Familiar faces and artwork on Mexican Banknotes

I was excited to collect my Mexican currency and to find familiar faces on the 500 Peso notes! I'm always interested to know who's on my money but often the faces and places portrayed on foreign notes in particular are unfamiliar, as with the other values of this currency which will require further research.

Artists Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera are shown here together with  their famous artworks.

 Diego Rivera's painting  of a nude with Cala Lilies is a subject which he painted  many times. 

The painting shown below is The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Senor Xolotl, painted in 1949 by Frida Kahlo. and appears on the reverse of the note .  The picture contains elements from ancient Mexican mythology, including day and night, the sun and moon and the earth goddess cihuacoatl.  One of Frida's favourite pets was a dog which also represents Senor  Xolotl, a Itzcuintli dog,  a being who guards the underworld.  She was very maternal towards her husband Diego  and said she wanted to hold him in her arms like a new-born baby, as in this painting. 

I'm not Carping ... but it would be good to see the Guildhall, Gloucester packed like a tin of Sardines!

Carping is an ancient expression meaning to complain about something .. and I'm not!  In fact, I'm very happy to say that you can see my Carp, looking quite beautiful in a silvery frame in the exhibition, Stamping Ground 2, at Gloucester Guildhall, Eastgate Street, until 30th October. (Next to TSB in case you miss the tiny entrance to this tardis like building). The print on show is a limited edition, and has proved very popular. My husband Geoff says it's his personal favourite!  Take a look for yourself!  Alongside the Carp, in an identical frame, is a can of sardines, inspired by a trip to a Portuguese post office.

People regularly ask where I get my inspiration so the blog posts are an ideal way to tell the stories.  See my blog posts of  10th and 15th January  for the story of the Sardines, with several pictures. You can access the posts by going to my website www.rachelmarkwick.co.uk and click on the blog at the left hand side. You can sign up to receive the blogs if you'd like to!

Severn Trows, working vessels on the River Severn

I was in Worcester yesterday and came across this little plaque showing a Severn Trow, by  the bridge across the River Severn.

The plaque reads, "Up to the mid-nineteenth century, this River was the main commercial artery of the West Midlands linking to the sea at Bristol. The Severn Trow was one of the vessels used, typified by its open gold, flat bottom and D shaped stern. "

The  Severn Trows  plied their trade on the river many years ago, but are no longer in use. You can see the remains of some of these little vessels, including the Alma and Jonadab  at the ships' graveyard at Purton, Gloucestershire, where many other types of vessels were hulked to shore up the banks of the river.   I came across a scale model of the Severn Trow  Norah,  in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich  and made a stamp collage depicting her in full sail  in her heyday. She was built in 1968 and sadly beached one hundred years later.   A  framed print is currently on show in the exhibition, Stamping Ground 2 in Gloucester Guildhall, Eastgate Street until 31st October .

Severn Trow, Norah, Stamp Collage by Rachel Markwick 

Johanna Lucretia, Stamp Collage . Now on show at Gloucester Guildhall until 30th October 2018

The Tall ships festival last year provided me with much inspiration for stamp collages, but I took a long time before embarking on my voyage of discovery and creating several new pictures!

The Johanna Lucretia is  just one of these but unlike others seen in the dock area during the festival,  I've portrayed her out on the high seas where she is often to be found. She was built in Belgium in 1945 and if you look  closely you will notice that I've used some old Belgian stamps to recreate her hull.

 For several of my latest ship collages, I've enjoyed using a new technique which is to sew the rigging using thread and scrim. She's technically known as a Topsail Schooner, and is 29 metres in length. In 1989 she was refitted in Gloucester by the firm T.Nielsen &  Co and used for training and chartered trips. She was found abandoned again in Gloucester Docks in 2008 and her current owners had to carry out another major restoration.

You can see the original Stamp Collage of the Johanna Lucretia in the exhibition, Stamping Ground 2, at Gloucester Guildhall until  30th October 2018 in the upstairs exhibition hall. Limited edition prints are also available and you can see a framed example of one of these at the joint exhibition called "Between Seeing and Dreaming", at The Old Passage Inn, Arlingham which will be on until the end of this year.   Gloucester Guildhall Box Office also have cards on sale  of many of the pictures in the exhibition and additional flags too! 

Cosmati Blue - Stamp Collage fun and fabric design, inspired by Roman Cosmati floors

Cosmati red - a commission

Having enjoyed  completing a commission  on a theme of circles, inspired by the Cosmati floors of Rome,I made another piece along similar lines, but in different colours and a slightly different format.
The recipient of the original piece was very pleased with the choice of colours  used to make the first collage, as they were among her favourites. My  preferred colours  are blues, greens and turquoise shades so I've had great fun making a piece which I eventually hope to have printed in cotton fabric. I've found a wonderful fabric printing site, wovenmonkey.com where you can have your own designs printed on various types of cotton fabric, to the size that works best for your own design.   You can see this design below at Gloucester Guildhall from 2nd to 30th October as it is part of my  new Stamping Ground 2 exhibition. 

Cosmati Blue

Fat Margaret Tower - Tallinn's Maritime Museum - an Estonian treasure

We visited  Estonia's Maritime Museum in 2017 but it is now closed for renovations until 2019. Fat Margaret, as the Medieval artillery Tower is know is the widest tower  in the city with walls up to 5 metres thick. It was completed in 1531. Some of the city's towers  can be climbed, and you can walk along certain stretches of the ramparts  and even have a coffee and cake at high altitude at the Neitsitorn Museum cafe, accessed via a very steep staircase. Beware the high cost, although the leaflet  does justifies it by saying that the tower has "breath-taking views of the Old Town, which is true!

Barquentine Estonia

The Nekmanngrund  - lightship

Maritime Museums always hold a great fascination for me with my love of making collages with ships as a subject,  and this one has more than 100 model ships,  with interesting stories to tell, no doubt,  if only I could have understood the language. Picked up a few leaflets and took many photographs of the models to keep for future research into subjects for stamp collages. A year later, and I still haven't made any ships based on any of these, but it's never too late.  The Don Fernando e Gloria, seen in Lisbon's Maritime museum the year before, has now been portrayed in a collage, and will be on show at my latest exhibition in The Guildhall, Gloucester, from 2nd - 30th October 2018.

The website www.fatmargarettower.com does provide some more information in English and other languages.  There are ships to visit in connection with the museum, but for us, time did not permit this time round!

Lucy Stone - 1818-1893 - an American Suffragist,Abolitionist and Orator - and on an American stamp

Listening to Radio 4 Woman's Hour today, 26th September,  I heard for the first time, the story of Lucy Stone. (You can "Listen again" online.)   Her name immediately brought  to mind  a 50c Magenta stamp with the name Lucy Stone on it, with a portrait of a strong and determined looking woman.
  I had seen this stamp many times in the boxes of  American stamps that I have and which I trawl through to find suitable stamps for  collages.I often get sidetracked by picking out random stamps and looking them up to find out more, but had not done this in the case of Lucy Stone, but Woman's Hour did this for me today!   A campaigner for the rights of women, abolition of slavery and equality for those of other races and religions, she was also the first woman from Massachusetts to gain a college degree. It's interesting to note that this stamp is from the series, Prominent Americans, issued between 1965-8 and that she's the only woman included in the series.!!  Famous men in the series include several Presidents, Architect  Frank Lloyd Wright, Historian Francis Parkman and Henry Ford.  One of the questions asked of USA citizens interviewed recently in  2018,  the 200th anniversary of her birth,  was "What would she think of today's America", and replies varied. She would have been pleased to have seen the first Black president, but would  be dismayed at the inequalities that still exist.