The Burrell Collection

We were at Pollok Park again this morning - that's the second time in two days, how keen are we? The kids and I were there yesterday with my brother (pics on my other blog), up at the Pollok House end. The kids love the playpark but it's very popular and that late in the day very crowded, so I told them that we'd go first thing in the morning one day. Today was the first day of my Beloved's holidays, we were up early and it was sunny so it was the perfect opportunity.

The playpark is in the part of the park where the Burrell Collection is, so after about an hour in the playpark we headed inside for a dose of history. When my Beloved and I first moved down here (back here in his case, he's 'local') we used to go the Burrell quite a lot, especially in our historical re-enactment days, but since the kids came along it's been a lot less frequent. They're getting to an age now where they can take a bit of an interest (especially the Boy) so we were in there for longer than I expected but it was nothing like as leisurely as it used to be! My favourite objects, the tapestries, have been moved around a bit since I was last there and there was an interesting leaflet about the Burrell Tapestries Research Project explaining what's going on with them.

Well, it would have been more interesting if Miss Mouse hadn't been running riot while I was trying to read it! I've linked to the Project's blog before but it's worth doing again!


I bought a few postcards - top right, Hercules Initiating the Olympic Games, c. 1465-70 (bit of a foppish 15th century Hercules!), at the bottom The Bible Tapestry, 1505 or 1550. And top left?


A closer look! This is one of the paintings from the 'upstairs' (mezzanine I supose) gallery. It's called La Raie (the Skate) and is by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) and it amused us because this is exactly what our own little tortoiseshell-and-white cat does. We're sitting eating (this is when we're lazy and eating dinner on the settee) and she saunters over, sits down and apparently falls asleep. At some point while we're eating she'll think 'Oh I'll just casually have a s-t-r-e-t-c-h, and, ooh fancy that, there's a bit of steak almost on my claw...' Hmm. Well-observed Monsieur Chardin.

I googled La Raie to check it is a skate as although I was pretty sure it said that on the label by the painting it doesn't say on the postcard. And through Google I found another painting entitled La Raie, also by Chardin. If you have a look you'll see it's another cat (I think), another skate and some more oysters. Further googling of 'Chardin cat' finds The Silver Tureen and Still Life with Cat and Fish and a bit of a theme developing. Poor Monsieur Chardin!

Anyway, why are the postcards on the grass? Well, after we went back outside the kids had a bit of a run around and an ice-cream each, while I sat on the grass, had a coffee (also from the ice-cream van, how sensible of them!) and looked at the postcards and the tapestry leaflet. What could be nicer?

Where was I?

Looks rather Mediterranean don't you think? Stirling Castle actually..

The Great Hall on the right there has been restored and has a very pretty peachy limewash exterior (some information here, isn't Google amazing!) which looks to modern eyes most un-Scottish. You can see it a long way off too, especially in the sunshine. Most of the castle is greyish stone as you see from the Chapel on the left-hand-side of that photo, and the castle sits on a grey hill in the middle of a plain. And there's that peachy confection sitting in the middle of it :-).

We had a great time wandering around - the kids loved that it's a proper castle-y castle with weird stairways leading in odd directions and lots of exploring to be done. In fact sections of it are inaccessible at the moment as there's work being done on them..

.. and entry is cheaper at the moment due to that, but there was plenty to occupy all of us. My favourite bit and the thing I was most desperate to photograph (but couldn't due to 'no photography' signs) was the Tapestry Studio.

There it is at the end of that row of buildings - the little purpose-built building at the end. In there they're weaving recreations of the Unicorn Tapestries - so fascinating and so much to see. I was there at one o'clock when the weaver present downed tools for a little while to explain about the project. She said each tapestry takes approximately four years - the one they're working on at the moment, this one I think, is nearly finished with only a few months to go. At the moment they're about at that man with the rich red velvety-looking sleeve on the right-hand side (as tapestries are worked on their sides). Ever since we moved to the Glasgow area I've loved the tapestries in the Burrell Collection so to see similar things in the process of being woven was brilliant. In looking for links about the Burrell's tapestries I found this blog post which details a trip by the Burrell Tapestry folk to the Tapestry Studio at Stirling Castle and includes a couple of pictures of the studio.

So that was my highlight but we all had a great time. Miss Mouse and I liked this chilly-looking mermaid on the Great Hall.

The last time we'd been to Stirling Castle was for a re-enactment event seven-and-a-half years ago when the Boy was just a Tiddler:

Here he is being a Mediaeval Baby! But as is often the case with re-enactment events we didn't see anything of the place apart from the bit we were in, in that case the 'Bowling Green' area near the entrance:

It was great to see the rest of the place. A Grand Day Out for all of us.