Keeling's 'Pictures from Persia'

I've been reading "Pictures from Persia" today by Cecil Keeling, an old tome from Much Ado Books. I'm not sure when it was published, judging from the tone perhaps shortly after WW2 ended, but there is an inscription in it from 1949. Also a stamp showing it resided at some point in 'Alfie's Bookstore, Abadan'. There are some gorgeous 1940's illustrations from the somewhat colonial perspective of a British soldier - several pipe-smoking officers, some interesting caricatures and a whole heap of impoverished Persians. A bit of a time capsule.

The whole day designing the Garden of Cyrus DVD.

Unpacking the studio today, looking inside The House.

Satellite studio visit

Satellite studio visit to Jo Chapman's temporary studio in Downham Market. Jo's done some beautiful drawings of personality-filled apple trees. Four of the Satellite group visited and we discussed ancient orchards. It reminded me of the Garden of Cyrus line about trees in rows and grids, Cyrus, " disposing his trees like his armies in regular ordination ..... brought the treasures of the field into rule and circumspection". I visited a gnarly old orchard in Alfriston some days ago, all propped up branches and rapidly ripening fruit. I had black mulberries off a tree there - the first time since being horribly sick after eating mulberries in a Chaikhaneh / teahouse in the mountains outside Tehran. These ones were explosively juicy and I had some more a couple of days later off the grand tree at Great Dixter.