transparent like glass. The method is probably most successful when the substance is not very thick. For a further account of this invention Zedler refers to Hen. von Sanden, Disp. de Succino Electricorum principe, Königsberg, 1714. Dreme (Der Virniss-und Kittmacher) alludes to similar methods. “Amber boiled in linseed oil is softened so that it may be bent and compressed: opaque or clouded amber by this process becomes light and transparent. The oil should be heated gradually, otherwise, the pieces of amber are liable to crack. ” Such modes of clarifying amber might be employed with effect, preparatory to its solution by some of the means before indicated.
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