open air chemistry

my meeting date:

Discover the art of the Victorian photographer with this hands-on,

six week evening class. As part of this course you will produce cyanotypes, calotypes and salt print, in a process which would be familiar to photographers who witnessed the invention of photography.

Beginning with contact prints and ending with the production of portraits. 

No previous experience needed.

All materials provided

... ps from the Victorian Era to the modern day

FRIDAY EVENINGS 6 pm - 9 pm

May11th 18th 25th 1st

course leader : Cabaret of spirits

£140

darkroom on" Queen Charlotte Street"  - Bristol -

between a ball of wool and sipping a cup of tea

Midsummer tree,folk festivals around which a MAYPOLE DANCE often takes place

In Britain the maypole was found primarily in England and in areas of Scotland and Wales which were under English influence. However, the earliest recorded evidence comes from a Welsh poem written by Gryffydd ap Adda ap Dafydd in the mid-14th century, in which he described how people used a tall birch pole at Llanidloes, central Wales. Literary evidence for maypole use across much of Britain increases in later decades, and "by the period 1350-1400 the custom was well established across southern Britain, in town and country and in both Welsh-speaking and English-speaking areas."

how can you not stay enchanted with these old photographs
... looking in my library a knitting book to make a sweater for this winter 
I found this book of Welsh woman  in traditional  rural dress.
1885-1905

the unique Welsh hat

The cap

Also known as the mob cap, the cap was a linen or cotton head cover with goffered  folded fabrics around the face. Some had long lappets which hung down the front below shoulder level.

The Welsh hat

The distinctive feature of Welsh hats is the broad, stiff, flat brim and the tall crown. There were two main shapes of crown: those with drum shaped crowns were worn in north-west Wales and those with slightly tapering crowns were found in the rest of Wales. They were probably originally made of felt (known as beaver, but not necessarily made of beaver fur), but most surviving examples are of silk plush (also sometimes known as beaver) on a stiffened buckram base. A third type of hat, known as the cockle hat, was worn in the Swansea area.

Sorg ond slaep 

Idylls of the King, en plein air

One of the early pioneers of photographic portraiture, Julia Margaret Cameron began her career at the age of 48.

 “From the first moment, I handled my lens with a tender ardor," she wrote, "and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigor." Cameron trained herself to master the laborious steps of producing negatives with wet collodion on glass plates, favoring slight blurs in her images and looser compositions than the polished portraits of her colleagues. She moved in the high intellectual circles of Victorian England, capturing leading academics and artists such as Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin. Many critics praised her originality, though others derided her for slovenly technique. Drawing inspiration from historical and contemporary writers and painters,

 Cameron also staged scenes from history or literature, such as her photographic illustrations of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and regularly enlisted family members, friends, and domestic servants as models for Madonnas, 

Christ figures, and angels.

Julia Margaret Cameron
DIMBOLA MUSEUM & GALLERIES
Terrace Lane (off Gate Lane)
Freshwater Bay
Isle of Wight PO40 9QE

Summer Days, 1866
Albumen print from a wet collodion negative
13 ^7/8 × 11 ^1/8 in
35.2 × 28.3 cm

The Sunflower, 1866-1870

Albumen print

13 ^7/8 × 9 ^9/16 in

35.2 × 24.3 cm

Consuming Nonsense: Freshwater Circle Society Study Day

SATURDAY 4TH JUNE, 10.30AM - 3.00PM

at 5 o'clock

Continue my logbook.

between work and bird watching, 

among the Irish countryside and Agreste Romano.

Sometimes the glass was first coated with a thin layer of
diluite albumen prior to coating, which helped the collodion
adhere to the glass.

The plate was then dipped into a bath of silver nitrate for
several minutes.
Wet collodion was also used to make positive trasparencies,

commonnly known as lantern slides, as they were typically
viewed by transmitted light using a magic lantern.

But Matte Collodion printing out prints POPs

are based on the light sensitivity of silver chloride, which

is suspended in a thin collodion binder on a paper support with

a very thin baryta layer.

A solution contaning silver nitrate was added to the collodion

chloride mixture, rendering the substance light sensitive.

Glycerin or castor oil :(  was somentimes added as plasticizer

to make the binder more flexible and permeable.

... the coated papers were contact printed under ultra-violet SUN

light.

Matte Collodion papers were coated In the same way as collodion

glass plate negative: by pouring the emulsion into the centre

of the paper and rocking it is each direction to get an even coating.

Paper were produced on a larger scale beginning in 1889 with the

introduction o coating machine.

Meeting... in wet collodion and hot tea.

Inside the barn as field mice

The landscapes of the  Spa of Saturnia

Inspired me to the winter meeting.

Collodion, which is cotton dissolved in nitric acid,

Was difficult and dangerous to make and was therefore typically 

Purchased by the photographer.

The colodion was dissolved in alcohol and ether creating a viscous fluid

With a consistency similar to maple syrupe and then "salted"with iodide

...

TO BE CONTINUED

new purchases

New acquisitions in my atelier vintage Victorian BACKDROPS... 

see you soon ... dear readers, This time I have very little time.,

THE FEBRUARY meeting IS FULL