to the British Museum,
we made our way into the Waddesdon Bequest gallery, a collection of nearly 300 objects left to the Museum in 1898 by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, the Waddesdon Bequest consists of exceptionally important and beautiful medieval and Renaissance pieces, as well as a number of 19th-century fakes. Together, they paint a fascinating picture of the development of the art market in the late 19th century,
everywhere we looked there were glittering jewels,
and the works of master craftsmen,
like this opal glass beaker, what gives the beaker its opal look is the fact that traces of arsenic are used in its manufacture, it was made on the estate of Count Buquay in the Czech Republic in about 1680,
Diana was looking at some of the jewels,
like these, from left to right, The Adoration of the Magi, Three Cardinal Virtues, The Annunciation, none of these look as good in the photograph as they do when in the museum,
Diana looking at me as I am looking at her, through a all glass display case,
not only gold and jewels are in the collection,
there are decorative plates, like this one depicting a vision of the future from the Book of Revelations from the Bible,
what makes some of these so unique is that even the backs of the dishes are decorated, like this one, painted copper on enamel, Limoges, made about 1580,
looking at these the vase on the left caught my eye,
why? because we had visited the area where it was made in Venice, the island of Murano, way back in March 2018, this piece is called the Deblin cup, and was made in the period of 1450 -1500,
and this I recognised immediately, or at least a half of it, it is a half of a coco de mer, it was formed from
half of a double coconut palm from the Seychelles, East Indian Ocean, ‘Sea
nuts’ were brought to Europe by the Portuguese from the 1550s and were valued as
antidotes to poison. They quickly found their way into court collections. The
Rothschilds may have added the figure of Jupiter before 1866 to ‘improve’ the
object for display, this object was collected by Anselm
von Rothschild and bequeathed to the British Museum by Ferdinand
Anselm Rothschild,
our next port of call was the gift shop,
where silks, jewellery and books are amongst many other gifts that were on display,
some are not the usual run of gifts,
by Bombki, displaying items found both in London and the British Museum, made of painted glass they were designed in the UK and produced in Poland, yours for £55 per set,
I tried to buy Diana a gift as a birthday present,
but nothing could tempt her,
we left the shop and made our way to the auditorium,
Diana waited whilst I made a donation, there is no entrance fee to the museum, it is all free except some of the changing monthly exhibitions, you do not have to donate, but we did,
these are the exhibitions you have to be a member of to visit,
outside,
and time for a few poses,
a pose from Diana,
Ah! one from us,
well I had to have one of me!
we crossed the road outside,
where if you look carefully you can buy your very own full size mummy!
now this is more my kind of shop,
selling old and antique coins,
to the Bloomsbury Hotel, only to find it was the wrong Bloomsbury!
we walked around the corner,
and followed the signpost,
we had booked an afternoon cream tea,
we made our way through the cocktail bar,
which was very nicely furnished,
I decided on a glass of Moët,
as well as the cream tea,
our sandwiches, scones and cakes arrived,
and nice they looked too,
but one thing was lacking,
a nice backdrop,
so a change of table,
and all was even better than before,
sandwiches, scones, fresh cream, raspberry jam and what a appetizing selection of cakes,
and many thanks to this gentleman for changing our table,
then a surprise, a Happy Birthday cake,
Diana made a short video of her cake, if you fancy a afternoon tea yourself, the bill came to £95.00 for the two of us,
we were so full, after arriving home it was feet up for a Lewis, a New Tricks and then for us we were off to bed.
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