near the pond

a magical microcosmos in the garden, on a frosty december morning (more on flickr) - little moments that help me keep calm in the eye of the storm...

patterns on the wall

An old house comes with many treasures... like old wallpaper!

these big 70's flowers and geometric design are in a walk-in cupboard.
They're a bit over the top. But I like them! They can stay...

These cosy flowers decorated the toilet...
they got painted over except for the back wall,
so the beige toilet doesn't look so very beige against all the white... :-p

This one I adore! it was under the stairs, going down to the cellar,
but most of it got removed for the renovations (luckily I took this photo).
It has such a wonderful folksy 70's vibe! I love those colors!

Japanese textile pattern in the stairway to the 1st floor.
I loved it but looked fairly degraded, and a bit dark and busy
for the narrow space it was in...so this became white too.

a random snapshot during the renovations.
The previous owners had taken such care of the decoration of this piece of multiplex
 that possibly covered the wood stove (or perhaps part of a cupboard).

Oh, and before I moved in there had been squatters too.
The back door didn't have a lock... They left this smiley among other things that weren't so cute. :-p
Smiley can stay for now.

I love what the runny spray paint did with the textured wallpaper...

...and like that I'm turning the house into a blank canvas, ready for a new life!
 I love how everyone who lived here has left some sort of mark, I don't need to erase it all.
Now it's my turn to make my own...

flashy and fresh

This is a piece of bread I baked some time ago with a good dose of turmeric, which gives it this lovely bright shade of yellow... just in case you wondered in my last post how it looked like. The juicy redness on top is beet salad, and there's a buttercup and a leaf of melissa officinalis. Hopefully I can get into the bread baking thing again soon, once the kitchen is done!

out in the autumn sun

fern at the edge of the forest

lots and lots of fine spider threads, carried by the air

the landscape I'm learning to call my home!

My friend Liesbet took me on a walking trip somewhere between Ronse and Brakel, on a very beautiful, scenic route that I didn't know yet (those are our shadows in the right bottom corner). The air was fresh and leafy and our boots got properly muddy. Afterwards we had a ginger latte (she brought with her, yum!) and carrot-ginger-curcuma-almond cake (my very yellow experiment).

It's been a while since my last post so it's about time I give you an update! The summer has passed like a storm, and meanwhile I'm back at college finishing my master's degree this semester, while continuing with my liberal arts degree at Sint Lucas in the 2nd semester.

So I'm a bit late with my Master's but I hope I can get it done now. I have to redo a couple of courses and finish writing that thesis... That wasn't the plan, mind you; I was hoping to be finished by September. But the summer proved to be quite much.

Perhaps it was to be expected: moving to my new house, renovating it, working on a lecture on my thesis and all the little and big things that come with moving into a new place didn't give me much of a break (although I had help on many levels from some truly awesome people! :-) ). And hardly had I moved in or we heard about my dad's accident and hospital stay, so mom and I dropped everything and took care of things in Antwerp. He's fine now although some things have changed (I'll talk about that some other time).

And so I've been catapulted into a new school year, a little exhausted but equally positive that everything will work out this year. If I stay mindful of the traps of burnout, things will be alright. I was in worse shape last year, after three years of intense studying and having combined two studies the year before. I've been doing pretty well in my studies, but I'm an idiot for not seeing that it would become too much. Or at least I knew I was playing with fire, having had energy issues before, but this was such a wonderful chance and I wouldn't want to miss it for the world. So I took that chance, and I'm not looking back.

Still I tumbled into an episode of burnout a year ago. Exhaustion, inertia and big emotions: it's a mess. Literally and figuratively! But it helped me realise I had to change the way I handled things (thanks to a wonderful therapist) and have been working on them since, one of which was the place I lived in. As much as I had loved living in the cute little house in Ghent, I had grown too big for it over the years (a bit like Alice!). So the hunt for a new place was on, and with mom's help we found it the day before my birthday! I wasn't planning at all to move to a small town like Ronse (my mom lives here), but when we visited it we knew it was "the one".  I'll gush about it next time, with all the proper pictures and renovation stories! No worries. So I scheduled to move after the exams in June and that's how that roller coaster of a summer started...

And now you know what I've been up to.

