PARIS: DAY 1: BIRMINGHAM TO PARIS

We flew from Birmingham to Paris (it is now June 29), arriving later than scheduled because of a plane delay at Birmingham International. By the time we actually reached the Hotel Innova on the Boulevard Pasteur, it was too late to visit any of the museums on our list so we checked in and set off to do the Champs-Elysees walk from "Rick Steves' Paris".

The hotel decor was pretty basic but fine. Notice our air conditioning--the window. Most buildings in Paris are not air conditioned.

The room was basic, but the ceiling gave the room panache.

The view from our room.

We started at the Arc de Triomphe, arriving just as they were preparing for a ceremony to rekindle the flame by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and place fresh flowers.

The Arc de Triomphe

The underside of the arch.

Some of the people participating in the ceremony. We had to take a photo of the woman in the red hat and yellowsuit because she was a real dragon lady at keeping the spectators in their place behind the barriers.

After the ceremony, we continued down the Champs-Elysees, reputedly one of the world's most celebrated streets for fancy car dealerships, celebrity cafes, glitzy nightclubs, and high-fashion shopping. What a disappointment! Maybe, it's because we come from New York where we have the same shops (like Hugo Boss, Disney, the Gap, and Sephora) but we were not impressed. What we saw was mostly people and trash--trash because there are no garbage cans to be found, so all of the crowd just dumps their garbage around the trees on the sidewalk. Here's a typical view of the famed street.

One part of old Paris that is still alive is Laduree, a nineteenth-century tea salon and patisserie. Don had no interest in overpaying for a coffee to find out what the inside looked like.

Another surviving piece of old Paris is the Arcades des Champs-Elysees that still serves as a shopping mall and, unfortunately, a large Starbucks. With its Art Deco lights, glass skylight, mosaic floor, and classical columns, the arcade was a pleasant break from the crowd outside.

Arcade des Champs Elysees.

The mosaic floor in the arcade.

We left the crowded shopping district and continued on to the park area, wandering past the Grand and Petit Palais exhibition halls. The Grand Palais, a Belle-Epoque era building that wasfirst unveiled during the Univeral Exhibition of 1900. Like the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais was meant to be a temporary structure but it stands today, serving as an exhibition space for art.

The Grand Palais.

One of the mosaics on the facade of the Grand Palais.

Past the two "palaces" was the pont Alexandre III, a highly decorative bridge over the Seine. Built between 1896 and 1900, the bridge is named after Tsar Alexander III, who concluded the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1892.

Looking over the bridge to the gold dome of Les Invalides.

One of my favorite parts of the bridge, a group of metal cattails with glass lamps on top.

Detail of the cattails. The light is too bright to see the lamps on top of the stems.

We continued over the bridge to scope out the exact location of Les Invalides, where we would be returning to visit the Army Museum. After that we wandered down a side street to find dinner at a crowded cafe and then stumbled across a shop selling delicious glace (ice cream to us). After our refreshing dessert, we headed bakc to the hotel, exiting through one of the remaining historic metro station markers.

Pasteur metro stop at night.

BIRMINGHAM, UK: DAY 3--MUSEUM OF THE JEWELLRY QUARTER

We spent most of the day at the Museum of the Jewellry Quarter (at left)

(http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/motjq.bcc).





The morning was taken up with the Annual General meeting of the Bead Society, held in one of the rooms in the museum .

Here are most of the BSGB members who attended the meeting. Normally there are about 25-30 members at the annual meeting but illness and personal emergencies cut down on the number of attendees this year.

We set up some of the same exhibits of beaded items that were on display at the John Peek Room but Margaret Carey also brought along her Turkish POW snake for us to see.

Margaret's Turkish POW snake, creatively mounted on a straw place mat.

When we broke for lunch, Don and I decided to grab a hot lunch at Rose Villa Tavern, one of the local pubs. We sat at a little table in view of this impressive bar and had a lunch of fish and chips and sausage, beans, and chips.

The outside of Rose Villa Tavern

The bar.

In the afternoon, a Jewellry Museum staff member gave us a fascinating tour of the museum. The museum is made up of the two houses that held the Smith and Pepper Company, one of many jewellry manufactures that were located in Birmingham. Smith and Pepper closed in 1981 after over 80 years in business. After the elderly owners failed to find a buyer for the factory, they simply fired the remaining 13 employees, locked the door, and walked away from the buildings. Everything was left as it was on that last day including dirty tea cups, overalls on hooks, and jars of marmite and jam. Nine years later, the Birmingham City Council raised enough money to turn the factory into a museum.

