iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Fiona McLees

Cambridge University Library @theul.bsky.social · 22h

📜 Flax to Folio: The Global Diffusion of Early Paper and the History of Textiles Join us for the 2026 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography delivered by Professor Marina Rustow. 17 & 18 November 2026 5-6pm In-person at Robinson College & online 🎟️ Book your free tickets: loom.ly/Du7jSUs

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 19h

Very interested to see that Cardiff Uni’s poster sale today featured a couple of William Morris prints amongst various popular culture posters. Are the prints just perennial favourites, or do they offer some sort of comfort to home-sick freshers, or is his aesthetic currently in vogue?

A photo showing part of a lamppost with a folded display board behind showing a montage of many different posters, including ones for Shaun of the Dead and Raye and Vertigo and Morris’s Strawberry Thief

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Gaston Bachelard: “All memory has to be reimagined. For we have in our memories micro-films that can only be read if they are lighted by the bright light of the imagination.” That’s so perfectly how it is

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The chicest art on paper I ever worked with, this costume remains in my head as my dream fancy-dress outfit for a belle époque party. Hand-coloured pochoir plate by Fabius, Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1914 (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin)

A fashion illustration of a very chic young woman dressed in a stylish harlequin outfit with diamond patterned skirt, tight black jacket with flouncy white cuffs and collar, black eyemask

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Notes from an anonymous hand. I especially like the group of tiny suns on wonky paving slabs

$A photo of a pavement. Tree roots have caused the tarmac to fracture, two bright yellow spray painted arrows point at the damage$ Another pavement. Yellow spray paint has been used to make square brackets around seams in the tarmac

Another pavement. Yellow spray paint has been used to make square brackets around seams in the tarmac

A pavement made of square slabs. Several fail to lie flat and have been anointed with dots of yellow paint to mark them out

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is John Cage’s handmade paper, composed of milkweed, cattail, pigweed, honeysuckle, saffron, and more — at the NYPL

Very fibrous handmade paper with different colored globs and flecks from various plants

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Crinkle-cut, folded parchment, burnished sunburst of a ginkgo leaf

A creased ginkgo leaf on concrete. The leaf is coloured in gentle gradations from dark copper to pale yellow and

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Strangely dreamed of a cherry tree in blossom being destroyed and then woke up to read this. Also, one for @lakesstiles.bsky.social

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Statue of Ruskin by Gutzon Borglum, best known for sculpting the 60-foot-high heads of Mount Rushmore. He described Ruskin as "the most marvellous, magnificent, unappreciated genius the world has ever known" - this small statuette certainly feels monumental. On display at Ruskin’s house, Brantwood

Detail of the bronze statue - Ruskin’s beard is long and flowing and he looks very serious. Behind the statue is patterned wallpaper that Ruskin hard commissioned for Brantwood

Bronze statuette of Ruskin seated; very grandiose - long flowing beard and fully draped in a cloak, he could be an old testament prophet

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Ruth Siddall @pavementgeology.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This is the Black Castle (Arnos Castle) in Bristol built c. 1750 from blocks of cast slag from copper smelting works. Visited by Horace Walpole, it doesn’t get more gothic than this! And they serve snakebite and black #urbangeology #gothic #18thCentury

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Allotment sign with a rather enigmatic tone of voice

Hand painted sign attached to railings, black paint on a scrap of wood, reading “NO MORE WOOD CHIP FOR NOW”

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The visual evidence of use here tells a very obvious story of how much I adored this book as a child (and well into my teens). Finally getting to read it with one of my own children, and no wonder I loved it so, Susan Cooper’s writing is brilliant.

A very creased paperback copy of The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

More of Gwen John’s St Thérèse of Lisieux and her sister. Elements come and go in these variations; the curtains are usually present but the table sometimes disappears. More enigmatically, a ball and a toy dog or cat come and go from the floor, neither were present in the original prayer card.

A watercolour of two girls in 19th century clothes

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I’ll be back to these faces in the studio today, with several more to prepare for the exhibition Strange Beauties tour to the US - Yale Center for British Art in Feb 2028 and National Museum of Women in the Arts in July 2028

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Erased, incomplete, & tentative faces by Gwen John. These watercolours depict St Therese of Lisieux & her sister, a subject John returned to again & again working from a photographic prayer card. I find the missing & incomplete faces so compelling - distance renders both girls & John so unknowable

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Gallery 12 at National Museum Cardiff now has EIGHT of our wonderful Monets on display. As viewing experiences go - none of the jostling and filing past you might find in the galleries of Paris and London. If you come early enough you might even have them to yourself!

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Apart from pay issues, working conditions are in dispute - this one is worth noting given the spate of recent thefts in European museums: “The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says that changes to staff rotas have left gallery attendants looking after large areas on their own.”