I long to get back on the blogging horse properly, sharing some hopefully inspiring things, books and people, and keeping you updated on my projects and adventures... But I'm learning to take it a day at a time, so I won't make any promises I can't keep. I'll do what I can and thank you for understanding!

a change of scenery

In between thesis projects I've moved to a new town!

The pâte de verre and artistic glass objects of Georges Despret (1862-1952)

a little intro

This is a post on my thesis subject, Georges Despret,  who was a Belgian-French industrial who developed the pâte de verre technique around 1900. He's the subject of my Master's thesis at UGent, and of the technical and practical research I'm doing at Sint Lucas (now Luca School of Arts) Gent. And I'm happy to share it with you!

reconstruction of a working process

At Luca I'm piecing together how Despret might have made one of his pâte de verre bowls, by making one from scratch. I've been working in the glass and ceramics studios, so this is a hands-on type of research, figuring out how each step of his work process might have looked like. It's partly based on historical sources and contemporary research into historical pâte de verre, and partly on the process of making itself.

Georges Despret - bowl from 1906 - Design Museum Ghent

Of course it's impossible to replicate the exact circumstances in which Despret worked - this wasn't my intention, but I reasoned that making one of his bowls could be a helpful complimentary method since there are very little historical sources left. His archives and many of his artworks were lost during the first year of World War I, when his manufacture in Jeumont (north of France) was reduced to ruins in an explosion. There he had built a museum that showed everything his manufacture was capable of, with an emphasis on the artistic glass objects. But all of that has been destroyed.

So I've based my practical research on what remains: his glass objects kept in museums all over the world, his collaborators like sculptor Yvonne Serruys (on whom my promotor Prof. Dr. M. Sterckx is a specialist) and ceramics collector Géo Nicolet; a few archival documents, some contemporary press, and recent research. Next to that I've looked at the discoveries and techniques of other pâte de verre artists, like Henry Cros (the pioneer to whom Despret looked up), Decorchemont, Argy-Rousseau and Walter.

The little (and big) parts I couldn't find an answer to anyhow, I've tried to find through experimentation, So there's a degree of hypothesis in my research I'm well aware of, but that doesn't make this project any less worthwhile. I've received fantastic help from my teachers at Luca, my promotor at the UGent, the city of Jeumont and the curators of the Design Museum Gent and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. And all the fantastic librarians!

This research project will become a chapter in my Master's thesis (it's due in August, so I'm still working on it), but I also wanted to give a more personal account of it,  showing you what I've been up to in the past 7 months. A bit like my studio and work in progress pictures. Thanks for reading!

Edited to add: here is an account of my technical research (pdf, in Dutch).

a few links:

Despret on Wikipedia (in French)
Despret in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass
Mémoire vivante de Jeumont with photos of Despret's castle in ruins after WW I, close to his manufactures

further reading:

Cummings, Keith. Contemprary kiln-formed glass. Londen: A & C Black Publishers ltd, 2009. -with a chapter on Stewart's research on Amalric Walter.

Daum, Noël. La pâte de verre, Paris: Denoël, 1984 -extensive book on pdv, but needs critical reading.

Delaborde, Yves & Bloch-Dermant, Janine. Le verre: Art & Design XIX°-XXI° siècles. Courbevois: ACR Edition, 2011.

Hamaide, Frédéric (red.). De glace et de verre: Deux siècles de verre plat franco-belge (1820-2020), Fourmies: Ecomusée de l’Avesnois, 2007. -with a chapter on Despret's artistic glass by A.-L. Carré.

expo: wat weeft in mij

anonymous Moroccan woven headscarf

detail of the delicate work of Saskja Snauwaert

Karen Santen's ceramics against a Moroccan carpet

woven carpet by anonymous Moroccan women

Tinka Pittoors

installation; forgot to note this artist's name

Sanne Dewolf & Christine Clinckx

Tamara van San

Enjoyed this wonderful exhibition at the Ververij in Ronse by women artists who weave their life into their artistic medium, whether it was weaving scarves or carpets, lace, ceramics or performance. Each medium has its own expression. The exhibition almost felt like an orchestra, with each piece adding to the sound of the whole. 

a tiny Greek owl (at the Louvre)