Curiosity Corner – We Have a Winner!

What is it!?


A George IV sterling wine funnel, made by Joseph Angell London 1826.

I’m pleased as punch to announce that Louisa Cornell, one of our most loyal followers, made to correct guess below. While it’s noted as a wine funnel, rather than a strainer, Louisa’s guess is close enough for us. Here’s Louisa’s answer:

Is it a strainer of some sort? In looking at some old photos of my Mom’s china cabinet it looks like a piece my mother bought at an estate sale in England. She uses it to strain her tea as she makes it from the real thing – tea leaves, not tea bags. According to Judith Banister’s English Silver it might also be a wine strainer? Not sure I want to drink wine I have to strain. Tea is another matter altogether.

See I told you it would make me nuts. 

Louisa – You’re not nuts – you’re the winner! Email your snail mail address to me via the link in the left sidebar and I’ll send your Sense and Sensibility dvd on its way to you. Thanks to everyone for such enthusiastic guessing! 


And as I’d alluded to, Kat was the first winner, but disqualified herself. Here, at last, is her post received yesterday which couldn’t be aired, as it contained the answer:



It is a wine aerator/funnel. I make my own wine as a hobby. So i will not claim this prize.


The first person to correctly identify this item will win a DVD of the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility. Please place your guess by using the “comments” link below this post.

Please Note: Only registered followers of this blog shall be eligible to win. You may register now by using the link in the right sidebar under “Those Who Call Number One London Home.”

Good Luck!

Camile Silvy – Royal Photographer

Actress Adelina Patti (1843-1919)
After reading a bit about the Exhibition on Camile Silvy running at the National Portrait Gallery 15 July – 24 October 2010, I was prompted to do a bit of research into the man. Camile Silvy was a pioneer of early photography and one of the greatest French photographers of the nineteenth century. This exhibition includes many remarkable images which have not been exhibited since the 1860s.
The Exhibition contains over 100 images, including a large number of carte de visites, focusing on a ten-year creative burst from 1857-67 working in Algiers, rural France, Paris and London, and illustrate how Silvy pioneered many now familiar branches of the medium including theatre, fashion and street photography and early image manipulation and photographic mass production.
Working under the patronage of Queen Victoria, Silvy photographed royalty (Prince Albert, at left) aristocrats and celebrities. He also portrayed uncelebrated people, the professional classes and country gentry, their wives, children and servants. The results offer a unique glimpse into nineteenth-century society through the eyes of one of photography’s outstanding innovators.


Silvy became a member of the Société Française de Photographie in 1858. By 1859, he had moved to London and opened a portrait studio producing cartes-de-visite, the small, calling card-sized photographs invented by André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854. At the height of ‘Cartomania’ in the summer of 1861, he was personally conducting as many as forty sittings a day, but the following year he began the habit of leaving the studio in the hands of others during the winter months, at first in those of his partner, Auguste Renoult, and then, after the partnership was dissolved in May 1864, in those of other members of his staff. 
Silvy kept record books in which he recorded the day-to-day business of the studio, as well as one unmounted print from each sitting, placed four to a page, with the name of the sitter entered above. From volume two onwards, the date was also recorded daily. There are some seventeen thousand sittings, spread over twelve volumes, acquired by The National Portrait Gallery in 1904.

Silvy continued to make and exhibit extraordinary larger photographs, some of the best being views taken immediately outside the studio. One of these from 1859 or 1860 (now in the J. Paul Getty Museum) shows a man buying an evening paper from a boy who leans against a lighted gas lamp on a misty afternoon. A figure hurrying along the pavement is caught in a blur—probably used deliberately for the first time to suggest rapid movement.

Lady Elizabeth Hay, the 2nd Duchess of Wellington

Lord Palmerston
 (1784-1865)

Lord Dufferin
(1826-1902)

Earl of Essex
(1803-1892)



 In 1868, when the popularity of the carte-de-visite had waned, Silvy sold his London studio and returned to France. In 1869, at the age of 35 Silvy abruptly retired from photography. He fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 before being diagnosed with manic-depression in 1875. Silvy would spend much of the next three decades in various psychiatric asylums. With his health wrecked by poisoning from photography chemicals, he succumbed to bronchopneumonia in the Hôpital de St Maurice, France in 1910.  Silvy died at age seventy-five.
Camile Silvy – Self Portrait
Photographs appearing in this post are copyright Luminous Lint or the National Portrait Gallery or Paul Frecker London

A Visit to Avebury in Wiltshire

from Victoria…

Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire
A few days ago I was wandering around the library and I noticed the book Off The Tourist Trail. I was especially attracted by the name Bill Bryson on the cover. More details on the book and Bryson below.  Immediately I grabbed it, as I love to travel but, like most of us, I prefer fewer tourists around than camera-wielding hordes. 
  
