Author: Richard

Eliza Elland Bell

Eliza

In this photograph, probably taken around 1901, my great aunt, Eliza Elland Bell, by now Eliza Mitchell, is in her mid-thirties.

Born at Blaco Hill Farm Cottages in 1867, by the time she was 13 Eliza had started work as a domestic servant for the Johnsons at a Elm House Farm, Lound.

Eliza

Ten years later and still working as a domestic servant she’d moved to Miss Hurt’s in Sutton-cum-Lound, and it was there that she met her future husband, the butler, William Henry Mitchell.

Costume

costume notes

I’m colouring these images in Affinity Photo and Adobe Photoshop. Would a light sky blue be a likely colour for her outfit? I asked my friend Hilary Stubbs, my go-to costume expert:

‘I think that this colour is perfectly possible,’ she tells me, ‘though pale green or lilac would work too. Not pink as it would be considered a”young” colour I do like this colour though and it looks right.

‘The overall look of the garment should look like a dress though in reality it was probably have been a two piece to help with fit and laundering.The skirt often hook and eyed on the waist to prevent gapping.’

This wedding photograph (see link below) was taken just a year or two earlier in 1899 to me has a more Victorian look to it. The 1901 (if that’s when it was taken) with its layers and small jacket looks more Edwardian.

Link

Great Aunt Eliza

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Threads

At Horbury Library this morning the Friends of the Library group launched the Horbury Tapestry website, featuring an ultra-high resolution interactive version of the tapestry which was created twenty years ago to celebrate the centenary of the town’s Carnegie Free Library.

Horbury library
In the group creating the tapestry (centre, top) that’s my mum on the left and her friend Olive Sergeant on the right.
My mum used a drawing I’d made of Carr Lodge for her emboridery.

My mum, Gladys Bell, was one of 70 stitchers led by Janet Taylor who between them created more than 200 pieces of embroidery celebrating the life of the town.

Link

www.horburytapestry.co.uk designed by the One to One Development Trust

‘Jack’ Bell

John Bell

I never met my Great Uncle ‘Jack’, grandad’s elder brother. He was christened John Theodore Bell but probably got Jack because his father was also a John.

This photograph, part of a family group, was taken at Lound around 1901 (and colourised by me in Affinity Photo 2 on the iPad).

John

At that time, aged 27, he was working as a steel polisher in New Radford, Sherwood, on the north side of Nottingham. He had married Fanny Taylor, 26, and was living at 16 Deligne Street, with his in-laws, Leicester-born Edward Henry Taylor, 59, an army pensioner and his wife, Chelmsford-born, Sarah Taylor, 54, a lace worker specialising as a clipper – cutting away the connecting threads at the edges of the lace.

John's signature 1911

The 1911 census records that the couple had one child who died in infancy.

John's signature, 1921

In the 1921 census he is still working as an ‘Iron & Steel Polisher’ in the Raleigh Bicycles factory in Nottingham. They’ve moved to 5 Edith Terrace, Radford, and mother-in-law Sarah, now 73, has moved in with them.

John was born on 1 April 1874.

Waterton’s Park

Walton Park spread
A camera-shy Waterton with his friend Dr Hobson

We’ve been out on location researching my September article for the ‘Dalesman’ magazine and I thought I’d go for an IMAX-style panorama of Charles Waterton’s nature reserve at Walton Hall, Wakefield, which, as you can see from the 1865 engraving, has now been restored to its former glory, thanks to extensive tree-planting and landscaping by the Waterton Park Golf Club.

cayman
Charles Waterton wrangling a cayman on the River Essequibo, Guyana.

I’ve dropped in contemporary engravings of Waterton’s adventures – a bit of a comic-strip version of the life of a complex character, imagining it as if it was a magic lantern show of his exploits.

Waterton getting a closer view of the Bempton Cliffs seabird colony.

As a graphic designer/illustrator, I’ve gone for layout first, text to follow. The placeholder text is a corrupted version of a text by Cicero, which I feel that Waterton might approve of as he had a habit of dropping Latin quotes into his natural history essays.

A cool-headed Waterton returns an escaped rattlesnake to its cabinet at a scientific meeting at Dr Hobson’s house at Park Square, Leeds.

Printing a Booklet with Affinity Publisher 2

printed booklet

I couldn’t resist the 6 month free trial of the three Affinity apps – Photo, Illustrator and Publisher. Printing a booklet, which is the main thing that I’d use Affinity Publisher 2 for, can be tricky as most of the options are hidden in various drop-down menus and pop-ups and the exact settings depend on what kind of printer you’re using.

printing a booklet

I’m using a Xerox VersaLink C600 colour laser printer with a duplex option (it can print on both sides of the paper).

To Print as a Booklet

  1. From the File menu, select Print.
  2. From the dialog, set your Paper Size, e.g. A4.
  3. In the Print Options pop-up menu, select Document Layout.
  4. From the Model pop-up menu, select ‘Booklet’. This instructs the print process to impose pages.
  5. From the Print Options pop-up menu, select Xerox Features.
  6. From the 2-Sided Printing pop-up menu, select ‘2-Sided Print, Flip on Short Edge’.
  7. Click Print.

Guest Artist

Dalesman

A guest illustrator in my nature diary in the July ‘Dalesman’: Jenny Hawksley, who joined us for a lightning tour of the North Yorks Moors and coast last summer drew the garland of wild flowers.

dalesman

Lighthouse

Experimenting with Procreate and loosely based on Coquet Island lighthouse but minus the puffins, sandwich and roseate terns this is my take on the first project in the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Procreate’. My thanks to freelance director and artist Izzy Burton for her step-by-step tutorial.

Curled Dock

Fine strands of dodder twirl around the clusters of flowers at the top of this curled dock’s stem. Dodder is a parasitic climbing plant, a member of the convolvulus family.

Foxgloves

‘Versatile, bee-friendly, drop-dead gorgeous,’ foxgloves are the cover star of this month’s RHS ‘Garden’ magazine.

They self seed around the garden and we’ve got more than usual this year as we haven’t cleared them from the veg beds, which we’re revamping this year.