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Visceral reactions in anticipation of spending 3 hours online today learning to use a room booking service, when I am a practising paper conservator. Institutions sure know how to dilute the functionality of expertise they employ

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Views into a railway carriage used by PT Barnum, and later Buffalo Bill, for his tour of Wales - curling layers of fractured paint; ageing wooden floorboards; traces of patterned wallpaper from its later life as a domestic dwelling. A compelling relic, and a prompt to a thousand reveries.

A view through a window into a disused railway carriage. The carriage has layers of white and mint green paint, and a broad strip of patterned wallpaper perhaps suggestive of 1950s styles

A view through a narrow door way at one end of the carriage, looking along the inside. It’s unlit and full of shadows, another partly open door visible at the far end

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

@typejunky.bsky.social a while ago we had a brief exchange about what I should do with my father’s collection of slides of buildings (he was an architectural historian). Not unlabelled, as a feared, actually they are well organised. Here’s one box, S-T I think. You can see some names on the slides

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is a lovely sketchbook I was assessing yesterday - by Welsh artist Calvert “Richard the Rev” Jones, largely of maritime scenes. He lived in Swansea so many are of the sea there in 1828-1831, elegantly rendered. But there’s a couple of nice bonuses in the book…

A watercolour and ink drawing of boats at sea, full sails billowing, executed in blacks and greys and pale brown and dusky pink

Another boat scene, this time monochrome in dark blue-grey

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A new artist’s/architect’s house museum to join the list!

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Fern-owl is one of the nicknames for the mysterious and unearthly nightjar, which I went in search of earlier this year. A bird associated with many names and myths…

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Here they are, in the kitchen, lined up on a ledge near the coffee cups - a perfectly spaced queue of soap Cosmic Houses waiting to be softened and smoothed until they disappear entirely

A view of a kitchen worktop in the Cosmic House, cafetière and mugs on the surface. On a ledge on the splashback stands a row of soap houses

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Dwelling on (but not in) this soap I saw in Jencks’ Cosmic House, one of a little row of identical soap houses in gem-like aqua blue flecked with gold, shaped like the Cosmic House itself. Those living inside the house would also be subversively wearing it away by proxy as they washed their hands.

As the text describes - a little greeny blue soap in the shape of the Cosmic House

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Excavations took place before building could begin, figures against the brown mud peeling back layers gently. They found proof that the fanciful formal gardens depicted in a 1773 print had, in fact, existed - the dense maze with a fountain at its heart, the tree-lined avenues, the ornamental lawns.

A 1773 engraving of Trinity College gardens.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

When I worked at the Bodleian Libraries, our conservation studio looked out over the wilderness area in Trinity College gardens. When one worked at the microscope one could look up and see the view beyond - mature trees and squirrels climbing and the changing seasons mapped across leaf colours…

Photo of a microscope on a bench in front of a window - many leafy shades of green visible beyond, and blue sky

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

No reason to ever update this signage. Functional perfection, can only hope the healthcare inside matches up

A photo of the side of a building. A long vertical sign sticking out from the side reads “SURGERY” in red, whilst over the entrance a horizontal sign reads “ENTRANCE” in black

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is a really interesting point - who gets to use light budgets for light sensitive items? If something is very light sensitive and as precious as the tapestry, then are using some of the lit hours for limited numbers of VIPs a good use?

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Reposted by Fiona McLees

pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Art by Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, (1707 - 1788)

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Grizzled old stump with embedded stones at Ruskin’s house Brantwood, with ferns and wild geranium leaves attempting to spring forth. Would be a perfect subject for Ruskin’s pencil, and a suitable memorial for the last years of a man with deep struggles and mental wounds

A photo of a gnarled section of tree stump upon a paved path

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Philolithia@bsky.social @philolithia.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is my favourite ‘was it significant?’ rock arrangement up near Cregennan- opinions welcome

Photo of a giant slab of rock lying across two giant upright slabs in front of a rock face.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

In Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom buys a bar of lemon soap from Sweny’s Chemist. A small episode in an enormous novel, not enough perhaps to stake a substantial claim for this chemist as a Dublin landmark. Modern-day Sweny’s could so easily be an attempt to cash in on this tenuous association -

A photo of the frontage of Sweny’s Chemist in Dublin. Two arched glass windows, a matching arched glazed door way, and the letters SWENY spelled out in gold letters above the door.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Do you know of any artist’s house or studio museums open to the public in the UK? Not the obvious ones please, or ones listed on the Artist’s Studio Museum Network website (Charleston, Leighton, etc). I’m thinking of ones like Kellie Castle in Fife, with Hew Lorimer’s studio in outbuildings