Our guide took us through the office with its antique adding machine and typewriter, the spiral staircase to the factory floor used only by management, the collection of stamping dyes, jewelers' bench, stamping machines, and other stations in the factory. Since our guide was also trained to use the equipment, he gave us a lively and informative view of the workings of the jewellry factory. We even got little brass scottie dogs as souvenirs of our tour.

Bead Society members in the factory office listening to our guide (standing by the famed spiral staircase).

Jeweller's bench with stations for 2 jewellers and 4 apprentices. The leather pieces hanging down from each station are there to collect the gold scraps and dust, which would be reclaimed at the end of each work day.

Another part of the factory. This is where our little scottie dogs were cut out.

Our souvenirs.

After our tour, Bead Society member headed home while Don and I took the metro back to central Birmingham. Here is the Jewellry Quarter metro stop. We were told by one of the Bead Society members that the green metal structures are antique toilet stalls that are now used as decoration.

Back in central Birmingham, we walked along part of the canal system and ended up having delicious hamburgers at Handmade Burger Company (http://www.handmadeburger.co.uk/ ), one of the many restaurants and pubs along the canals.

Here is one of the restored long boats that are narrow enough to travel on the canal. Many of these boats have been turned into living spaces and even a restaurant.

Then it was back to the hotel to pack for our trip to Paris early in the morning. Except for the cool and rainy weather, we enjoyed our stay in Birmingham.

BIRMINGHAM, U.K.: DAY 2---BEAD PRESENTATIONS

Saturday I immersed myself in bead matters as the members of the Bead Society of Great Britain who had presented papers at the Bead & Beadwork Conference in Istanbul, Turkey in 2007 repeated their talks for fellow BSGB members who were not able to make it to Turkey. The talks were held in the John Peek Room of the Birmingham & Midlands Institute (at left), another lovely 19th century building.

Here we are getting set up in the John Peek Room.

The lectures were all very interesting and the experience was made even better by the beadwork exhibits pertaining to the lectures that members set up on tables around the room.

Sarah Withers spoke on the Arkell Bead Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Stephany Tomalin gave a fun and informative talk on "Realistic Replicas, Ingenious Imitations and Fantastic Fakes: Collecting Brazen Copies in the World of Beads."

Along with her talk, Stephany set out an extensive collection of imitation and fake beads. This is only part of it.

Margaret Carey gave two interesting talks on puzzles in African beadwork, examining a 150 year old, beadwork headress described as being from the Nuer people of the Nilotic Sudan and , seven-sided, faceted beads worn by a terra cotta figure found in Mali. Unfortunately, I don't have permission to reproduce the museum photos that Magaret used, but--trust me--the Nuer headress that may be based on English judicial wigs was really neat.

Carole Morris spoke next on early 17th century English beadwork purses from the reign of Charles I. These purses were made with a two-needle right angle weave stitch, which Vera Grey has reproduced in a purse shown at the bottom of the photo at left. A close up is above.

I was next to speak on the subject of World War I, Turkish prisoner-of-war and Balkan beadwork. My talk concentrated on the snakes and how they were a continuation of crochet (with or without beads) in the Ottoman Empire, the tradition of civilian prisoners making souvenirs to sell, the view of snakes as good luck symbols, and the characteristics of the World War I bead crochet snakes as opposed to the later, civilian-made snakes and the commercially-made, bead crochet snake jewelry.

Photo above: A lovely example of a World War I, Turkish prisoner-of-war, green and black, beadwork snake exhibited by Lady Suzanne Warner.


Margaret Carey ended our day of presentations with a short talk on the history and manufacture of 'garden roller' beads at Zimbabwe.

The other fun part of the day was seeing the antique and new bead crochet items that BSGB members had brough for the exhibit. Here are some of the other items.

WWI, Turkish POW beadwork, bead crochet Muslim rosaries, and a civilian-made snake brought by Carole Morris.

More snakes brought by myself and Lady Warner, a civilian-made, blue, red, and white bead crochet necklace, and a WWI Turkish POW lizard brought by Carole Morris. There is also a black and brown, commercially-made snake necklace but it doesn't show on the black background.

