Welcome to the second George Bain Celtic Art Digitisation Project newsletter!
PROGRESS SO FAR…
- Pooka&Co ( https://www.pooka.co/ ) are still working full steam on designing and building the new website. They have been working with graphic designer Sheree Walker ( https://www.shereewalker.com/ ) on a clean, contemporary design that also pays homage to Bain’s work. We can’t wait to share this with you all soon and getting volunteers to help with testing. Let us know if you would like to test the website and check for glitches and items you feel would be useful.
- We have been photographing the collection with museum photographer Jim Dunn and hope to start scanning soon (Covid dependant). Our first tranche will include some of the designs used to knit objects in the collection. They’ll also be relevant to crafters interested in Celtic art for their work.
- Professional photography training has taken place and the volunteers are raring to go when they can get safe access to the items.
- We’ve also had some professional interpretive writing training and have started to create new texts for items in the George Bain Celtic Art Collection.
- Planning for mid-term events has started. We hope to join with Highland Threads and to encourage the skilled knitters amongst you to join in to show what can be done in knitting using Celtic art. If you are interested, please contact us as we would like to start a group willing to work together over the next few months. This is why we’re prioritising the scanning of George Bain’s ‘patterns’, so they can be easily accessed by interested knitters.
- Perhaps the final knitted products will be displayed in some way connected to the events. Do contact us to be involved in our Celtic art and modern knitting event
A scarf knitted by one of our volunteers using a Celtic design pattern created by Lucy Hague
GET INVOLVED
If you are interested in joining our online community of Celtic art practitioners, we are looking for creatives to help us test the design of our new community member pages. Why not join the test team – jenny@groamhouse.org
An example of Celtic craft work from our Australian friend Peter Grimes who’s made this Celtic design chess board. We would love to see the work of other specialist practitioners who use Celtic designs. Do get involved with the Project
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS
The first workshop covered how to use a camera – whether it be an SLR, tablet or smartphone – when photographing objects. We learnt about some of the equipment we might need, but also found out how to build a ‘mini-studio’ from items in our home.
There was also great coverage of aspects like lighting, reflections, and how to photograph flat objects to show them at their best. Follow up sessions with small groups enabled members to take photos and have an expert eye run over them, with constructive comments on how to improve them.
People joined Zoom for the excellent photographic workshops run by Jim Dunn, museum and heritage photographer.
WHAT’S NEXT?
- More design work to make the website beautiful
- Testing, testing… particularly of the community pages
- More photography training – keep an eye on Groam HouseFacebook and Twitter for details.
- More news on the project in a couple of months – please share this newsletter with anyone who might be interested and encourage them to sign up for future editions by emailing jenny@groamhouse.org