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Missing person, lost at sea for many years Washed up in the sands amongst pearled discs of worn oyster shells and sea glass jewels and disembodied flesh pink crab claws

Fragment of blue and white ceramic, edges smoothed by the sea. A figure with a hat and raised arm is visible in the decoration

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

“Lefranc: Rouge Phénicien is the colour of what we called wild geranium. The stems are dark crimson, the leaves seem dipped in pale crimson just now, the rest of the leaves are somewhat 4 Anglais. Earlier in the summer the leaves are emerald green all over.” (Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 1936)

A photo of a Lefranc watercolour chart c.1930s, showing two handpainted swatches of Rouge Phenicien and Rouge Rubis. Rouge Phenicien is a very vivid pinky-purple, whilst Rubis is a purer dense red.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Just finished re-reading Gwyn Thomas’ 1947 novel The Alone to the Alone, set in the Rhondda during the depression, and there are so many fast, funny quips and quotable sections. This time the vitriol directed at the wannabe Fascist firebrand Shadrach Sims and his protege Rollo really stood out..

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Deinstalling the Gwen John show in Cardiff (next venue, @nationalgalleries.bsky.social Edinburgh!) and taking the chance to match up one of her sketchbooks with some of the paintings. This is Amgueddfa Cymru’s Girl in Profile

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Lettering worth dying for at St David’s, Llanthony. Perhaps Gill and David Jones looked upon this slab when they lived in the valley.

A photo of a tombstone on a church floor, with carved inscription in elegant script with curled capitals:
Here

Lyeth the Body of

Mary the Wife of

David Gunter

decease march ye 28th

Anno Dom 1723

Aged 42

Psalme 46 vi

god is our refuge &

Srength a very pre

sent help in trouble

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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Marine painter Willem van de Velde hard at work from his stock of drawings. Portrayed by Michiel van Musscher, whose day is today.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

"The feast of the solstice - midsummer night! Fires on the mountain-top, and ring-around-a-rosy about the leaping flames! I have never seen it; but they say our rude forefathers used thus to celebrate the first summer night, the night with which autumn begins, the very midday and zenith of the year,

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Initially took this for a Volvo Estate as I walked by and then got confused when it kept on going. Stretch Volvo!

A picture of a Volvo with three doors on each side and presumably 8 seats inside. Stretch Volvo!

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

An Edwardian doll made from a shoe; part of the Lovett collection held at St Fagans museum. Found in a London slum, she’s made from a shoe, and black sock, and various fabric scraps. Currently back on display at the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh alongside other dolls from the Lovett collection.

A doll made from a shoe: pieces of paper or fabric have been cut out and stuck to the sole of the heel to make eyes, mouth, nose; the rest of the shoe has a loose dress of discoloured fabric with a lace collar. Two arms are made of thin sticks wrapped in rough black fabric. The doll has a museum label tied around it and rests on crumpled tissue

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The sunny side of Franz Kafka @amschelkavka.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Now I am losing my name too; it grows shorter and shorter, and now I am called: Yours. Franz Kafka, 1920.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

A little colour note for Bloomsday, the anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s adventures across Dublin. James Joyce requested a very specific blue for the cover of Ulysses: the blue of the Greek flag, a nod to Homer & Ancient Greece, and a token of the country that Joyce believed brought him good luck…

Photo of the first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses, white text on blue cover, “Ulysses by James Joyce”. It’s a chunky book.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 16/06/2023

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”. The Ulysses quote that sticks with me most as I find it reassuring to conceive of myself as a portal through which time passes. Here’s the great sweet mother sea at Vico Road. #Bloomsday2023

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

A question for something I’m thinking of: what diseases might 19th c brick-makers be susceptible to? Silicosis perhaps? (Not thinking of injuries now but other risks from the job)

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Kelmscott: William Morris’ quill pen on display, taken from his work-table after his death; and the brewhouse where Morris claimed “he could bake bread and brew ale with any farmer’s wife in Oxfordshire” & was an excellent cook. A home & a workplace for sustenance of the mind and the belly.

A photograph of a display cabinet. A quill pen lies inside with an old handwritten label attached. Behind are ceramics.

A photograph of the brewhouse at Kelmscott: whitewashed walls, a large fireplace with a bread oven, and a curving tank for brewing. Strings of hops and various wooden utensils such a long wooden ladles decorate the room.

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Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

On Monday evening at Beacon Hill in Monmouthshire I spent an hour staring at this scene in a state of high alert. The pile of woodshavings hedged in by gorse and bramble, bright pink foxgloves beyond, & the raggedy pine and the dusky sky became a stage set for a fascinating creature.

Scene as described! Photo of a clearing on a hilltop

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