Indian beadwork showing peacocks and the tree of life design brought by Carole Morris.

The bead crochet items brought by Marita Page included Muslim rosaries, antique pocket watch holders, WWI Turkish POW snakes, and new Turkish prisoner key holders, key chain, and Masallah birdies.

Don stayed for some of the lectures but while we were busy with bead matters, he also wandered around parts of Birmingham. One of the events he stumbled across was the Dragon boat race held on one of the canals.

We ended our day with a lovely meal at a French restaurant with some of our favorite BSBG members.

Left to right: Carole Morris, Graeme Morris, Stephany Tomalin, Margaret Carey, and me. Don is taking the photo.

BIRMINGHAM, UK: DAY 1,

We flew out of new York on June 25 to Birmingham, England via Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Although we only had enough time to walk from one gate to another for our flight to Birmingham, the airport looks very nice. We did have enough time to admire the Lego airport scene and stop in the art museum annex to view an exhibit of still-life paintings.

After a short plane ride, we arrived at Birmingham International on the morning of June 26 and took a train into the city and a bus to our budget hotel, the Inkeeper's Lodge Birmingham West (Quinton) shown below. Richard Green, one of the Bead Society members had suggested the hotel and it turned out to be a good deal. The hotel is in the back of a chain restaurant called Toby Carvery so it was a little strange checking in at the restaurant's bar, but the price was right, the staff was very friendly, breakfast was tasty, and the rooms were good-sized, clean, and quiet at night. We even had a kettle and complimentary tea, instant coffee, and biscuits in the room. The bus ride to and from central Birmingham took about 15 minutes and the stop was right across from our hotel.













Since our rooms weren't ready, we left our luggage and headed back to Birmingham to see what it was like. We stumbled across the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which is a lovely place to spend a rainy afternoon. Opened in 1887 to display objects from around the world as inspiration for local artisans, it has developed a very interesting collection including metal work, tiles and pottery, stained glass windows, prints, body armour, paintings, a vast collection of works by Edward Burne-Jones, and much more.

The Victorian building was just as intersting as some of the exhibits that it houses. Here are shots of the building exterior and part of the interior.

























Even the floor was impressive.








A few of my favorite objects from the collection.






Metal Balustrade.









Egyptian beadwork mask from a mummy, 1000-600 BCE



Tile panels designed by William De Morgan, 19th century

After the museum, we went back to the hotel, ate dinner at the Toby Carvery, and were in bed by 7:30 PM.

WORLD OF BEADS VIII

Okay, I am pretty much caught up on the things that piled up while we were in Europe (and cleaning the house can wait until another day), so I will start chronicling my latest adventures with the World of Beads VIII. Organized by the Bead Society of Greater New York and held at the Fashion Institute of Technology from June 19-21, WOB VIII was a three-day beadfest with classes, demonstrations, exhibits, raffles, and bead buying. I didn't have time to take many photos but luckily Zoya Gutina of My Lovely Beads did. You can see her photos in the June newsletter at

http://www.mylovelybeads.com/php/newsletter/en/200906.html#4

Part of the WOB was a china challenge, where each member took a shard of a china plate that had been prepared by Milly Valentine and made a piece of jewelry using the china piece. This was my entry. I made a wire nest, three needlelace oya flowers, raided my bead stash, and found a cute, little bird at Tinsel Trade. Then I put it all together with the china shard to make a nest that any packrat (or bird) would be proud of. Since I ran out of time, I mounted my nest on a purchased macrame cord neck piece. It was great fun to see what everyone had done with their china shards and we plan to wear them to the first Bead Society meeting in September.

I was also pleased by the announcement that my big snake (all 15' 6" of him) entitled "Why is Everybody Always Picking on Me?" received Honorable mention from the judges in the juried exhibit of beadwork. Here is a photo of the snake in the exhibit.

Even though I couldn't spend much time at the World of Beads, it was a great event and I have heard a lot of nice comments from people who attended the event. Hats off to all of us who helped make the weekend a success!

WE ARE BACK FROM EUROPE

We arrived back in new York on Friday and I have been catching up on all of the things waiting for me. I am going through our photos and arranging a description of our trip. I loved meeting some members of the Bead Society of Great Britain and seeing others that I had met in Turkey. Details coming soon.