Avebury vs. Stonehenge is their  recommendation for a more leisurely visit to a great megalithic site. Stonehenge might be more famous, the book says, but it is fenced, crowded with tour buses, much smaller in size, and you can’t get close to the stones.  In Avebury, you can walk among the stones, touch them and even pet the sheep. Here is a lovely short film about Avebury.
 I have visited Avebury several times and I definitely agree. You can really get the gist of Stonehenge from pictures or driving by, but to experience the great thrill of standing next to a 5,000-year-old sacred stone, Avebury excels. It is about 20 miles north of Stonehenge.

There are many places to park and get out to hike around. Be sure to wear walking shoes as you will want to cover a lot of territory.  In the center of the circle, give or take a bit, there is a  village and manor house run by the National Trust. There are some interesting displays in the outbuildings about the history of Avebury, the stone circle, the farm and the village. The Red Lion pub is a good spot for relaxation.
The manor house dates from the 16th century. Sometime in the middle ages, most of the stones were either removed or buried due to the pagan associations they suggested to superstitious residents.  The entire site was re-discovered in the 1930’s, the stones dug and stood  up once more.  Continuing studies reveal more and more information about the area.
The Stone Circle at Avebury dates from about 2500 BC and must have been built for religious and ceremonial purposes. Nearby is the conical Silbury Hill which is manmade but still mostly unexcavated. Various technological processes will enable more and more of it to be explored without endangering its internal construction as time goes by.  Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric earthwork in all of Europe.  Nearby are also several Long Barrows, (above, left) burial sites, some of which can be entered, though when I was there, I found a pile of trash left by previous visitors. Shame!
The fine museum at Avebury contains many bronze weapons and items of jewelry from ancient times found in this neighborhood.  Silbury Hill, below.

By all means, go drive by Stonehenge, but plan on spending most of the day at Avebury, just a half hour’s drive away. Stonehenge, below, without the fences.

Now back to Bill Bryson.  I have read that he has moved back to England since his book, Notes from a Small Island, was written.  But at the time it was published in 1995, he had moved to the U.S. after several years in Britain. It is a humorous homage to the UK and its culture and well worth reading. In fact, everything Bryson writes is excellent!  Go Bill!
We hope you enjoy living in Britain. In fact, we are really envious.

Happy Birthday to Prince Albert

Prince Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was born August 26, 1819. His wife, Queen Victoria, was born on the 24th of May in that year. They were first cousins.

Right: Prince Albert by Charles Brocky, 1841

The exhibition Victoria and Albert in Love can be seen in the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until October 31, 2010.

The jewelry, musical compositions, drawings, paintings and furniture exchanged by the royal couple make an interesting statement about the depth of their love and commitment. Many of the items were birthday gifts given to the Prince by the Queen.

Rupert Friend (right) as Prince Albert in the film The Young Victoria. The costumes and settings were sumptuous, but the story left a bit to be desired by those of us who paid attention to the details! 

John Lucas painted Prince Albert in 1841, left. 

Prince Albert, right, by Winterhalter, in 1842.  Albert had an excellent private education. With his older brother Ernest, he was tutored at home and later attended the University of Bonn. He excelled in fencing and riding, and traveled in Italy.  Almost from birth, many considered the possibility of uniting the cousins, and King Leopold encouraged the marriage.  Victoria and Albert met several times and she was eventually quite taken with him, but after she took the throne at age 18 in 1837, she was in no hurry to wed.
After her coronation, however, she wrote to Uncle Leopold: “Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he so amiable and unaffected — in short very fascinating.” Louis Auchincloss in his Persons of Consequence: Queen Victoria and Her Circle (1979) observes: “A principal industry of the German States in the nineteenth century was the production of marriageable princes and princesses.”
The wedding took place on February 10, 1840.  Albert’s role in the realm was unclear, and it changed, evolving over the next few years until he became very influential and quite popular (though only after his death was his popularity recognized by most in the government).  Albert and Victoria became the parents of nine children.

At right is a family portrait, also by Winterhalter, of the family in 1846.

One of Albert’s greatest achievements was the Great Exhibition of 1851.  As a supporter of science and technology, he was particularly influential upon industrial advancements of the day. In addition, he single-handedly modernized and revamped the running of the royal palaces and the financial administration of the monarchy.  

Prince Albert died of typhoid fever at 10:50 p.m. on 14 December 1861 in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children, leaving the Queen devastated. Though she lived on until 1901, Victoria never shed her widow’s weeds.