Harmony & Concord

This was a design of my invention from many years ago that turned up in a drawer. You may find a larger version on my glintingly new flickr page.

Urania Theatre (after)

Urania Theatre (before)

The Urania proscenium was published by Joseph Scholz around 1880 in Mainz. I purchased this lovely broadsheet in 1983 at Pollock's Toy Theatre Museum in London. Would it not make a fine stage-within-a-stage, a theatrical frame, for Persephone's magickal act? But first I must add drama and atmosphere!

Snowflakes

Precipitated by Osprey's post.

Stage Designs

After another summer of supremely illusionistic film, of young wizards and fallen stars, labyrinths and pirates, magical fantasies created by artists and animators, and of the daily fantasy we inhabit in Second Life, I thought back to my own age.
The Baroque was the supreme age of illusion. Sumptuous spectacles marked every turning point in a sovereign's life. The stage offered princes and kings vast dream palaces free from the "vulgar solidity of stone". The Bibienas, a remarkable family of eight theatrical designers, were the undisputed masters of the Baroque stage set, and Giuseppi Bibiena (1696-1756) was the happy inheritor and brilliant exploiter of the family's skills and inventions. (adapted from A. Hyatt Mayor, Curator of Prints, Mertropolitan Museum of Art)
I have used Giuseppi's proscenium arch and other bits, plus a little of my own invention, in these three designs, preparatory to the construction of my Doric Theatre in Orion.

From my sketchbooks

None of these quick sketches are recent. But they serve to tell you a little more about myself.


The room in which I spent my childhood, its toy theatres, marionettes, dolls, magic lanterns, books, kites, costumes and furnishings removed before moving to Venice.

In Rome.


Another stage design. A drummer boy who noisily courted me when I was twelve.