Christmas comes to New House

I always start getting the Christmas Tingle about now and this year the Nordic Elves have been EXTRA busy, magicing up some incredibly charming, high-quality, lovely Swedish-made items to give everyone's Christmas a delightful festive buzz :

 

My favourite is the table runner and Charlotte Farmer's Shake It tea towel and mug :

Closely followed by the useful oven glove and tea towel :

But don't forget the Christmas apron to complete the look!

   Happy Christmas!

Gloucester Cathedral's sculpture exhibition, Crucible 2.

It's been a few years since I'd last visited Gloucester's fantastic cathedral, but I was bowled over by Crucible 2.

Magnificently curated by Gallery Pangolin, they'd brilliantly placed sculptures in different parts of the cathedral to envoke surprise, shock, depth, thought and beauty. To me it was exhibition of the year.

Outside there was Randall-Page, Robertson and Lynn Chadwick :

Inside you were greeted by March's 'the thief' and Lutcyens 'outraged Christ'. I loved the way the thief was placed so colour from the stained glass windows shone through his eyes :

In the cloisters (where parts of the Harry Potter movies were filmed) there was Buck's 'in man's nature' & 'dog', Harvey, Cooper, and others :

In the main cathedral there were so many excellent scultptures in great positions - Moore's, scary Humphreys, Gregory, Mach, Kenworthy, and Gavin Turk's 'Nomad' placed just perfectly :

I loved where Antony Gormley's 'The pose' stood :

The cathedral looked on impassive and impressive with chapels and historic rooms I'd never seen open before.

Even 'anatomy of an angel' (that I doubt Dameon Hurst created with any feeling of religeous spirtuality) looked great, and was actually very moving here :